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372 points Eumenes | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.235s | source
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crazygringo ◴[] No.42203302[source]
I'm always so baffled by warnings about losing muscle when losing weight.

Of course you do! If your body is tens of pounds lighter, then you don't need the extra muscle to lug it around. This paper is about reduction in heart muscle, and of course your heart doesn't need to be as strong because there's less blood to pump and less tissue to fuel.

When you gain weight, you also increase the muscles needed to carry that weight around. If you see someone obese at the gym doing the leg press, you may be astonished at how strong their legs are. When you lose weight, you don't need that muscle anymore.

Our bodies are really good at providing exactly the amount of muscle we need for our daily activities (provided we eat properly, i.e. sufficient protein), so it's entirely natural that our muscles decrease as we lose weight, the same way they increased when we gain weight. Muscles are expensive to keep around when we don't need them.

Obviously, if you exercise, then you'll keep the muscles you need for exercising.

But this notion that weight loss can somehow be a negative because you'll lose muscle too, I don't know where it came from. Yes you can lose muscle, but you never would have had that muscle in the first place if you hadn't been overweight -- so it's not something to worry about.

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lee ◴[] No.42203958[source]
From the article: "...explains this rate of muscle decline is significantly higher than what is typically observed with calorie-reduced diets or normal aging and could lead to a host of long-term health issues..."

The warning isn't that you're losing muscle during weight-loss with these drugs. It's that the ratio of muscle vs fat loss is much greater with the drugs compared to traditional weight loss methods.

It's been well studied that if you exercise and eat enough protein while losing weight, you can retain more muscle.

Losing a lot of lean mass is incredibly detrimental to your longevity and quality of life.

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cactca ◴[] No.42205273[source]
Can you provide a single high quality (randomized) study demonstrating GLP1 therapeutics are 'incredibly detrimental to [your] longevity and quality of life'?

Consider the type of confounding that occurs in studies of people losing a lot of lean mass: cachexia, restriction to bed, famine.

Traditional weight loss methods have not shown the magnitude of survival benefits wrt cardiovascular disease, joint pain, diabetic complications. Exercise is wonderful, but as a public health intervention it is not sufficient.

If anyone looks at the totality of the high quality GLP1 clinical evidence and concludes these drugs are going to cause a net reduction in longevity and quality of life, then they should step back and assess their process for evaluating information.

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1. watwut ◴[] No.42208292[source]
Exercise is a public health intervention that actually works in improving health. It may not work to create actual weight loss, but it does improve things like blood pressure regardless.