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Micro wisdom delivered to your ears every morning in voice notes ranging from 3 to 15 minutes long. Wisdom on how to live a healthier and more fulfilling life. Every podcast will ground you in the present moment to ensure you know what's important, the here and now.
Hello, everyone. Live from Rio well, I'm not live, but I'm here from Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. I'm here to live, to work, to enjoy the culture, learn Portuguese, mainly to train Brazilian jujitsu where it was born even though it's Japanese, but it was really rediscovered well, yeah, kind of rediscovered and developed in Brazil in Rio De Janeiro. So something I love doing. I don't think, oh my god.
Speaker 1:Did I burn loads of calories today doing jujitsu? No. I say, did it help me mentally? Yes. Did I learn some new skills?
Speaker 1:Yes. Did I enjoy it? Yes. Did I have the community spirit? Hell yes.
Speaker 1:So just a quick one on that. Find something you like doing that is good for your cardiovascular health, maybe your strength, endurance, whatever. Find it. Go and find it. Make it a mission.
Speaker 1:Whether it's the gym classes, whether it's Barrie's boot campers, paddle, badminton, tennis, croquet. I don't know. Find something and get the social element of them as well. And if you are nervous about joining stuff, guys, honestly, just go and say, hey. I'm really new.
Speaker 1:I'm a newbie. I would love some help and support, and I'm a bit nervous. And you'll be shocked how many people will help you. Okay? People are want to help.
Speaker 1:People wanna be nice. Come on. You know, go and do that this week. Think about it. Anyway, today's topic is GLP ones and muscle loss.
Speaker 1:So GLP one receptor agonist. You know the weight loss drugs you've all been hearing about, very popular and for the next few years is gonna be even more popular with more drugs coming out with even more impressive results. My opinion on these is maybe it's a bit early to know whether they have got long term negative effects. It seems to me people in the industry, the experts on these drugs, think they're safe, the results are amazing, they work slightly differently than the ones before, they basically suppress your appetite. There are some gastrointestinal issues with some people, side effects there, but the results are there because the appetite is suppressed a lot.
Speaker 1:People do say there's a suppression of desire in general, which may be a concern, But the reason why they work is because they suppress your appetite enough that you eat less calories than your maintenance and you lose weight. That's pretty much how it works. Combine it with the calorie tracking and making sure you eat enough protein, You're probably in a good place and also to make sure that it's going to be difficult to hit your protein target if you're on these drugs because your appetite's already suppressed, so eating more protein again is going to cause that to suppress more or at least you're to feel fuller from your food, so it might be tricky to hit your protein target. Now I'm not here to advise, I'm not a medical doctor to say you should take it or not. I just wanna cover a study on you know, there is substantial weight loss with these drugs.
Speaker 1:There is something going around, the muscle loss is something that happens. In general, when we do look at weight loss, we probably lose 75% of the weight from fat and 25% from lean body mass, includes muscle, tendons, tissue, stuff like that. Lean body mass losses, reported in GLP ones are from twenty five to 45% range. Few studies looked at this. So a recent paper wanted to look at this properly and see, you know, is it true?
Speaker 1:What's happening? Is it just because there's more weight loss, there is more muscle loss? Is it like a normal relationship? So they wanted to see as well if the quality of the muscle functional muscle tissue was there, and so if, basically, if your strength maintained at least with the grip strength and all that. So in short, guys, the study realized that lean body mass loss with the GLP one drugs were adaptive, so they weren't dangerous or no beneficial.
Speaker 1:Same conclusion as other studies. There's no evidence that the loss of lean body mass affects muscle strength or function. And yeah. So, essentially, the research is limited. For sure, muscle loss happens.
Speaker 1:Grip strength, after doing these things, there wasn't a significant difference. But again, it's too early to tell, so it's too early to say definitively about what's going on. So it comes down to what happens. If any of you listening are on one of these drugs, how can you make sure that you're losing fat and not losing muscle at an alarming rate? Well, there is a secret weapon against muscle loss and it protein combined with resistance training, which is any form of training that gives you muscles resistance.
Speaker 1:It can be body weight, you can be using resistance bands, you can use weights. You know, it's it's worth doing once or twice a week if you can, even if it's thirty minutes each session. You do a few sets, and a set is like, okay, I'm gonna do six repetitions or eight reps and then I'll that's one set. And I'll do two or three sets. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1:So if I'm doing eight reps of say squats, I'm just gonna do go down and up, down and up eight times. I take a one or two minute breather, and I do another set, which is including eight reps, and then maybe another one. But two to three is good. You can do two maybe on each body part to start with, and do that twice a week. If you're new to training or you're coming back after a long time, don't go too hard too quickly because and I did this.
