Here's What Actually Fixes Loose Skin After Ozempic Weight Loss

Hey, I get a ton of questions about how to fix loose skin if you've been on GLPs and have lost a bunch of weight. I'm going to give you my thoughts on that and some practical tools. Also, new research on how much protein you should eat during a calorie deficit to avoid losing muscle and maybe even gain muscle. Some other proven muscle growth tips and myths that come out of the bodybuilding industry. Is creatine actually a steroid? That one you should already know. I'll get to that and plenty more. All the shownotes are going to be at BenGreenfieldLife.com/507. Let's dive in. Yo. Oh, yeah. This will be good. This podcast is being fueled by LMNT. Element. I don't know how to pronounce it. I feel like I often get confused, but it's sodium potassium magnesium. And, that's not even a sponsor read or whatever. It's What I'm drinking. I'm authentic. I actually drink this stuff. There's some cool stuff going on behind the scenes. By the way, you might notice that this podcast changes, specifically the feng shui. I am building a new studio and that will be unveiled soon for both in-person guests, for virtual recording, for these so-called solosodes, and I guess any other time I might need to flip on a video camera and tell you stuff. So, stay tuned for that. I'm pretty excited. My office is full of crap behind me somewhere, which you may or may not be able to see depending on which filter I use. I might just put myself in front of the Eiffel Tower or underneath the sea wearing a scuba diving mask. We'll see. Either way, all the shownotes for today's episode are going to be at BenGreenfieldLife.com/507. And, do I have some doozies for you. I probably think it's not a secret that most people now realize that protein is important. But, I was recently reading because I don't have a life and I do things like this for fun, the Strength and Conditioning Journal. The Strength and Conditioning Journal as a CSCS, that means Certified Strength Conditioning Coach and Certified Personal Trainer through the National Strength and Conditioning Association. I still receive that journal. I've received it for 20 years and I actually read it usually in the bathtub. And this article was pretty cool. It was basically a look at what happens to fat-free mass, meaning all of the mass that is in you that is not fat, in energy-restricted, meaning people who were eating below their actual number of calories that they needed, resistance-trained individuals. So these are trained people, Eating an energy-restricted diet. And what they wanted to look at was, is there a certain ceiling or a certain amount of protein that can mitigate muscle loss and surprisingly even lead to muscle gain or fat-free mass gain even during significant calorie restriction? I realize that that seems to defy the laws of physics because calories in equals calories out. Yet multiple studies leading up to this point have shown that even if you are restricting calories, and in many cases, if you are bedridden, not exercising, that protein intake can influence muscle protein synthesis in such a way that there's almost like this conservation of calories that allows for muscle maintenance and in some cases muscle gain. So, this is a new paper out in, like I mentioned, the Strength Conditioning Journal of August 2026 at the time that I'm recording this. And it kind of updates, I think, some of the more cited protein recommendations in sports nutrition. So here's the background. In 2014, this researcher named Eric Helms and his colleagues put out this systematic review suggesting that lean— I'm lean, I fit into this category, which is why I was interested— resistance-trained, like people who weightlift, people who are in a calorie deficit actually need more protein than the general population. And they suggested something like 2.3 to 3.1 grams per kilogram of protein per day, grams per kilogram of your actual fat-free mass, not your total body weight. And don't worry, for those of you who prefer freedom units, I will express that in grams per pound later on as I go along. So that number has been repeated all over the place, 2.3 to 3.1 grams per kilogram of fat-free mass per day. So in freedom units, that's about 1 to 1.5 grams per pound of protein, grams per pound of protein, or grams per pound of protein based on what your fat-free mass is. So let's say you step on a body fat calculator or you do a DEXA scan or whatever, and you find out that you are— I don't know, let's just use a rough number because I suck at math. You're 100 pounds of fat-free mass. That would mean you're not a very big person, but you're 100 pounds of fat-free mass. Well, based on general recommendations leading up to this point, 1 to 1.5 grams per pound would mean that you would have 100 to 150 grams of protein per day. That would be the recommendation. So, this new paper goes back and looks at 29 different studies over several hundred individuals, about 729 to be exact. And what they did was they pulled every study that exists out there that they could find, at least on people who lifted weights and people who were lean or at least non-obese, ranging from about 18 to 50 years old. And people who had gone through a period of calorie restriction that actually produced fat loss. And then they looked at what actually happened to their fat-free mass. Now, it's important here that when I say lean, it's all relative. Non-obese here means under about 28% body fat for men, underneath about 40% body fat for women. So they wanted people who didn't fit into the obese category. At least I wouldn't classify like, you know, a man at 28% or a woman at 40% body fat as lean per se, but they at least cut out folks who were obese and they looked at people who were trained and they screened over 900 studies and 29 actually made the cut. And what they wanted to run was a meta-analysis, right? Head-to-head