Weight-loss drug found to shrink muscle in mice, human cells

> emerging research showing that up to 40 per cent of the weight lost by people using weight-loss drugs is actually muscle

That's the sort of headlines that smells like bullshit to me.

My understand of those drugs is that they don't actually make you lose weight, they just cut your appetite so you can follow a diet to lose weight without hunger hammering at the door. So to start with, if that's the case, all they are observing is the effect of a diet. Not sure the diet drug has much to do with it.

Then I went from 133kg to 88kg with these diet drugs. Even though I exercised every day, I am sure I also lost some muscle mass as well, just because I don't have to carry 45kg every time I make a move anymore. Seems logical and would probably be concerned if it was any other way.

I don't have it at hand [edit: [0]] but there are a number of studies showing exercice had more health impact than weight loss (you can combine both of course, but just losing weight has less benefits)

As you point out, losing muscle is common in a diet, and the researchers are well aware of it. Their point was that this aspect is not pushed enough and is drowned by the losing weight part.

From the paper:

> Dismissing the importance of muscle loss can create a disconnect between patients' increased awareness of muscle and the role it plays in health, and clinicians who downplay these concerns, affecting adherence to and the development of optimised treatment plans.

[0] https://journals.lww.com/acsm-csmr/Fulltext/2019/08000/Effec...

For the "Fitness Versus Fatness" part for instance