Sleep deeper. Recover faster. Feel better.

You go to bed at the same time and still wake up more, and mornings stopped feeling like a reset. The largest release of growth hormone happens during deep sleep, so this is usually the first thing to change and the first thing people put down to stress.

The session that used to cost you a day now costs two or three. The training has not changed. What has changed is how fast tissue repairs between sessions, and repair is one of the things growth hormone signalling supports.

The scale can sit still while the proportions shift. Less lean mass, more around the middle, on the same food and the same work. It is the slowest of these to appear and the hardest to argue with once it has.

Focus that used to hold through the afternoon starts thinning out after lunch. This is the easiest of the four to blame on workload, which is why it tends to go unexamined the longest.