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.

I follow this guy on YouTube ...

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Personally I don't really care if people who are 'just' overweight want to use them as long as they are informed of the risks - but I do resent people lying and tricking prescribers to get hold of them as it has a knock on effect for people genuinely entitled to access the medication.
I do however care about the promotion of research into recovery from obesity and increased understanding of how it affects people long term. Many people see obese people as just being temporarily fat, usually due to bad diet choices or lack of knowledge, and assume it can be fixed by making better choices or having more knowledge about nutrition. This medication is very important to promoting knowledge about obesity and I am sure over time it will be used in a preventative way for people not yet obese. But we aren't there yet, and I don't think it's sensible for people of a healthy BMI to start using drugs that suppress their appetite. That is very close to eating disorder behaviour.

No I agree that’s all completely fair.

@podulpopda I think the dismissiveness comes from knowing that people are attempting to or are obtaining prescription only medication fraudulently and by deception. I think it’s reasonable to have an issue with that, regardless of whether you think that it’s relatively low risk or worth the risk for the apparent benefits to people who are not obese.

Every obese person has a disordered relationship with food. You throwing that around as an insult is childish.

No absolutely I can’t disagree with that, and if that’s the reason people are frustrated then fair enough, but a lot of the comments I’ve read is how risky or dangerous it is, when in reality it seems to be more of an ethical issue than a health one (though not totally devoid of health risk of course).

Speaking for myself, I experience an uncomfortable feeling of apprehension when people start talking about accessing this medication when they don't fit the criteria. It's not because I particularly care about what someone decides to put into their own body; it's because we've already seen one phase of the regulations tightening up due to these drugs now being categorised as at high risk of misuse and I worry about where things are going to end up. There will be further and further crack-downs if those using the medication who don't suffer from the condition it is meant to treat are more likely to experience side effects that need medical intervention.

I believe that's why you get a knee-jerk reaction on threads like these. At the moment those of us accessing appropriately are ok because we can evidence we fit the intended category, but I'm not sure how long this is going to last or what it'll look like next.

Yeah I get that. And the fact the NHS lists are so long must add to the frustrations when people are able to get it privately and perhaps not for health reasons.

OP, I feel quite similar to you, I feel like I have to have constant and consistent willpower to stay slim. I don’t think I would use WLI though but I have certainly thought about it. My BMI is currently 25.

I think it’s inevitable you’ll lose some muscle alongside fat but with a small deficit, adequate protein (like over 100g a day) and lifting you can limit this to 10% muscle. But yes the first 2kg could muscle glycogen from eating less.

You keep the muscle but eating 150g -180g protein, spread throughout the day and lifting very heavy weights (like so heavy you can only manage sets of
5). But the best you can hope for in a deficit is maintaining muscle - will be very hard to gain any.

So you just have super will power that those people currently on MJ just don’t have or have ever had. But you’re just a bit tired of using your super will power so you thought you’d spend £150 a month on meds you don’t need so that you can stop using your super will power?

Right, ok.

I think it's inevitable that there will be some muscle loss with fat loss, but doing lots of exercise will help retain good muscle tone.

I find having lost about 12lbs that yoga, callisthenics and running feel easier while weights are a bit harder. But I can worry about building the strength up again when I move to maintenance calories.

They make you lose muscle though op. It’s getting fairly well documented. gyms are moving out the running and cardio equipment people use to lose weight and devoting more floor space to weights as all the people on injections need to do more weights to counteract the muscle loss.

I think muscle loss is inevitable on mj.

I've been on it 3/4 months, lost 3 stone and nearly at goal. I know I've lost muscle and I feel.quite weak.

Now I've lost the bulk of the weight and nearly.at goal, I'm.switching my focus to getting strong. I am joining a swimming club, slowly increasing my running (which will have benefitted hugely from the weight loss once I regain some strength) and will focus now on some weights.

For me, I needed to get the weight down. I don't mind the muscle.loss as now I've lost the weight I can focus on re-building strength.

