Taking a GLP-1? Do These 7 Things to Lose Fat Without Losing Muscle

If you're on a GLP-1 and losing weight fast, it can be exciting at first. Let's get real. Till you realize up to 40% of what you're losing could be fat-free mass, not fat. In this video, I'm sharing 7 easy things you can do to help make sure the weight coming off is from fat, not from skeletal muscle. So you can stay strong, healthy, and fit, and keep that metabolism cranking regardless of how long you're on that GLP-1. First up, You gotta monitor the right numbers so you know what's actually happening under the hood. There has been a lot of discussion about losing up to 40% of your muscle. That's actually not entirely true. It's up to 40% of your fat-free mass. So let's break that apart because you'll be able to see this. You don't wanna just get on the scale. You wanna get on a bioimpedance scale because you gotta see what your weight is made up of. A bioimpedance scale is going to look at your body in 2 ways. It looks at How much fat is on your body and how much fat-free mass. It does that by sending a little wave up your body, an impedance wave, and checking the resistance to it. The fat provides the resistance. This is the subcutaneous fat. And from that, it can predict how much your body's fat and how much is fat-free mass. What it then does is go a step further in that prediction to give you how much you potentially have in your fat-free mass of skeletal muscle mass. Now, this will vary based on your age, your sex, how much you work out, Your genetics, right? And the only way to really know how much skeletal muscle mass you have is by doing an MRI, which is expensive. You're not gonna do it. Or a D3 creatine test, which isn't even available commercially yet. You're gonna use the guesstimate, and I'm gonna help you be able to determine if you are actually holding onto, or better yet, improving your muscle quality, because that's what it's all about as you are losing body fat. Okay, so first thing we have is that your body has 2 compartments, fat mass, fat-free mass. And within fat mass, maybe 40 to 50% of that is muscle. Again, depending on all those factors. So that means that as you're losing weight, you're going to be losing maybe some fat within your muscle that would show up as fat-free mass. Maybe some of your fatty liver that would show up as fat-free mass. Maybe some of the different things in your body, let's say blood supply, etc., to your fat. That will still show up as fat-free mass. So you could be losing some fat-free mass that's not muscle and is actually fine to lose. So how do you know if you're good or not? Well, this is where muscle quality comes in. You wanna not just look at your body on that bioimpedance scale, though I want you to use that. I want you to use it every day. The way you use your bioimpedance scale is you step on it every single day because it's based on total body water and that goes all over the place, as we know. And then you take the average over the week because you wanna see if Over the week, you're improving. So take the average over the week. Now, the other thing you're gonna put together with that to ensure that you're improving your muscle quality as you go, because if you lose, say, 20% of your fat-free mass, but you get stronger, you're fine. So the best tool of all for that is something I'm holding in my hand right now. This is a grip strength tester. It's a hand grip dynamometer. When I had these in grad school, they were expensive. Now they're like $30 on Amazon. And what you wanna do is test that. And you don't wanna be average here. You wanna be above average. In fact, I'd love you to be in the top 25%. And as you are losing that fat, you wanna make sure that you are improving your grip strength, or if you're in that top 25%, you are staying there. So grip strength is one way to look at it. It's not the only way though. It's a proxy. We're not trying to improve your grip strength. We're trying to improve your overall strength. And that's what grip strength is giving us another guesstimate of. 2 other ways you can test that I think are great and no equipment required, just your body, is a sit-to-stand squat test. Squat test. You do this over a normal-sized chair, start seated, and then you count in 30 seconds how many times you can go up and down. Your goal, your mission is to hit 20 or more. That's where you wanna go. What's this checking? Your leg power, which is the thing you lose the most as we age. And then the other one are pushups. And if you hear me out, are saying, I can't do a pushup, I would say you can't do a pushup yet. I don't care if you start against a wall, against a table, on your hands and knees, I just want you to start and you wanna get to the point where you can do it on your hands and toes in a plank style with a very good form. And that's where we are gonna start counting from and continuing to improve. That's gonna check your strength and your stamina. So we've got power, strength, stamina, all being tested here. So we're making sure that as you're losing your weight, you're holding onto or building your muscle strength and quality and power. Okay, so that's the first thing. Now, you're also going to monitor your overall weight loss. And what I want you to think of here is if you've got over 30 pounds to lose, you can lose 1 to 2% of that a week. But if you've got less than that, I want you to really focus on 0.5 to 1% of that body weight per week. Because if you go down too fast, if you're going too fast on the weight loss, guess what's gonna happen? You're not gonna have the energy. You're not gonna be able to work out like you need to, and you're probably gonna lose that skeletal muscle. And that's the whole point. Our biggest goal here is to make sure that you are holding on to skeletal muscle and improving muscle quality, because that's going to impact your overall health the biggest, the most. Think of muscle, remember, it's your metabolic control center. And it's also going to keep your metabolism from going into the gutter when you go through this. The next thing is protein intake. And I have a mantra because I've heard for so many years, I can't get that much protein in. And so what I just tell people is eat protein first. What I like you to do is Before you even worry about this, first thing, step 1, start tracking your food. I have right here a food scale. This is