My Carbolin 19 Comparison/Study

With the urging of a few others here on this site, I’ve decided to post my results and future comparisons of Biotest products on this board. I decided about 6 months back that I was going to take a full dose of Carbolin 19 for the full 3 months and totally chart my performance to see if the supplement in fact was truth or myth.

My fascination with Carbolin 19 was the fact that you could make steroidal type gains while decreasing body fat. This was especially positive for me being that I have more than a few pounds to shed, but being a Powerlifter, I needed to be able to retain and gain strength while trying to shed this fat.

To start off, I should state some of the controlling variables. First, my food intake was going to be set around the 3000-4000 calorie a day mark which is pretty low for my starting weight of 297. My daily supplement intake consists of 6 tabs of Flameout, 3 tabs of REZ-V, Multi-V, BCAA’s, and Creatine or NO2/Creatine products. I drink 48 ounces of Cytomax during my workout, take a full serving of Muscle Milk Collegiate post workout, and drink 3-4 sefvings of Muscle Milk throughout the day. I also sleep between 7-8 hrs every day.

My Carbolin 19 trial lasted nearly 6 months. It initially was going to be a 3 month trial, but I was liking where it was going and decided to do another 3 months. During this trial, my workouts felt good…I wasn’t setting wild PR’s or anything, but I also wasn’t missing many workouts either due to over-training or sickness.

My appetite, as others have noted, seemed to increase, but I kept to my daily intake of 3000-4000 Kcals daily. Visually, I didn’t think that I was loosing too much fat, but I did seem to add some muscle. After the 6 months of the experiment, my weight increased 12 lbs and my BF% dropped 2%. I was pretty impressed with the results, especially since I really didn’t “feel” much going on differently from my training.

The last month though of my Carbolin 19 experience, I decided that I wanted to in fact start “feeling” more with my training, but still have the same goal in mind which is to drop body fat, and ultimately about 35 lbs of weight while trying to maintain strength. I’m keeping my intake the same, the only difference this time with my study will be the addition of Alpha Male instead of the Carbolin 19.

I’ve actually been on the Alpha Male now for 2 weeks, taking only the minimum dosage of 4 tabs per day. My initial feelings are a much stronger drive, both in the gym and in the bed. The recovery so far doesn’t seem much different. I thought there was going to be a bigger hunger increase as well as an initial strength increase, but there hasn’t been much, so starting next week, I will be increasing the dosage to the max of 6tabs a day, 5 on 2 off. I will report finding as I go along, and I will plan to take the Alpha Male for 3 months to start.

My studies will not stop here. I plan to start a Surge experiment as well next week. I will be taking Surge instead of my workout Cytomax servings and post workout Muscle MIlk Collegiate serving. I’m going to take 1.5 servings for my workout and then 2 servings for my post workout recovery.

I also will be taking a look at BETA-7 vs Creatine, and then comparing both results with both Creatine and BETA-7 together.

This should take most of the year to compare results with the above mentioned products, but I’m also considering taking Methoxy-7 for a period of time as well, and I may do a comparison of Spike Shooters and Caffeine-Free Spike.

I’m open to thoughts, so if there are some that think I should try something out, I’m more than willing to look into it.

Sounds like you got some great results.

Do you have progress charted monthly?

It would be intersting to see, atleast for me.

How did you measure starting and ending body fat?

[quote]HJLau75 wrote:
Sounds like you got some great results.

Do you have progress charted monthly?

It would be intersting to see, atleast for me.

How did you measure starting and ending body fat?[/quote]

When you say progress charting, are you specifically talking about body comp, or performance?

I keep a training log, so I can list my workouts, however, the body comp was done pre and post using both calipers and bio-electrical impedance. Actually, we found during the body comp measures that the hand-held bio-electrical impedance was pretty accurate. Ideally, I’d like to get in a tank and get an under water number to compare against the two measures, but, I’m pretty certain that the two measures that I do have are fairly accurate.