Muscle loss isn't great if you are sedentary and over 60. But for someone younger, active, and taking mj temporarily, the muscle will come back

As PPs have pointed out Tirzepatide is not lean mass sparing, so some muscle loss is inevitable. New GLP1s like Retatrutide do appear to be lean mass sparing but it's not yet available on prescription.

If anyone is ever concerned about what they've received from any source there are labs that will test for mass and purity. Janoshik is the gold standard.

@FortyElephants That's really interesting. The long term effects of obesity in the body is something I've been pondering. I was hoping there might be research, do you have any links or pointers please?

Dr Andrew Jenkinson

My BMI was 27 when I started Mounjaro. I'd just come out of 2 years of IVF which made me pile on weight (and discovering I've got PCOS). I spent a year after that (and before MJ) focusing heavily on my health and trying to lose weight unsuccessfully.

I was developing joint issues because of my weight and felt I was at a tipping point, that it would continue to climb if I didn't take action and get on MJ. My online doctor was happy to prescribe it on that basis and I actually didn't realise I was on the cusp of not being overweight enough to get it.

If as posters above have said, obesity causes irreversible damage to fat cells, I'd say taking MJ to avoid getting to that stage to begin with is surely a good thing?

I'm losing weight very slowly on it which I'm happy with. 4 months in I've lost almost 2 stone and want to stay on it until I've lost another stone. I did have a one week break and put on half a stone in that week, without eating any more than the week before. So I know that Mounjaro is doing more for me than making me eat less (like reducing inflamation, helping insulin regulation as well as improved mental clarity at work). So I highly recommend it for anyone else on the cusp of the weight limit and struggling.

I don't think the evidence is conclusive regarding whether the damage to fat cells from obesity is permanent or can be reversed. Part of what makes GLP1s so important and interesting will be finally being able to study recovery from obesity over long periods of time.

ETA just re read your post properly - there's no way you gained 7lbs of fat in a week, especially not eating in a calorie deficit. That's impossible.

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

But you will put weight on if you eat 2600 kcal on mounjaro as well. It's not a miracle drug that will allow you to eat 3000 or whatever you consider 'normal sized' and still make you magically lose weight. It still comes down to calorie deficit. Personally I now eat about 1/3 of a 'normal sized portion'. So if you want to eat more, the WLI won't be the solution you're looking for.

Do you have anti-doping control in your sport? Even if a drug is not specifically on the WADA ban list it may be considered a PED if taken in a non-approved manner so you may be looking at a ban if you get caught.

i would be incandescent if I found any of the athletes I coached were pulling this shit. If you’ve got the mindset to compete at high level, you’ve got the mindset to control your food intake.

Just checked and Hyrox adheres to WADA. So basically you are a drugs cheat unless you have a TUE.

I’m intrigued about this. They seem to reduce the desire for some things that cause pleasure - foods, especially fatty sugary ones but they also seem to be helping with addictions, alcohol and drugs- blocking that rush. So that sounds hugely helpful. But the human psyche is fundamentally pleasure oriented so I’m intrigued as to whether people taking them en masse will have a wider negative impact- higher achievement in general reduced becuase people get less satisfaction from those little breakthroughs that combined represent scientific advances? (Even) lower birth rates because less sex? Poorer general attachment levels because we love less?

For me, MJ magically seems to reduce need and pleasure in unhealthy things - alcohol, chocolate, crisps and other UPFs. But I find a lot of pleasure in apples and exercise.

😂🤣 I wish that was me! I have never really enjoyed food and while I still crave some healthy foods such as avocado or toast, or eggs, occasionally, I still have maintained a desire for chocolate which is one of the few things I continue to want and have a (albeit now small) appetite for (no binging now though! Yey!)

I'm not fussed about alcohol though! (Though I wasn't much of a drinker before to be fair!) and nor am as bothered about a McDonald's hash brown (though I can still eat them occasionally!) as I used to be!!

The cynic in me thinks the food industry will never allow these to be widely available no matter how low risk they may end up being…