such an eye-opener because you probably think you're eating more protein than you are, and you probably think you're eating less calories than you are. This is where tracking can be so important, but use a food scale so you get really clear on how much you're actually eating. For the first week you're tracking, you're just gonna be curious. This will be challenging. You're gonna wanna be judgmental. Don't do that. Just be curious and record everything. And these apps now have made it so easy to do this because you can literally snap pictures of the barcodes and then it will save it. And, and we tend to eat the same things most days. So keep it simple. And then once we've got that tracking, start to go, okay, I wanna eat somewhere in the neighborhood of 0.7 to 1 gram per pound of target body weight. If you are in more caloric restriction, you're better off going higher on protein. You need more essential amino acids. And that's what you get from eating that protein. Protein. And so you wanna make sure you eat it first so you got it in. And ideally choose the leanest choices because some of the fattier choices of protein can actually be more fat than protein, right? Think of the difference between a ribeye steak and a lean filet. Only exception there is cold water fish. You want those healthy fats. That is protein, 0.7 to 1 gram per pound of target body weight. I have a little tool for you. I created a protein calculator and an Eat Protein First challenge, which we'll link in the notes. So if you go, I need some help here, JJ, I got you. Speaking of that, I also created a body composition calculator, which we'll put in the show notes, that will help you determine what your ideal range for your body composition, how much protein or how much fat, how much fat-free mass you should have. How's that? Cool, huh? All right. Now, I mentioned protein and I mentioned eating protein first. And I know this can be challenging. I like you to eat it first because it's going to help you eat less overall and make better food choices. And I know you got it in. But if you're struggling to get it in, or maybe you're struggling to get enough in, in the morning or evening, or you're gonna work out in the morning fasted, here's what you can do. This is what I do. You can use essential amino acids. I love this tool. I think this is one of the most underutilized tools. I got so excited about it. I made my own amino acid power powder through Reignite Wellness that's based on the ratios that they advise for sarcopenia that the NIH advised. Here's what you wanna Look for a leucine-enriched essential amino acid powder. And what I want you to do is if you're not getting a meal, you'll probably want to have 10 grams, maybe even 15. If you are having a meal, 5 grams is probably going to be great. Have it before the meal. Like if you look and go, I'm having a lower protein meal, like sometimes I'll be traveling and I know what's available and I'm like, I'm just not going to get what I need here. I'll always have a scoop or 2 of essential aminos before. Works great with before dinner too. So this is your little hack. I don't tend I love the hacks, but this is one that I do. And I think this, I'd rather you err a little bit on having more than less, because having less is really problematic, especially when you're on GLP-1s. Another thing that can be problematic when you're on GLP-1s is hydration. It can be really challenging to get enough water in. I don't know if you're aware of this. This blew my mind. I would always heard that mild dehydration can cause some problems. It can cause you to raise cortisol. And it can cause you to store fat. I didn't understand the mechanism until I interviewed Dr. Rick Johnson on Well Beyond 40, and he taught me that here is how it happens. When you're mildly dehydrated— and by the way, this is 1% dehydration, you don't even notice this. It is so crazy how we can be just the slightest bit hungry when we shouldn't be, but we never seem to be thirsty when we should be. Like, who created that system? So you're mildly dehydrated, 1%. And what happens is your body frees up glycogen stores, carbohydrate stores in your liver. And this is where we tend to store fructose. So it's fructose gets stored as glycogen in the liver, frees back up that glucose, turns back into fructose and stores it as fat so that you've got water on hand if you need it. Because water has fat. When you burn off fat, you are also liberating water. Think of the camel. Do not be the camel, right? So that is how hydration can impact fat storage, but it also raises cortisol. And here's the other issue with it. There's a couple things. I did this segment on Dr. Oz a couple years ago where I showed that drinking water throughout the day, especially colder water, can boost your metabolism like 300%. Now, it's, it's for a short amount of time. This is not you burning hundreds of calories more a day, but hey, I'll take anything I can get here. And it, you know, every little bit helps, right? So it can boost your metabolism for a short amount of time. Yay. We'll always take that. But the other piece of it is it's reducing your appetite. You've heard it so often. We're not really hungry. We are thirsty. So it can be great for appetite reduction. And it also is necessary for detoxification. And when you are liberating fat, do you know what you're doing? You are also— Releasing toxins. Now, in order to get toxins out of the body, you need protein and you need water. So you need some other things too, but those are key amino acids and water. So you want to make sure you have enough of them. Now, I'll tell you one thing I really think is important here is if you're drinking a lot of water, and I hope you are, it better be clean, pure spring water, right? Filter your water. Don't go getting— and I wish my younger self had known this, but we didn't know it at the time. I used to buy so many plastic water bottles. I didn't want us to drink the tap water at home. So I bought all this, all this plastic. I remember from Trader Joe's, all these big water bottles. And I shudder at this now, especially some of them that might've sat in my car in Palm Springs and just got heated. Ugh. So forget that. Ideally, travel with a water bottle, travel with a safe one so you can use all the filtered water so you're not getting the plastics. Plus, Better carbon footprint and you're saving cash. So