ever the optimist im assuming ill soon be lean enough to start a bulk. bearing in mind ive spent seven months in a deficit now to get rid of my carnivore dad bod i dont want to add that back while gaining muscle. so im thinking plenty of protein , carbs around rt , maybe keto on days off , 300-500 photons surplus ( thats what lyle suggests) , ill go higher on the anabolics but nothing crazy , i think motsc would be valuable and also reta at maybe 0.5 mg a week this is copied from another site , what do yo think about this info @Shaun Womersley and what top tier wisdom could you offer ? id rather make slower gainz than get bigger but look absolutely Flabulous ' Why Retatrutide Isn't Just Appetite Suppression (Nutrient Partitioning) Ask GROK whether you can run retatrutide while bulking and it will tell you no, because retatrutide is an appetite-suppressing drug. That answer is built on one mechanism out of three, and it misses the one that matters most for anyone eating in a surplus. Retatrutide hits three receptors at once. GLP-1, which slows gastric emptying and dampens hunger signaling in the brain. Glucagon, which raises energy expenditure. And GIP, which is the one almost nobody talks about. GIP stands for glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide, a gut hormone released when food arrives in the small intestine. It tells the pancreas to release insulin before blood glucose climbs much, and it talks directly to fat tissue about how to handle incoming nutrients. What that GIP arm is really doing inside retatrutide is optimizing nutrient partitioning, which just means your body decides, based on your energy balance and your energy requirements, where to send the food you eat. Think of every meal arriving at a switchyard. Protein and carbohydrate and fat come in, and there are tracks going out to muscle glycogen, to muscle protein synthesis, to liver, and to fat tissue. Your hormonal state is the switch operator, and insulin sensitivity is how well that operator can hear the instructions coming in.