comparisons based on studies that exist of high versus low protein groups. So they pooled all this data across 29 different studies and In short, what they found, in case you feel like hitting the fast-forward button, is that more protein intake tracks with better fat-free mass, which you could think of as better muscle retention and in some cases muscle gain during a calorie deficit. And that relationship is linear, meaning that as protein intake increases, fat-free mass increases when you are dieting. So, What they actually found was the point where the data crosses from muscle loss to muscle maintenance or muscle gain was about 1.9 grams per kilogram of overall body mass per day. So, that's about 0.85 grams per pound. And, that's interesting because in the past, me and other guests I've had, perhaps most notably Gabriel Lyon, has talked about around 0.8 grams per pound as being a pretty good amount of protein to target. on up from there versus what's normally recommended, which is around 0.55 grams per pound. Now, what they found was that every added gram of protein resulted in what's called a 0.06 effect size improvement with 99% probability. All that means for you non-statisticians out there is that as you increase protein, your risk of losing muscle when you're on a calorie deficit continues to decrease as protein goes up. So, the top end of what they actually looked at, like the most amount of protein that they actually looked at, was about 3.2 grams per kilogram, which comes out to about 1.45 grams per pound of body weight per day. So, in summary, what that means is that if you're eating, if you're at a calorie deficit and you're eating 0.85 to 1.45 grams per pound of protein per day, We can say that all the way up to 1.45 grams per pound of protein, you're actually going to do a pretty good job staving off loss of muscle and possibly even gaining a little bit of muscle, even if you're dieting. So why is this? Well, a calorie deficit, we already know, suppresses muscle protein synthesis, aka MPS, if you want to sound cool. That's well established. So what happens to muscle breakdown depends on how lean you are. So in people with more body fat, breakdown tends to not occur as much during a calorie deficit, meaning the fatter you are, the less likely you are to lose muscle during a calorie deficit. And then in lean people, it's the opposite. As you would probably imagine, muscle breakdown goes up, muscle protein synthesis goes down, kind of a double whammy. And the reason for this is that if you're lean and if you're fasting or you're not consuming adequate calories, you excrete a bunch more nitrogen, like 2 to 3 times more nitrogen, and you burn more protein for fuel than people with higher body fat because fat mass is kind of the body's energy buffer. What that means is if you have less body fat, you have less energy buffer. So your body is going to turn to your own muscle tissue sooner because you just have less fat to burn. Now, dietary protein intake pushes back against that by giving the body an outside source of nitrogen. and amino acids so it doesn't have to cannibalize muscle. And it can also prop up muscle protein synthesis through 2 different pathways, a leucine pathway and an mTOR pathway. So the idea behind the increase in protein intake when you're on a calorie deficit has a few nuances to it. First of all, the leaner you are, the greater risk you have of losing muscle if you are at a calorie deficit. I question why you'd be on a calorie deficit anyways if you were lean, but I don't know, maybe you're like— Doing it for the longevity, bro. Like, you heard that fasting was good for extending longevity or increasing autophagy. So every once in a while you're doing a fast. Well, during those periods of time, if you're going to restrict calories, I would actually try to keep protein at least constant, right? Cut the calories from carbs, cut the calories from fat, but try to keep protein up because the leaner you are, the more a given gram of protein will do for you if you're at a calorie deficit and trying to maintain muscle. The next thing to know is that sex actually plays a role here. So, men had about a 98% to 99% probability of a positive dose response to protein. Women, they topped out at about 80%, right? So, men seem to need— and I know there's a lot of female strength trainers and people who really endorse that females should eat adequate protein aren't going to like that I'm saying this, but females have a little bit less of a need of higher protein compared to men when they're at a calorie deficit. But if I were you and I were a woman and I were listening in, I would play it safe and just still make sure that you're hitting somewhere around that, like 1 to 1.5 grams of protein per pound of body weight, even if you are dieting. Now, the deficits Didn't really seem to matter that much, meaning like starting at 300 calories a day deficit on up to well over 300 calories per day still showed a need for higher protein intake, right? So whether you're dieting a little bit or whether you're dieting a lot, it's still a good idea to keep protein intake pretty significant. So the, the takeaway message for this entire discussion is basically this. If fat-free mass retention, AKA muscle retention, and I guess fat-free mass, you could also classify some organ retention, like if you don't want your heart or your liver to get eaten away, data supports putting your protein intake at around 0.85 to 1.45 grams per pound of body weight. And for me personally, I just, just when you look at all the pooled data leading up to this point, I like to make that number easy to memorize, a little bit higher. and 1 to 1.5 grams per pound of protein. And this latest study backs that up. Now, that's not to say that you should not lift because in other studies, lifting has shown to be highly protective against muscle mass loss during