Speaker 1:I went because I'm doing jujitsu more than weights right now. I did a a full body weights workout like six or seven weeks ago, and I remember two days later, which is the days Dom's kicks in, delayed onset. It is delayed. Oh, for sure it is delayed of muscle soreness, and I felt like I had the flu. This is a normal thing.
Speaker 1:A lot of people who do CrossFit have this. A lot of people who start CrossFit and they do a workout because it's so intense and full body, they have a really bad side effect where they feel ill for days, and sometimes it can be dangerous. The body is releasing things into the bloodstream because from the damaged tissue and stuff, so inflammation is going through the roof. So it's important, again, as with everything teaching on this podcast, that you go into it slowly. You might want to do one a week to start with and you want to make sure you walk out to that workout thinking that wasn't too bad.
Speaker 1:The worst thing to say is that was solid from your first workout because in three days you won't be able to walk or you'll be in pain, and it's gonna impact your quality of day. So this is the thing you need to do if you are on these medications and we don't have enough research yet to make sure you're adding in the strength training, which is resistance training. Okay. Well, strength training can be done through resistance training. And the reason I bring it up is as well because a lot of people want to go on them.
Speaker 1:A lot of people want quicker results. A lot of people's. I saw someone comment saying one of their friends is on the drugs and getting quicker results and it puts pressure on you. No one's judging you if you go on them. These are for people who are severely obese, so they were the last step, crucial step to help people.
Speaker 1:So to be sure, to realize that if you're not obese and you just need to lose a few pounds, maybe it's not worth you taking that medication away because there might be limited resource of it. Same with people who are using the continuous glucose monitors when they didn't have diabetes, making the supply shorter for people that genuinely needed it. So whilst it's again, it's like we turn into vultures, We're just in and in. We wanna take things without realizing the second order effects of things. Second order effects of things of taking a drug, and this is from speaking to many people in my life in the bodybuilding world, taking I don't want to try and make them comparable, but when bodybuilders go on steroids, and they build some muscle and they've been taking steroids, they find it really, really hard to come off steroids because they believe that their results are all from it.
Speaker 1:If they come off, they're going to lose everything. So there's a high anxiety cost of starting steroids and not being able to come off them. So coming off them isn't an option for people. They stay on for longer than it's needed, and the mental effect is worse. When it comes to these drugs, and maybe you want to think twice before starting and maybe make it a real last port of call for you.
Speaker 1:You you obviously try the app first for a long time and make sure you get your lifestyle right anyway because if you don't get your lifestyle right, these drugs will only last as long as you take them. Maybe you take them all your life, but maybe this period you can't, so you need to be prepared. Anyway, the mental cost of relying on a drug to deliver you your results means that if that drug was ever taken away from you, if you had side effects and you had to stop it, bring you anxiety because you think you won't be able to do it without the drug. Now this is reality talking. This isn't like, you know, the research studies aren't gonna talk about the dark side of things like this, but we've seen this time and time again in the bodybuilding world.
Speaker 1:And it doesn't even have to be steroids, it can be the fat loss drugs that the bodybuilding worlds have been taking for years. There's a lot of them. I'm not gonna name them in case you go and look them up because some of them are dangerous, man. You you can't be taking these and, not not knowing well, a lot of these okay. Put it the dark side of bodybuilding is, like, there's a lot of drugs taken.
Speaker 1:Kind of a nice side with with us is that usually there's a lot of doctors overlooking them when they get a lot of checkups, but that's the professional level. Mean underneath that then there's a lot of drugs taken without the lookup, so it's kind of dangerous. So there's been a lot of weight loss drugs that bodybuilders have been taking for decades and they are effective in terms of increasing metabolic rate and stuff, and they're dangerous drugs. But again, even if you remove the steroids and you said to these people that you're taking away the drugs they use to lose weight, they might not have the same belief they can do it, brings anxiety, and then they worry about it and they need the drugs. Okay?