[quote]Dominator wrote:
Actually, we found during the body comp measures that the hand-held bio-electrical impedance was pretty accurate. Ideally, I’d like to get in a tank and get an under water number to compare against the two measures, but, I’m pretty certain that the two measures that I do have are fairly accurate.
[/quote]

i hate to burst your bubble, but the bio-electrical measures are worse for accuracy than a simple skinfold

[quote]ubl0 wrote:
Dominator wrote:
Actually, we found during the body comp measures that the hand-held bio-electrical impedance was pretty accurate. Ideally, I’d like to get in a tank and get an under water number to compare against the two measures, but, I’m pretty certain that the two measures that I do have are fairly accurate.

i hate to burst your bubble, but the bio-electrical measures are worse for accuracy than a simple skinfold[/quote]

Edit: Woops.

[quote]ubl0 wrote:
i hate to burst your bubble, but the bio-electrical measures are worse for accuracy than a simple skinfold[/quote]

I’m quite aware of the lack of reliability with the bio-electrical measures, but I’m actually working with one of the PhD’s that was pat of the Univ of New Mexico study where they compared all the different body comp methods and actually found that the hand-held bio-electrical units were very comparable to both caliper and hydostatic methods provided the athletes were pre-hydrated and fasted for over 6 hours prior to testing.

I was initially just going to use the caliper number, but I then decided to use the hand-held bio-electrical just as another form to back up claims.

Oddly enough, the unit that showed to be the worst, well second worst was the Bod-Pod…the unit that was heralded as the most reliable of all the measures.

The unit that is consistently the worst is the Tanita foot bio-electrical units. They aren’t very accurate even between repeated trials, and they’re even worse for athlete’s that are heavier. Part of the problem I’m told is that the equation they work off is pretty flawed.

At any rate, I’m pretty sure my BF% is fairly accurate both pre and post testing because both values were lower by nearly the same percentages.

Given the study, I would tend to think that the change in body fat percentage is more important than the instrument of measure in this case. Even if the instrument were flawed, if it gave consistent readings, then the net change would be accurate, even if the actual number were not.

Cool read and good results. Thanks for doing it. Looking forward to your other experiments.

When you talk about the Alpha Male you’ve started taking, are you referring to the new one containing Carbolin 19?

[quote]Dominator wrote:
Alpha Male:
I’m keeping my intake the same, the only difference this time with my study will be the addition of Alpha Male instead of the Carbolin 19.

I’ve actually been on the Alpha Male now for 2 weeks. I will report finding as I go along, and I will plan to take the Alpha Male for 3 months to start.

My studies will not stop here. I plan to start a Surge experiment as well next week. I will be taking Surge instead of my workout Cytomax servings and post workout Muscle MIlk Collegiate serving. I’m going to take 1.5 servings for my workout and then 2 servings for my post workout recovery.
[/quote]

My only thought is that if you are going to start taking Surge, how will you know if you can attribute your gains in the next few months to Alpha Male or Surge?

[quote]Miserere wrote:
When you talk about the Alpha Male you’ve started taking, are you referring to the new one containing Carbolin 19?[/quote]

Yes, that’s the one.

I took the minimum dosage for 2 weeks and found that to not be enough for me, so I’m now on week one of a full dosage, 6 tabs a day.

I understand that a full serving of Alpha Male contains a full serving of Carbolin 19. The point of my comparison was to see which was better for fat loss, or trying to maintain strength while on a calorie restricted diet.

[quote]PharmD Pete wrote:
Dominator wrote:
Alpha Male:
I’m keeping my intake the same, the only difference this time with my study will be the addition of Alpha Male instead of the Carbolin 19.

I’ve actually been on the Alpha Male now for 2 weeks. I will report finding as I go along, and I will plan to take the Alpha Male for 3 months to start.

My studies will not stop here. I plan to start a Surge experiment as well next week. I will be taking Surge instead of my workout Cytomax servings and post workout Muscle MIlk Collegiate serving. I’m going to take 1.5 servings for my workout and then 2 servings for my post workout recovery.

My only thought is that if you are going to start taking Surge, how will you know if you can attribute your gains in the next few months to Alpha Male or Surge?[/quote]

I thought about this some over the weekend, and thought the same thing, so may just continue with the Cytomax/Muscle Milk Collegiate fromula for another 2 months or so to give the Alpha Male more of an up front prescence in the comparison.