dieting. Right. The ideal scenario is it's 1 to 1.5 grams of protein per pound of body weight and you're lifting preferably at least 3 times per week. We'll get into some lifting strategies a little bit later on. But that is the latest on protein, and hopefully that helps answer all the questions I often get about how much protein you actually need to eat to maintain muscle. So this was another interesting one. This was from the Journal of Sports Medicine, and it was titled, Does Performing Different Resistance Exercises for the Same Muscle Group Induce— here's a big word I've probably never used before in my life— non-homogeneous Muscle hypertrophy, non-homogeneous muscle hypertrophy. So, what does that all mean? Well, there's evidence in sports exercise research that increases in muscle size are not uniform, meaning certain regions of muscle can grow more than other regions, and that difference is influenced by the exercises that are performed. So, what this study wanted to look at was whether performing more exercises and/or different exercises for a muscle group would lead to greater increases in muscle mass compared to doing just one type of exercise per muscle group. So, this would be the classic, I'm going to go to the gym and I want to work, I don't know, let's say my chesticles. And instead of doing 6 sets of barbell bench press, I'm going to do 4 sets of dumbbell bench press. Actually, let's keep volumes equivalent, right? Let's say we'll be extreme. I'm going to do 8 sets of bench press. Or, I'm going to do 2 to 3 sets of bench press and then 2 to 3 sets of push-ups and 2 to 3 sets of chest flies, right? Is it true that if you were to vary things up, you're actually going to have greater benefits for muscle growth? So, they took 32 young men and women, and this is important, they didn't have previous resistance training experience. And, the reason that's important is because People who have resistance training experience, people who are trained, tend to fight a little bit more of an uphill battle against getting more fit or putting on muscle, whereas people who are untrained can look at a weight and put on muscle. So, the reason that I think that's important is that this research, probably all the more that I'm about to share with you, applies to people who are already trained. So then, they had them do weight training twice per week. So, this wasn't really a balls-to-the-wall protocol, and they were just looking at arms. So, we're going to extrapolate this to the rest of the body. So, each workout had 4 sets of barbell curls and 4 sets of triceps pushdowns. And, that's what they did for 6 weeks. Yay, that sounds super boring. And then, for 8 weeks, they continued on one arm. This is kind of crazy. One arm to do the barbell curls and the triceps pushdown. But then, on the other arm, they had a group do 2 additional sets per exercise. And then, on another group, they had them do different exercises beyond just the barbell curls and the triceps pushdown. And then finally, they had a group increase not just the volume and change up not just the variety, but also increase both the volume and the variety. So, before jumping into what they actually found, yes, I'm using a tactic to make you listen to my podcast for a longer period of time. Let's talk about why they would have even looked at this. So, muscle growth is influenced by a variety of factors. So, muscle growth can be greater in an individual muscle within a muscle group. Like, your quadriceps has 4 different muscles. It's not just your quads or your quadzillas as some of you call them. It's your rectus femoris, it is your vastus intermedius, it's your vastus lateralis, and it's your vastus medialis. And yes, I TA'd anatomy and physiology at University of Idaho, so I had to dissect all these little muscles out. And so, there's those 4 for the quads: rectus femoris, vastus intermedius, vastus lateralis, and vastus medialis. And, it has been shown, for example, that when you're doing leg extensions, everybody's favorite exercise like seated leg extension machine, that increases the size of the rectus femoris more than the other quad muscles, whereas the opposite is true for things like the squat, Or the leg press. The squat and leg press train a lot more than just the rectus femoris. Now, muscle growth can also be greater at a specific region within a muscle. For example, in studies that have compared changes in muscle size in groups that perform the same exercise but with different ranges of motion, usually the range of motion performed influences which part of the muscle grows the most. So, it's not just the range of motion that you move through, but it's also the type of exercise that you do. Like, if you did leg extensions through just the first part of the range of motion, that would increase the quadriceps muscles that are closer to the knee more than performing only the final range of motion. And then, in addition to that, they've found that in people who perform only the initial range of motion, they can grow the part of the muscle that is the distal part, like in the case of a biceps curl closer to the elbow, more than performing only the final range of motion. Right. So, all I'm getting at here, in case that all sounded a little bit confusing, was that the range of motion and the type of exercise that you do can both influence muscle growth. And that would make a pretty good case for increasing variety in a training program, because if you perform multiple exercises for a muscle group with multiple different ranges of motion, just because because you're doing different exercises, that's going to allow you to target each individual muscle within a muscle group and even specific regions within that individual muscle, thus potentially optimizing overall muscle growth. Okay. Now, last thing you should know is that leading up to this study, there has been previous studies suggesting