even more reason to do it. One other thing I would encourage you to do there is add 1 or 2 servings of electrolytes a day. And now why would I say this? First of all, they make your water taste yummy. So there's that. Don't get sugar ones though. I have my own through Reignite Wellness. Find one that you love that tastes great. I like it because the minerals, because if you're drinking spring water all day long, that's been purified. Well, the cool thing with purified is it's taking out all the garbage that can be in there. Like, there's all these pharmaceuticals, and, um, I mean, I think they found estrogen in the water. I mean, just think of all the stuff that could be in our water— heavy metals, etc. But they're also taking out the minerals, so they've taken out everything. You can't selectively take out things. So that's where electrolytes come into play and can be an amazing asset. All right, you know I'm gonna say this one, but again, if I think of the most important things here, resistance training— challenging your muscles— has to be on the program. In fact, in my humble opinion, but maybe it's just because I'm an exercise physiologist and nutritionist, like I would not want anyone to start a GLP-1 until they have committed that they will eat protein first and do their resistance training. And here's the thing, it doesn't take much resistance training, full body, multi-joint, twice a week, 20 to 30 minutes. That's it. We can do that. And if you're saying to me still, I don't have time, which I'm going to argue with you about, what about 10 minutes? 10 minutes a day, because you could do it that way. So I'm going to share with you my 2x2x2 workout. I will also link to it because I have a YouTube video where I show this and my resistance training cheat sheet. I know there's a lot of buzz out there about lifting heavy things. I think that might scare some people away unnecessarily because what really we're trying to do is have you challenge your muscles. There is a term in resistance training Called progressive overload. This is necessary for your body to do more than what it's used to so it gets stronger and rebuilt. If you do the same old thing, your body doesn't have to get stronger and adapt. It already did. So you've got to continue to progressively overload your body. Now, I like to start with just focusing on 3 of the 4 core body parts. Upper body pushing, that would be like pushup, overhead press. Upper body pulling, like a pullup, a bent-over row, a high pull. Lower body, hip and thigh, Squat and hinging. Squats, deadlifts, lunges, step-ups. Here's what you can do, and it's this simple. You can do a warmup set, say a warmup set of pushups, maybe against a wall, against a table, and then 2 sets of working sets hard. Do the same with an overhead press. That could be Monday. Tuesday, you could do a pullup or a flexed arm hang and a bent over row. 1 warmup set, 2 hard ones of each. Wednesday, you could do a squat and you could just do an air squat warmup. And then you could hold onto some dumbbells or a kettlebell, and then you could do some deadlifts, easy and then hard. And then you could repeat literally 10 minutes or less a day. So that's why I say you just gotta make the time for this. Your future self will thank me so much. And again, as you're going through that testing that I start out with, initially test your grip strength, test those pushups, test those squats. The thing I love the most about strength and power is how quickly It shifts. Not so much with putting on muscle. It takes usually 4 to 8 weeks to start to see anything happen with your muscles, and then it might be a pound. And in fact, in our world, we have this thing called newbie gains where you do a little bit better, but generally it's about a pound a month until you get in pretty good shape. And then it goes down to like a half a pound a month until you get into really good shape. And then you're lucky if you can put on a quarter pound of muscle a month. Changing your body composition is like watching grass grow, honestly. So that is why you want to be making sure you're monitoring. So that you're losing fat and improving muscle quality. And if you're doing the reps, if you're eating the protein, if you're doing those habits that a healthy lean person has, you will get the healthy lean body. It just takes time. You didn't get here overnight. You're not gonna repair it overnight. Okay? Now, we don't actually build muscle at the gym. We build muscle in recovery. This is one I would go back and tell my younger self, cuz boy, I used to like to push it way too hard. And then I would have to take time off for some and I go, why am I always stronger when I take a day or two off? So give yourself the recovery. The biggest one at first is the gift of good restorative sleep, because not only is it where you're going to really build that muscle and raise your growth hormones, also where you're going to start to improve that insulin sensitivity, reduce inflammation. So many good things happen during sleep. You detoxify, you detoxify your brain. So super duper duper important. Never underestimate The power of a great night's sleep and make that a consistent habit. And I find for a lot of people, they just steal from it. They're like, I can't tell you how many times I've heard in my career, I'll sleep when I'm dead. I'm like, that'll be a lot sooner. So let's prioritize sleep. All right. I gave you a bunch. I talked about monitoring and how to monitor the right numbers. And then I talked about the speed of weight loss. Then I talked about protein and eating it first, and then how to use a hack of essential amino acids. Why you wanna stay well hydrated and maybe using some electrolytes, challenging your muscles with resistance training, and doing that recovery by starting with sleep quality. I don't wanna overwhelm you. I wanna make sure you get into action. My goal is that you right now commit to one. Commit to one. And here's a way that you can make that commitment stick. Number one, post it in the comments, which one you're gonna do. And number two, share this episode with a friend and get them on board. to do it with you. Like you both, you don't have to do the same one, but commit to each doing one and holding each other accountable. That's how you get these things to stick. All right, I will see you in the next one. Thanks so much for tuning in.