Serious hobby athlete and weightloss injections

[Greedybugger]

Hello,
Any serious hobby athletes/ fitness fanatics who are using WLI?
I’ve started using Tirzepatide, I don’t need it for weightloss or for medical reasons but I want to quiet the food noise. I’ve lost 2kg but I think it’s muscles and I want to keep my hard earned muscles!
I eat around 500kcal less a day than I used to but still lots of protein and I do weights. Maybe it’s too much of a deficit? How do I keep my muscles??
I take training quite seriously but don’t have a race or a competition as a goal now. I do Hyrox type training and weightlifting.

Are you obese??
I am on Mounjaro for obesity and I am less energetic and have less endurance at the gym. I see it as a necessary evil because I need to drop weight but it is madness to take it if you're not obese and are very muscular. How did you even get it?

I’m sorry but you are likely to get a lot of flack for this, on this board! WLIs can be really dangerous for the body if you aren’t obese - and muscle loss is a very well known side effect.

I train six days a week for my fitness hobby and I eat a lot of protein but I have still lost some muscle - however, because I am obese, the weight I’m losing still means I can balance the muscle loss at this stage in time.

Erm…. This post is nuts.

there is NO way I would take it unless my health was being impacted. You are perfectly healthy. being a normal or low bmi and taking this may cause you to develop health conditions- genuinely…. You don’t sound overweight id be really really cautious and advise against this.not because you are “stealing all the MJ” but because you could damage your health good.

second if you can afford a semi glutide you can afford body muscle and fat measurement scales. Buy some! 🙃 it will track your fat (&muscle) loss

you will lose muscle with fat when you lose weight it’s generally inevitable.

If you aren’t overweight then where are you buying it from? My biggest concern would be what the hell are you actually injecting because if you don’t meet the eligibility criteria then you can’t get it from a legitimate supplier which means buying it via unlicensed/unmonitored sources and you could be injecting anything.

If you don't need to lose weight why are you trying to quiet the food noise? You need food and it's fine to eat food as long as it isn't making you overweight. As an athlete you will need to eat more food than a sedentary person. This is bonkers.

This.
How do you even know it's tirzepitide?
I've lost almost 5stone. Lost lots of muscle and at many points during my diet would have been too tired to train. But I did no exercise (and regret it).
I wouldn't take it if I didn't need it. The risks of the drug are better than the risks of being obese. But you're not obese and seem to be fit if you train frequently. So why? Makes no sense.

I'd this is true then you are bloody daft and are going to end up ill. So, no, I haven't done this.

you need to eat more, which would be easier if you weren’t on WLI….. so stop taking them.

If you’re training with weights and training seriously and you had a lot of food noise you mights simply have been under fuelling. What medical professional prescribes WLI to a hungry athlete??? How did you get it? It sounds as if maybe you just needed more calories.

I took it OP, but only twice at 2.5mg. I train around 5 days a week, two HIIT sessions and 3x resistance with cardio (walking) between it all. I found my resting heart rate (which is usually about 55) went up to around 62 and I lacked energy and strength to work out to the same capacity as before.

My BMI is 28.5 so close to being obese and my body fat, despite the muscle I’m carrying is 5%

I’m heavier than when I started on MJ and this was all October 2024.

I thought I would get lots of flack on here..
Well, as a lot of you on WLI I have to fight every waking minute to not eat too much. Too much sweets/ dessert/ cake/ bad for you food etc. It takes an enormous amount of willpower and I’m just tired of it.
I would be obese if I gave in but I’m refusing to. No I don’t need to eat more to keep up with training, I’m constantly hungry and it doesn’t matter if I eat 3000kcal of a well balanced diet, high in protein, lots of veggies, complex carbs, good fats, I’m still craving chocolate. I put weight on if I eat more than 2600kcal. Now I just want to be like a normal person and eat normal sized portions and not constantly think about food. The injections give me that and the relief is immense! Diabetics have been on these drugs for years so I’m taking my chances I’ll not suffer any bad side effects.

How did you get them, are you in the obese category?

I’d be interested to know why there is so much concern around non obese people taking them? Not to be inflammatory, just genuinely curious, I assume a lot of celebrities are on them? And I thought some people take them for life once slimmed down, so why does it cause such a vitriol reaction when someone who isn’t obese wants them? (Asides from concerns around ED of course).

It can be difficult to gain muscle if you're in calorie deficit, depending on how close you are to your ceiling for muscularity.

Problem is BMI is an awful indicator of individual body mass. Top athletes are often in the Obese category as it does not distinguish between fat and muscle weight. If you are 200lb and only 15% body fat the BMI just sees the 200lb not that fact that only 15% of that mass is fat.

OP I am tempted to start it again for the mental relief from constantly fighting my hunger too. I’m not convinced it won’t do more harm than good long term in terms of my metabolism.

To help keep your muscle mass you may need to ensure you are eating in a small enough surplus to keep building the muscle and would probably need to do refeeds to negate the low calories you are consuming when you first take the jab. Ensure your protein intake is adequate and living heavy and perhaps reduce the cardio intensity to ensure you preserve/build your muscle mass.

*lifting heavy

I won't respond to your first question but to answer the second - the reason it's different for people continuing to take Mounjaro after losing weight to maintain a healthy BMI as opposed to people starting with a healthy BMI is because obesity damages your body and once you've been obese it's extremely difficult to maintain a healthy BMI. That's why people yo-yo. There are clear health benefits to formerly obese people continuing to take a drug that maintains a healthy BMI whereas the same health benefits don't exist for people who were not obese to start with.

A lot of the celebs on them are in the USA or other places like Dubai where the prescribing criteria is different than the UK.

Do we know that those previously obese people will definitely become obese again? It feels that is based on assumptions rather than knowns at this point? If it’s so dangerous for non obese people to be on them, wouldn’t the advice be to give it a go without first, see how you get on, and wait until (if) you become obese again to go back on the injections because presumably the obesity health risks aren’t prevalent until the person is actually obese again?

Yes we do know that. There is research that demonstrates the way that fat cells are damaged by obesity and the body even creates a number of new fat cells. Obesity also causes hormonal/metabolic damage. It's not just a state of being that disappears when people lose weight.
Why would the advice be 'give it a go without' if the medication is working very well for the patient and they don't need to come off it for health or financial reasons? It's not that the drug is massively risky, it's not, but it does carry risk. Currently prescribing guidelines follow the principle that the risk of obesity is greater than the risk of the drug, but this doesn't apply if you're not obese.

You're very silly, at best. At worst you have a deeply disordered approach to food and your body.

How much are you taking?

I've heard of athletes taking microdoses of GLP-1s but that's in the US where these things are presumably easier to get hold of

Ok interesting, didn’t know that about the cells. I just meant that if the injections are so risky that non obese people are quite dismissively told they mustn’t go on them (as we see here) then it seems to me it’s likely worth seeing if a person can manage without the injections first when they’ve slimmed down, because presumably, if they are slim and no longer at risk of obesity related health issues, the risks of the injections could outweigh the benefits? If they then do indeed start putting on weight to overweight levels, it would make sense to be back on the injections.

Surely not everyone who is using them will intend to be on them forever? And if so, I really do think it begs the question how risky they really are and if people need to be quite so vitriolic to slimmer people wanting them (by slimmer I just mean those under 30BMI who may have other reasons).

No skin in the game here whatsoever I just find some of the arguments a tad contradictory.