that multiple exercises are a little bit better when it comes to growing muscles. Like, one study performed squats and deadlifts and lunges and leg presses and saw a bigger increase in leg size Compared to just performing squats. There was another study where they looked at leg presses and half squats and hack machine squats, and that seemed to beat out just leg presses. Now, in this case, and again, we are talking about for the arms, for the upper body, increasing the variety of exercises and increasing the volume of exercises did not result in a significant increase in muscle growth for the arms, specifically for the biceps and the triceps. So again, like, these people got just as much benefit from doing barbell curls and triceps pushdowns over 4 different sets for each exercises as they did when they went through all of the process of changing up exercises and changing up the volume. So, what does that all mean? Well, first of all, these are untrained individuals. It means that if you're just starting to lift weights, you can keep things pretty simple. Let's say you can make it to the gym 3 times a week for 45 minutes and you've got the time to do a bench press, a shoulder press, a row, a pulldown, a squat, and a leg press. Great. Do it. You don't need to do the bench press and the incline fly and the decline push-up and the incline bench press and then move on to the squat, the leg press, the hack machine, the leg extension, yada, yada, yada. Don't guilt-trip yourself if you need to just do one exercise or maybe a couple exercises per muscle growth or per muscle group. You're still going to get benefits. Now, in trained individuals, I wouldn't say that's the case. From previous research that I've seen that variety of exercises that you introduce as a trained individual, someone who has experience lifting weights and has done so for some time, is going to be pretty beneficial. But it's also good to know that you're still getting some benefits. Like, let's say you just prison-style workout, no offense intended to those who are living in a prison, you could just do push-ups, squats, pull-ups, and lunges, and you'd still get pretty good results. That actually sounds a little bit like the time-compressed workout that I did this morning. So, overall message, overall takeaway here is that in untrained individuals, muscle variety in terms of exercise variety and even training volume might be a little bit overrated. You probably can't say the same thing for trained individuals, but it's good to know that you could hit the gym, keep things pretty simple, and you're still going to get pretty good results. And, the last thing that I would throw in there would be that when it comes to just functional athleticism, I am a fan of variety, right? So, if I can go to the gym and I can do side lunges and Cossack lunges and walking lunges and reverse lunges and lunge jumps and step-ups, I feel like that would help me out a lot better with hiking and pickleball and tennis and whatever other activity of daily living I want to do with my legs compared to me just doing reverse lunges or just doing the leg extension machine. So, this study and others that I've mentioned weren't looking at functional athleticism, they were just looking at— Strength. Growth, right? But, I tend to think of things in terms of function and athleticism anyways. So anyways, interesting stuff, good stuff to know. Okay. So, this one is really fun. This was also from the Journal of Strength Conditioning Research and it looked at 12 of the biggest myths, 12 of the biggest myths in bodybuilding. And, when I say bodybuilding, I mean I'm not just talking about posing in your underwear or your Speedo on stage covered in gold-flaked tanning lotion. I'm just talking about lifting weights in such a way that you want to maintain muscle. So here, I mean, I'm just going to jump right in. Here are the myths. Here are the myths that were covered. Myth number 1, you need what's called periodization to maximize muscle growth. I remember I first came across the term periodization when I was at the library at school, and I came across this book by a guy named Tudor Bompa who wrote, like, the textbook on periodization, which basically refers to, like, splitting a training month or a training year or a training period or training time into certain periods in which you might be focused on bulking during one period and getting lean during another period and increasing power during another period. And a lot of programs do sell the idea that you got to cycle your sets and your reps and your intensity to keep making gains, bro. And that reasoning comes from something called general adaptation syndrome, the idea that your body adapts fast, so you need constant novelty. But researchers have tested this head-to-head, and the data doesn't support it. Like, there was one study where they put 20 trained weightlifters through a standard program that didn't change, Or one with built-in variation in sets and reps. And both groups showed the same increase in muscle fiber cross-sectional area in fast-twitch and in slow-twitch muscle fibers. The biggest predictor of who grew and who didn't wasn't whether or not the program was periodized, it was just basically the idea of progressive overload. Like, if you are adding weight when you hit the gym day in, day out, week in, week out, You will gain muscle. You don't have to switch things up and cause muscle confusion and go through these sometimes complex periodization programs. Now, there is a time and place when periodization comes into effect. Like, when I used to coach a lot of triathletes, I would really get them to the point where they were building endurance, then eventually speed and intensity, and then a deload week leading into the race. But, if we're just talking about muscle growth, if you go to the gym and you increase increase weight when you step into the gym on a