Speaker 1:Now this isn't the same as being addicted, don't think. I don't know. I don't want to talk out a step here, but think things through. If people in your circle are not obese, are thinking about taking drugs, going to lose a few pounds, might be worth having a chat, talking through second order effects, reliance, taking away from someone who actually needs it, have they tried lifestyle changes genuinely, do they understand lifestyle changes will need to come anyway and things like that. That's just the overall view of these drugs right now.
Speaker 1:There's a few people you can follow on Instagram, I posted in the group, that are obesity doctors who specialize in these things and they post really good content about it and I keep up to date on it to make sure I'm not missing any new bits of information on it, this pretty much is a recap of where things are going. The app is going to give you the ideal protein amount, like the sweet spot amount to maintain muscle mass and not be too high so you're happy days there. But that's it guys. Think twice, but again, we're in January so it's kind of mid Jan now, It's time when people have tried big changes and maybe realize it's not good or maybe you're still slow off the start, which is understandable because you've gone from eating a lot of food to, trying to get back into things. It can take time.
Speaker 1:It can take time. It takes a few days sometimes on the trough to build momentum. And don't forget, like, momentum is really powerful. It can swing back in your favor really, really quickly. It takes a day or two or having a good day.
Speaker 1:It doesn't mean you have to be bang on, but you go to sleep and your head hits a pillow and you go I did decent today. You wake up the next day with some new motivation and new willpower is replenished and you feel good about yourself. So momentum can be lost and gained quickly, either way. Remember that. And don't beat yourself up.
Speaker 1:Like, come on. You know, when it comes to January, there's a lot of pressure. Remove the month January. It doesn't exist. It's made up.
Speaker 1:It is anyway. Made up January. Well, that's made up. Today, you've got now. It's another day.
Speaker 1:I know today is real. It doesn't have to be called Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday again. That's made up as well. You know, we got today, and really our life is just made up of today. Don't wanna get too philosophical and like a Buddha, aren't you?
Speaker 1:Like, you know, the Eastern philosophies and stuff. I do like it. But it's true, though. They repeat this. The eternal now, today.
Speaker 1:You know, the physical time exists. Of course, we age. It takes me, you know, a minute to go from here to the shop. The psychological time, I mean, now. Will I get better psychologically tomorrow?
Speaker 1:Well, tomorrow is now again psychologically. There's only now. So when we're thinking about acting, thinking about changing our behavior, it's really only now we can actually put into effect. So I just want you to remember that everything is made up of now to bedtime, now to bedtime, now to bedtime. That's the only time you can actually act.
Speaker 1:You can plan all you want. You can do all the fancy charts. You can do all the research you want. But really, just get those behaviors out even if it's to walk out and get an extra 2,000 steps today. Sometimes, you think of it in a work scenario, you've got loads of work, it overwhelms you, and sometimes you just lay there thinking, I need to get through so much stuff.
Speaker 1:And then you say, Do know what? If I just reply to five important emails today, or if I just do one thing like the tax returns, or if I do one thing where I just get back to the team on the project, or if I do whatever it is, you just get that one thing done and it's a successful day, That's the day to get out of these slumps. That's the way to get out of these slumps, this one big thing mentality. Let me get going on one thing. When you think of 10 things, get none done.
Speaker 1:But when you think of one big thing, you might end up doing more as a consequence, but you can go to bed and I did one big thing. The next day you do one big thing. Within a week you've done seven big things and that could be hitting your steps on one day, hitting your calories on another, hitting your protein on another, meal prepping on another, maybe getting to work on another, and then you've built momentum and then eventually after day five, six, seven you start tying more one big things together like calories and protein, calories and steps, calories, protein and steps. Not everyone gets calories, protein steps every day. It might be like six days a week calories a hit, four days a week protein is hit and five days a week steps hit, successful week.
Speaker 1:And then you start checking in and you're losing weight, you're losing weight and eventually your weight loss plateaus maybe and you start thinking, maybe I need to turn the five calorie days into seven calorie target days and maybe I need to take my steps from five to seven as well and now I'm actually hitting on seven days instead of five and then results start showing again. But you can always make tweaks, get to a good place and then tweak from there. But get there in a way that's manageable and not stressing you out because the name of the game is to manage our stress, enjoy day to day, not overwhelm ourselves, life is crazy anyway, and to make the most of each day and eventually tie these good days together and things start changing. There's no point trying to do too many things at once. We know it doesn't work, so don't even bother trying really.
Speaker 1:That's really the harsh reality guys. I'm sorry. But, yeah, that's it. Have a good day, and speak to you all soon.