Tesamorelin
Also called Egrifta, tesa
Tesamorelin is the specialist for one job: stubborn deep belly fat.
This one has been through full clinical trials and is an approved medicine somewhere in the world. The ranges below are drawn from those trials and from what the community reports using.
12,755 posts20 communities
of community reporting analysed for this compound. That is the part you cannot find anywhere else — the trial data below it, you could look up yourself.
USA · FDA · Egrifta · HIV-associated lipodystrophy
Canada · Health Canada · Egrifta
- Belly fat / contouring
- Fat loss & metabolic
- Longevity & anti-aging
- Sleep
The quick answer
Tesamorelin is the specialist for one job: stubborn deep belly fat. It's a growth-hormone-releasing analog, so it prompts your body to make its own GH in natural pulses - and that GH goes preferentially after visceral fat, the deep kind around your organs that's hardest to shift with diet alone.
The arc people describe is steady: deeper sleep and vivid dreams early on, subtle waist-tightening around weeks three to six, and the visible visceral-fat changes emerging near the two-to-three-month mark. It's a nightly, consistency-rewards-you kind of peptide. Some water retention or hand tingling can show up early and usually eases if you ease off. One note: visceral fat can creep back after stopping.
Why people use it
🎯 Targets deep belly fat; 🫀 Reduces liver fat; 📉 Better body composition, no dieting; 🕒 Raises your own growth hormone; 😴 Better sleep and recovery
What people report using
These are ranges other people have reported running. They are here so you can see what has actually been done — they are not medical advice and not a recommendation for you.
People report running this anywhere from 1mg to 2mg, every night, empty stomach.Where somebody sits in that range depends on what they are using it for and what they are starting from — the low end is a deliberate choice a lot of people make, not a half-hearted version of the high end.
Body composition
- How often
- Every night, empty stomach
- Route
- subcutaneous
- Where this comes from
- Approved medicine
Visceral fat coming down, better sleep quality, firmer body composition.
Body composition
- How often
- Mon–Fri nights
- Route
- subcutaneous
- Where this comes from
- Approved medicine
Fat loss & metabolic
- How often
- Once daily, evening
- Route
- subcutaneous
- Where this comes from
- Approved medicine
Fat loss & metabolic
- How often
- Once daily, evening
- Route
- subcutaneous
- Where this comes from
- Approved medicine
Fat loss & metabolic
- How often
- Once daily, evening
- Route
- subcutaneous
- Where this comes from
- Approved medicine
Fat loss & metabolic
- How often
- Once daily, evening
- Route
- subcutaneous
- Where this comes from
- Community practice
Longevity & anti-aging
- How often
- Once daily, about 30 minutes before bed
- Route
- subcutaneous
- Where this comes from
- Small human studies
10mg vial + 1ml BAC water = 10mg/ml. 2mg = 20u. Once DAILY, PM on an empty stomach. Note: the EGRIFTA WR label reconstitutes to 8mg/ml - ours is a vendor convention, not the label concentration.
Work out your own units on the reconstitution calculator — the most common serious mistake in this area is arithmetic, not chemistry.
What to expect, and when
- First thing people notice
- Weeks 1–2 (sleep)
- When it gets real
- Weeks 4–6 (visceral fat)
- Where it peaks
- Weeks 8–12 (full protocol)
- Patience needed
- Medium - 8 wks to full effect
- Days 1–7GH & IGF-1 rising - nothing visible yet
IGF-1 levels begin rising in the first week. Lipolytic enzymes start upregulating in visceral adipose tissue. None of this is visible or felt, but the biochemical foundation is being laid. Phase 3 data shows IGF-1 increases of ~108 ng/mL over baseline during the treatment period.
- Weeks 1–2Sleep quality improves - first felt effect
Improved sleep depth and quality is consistently the first reported effect of Tesamorelin - usually within the first 1–2 weeks. The bedtime injection timing amplifies the body's natural overnight GH pulse, leading to deeper, more restorative sleep. This is the earliest signal it's working.