regular basis, you don't need a fancy periodized program. You don't have to bulk and lean and go through all this other stuff just to get strong or to grow muscle. Myth number 2 is similar, is that muscle confusion leads to better growth. And, this is kind of similar to what I was talking about earlier, right? So, constantly rotating exercises to keep your muscles guessing, highly scientific term, guessing. So, they've actually looked at this and they haven't found a real difference in something like quadriceps growth between people who trained with different combination of squats and leg presses and deadlifts and lunges. There was a 2022 review that pulled together 7 different studies on exercise variation and landed on the same answer. You don't get additional hypertrophy from switching things up. But here's the caveat, and this is related to what I was talking about earlier. Individual parts of a muscle can respond differently depending on which exercise you pick. So exercise selection, if you're concerned about shaping a muscle, still matter for getting that muscle to be shaped the way that you want to. Like if you did side raises and front raises and overhead shoulder press and band pull-aparts, you're going to develop better shoulders than if you just did overhead shoulder press. But muscle confusion as a strategy for Extra size is not actually necessary if we're talking about one single muscle group. So, this one, the way I look at it is switching things up again from a functional athletic standpoint is still, I think, a really good idea. But again, you don't have to switch things up and confuse the muscles as much as you think to actually gain muscle. The next myth is you have to train to failure to gain muscle. There is a little bit of truth to that, right? There was a 2024 analysis that pooled 55 studies and found that the closer a set gets to failure, the bigger the growth stimulus from that set. But that doesn't mean you always have to go to failure. As the load gets heavier, that relationship weakens. What I mean by that is if you're doing mostly bodyweight training, calisthenics, and lightweight training, getting close to failure, getting close to not even being able to squeak out that last rep becomes more important. And then, as your weight increases, that's less important. So, for example, 25 to 30 rep sets to failure can basically be something that you actually have to do if you're just doing push-ups to gain muscle. But, if you have a barbell loaded up with 250 pounds, you can have 2 to 3 reps in reserve and still gain muscle. I personally, just from a time-hacking standpoint, tend to prefer A higher amount of weight. And, as I age, I'll admit this makes me sound old, but I like to use Nautilus machines and machines that allow me to control the load if I'm lifting a heavier load. I just find I have lower risk of injury and tend to get injured less when I do that. But, if I have to choose, I will always go with higher load, not quite getting to full failure versus cranking out rep after rep after rep and having to get to failure in order to get any appreciable gain in muscle. And by the way, you can tell I'm lean. I'm not trying to put on tons and tons, slabs and slabs of muscle. I'm 6'3, I'm 195 pounds, I'm 7% body fat, and that's a pretty good sweet spot for me. If I can be between 190 and 200 pounds, I feel like I'm strong enough. I don't have to walk out of an elevator with my arms out by my side, and I feel like I can carry and cool that muscle effectively. But, A lot of the tips that I'm giving you are not just for bodybuilders, just for the average person who wants to gain weight and muscle and get stronger. Cardio kills your gains. That's myth number 4. And that fear traces all the way back to the '80s, which found reduced strength gains when cardio and lifting were combined. And that has been repeated so often that people even call it the interference effect. And yes, there is a small interference effect at the level of the individual muscle fibers, like slow-twitch muscle fibers, When your cardio is comprised of specifically running, like running outdoors, running on the treadmill, that's the only time during which muscle growth seems to be really significantly inhibited by cardio. But if you're eating enough calories and eating enough protein and say like riding the exercise bike or doing the elliptical or throwing in some swimming, It's not really going to significantly affect gains. If you look at a lot of bodybuilders and you look at their programs, a lot of them are doing, in some cases, like an hour of cardio a day plus their strength training because the cardio is what can help to contribute to leanness, to cardiovascular health, et cetera. Plus, when else are you going to listen to an audiobook or watch a movie? So, myth number 5 is that lifting makes women bulky. That myth actually sadly keeps a lot of women out of the weight room and pushes them towards Zumba classes and light dumbbells and High-rep toning work. Hello, Gwyneth Paltrow. Untrained men carry a lot more muscle mass than untrained women from the start, mostly because of the testosterone surge that happens for men somewhere around puberty or whatever testosterone replacement therapy they're slapping on their balls. But men and women build muscle at a pretty similar rate once they start training, but the starting point and the ceiling differ because of that testosterone difference. Most women, unless they are training with huge amounts of volume and/or on steroids or supplemental support are not going to gain enough weight to get bulky. Yes, there are exceptions to that rule. Women who bodybuild and are on steroids, women who are CrossFitting and doing just massive amounts of volume. But, a basic resistance training program for a woman is in most cases going to improve aesthetics, improve physique, and not result in significant bulkiness. I would