Medicine and Exercise for Weight Loss
Incretin-Based Weight Loss Pharmacotherapy: Can Resistance Exercise Optimize Changes in Body Composition?
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a healthcare professional. Terms
Some new weight-loss medicines help people lose a lot of fat, but they also make them lose muscle. Muscle is important to stay strong and healthy, especially as we get older. Doing strength exercises like lifting weights can help keep muscle while losing fat.
Surprising Findings
Weight-loss drugs cause muscle loss comparable to over a decade of aging in just months.
Most people assume weight loss = better health, but losing muscle this quickly mimics aging and increases frailty risk — a hidden downside of otherwise effective drugs.
Practical Takeaways
If you're taking semaglutide, tirzepatide, or similar drugs, do supervised resistance training for at least 10 weeks to preserve muscle.
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a healthcare professional. Terms
Some new weight-loss medicines help people lose a lot of fat, but they also make them lose muscle. Muscle is important to stay strong and healthy, especially as we get older. Doing strength exercises like lifting weights can help keep muscle while losing fat.
Surprising Findings
Weight-loss drugs cause muscle loss comparable to over a decade of aging in just months.
Most people assume weight loss = better health, but losing muscle this quickly mimics aging and increases frailty risk — a hidden downside of otherwise effective drugs.
Practical Takeaways
If you're taking semaglutide, tirzepatide, or similar drugs, do supervised resistance training for at least 10 weeks to preserve muscle.
Publication
Journal
Diabetes care
Year
2024
Authors
João Carlos Locatelli, J. G. Costa, Andrew Haynes, L. Naylor, P. Fegan, Bu B. Yeap, Daniel J. Green
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Claims (10)
A drug called retatrutide helps people lose a lot of weight—sometimes over 70 pounds—by targeting certain hormones, but it works so well that it can cause unexpected health problems.
Some newer weight-loss drugs help people lose a lot of weight—up to a quarter of their body weight—but they might also cause a big drop in muscle, about as much as people usually lose in 10 years of aging, which could make them weaker over time.
If adults do guided strength training for over 10 weeks, they might gain around 3 kilograms of muscle and get 25% stronger — and this could help balance out muscle loss from weight-loss drugs.
If you lose weight on a low-calorie diet, you're more likely to keep it off if you combine liraglutide with aerobic exercise, rather than doing just one of those things — the exercise seems to boost how well the medication works over time.
If you keep your muscle while losing weight with certain diabetes or weight-loss drugs like semaglutide, you might be less likely to gain the weight back after stopping the drug — muscle could help keep your metabolism healthy long-term.