- Weeks 4–6Visceral fat begins reducing · lipid profiles improve
Abdominal fat begins to reduce meaningfully by weeks 4–6. Lipid profiles improve. You may notice clothes fitting differently around the midsection before you see dramatic scale change - Tesamorelin targets the deep organ-surrounding fat, not surface fat.
- Weeks 8–12Full visceral fat reduction · body composition & cognition
The full suite of Tesamorelin benefits becomes evident: substantial visceral fat reduction, improved body composition, and measurable improvements in cognitive function (executive function, verbal memory - documented in JAMA study). Muscle mass preservation is visible by this point.
💡 Better sleep within the first two weeks is your confirmation signal. If sleep quality hasn't changed by week 3, review your injection timing - it must be taken within 30–60 minutes of bedtime to align with the natural GH pulse. Timing is critical for Tesamorelin in a way it isn't for most other compounds.
Side effects, and what people do about them
The early stuff is fluid, not fat, and it front-loads: puffy hands, achy joints, tingly fingers overnight, mostly in the first few weeks and settling as your body adjusts. It helps to see the trial numbers next to placebo - achy joints ran 13% on tesamorelin against 11% on placebo over 26 weeks, so nearly all of that is just being human. The one that is genuinely more common on the drug is injection-site redness or itching, 17% against 6%. It is a daily shot; rotate around the abdomen and it stays a non-event for most people. If your hands feel puffy or tingly at night, hold at 1mg for a fortnight rather than pushing through - it is dose-related and it clears. And if you already keep an eye on blood sugar, keep doing that and loop in your doctor.
Go deeper
Open these only if you want them.
How it actually works
A stabilised analogue of the full 44-amino-acid growth-hormone-releasing hormone, binding the GHRH receptor on pituitary somatotrophs and producing a physiological, pulsatile GH release rather than a flat exogenous level.
For stacking, this is the most frequently muddled relationship in the category: CJC-1295 is also a GHRH analogue and binds the same receptor. Running both is one mechanism twice. If the goal is a larger pulse, the non-redundant partner is a ghrelin-receptor secretagogue such as ipamorelin, which arrives by a different door and also lifts the somatostatin brake.
What people report, in full
People describe Tesamorelin as a slow, quiet one. Sleep tends to change first, around two to three weeks, and the waistline follows at about a month. The thing users judge it on is almost never a scan - it is how trousers fit, how they are sleeping and whether they are snoring less. That is worth naming, because the trial evidence behind it is CT-measured deep abdominal fat in a specific clinical population, and the community applies it much more broadly than that. Timing is genuinely contested: roughly half inject nightly before bed and half do it fasted in the morning, and nobody has compared the two. The shared belief is that an empty stomach matters. One pleasant surprise in the reports - injection-site reactions come up far less than the approved label would lead you to expect, and where they do come up people describe a brief sting rather than a problem. Cost is the loudest theme by a distance, and there is a visible drift down to smaller amounts to make it affordable.
Worth knowing
The trials are real. They were not asking the question most people are asking when they come looking for this one.
Sources and review
Most of what is useful about these compounds comes from people who have used them, not from trials. These are published analyses of what communities reported. We did not read the posts ourselves and we do not claim to.
12,755 posts20 communities
Reports from 2023-01-01 to 2024-05-18
Rosenberg AE, et al. Injuries, Injections, and Internet Forums: A Qualitative Study of Reddit User Perspectives on Peptide Therapy After Orthopaedic Surgery. Sports Health 2026;18(4):901-910.
Qualitative coding. No dose distributions reported.
These references were located by literature search and recorded as the primary sources behind this record. The publishers block automated retrieval, so they are pointers to the right papers rather than quotations we have checked line by line. They are replaced as we read them properly.
Last reviewed 2026-09-06.
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