say the only other scenario in which a woman might get bulky is if she's eating too significant calorie excess and living in the gym. There are always outliers, but for the most part, women don't need to worry about getting bulky. Another myth, I'm not going to go through every single myth. I think I'm going to pick some of the big ones here and then I'll put a link in the shownotes at BenGreenfieldLife.com/507. to a few of the ones that— or to the whole article if you want to review them all, because I'm just summarizing what is a pretty big article, monster of an article. How about this? You need to eat every 3 hours to keep your metabolism elevated. I have been guilty of spreading this news. So the idea here is that when you eat, you get the thermic effect of food, you keep the thyroid activated, you burn more fat. Now, they have compared groups eating 3 meals a day and groups eating 6 meals a day, body mass, fat mass, fat-free mass, It all comes out the same. Time-restricted eating research backs this up also. They've looked at women who lift weights and eat within a 7.5-hour window, and they gain the same fat-free mass and the same muscle thickness and the same strength as women eating across a 13-hour window. Meal frequency doesn't matter as much as you would think. Now, having mild amounts of protein throughout the day seems to stimulate muscle protein synthesis. pretty effectively. And there might be a ceiling depending on the research you look at. That ceiling might be at anywhere from 40 up to 100 grams of protein, at which point you might not absorb as much protein from the food that you're eating. So you can make a case for spreading protein throughout the day, but even then, you're not going to see a big difference between 3 protein feedings a day and 6 protein feedings a day. Now, most of the research that I've seen does suggest that you should eat around 2 to 3 times per day for things like metabolism, muscle protein synthesis, et cetera. But what I'm getting at is that the people who are walking around with 6 to 7 meals in their gym bag or who are stopping every 2 hours to eat just to keep the metabolism elevated, it's not necessary. I used to go to work with yogurt and apple chips and a protein bar and chicken and rice and and steak. And it was laborious and unnecessary, right? No need to eat every 3 hours. No need to go more than 3 square meals a day in most cases. There are probably a few exceptions to that rule. Let's say 2 a day, college football player, scrimmage in the morning or scrimmage in the afternoon, weight training session in the morning, maybe a run at some point during the day. There is a need to consume some amount of carb and protein if you're training more often than every 24 hours. So, caveat would be maybe an athletic population doing a 2 a day. But for the most part, meal frequency is overrated. How about this? You need protein right after your workout, right? The 30 to 60-minute post-workout anabolic window. It's one of the most repeated pieces of advice in the industry, and it's been challenged by many reviews. Your muscle protein synthesis stays elevated for up to 48 hours after you've done a training session, not just the first hour. What's most important is the amount of protein that you've consumed by the end of the day. And I would say second most important is to try and get at least 3 different surges in protein throughout the day. I think essential amino acids are a huge boon in this regard because you can have as little as like 3 grams of like a leucine-enriched essential amino acid And give muscle protein synthesis just a slight bump throughout the day. So, for example, I eat 2 to 3 times per day, right? Have breakfast most days, lunch some days, dinner just about every day. But I have essential amino acids twice a day. I take 10 to 20 grams. Both my 18-year-old sons do the same just because of some of the research that has been done on essential amino acids that are enriched in leucine to stimulate muscle protein synthesis. throughout the day. But as far as dropping everything to go eat protein right as soon as you finish working out, it's a little overrated. And again, the exception to that would be if you're a 2-a-day athlete and you're going to be training again within the next 24 hours, it's a good idea to feed after your first training session. But besides that, it's a little bit overrated. So how about this? Fasted cardio burns more fat. There has been a meta-analysis that has looked at this comparing fasted training and fed training, and there are only trivial differences in body fat and body mass or lean mass either way. And none of those differences are statistically significant. Fasted training does not necessarily mean that you're going to burn more fat. Now, that is what the research says. That being said, I personally Train fasted quite often in the morning because my stomach doesn't like to train. My gut does not like to train on food. I take some amino acids, I take some ketones, right? So, I can stay a little bit anabolic and have energy levels and not some kind of glucose crash during the workout, but I don't have a formal meal before I train. And, that's not because I fooled myself into thinking that I'm going to burn more fat, it's simply because I have a better higher-quality training session In most cases, on an empty stomach. Another caveat to that would be if you travel a lot and you're trying to normalize your circadian rhythm and avoid jet lag, doing morning fasted training sessions probably isn't a good idea because food, especially protein-rich food, is a circadian cue to get you onto your new time zone. That would be another example where you would want to eat before the workout. But eating before the workout is not going to inhibit your ability to burn fat. before the workout. You're just doing it for a circadian timing strategy. So, in my book Boundless, I talk