Why Fast Weight Loss Is Destroying Your Metabolism

Rethinking Weight Loss Goals 0:00

You're not gonna go to a mechanic to ask about your diet. They just know how to fix cars. So let's be honest with who we're getting our information from. So GLP-1s, they help with the glycemic control because they're working at that agonist pathway and you're gonna eat less calories. But the problem is, is that this is not protecting muscle. So my rules for GLP-1 is using the lowest effective dose, okay? And we're not increasing that dose. If you're not hitting your protein and strength targets, you don't get to move up.

You know, you might just be stuck in not losing weight. But if you're building muscle and eating protein, you will. It will help because your insulin resistance is getting better through lifestyle and the peptides. Hey, it's Dr. Jen. Okay, this might be a rant solo podcast, but I think it's necessary. Here's the problem. Everyone is so desperate to lose weight and they're doing it wrong. They're doing it wrong. they want to lose weight, they want to lose fat, they want to get the scale down, but they're doing it wrong because they're focusing on easy fast fixes, maybe things that they see online, maybe buying supplements they think will solve all the answers, but it's not like that.

And, you know, me personally, like I started struggling with my weight in my senior year of high school and this was all driven by my thyroid disease and not finding not having the root cause for this. It's just been so much freedom the last 10 years to work on the root causes and get my body into homeostasis. I remember trying everything, like Weight Watchers with my mom and all this stuff, but it wasn't like a food problem. It was a root cause problem. you know everyone is just chasing like numbers on the scale and low-fat foods and appetite suppression and losing faster and extreme restriction like you know chronic fasting or you know carnivore carnivore harder lion's diet like all this stuff and what we should be chasing is homeostasis so principles at that like we should be chasing muscle and strength We should be chasing proper metabolic health.

We should be chasing insulin sensitivity so we don't get diabetes and dementia and cancer. And really what we should be looking at is body composition. You know, this isn't about being super lean. Like, yes, I like it when my muscles pop, but that's not always going to happen, you know? I mean, women Especially in midlife, we are not men. We shouldn't look like men. We shouldn't be so lean all the time. The women that are more athletic, that look lean and you can see their cut muscles all the time, well, they're more androgenic.

Weight Loss vs. Fat Loss 2:56

That's just how their body is. And do we all need to be androgenic? No, you know, I like my waist and my hip ratio how it is. So that's, that's something we shouldn't be comparing ourselves. You know, I know for me, yeah, like maybe I do want to lean down a little more, but I don't want to be so lean that it's affecting my hormones and perimenopause. And I just see this big kick for that now. So here's the thing. We want to lose weight, but if you lose muscle, you're not winning. You're damaging your metabolic engine.

And this is what I'm seeing with women right now with GLP-1s. And it's concerning or extreme dieting or whatever. I mean, they're a tool. They shouldn't be the only tool in your toolbox. You shouldn't be going to a doctor, a med spa, that that's the only tool in their toolbox. They should not be advertising that that is their toolbox, is their tool, because it's probably the only thing they do. And guess what? They're trying to get rich off of you. I know a doctor from where I came from that is opening online clinics for GLP-1s and all this stuff.

And he's more of a businessman and just wants to make money. He doesn't care about your health. Okay? And that's what's really frustrating is a lot of people are jumping into the wellness world and they have no right to be in it. They don't have the schooling. They didn't do functional integrative medicine, but they're all calling themselves that. And, you know, they need to, you need to look, you need to look at their website and see if they're actually trained in this stuff. Anyway, told you this would be a rant.

So let me give you a framework, okay? So the big key is weight loss is not the same as fat loss, especially visceral fat loss, okay? The fat that hangs around your belly and inside your organs and is causing inflammation and damage to your health. So when we're on GLB wands or really aggressive diets, even like a keto or carnivore diet, you know, the concern is we want to lose fat. So with keto and carnivore, yes, you're going to be burning more fat and maintaining more lean muscle. But if you are doing it so harder, not cycle syncing, which listen to my cycle syncing stuff, then you could be producing some fat from cortisol.

Okay. So that's why women are different. We are not men. Okay, so then we look at GLP-1s. GLP-1s, you're going to be losing lean mass. We know that. Unless you do something about it, you will lose muscle on a GLP-1. Let me repeat that. Unless you are doing something purposefully and intensively You will lose muscle mass on a GLP-1 medication, okay? No matter what dose. Usually the higher dose is yes. The micro dose is the small for inflammation. Usually you're not. But we still have to be careful.

So usually majority fat loss or majority is for semi-glutite and tris-epatite. Majority is you are still losing fat which stores toxins but also losing a lot of lean muscle mass, okay? So that's why you see people shrinking. Yes, obviously they're losing some fat but you're not you're losing that lean muscle too. So what happens when you stop and go back to just life not on a GLP-1, which we should be cycling these? Well, you're going to gain weight back and it's going to be most likely fat because it's hard to gain lean muscle.