That said, I looked at the numbers of the Surge as compared to the Cytomax/Collegiate combination that I’m currently on, and the difference would be an increase of 140 calories taking the Surge instead of what I’m currently taking. On a 3000 calorie a day diet, that increase would represent roughly 4.5%, and 3.5% increase on a 4000 calorie a day diet. The increase in percentage seems to be enough over time in my calculation to sway potential body comp changes with the Alpha Male/Carbolin 19 comparison that I’m currently doing, especially if I was too look at the comparison of Alpha Male to Carbolin 19 over 3 months, so I will continue with my intake of Cytomax and Muscle Milk Collegiate for another 10 weeks at the minimum to validate my results of the comparison.

What will be interesting to see now that I’m taking the full dose of the Alpha Male which contains a full dose of the Carbolin 19, if there’s any significant change due to the inclusion of the Tribulus, Eurycoma, and Vitex.

I think I’m going to post weekly updates on my Alpha Male results now that things are happening.

As mentioned before, this week, I went to a max dose, a total of 6 tabs, 5 on 2 off. For two weeks, I was taking 2 tabs twice a day. During that two week period, I had lost .5 lbs. Today was my weigh in day, and I’m now a full 2 lbs down from the start of the Alpha Male trial, however, I lost 1.5 lbs this week alone going up to the full dosage. I didn’t really notice any changes in drive or hunger. I thought for sure that I was going to be more hungry this week. I also thought I was going to “feel” more lifting with the max dose than before, but that wasn’t the case.

So to some up, I’ve been on Alpha Male for 3 weeks now, and I’ve already lost 2 lbs, and 1.5 of that was this week when I increased dosaging. Strength levels are about the same, which I’ll take if I can drop some more fat. I’m eager to see what the body comp changes are going to be because today I threw my briefs on for Speed Box Squats, and they felt looser or easier to get on around the gut, that and my belt was a bit easier to put on with the added briefs.

Good stuff. So the supplements listed in the first post are supplements you take all the time. They have been staples for quiet some time right? Did you add them one at a time? Did you see any good things happen when you added the Rez-V?

[quote]StandTall wrote:
Good stuff. So the supplements listed in the first post are supplements you take all the time. They have been staples for quiet some time right? Did you add them one at a time? Did you see any good things happen when you added the Rez-V?[/quote]

Yes, all the other stuff is what I take on a daily basis and have been taking them for some time.

I initially thought that taking the Rez-V would maybe add a bit of strength or body comp changes which is why I decided to add that into my daily intake. I was also impressed with the health benefits associated with it as well.

Personally, on it’s own, I doubt it does much. It seemed to be a little more effective with the Carbolin 19-19. I had stopped taking the Rez-V for a period of time when I started taking the Carbolin 19. At the 3 month point, I re-added the Rez-V and there may have been a minimal change at best. For a little while there, I was having a wild run of huge PR’s, and it was right around the time of re-adding the Rez-V, however, I now believe that the results had very little to do with the Rez-V inclusion. There was a month where I was sick off and on and wasn’t moving my numbers up much, so I attribute the move in PR’s to being completely healthy. It’s possible that the Rez-V helped with getting over the sickness though, and that’s always a big factor.

I guess if you’re looking for the Rez-V for mainly health benefits, I’d take it, but as far as a “feel” supplement, it’s certainly not that.

Another weekly post.

I gained my 2 lbs back, but this has a lot to do with my de-load week and slight increase in caloric intake.

I was feeling a little run down, and I really hadn’t taken much time off in the last two months, so this was a good week to just do some GPP and pre-hab.

I’m pretty sure that the weight will come off in the next two weeks when my workout intensities increase.

So, this concludes the first month of the comparison. Overall, I don’t feel much different than when I was just taking the Carbolin 19. The next two weeks will be good indicators of how well the Alpha Male is working in training, and hopefully I’ll be able to loose a little more fat to go along.

My 2 lbs that I gained last week came off this week.

I also had a few good PR’s to go along with the decrease in body weight.

All in all, still not bad results, but I was hoping for more, especially in the strength dept.

I’m starting to believe that this is a good supplement for strength increase if you’re going to consume more than you burn. If you’re on calorie restriction, I don’t find it much better than Carbolin 19 by itself, at least for strength and recovery.

I think I’m going to call it done aftr this bottle is done. I can see where this is going, and it really isn’t much different. At this point I’m becoming more interested in Surge and Carbolin 19.