about a strategy that I have used for myself. And, one of the things that I'll occasionally do is help someone get ready for a wedding or a movie role. And, I readily admit in Boundless that none of this is based on research, but I have noticed anecdotally That people tend to increase the rate at which they can get lean when they wake up and do a morning fasted fat-burning session with caffeine like coffee or green tea prior to slightly increase oxidation of fats and cold afterwards to cause a little bit more of a white adipose tissue to brown fat conversion. I think there's something to that, but it's never been studied and it's all purely anecdotal. So, if you want to try that so-called strike, shiver, stroll strategy or strike, stroll, shiver strategy where you get up, have coffee, walk the dog or go on a hike or whatever for 30, 45 minutes, come back, take a cold shower, and then go about the rest of your day, whether that mean having a snack and hitting the gym or heading to work and hitting the gym later on in the afternoon or evening, great, go for it. But, as I say in the book and as I'll say now, there's not a lot of strong evidence out there that fasted cardio is going to burn more fat. than fed cardio. Okay. Those are the main— I think I covered 8 of the 12 myths. There are other myths like muscle turns into fat if you stop training or myths like creatine is a steroid. Hint, it's not. But, I'll link to the full article at BenGreenfieldLife.com/507. Those are a few of the ones that I think are actually pretty important to know about. Alright. Got one more doozy for you. This I get asked about so much, you guys. So I'm just going to come right out and say it right here. A lot of people are losing a lot of weight with GLP drugs, and in many cases, that's great. I think that there are benefits to that, but they're then complaining about loose skin and hanging skin, and it's an issue and people are concerned about it aesthetically. And I'm going to address it briefly. So your skin doesn't snap back right after you've gone through a series of GLP drug use. And that's for 3 reasons. Fat loss when you're on a GLP outpaces the rate that collagen and elastin in your skin can remodel. Your existing collagen and elastin fibers get stretched and they get fragmented, and people lose about 7% of facial volume for every 10 kilograms of weight that they lose, which shows up even when the weight loss itself is healthy. There's some emerging data now. This might be a 4th reason that GLP-1 drugs can directly affect the cells that maintain collagen and skin structure. And so it's not just fat loss. So the idea is that, yes, maybe metabolically, from a longevity standpoint, from a diabetes standpoint, from a metabolic standpoint, you are getting healthier with the use of GLP drugs. Questionable for some people. I think they're like anorexia enabling in many people, but People who have had successful weight loss through GLP drugs, and what I'm about to tell you, like a lot of stuff I'm about to tell you is like what you could do even if you weren't on GLP drugs for loose skin issues. They have this thing creep up where it's just like, yeah, skin hangs and sometimes they don't like the way that looks aesthetically, and I get it. So, the first thing to understand here is That probably the most important foundational principle is that GLP-1 use or triple agonist use like retatrutide, GLP-1, GIP, and what's the last one? GLP, GIP, is it an incretin hormone? Leptin? I'm forgetting. There you go. I'm not perfect. I'm forgetting. So, GLP-1 appetite suppression tanks both your protein intake and your hydration capacity and dehydrated Protein-starved skin looks thinner, and that kind of is on top of whatever laxity that you might already have in the skin. So, number one thing is eat adequate protein. Think back to what I was talking about a little bit ago. 1 to 1.5 grams per pound is a pretty good amount to shoot for. And stay hydrated because that will help to rebuild muscle volume under the skin. It will fill space. It will reduce that draping look. especially in the arms and the thighs and the midsection. So protein and hydration are key. That's the first thing. The next thing with real human evidence that you can do without visiting some beauty clinic is collagen peptides. And I'll give a nod to amino acids, even though the studies have been actually done on collagen peptides. I would put amino acids into this category as well. So a meta-analysis of 26 different randomized controlled trials with Over 1,700 people found a significant improvement in skin elasticity with supplementation of collagen peptides. There was a separate analysis that had a pretty good effect size across 113 trials and nearly 8,000 individuals. 2.5 to 5 grams a day of collagen, hydrolyzed collagen, specific collagen peptides taken for around 8 weeks minimum has an effect on sagging skin, and loose skin. Red and near-infrared light would also fit into this category, something you can do at home. Red and near-infrared light has been shown around 3 to 5 times per week over 6 to 12 weeks at 10 to 20 minutes per day to be something that contributes to collagen and elastin health. That could be a red light panel, it could be a red light bed. Again, 10 to 20 minutes, 3 to 5 times a week over 6 to 12 weeks. You combine that with 2.5 to 5 grams of collagen peptides per day, 1 to 1.5 grams of protein per pound of mass on top of the collagen, and then adequate hydration. And adequate hydration is usually your body weight in pounds divided by 2, that many ounces. If you weigh 200 pounds, minimum of 100 ounces of water per day. And that doesn't count what you sweat out. So, it's going to be more than that. And then, we get into the fancy stuff, right? I get called out for being a biohacker, so I'd be remiss not to talk about a few of these things. We have fancy equipment, RF microneedling, right? These