GLP-1s, Muscle Loss, and Dosing Rules 6:38

It is a challenge to gain muscle. So we have to maintain what we have, not lose it. So the goal is not just weight loss. It's not shrinking. It's body composition, okay? Why? Why do we care about muscle? Muscle is a longevity organ. We know that. It helps keep us insulin or insulin sensitivity good. It helps our resting metabolic weight. You better bet you can eat more if you have more muscle. It's fabulous. This helps our glucose. It's our glucose disposal. We're not having a bunch of glucose hanging around after a meal.

It's going into our muscle. That's how it helps with insulin sensitivity. It helps with longevity because of that and because we're having strength and independence. It's good to be strong and you're not going to look like a man. We're using the GLP-1 agonists and dual agonists. We're using them as a tool. We're not using them as a fix-all. I mean, they are going to help with appetite regulation. You know, if we're having like that food noise. I mean, there's other ways to increase your GLP-1s though.

You could do cycle syncing and do fasting and that will increase that. You can take the right pre and probiotics to help with your natural GLP-1. you can lift so there's other ways it doesn't have to be the shot. Do I use it in women that have like tried everything or they're stressed out in trying anything more? Then yeah, well sometimes I'll just use metformin though or berberine to help with that insulin resistance or sometimes we'll just control their stress you know and use a vagal nerve stimulator.

I mean there's so many different tools in the toolbox I use with my patients so That's basically another rant. Don't go to a doctor, provider, whatever they call everyone nowadays, an influencer that's selling you a GLP-1 when it's the only tool in their toolbox. Don't do it. They have nothing else. If you go to a surgeon, they're going to cut you. If you go to a dermatologist for a rash, if it's wet, make it dry. If it's dry, make it wet. They're not looking for root causes. They don't have any other tools.

If you're not going to go to a mechanic to ask about your diet, they just know how to fix cars. So let's be honest with who we're getting our information from. So GLP-1s, they help with the glycemic control because they're working at that agonist pathway and you're going to eat less calories. But the problem is that this is not protecting muscle. So my rules for GLP-1 is using the lowest effective dose, okay? And we're not increasing that dose. If you're not hitting your protein and strength targets, you don't get to move up.

You know, you might just be stuck in not losing weight. But if you're building muscle and eating protein, you will. It will help because your insulin resistance is getting better through lifestyle and the peptide. So it's both. You're doing both. You need both. So the lifestyle changes are not optional. It's actually, it's protective, okay? So once again, you know, I know everyone wants fast weight loss, but this fast weight loss without muscle protection is not a win. I see it as a negative. I look at these people, they're becoming frail and it's going to be so hard to build back that muscle.

We even see that in the keto community. There's keto people that they're like, I did it too much too hard and now I need to gain muscle. They don't look good to me because I know what good health looks like and it's not being super skinny and frail. That's not good health. When I prescribe GLP-1s, like protein, it's not just a suggestion. Like, eat your protein. No, it's like a prescription for them. Like 30 grams per meal, 120 grams per day. You know, the only time I wouldn't suggest that if someone had severe kidney problems, but otherwise we're having protein.

And we also need to make sure we're drinking waters, electrolytes, all of that, because a lot of the times we'll see side effects. The compounding pharmacists I used, they were like, yeah, this MedSpot, they were overdosing everyone on GLP-1s and they ended up in the hospital with kidney failure because they weren't drinking, because they gave them so much, they were so nauseous, they couldn't keep fluids down. That is not good. That is dangerous. That is not okay. But the why behind higher protein during this calorie restriction, which you're bound to have if you're on a GLP-1, it helps improve that lean mass retention.

Protein, Hydration, and Resistance Training 11:30

So we know this is shown repeatedly in the weight loss literature that resistance training you know, plus protein is going to drive weight loss. So if we have higher protein plus resistance training, it's going to preserve lean muscle better than just standard protein diets, better than just dieting. So we know that. So this is also where when we when we're talking about protein, I change the rules a little bit. Because for reversing insulin resistance, I'll say, you know, eat your vegetables first and then protein and fats, you know, after to create that buffer.

But patients on GLP-1s, eat your protein first because I don't want you getting full on some broccoli. I want you getting full on protein and then have that. So the goal is that protein first. So you can't just like trust your appetite on a GLP-1 because it is being altered a little bit by the peptide and the mechanisms behind that. You know, this is where to get your protein in. You could also use protein shakes like whey shakes. I can list, you know, my favorite down in the show notes. You might want it to be grass fed, that's for sure.

