Hi from Patricia: labs up, energy lagging

Welcome. Worth knowing before you compare options: 191 from 198 in 8 weeks is solid, and that's the kind of drop people end up measuring themselves against. One thing that gets left out of these threads — energy tends to lag the labs by about a month once lifting comes back into the mix, so a good panel doesn't always match how someone feels right away.

Sleep is the missing variable. Six hours with kids would flatten me no matter what my labs said.

Ferritin 38 would make me curious, but I've seen mine swing 20 points just from training load.

Training load is a good call. How many days are you lifting? My 4-day split tanked me until I cut volume.

5 days wrecked sleep. 3 full-body days felt better. Consistent pattern, weirdly.

I had almost the same intro last year: 44, two kids, six hours sleep, total T around 430, ferritin 41. What actually moved the needle for me was logging sleep and steps for three weeks before changing anything. My 3pm crash tracked almost perfectly with nights under 6.5 hours, not with the lab numbers. Once I got to 7 hours most nights for a month, waist kept dropping and energy caught up. Not saying that's your deal, but the timeline in your post looks familiar. The scale was noisy, waist and sleep were the honest signals.

Did anyone else see A1c 5.5 improve before waist moved? Mine dropped 0.2 at week 10, scale barely moved.

Waist moved 1.5 inches here, A1c stayed 5.4. So no, not for me.

OP, are you eating enough? 140g protein at 191 lb seems low if you're recomping.

I was going to say the same. When I bumped protein and kept calories moderate, energy stabilized around week 9.

Six hours is the elephant in this thread, not free T.

This thread is making me want to recheck ferritin and A1c. Thanks for posting real numbers, not just vibes.