are devices like the Morpheus8 or the Genius or the Vivace. These deliver radio frequency through microneedles into the dermis to trigger collagen remodeling, and they work up to about 4 millimeters of thickness. Which is pretty significant. They work on the face, they work on the body. You can ask about this at a beauty clinic near you. So again, it's called radiofrequency microneedling. The other one is called ultrasound, focused ultrasound. This would be a device like the Ultherapy. So that's a totally different mechanism. It heats what's called your SMAS layer. That's the superficial— brace yourself— superficial musculoaponeurotic system. That's a thin, tough sheet of fibrous tissue and muscle beneath your skin and your subcutaneous fat that covers and supports your facial structures. It acts as a scaffolding. It provides support for things like facial fat pads. It changes with age. So as collagen and elastin breaks down, that layer weakens. And as I've already alluded to, GLP-1 drugs are going to aggravate that. So the way that it's targeted is with something like focused ultrasound. And again, a device that would be an example of this is the Ultherapy. And this is something you would need to do at a clinic. So a lot of times they'll call this an SMAS facelift, and then non-surgical treatments would use ultrasound. The way ultrasound works is it stimulates new collagen production and tightens the tissue without therapy. Ultherapy, that's U-L therapy. I'm not affiliated with the company at all, but that's the only FDA-cleared device I know of for lifting and tightening skin on the face, the neck, the chin, and the brow. And, it's pretty safe, pretty effective. So, the next one would be injectable biostimulators. I realize we're getting super fringe now, but this would be things like poly-L-lactic acid, which is also called Sculptra. There's calcium hydroxylapatite, which would be like Radiesse. Now, those don't fill space like hyaluronic acid fillers do. They trigger your own fibroblasts to stimulate new collagen, and that's via low-dose lactic acid release that builds structure gradually over months. It doesn't work instantly, but many people use this for the facial volume loss. And then, if we're talking about real significant hanging skin, not just laxity, that's where you have to turn to surgery. It's called a panniculectomy that removes the abdominal apron. You can get what's called a circumferential lower body lift that addresses the abdomen, the flanks, the back, lifts the buttocks. There are treatments like brachioplasty that handles the arms, thigh lifts lift the inner thighs. I realize a lot of people are like, dude, that's a lot to go through. But, if someone's going from— and I've seen this before, before, like 350 pounds down to 175 pounds, there are some skin issues that people do want to address. So, if I could wave a magic wand, I would finish this part by saying a few things. Yes, eat adequate protein, get adequate collagen, hydrate, and use red light. So, those are just the biggest tools that I can name that are going to help out quite a bit with hanging skin after intensive weight loss. The next thing that I would think about is, of course, weight training because weight training is going to fill out some of that hanging skin. The next thing that I would think about is, well, you've been overweight, you've lost the weight, you're metabolically healthy, you've probably extended lifespan, you've probably improved your heart health. And yeah, aesthetically, maybe things don't look perfect, but I also wouldn't Like, I wouldn't— how am I going to say it? I'm just going to get super esoteric here. Like, I wouldn't place your identity and your feeling of worth based on how much hanging skin you have, right? You are your own worst critic. I guarantee the people you actually care about in life that you should care about, they're not going to be judging you based on your loose skin. They're going to be more glad that you're metabolically healthy and going to be around longer to to be someone who loves and is loved and is taken care of. And, I think that if you're eating adequate protein, taking collagen, doing some red light therapy, lifting weights, staying hydrated, you're going to address most of the major variables. And then, if you're turning to surgery after that, I would say the only real good reason to do it would be like, okay, well, now I want to be a model, or now I want to pose on Instagram or whatever. But, I think we have to be really careful not cross the line between feelings of worth being tied to vanity, if that makes sense. But, I'm asked so much about this stuff with loose skin that I couldn't not address it on the podcast. I just don't want to give you the impression that I think everybody should go out and do ultrasound therapy and calcium hydroxylapatite fillers and surgery for loose skin if you've lost a bunch of weight. Versus just do the basics and go from there. And, I certainly, if I see someone with loose skin after they've lost weight, where my mind goes, I'm just like, yeah, that's human biology. That's the way things work. And, if you want to tighten it up a bit, use some of the simple tools that I've given you in this podcast, but I wouldn't beat yourself up too much about it. I mean, if someone's judging you harshly for loose skin, then why should That's not the type of person that you should care that much about when it comes to what they think of you. That's just my counsel, but I'm no psychiatrist, psychologist. I'm just a personal trainer. So anyways, all the shownotes are going to be at BenGreenfieldLife.com/507. Leave a review, leave a ranking, share this episode if you liked it, if it helped you out, if you learned some stuff. Hopefully, it didn't feed you through the fire hose too much. And, uh, until next time, thanks for listening. 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