And then you want to split this up. I don't end up like three, sometimes four bouts of protein. Usually three meals are protein dense because you don't want your body to eat 120 grams of protein at once. No, that's not helpful. So we want to break that up. Now, what about lifting? I spoke a lot about muscle. So you can't like starve your way into metabolic health. That's not, it's only gonna work for so long. Fasting is for metabolic health, but this calorie restriction like for a week, like fasting for a week is not gonna be helpful long-term.

You're gonna lose muscle. You know, unless you're doing it with a doctor, right? Part of your cycle, go for autophagy or some really good cellular cleaning. That's a different story, but we're talking about For weight loss, we have to be strategic. So to preserve the lean muscle, and it requires stress and hormesis of that muscle to break it up and build it up. So we want to lift weights at least three to four times a week. More to progressive overload, compound lifts and lower body is a priority.

Okay. This is a priority because those are big muscle groups and you're going to really maintain muscle, you know, especially the legs and quadriceps and glutes. Women should be working those. Now to burn fat, also I like, you know, walking on an incline. So 12%, three miles per hour for 30 minutes. And you could add that in one to three times a week, but that is going to be more fat burn and less calorie, less taking like a lot of, less of your energy expenditure. And there was a study that was done on this.

Now the strongest signal to preserve lean muscle mass during weight loss is resistant training. So if you're not lifting, you're sending the wrong signal to your metabolism. And then supplements. So there's also non-negotiable for me with patients on a GLP-1 or any weight loss program. So we want to support muscle, metabolism, and mitochondria. So muscle, metabolism, and mitochondria. Creatine is amazing. Creatine monohydrate, five grams. I'll list my favorite in the show notes. Creatine plus resistant training increases lean mass and strength across age groups.

There's been many studies that have shown that. If you're not taking creatine, I think that would be a great idea. You just put it in whatever you want. It doesn't taste like anything. So sometimes I'll take it with my proteins. Sometimes I'll take it with some electrolytes and I'll usually take it with inositol. So inositol, inositol plus. So this is. I love this. This is so good, especially for my insulin-resistant PCOS patients. So we know that myoinositol improves insulin sensitivity and metabolic markers in multiple human studies.

Supplements for Muscle and Metabolism 15:48

So this is especially across patients that have insulin-resistant and metabolic problems because it's supporting glucose signaling, how insulin responds, and our metabolic flexibility. So that isn't important for anyone in midlife, anyone on a GLP-1 inositol support is very important. And then magnesium is really important at night. So it's going to help with sleep quality, muscle relaxation, and nervous system regulation because it's a stressor to lose weight and it's difficult. So magnesium is really going to help support and support those muscles while you're lifting.

And then we also need just mitochondrial support with a multivitamin is helpful. So Mitoboost is what I love and recommend to my patients on a GLP-1. Multiple B vitamins, CoQ10 and other things can really help support the mitochondria while we're going through weight loss. And then finally, a plant-derived peptide complex called PeptiStrong is very helpful when someone's on a GLP-1. I almost always have my patients on a form of PeptiStrong, and that's going to help with muscle protein synthesis signaling.

There's improved markers for recognition. recovery, which a lot of the times recovery is an important, it's a concern for patients that are getting into a new resistance training. They don't like that feeling sore. And then also helps just supporting lean muscle mass support and in human trials. So this is one of a newer muscle support, bioactive peptide that can help, which is great. So medication, you know, using the GLP-1, using the peptide, before it was a medication to me, it was just a peptide.

This can help reduce like the intake of food and that is more so what it's doing. But our lifestyle, these lifestyle changes that I spoke about helps determine the body composition and that is most important. So GLP-1s can help lower the calories in most cases, but protein and lifting decide what kind of weight you lose. Are you losing fat? Are you going to lose fat and muscle? So without the strength training and the protein, you will lose muscle. But if you don't do those, you will lose both. Now also, your muscle is going to determine what your metabolism is after the fact.

So that is why we see so much weight gain when people get off of these or off of the high doses, which they should because high doses for a long time have side effects. So Once again, you know, share this with someone.

Using GLP-1s Wisely 18:38

Please make a comment below. What was your favorite part? Because everyone is desperate to lose weight, you know, but they're doing it wrong, you know, and we've seen this. So, so do it right. Lose the fat, build and preserve your muscle. So train appropriately, eat protein, eat it first. support your metabolism using supplements, you know, use this tool, use this GLP-1 wisely and rotate it and think body composition. Don't be like obsessed with the scale, you know, how I always ask my patients like how are your clothes fitting though?

So if you're on a GLP-1 right now or considering one follow these muscle first rules because your future metabolism and health depend on it. Thank you for listening to this rant and I will see you guys next time. Bye.