Before You Take Weight Loss Shots, Watch This

Somewhere between 25 and 40% of the weight people lose while taking a GLP-1 isn't fat, it's muscle. That's what the research tells us. And almost nobody who is handing out these prescriptions is educating people on that. The drug will solve your appetite and calorie deficit problem, but it does not solve your muscle problem. So by the end of this episode, you'll know exactly how to work out, how many days, how many reps, how hard, how heavy should you be lifting that's actually going to fit into your lifestyle. I'll also give you the protein playbook that you can implement into your diet in a realistic way. Eat more protein or hit your protein goal is not useful advice when you're not even that hungry on a GLP-1. And last, I'm going to tell you the one thing about coming off these GLP-1 drugs, if you decide to do that, that is going to make everything else in this episode 10 times more important. And my one promise to you is the information and the tactics you'll receive in this episode are going to be things you can't just find Googling or asking ChatGPT. I'm going to go more in-depth, give you more practical tactical advice, and give you my experience coaching over 25,000 clients in the last 10 years. And one last note, even if you're not taking a GLP-1, all of this stuff could apply to you anyway to make sure you don't lose muscle and/or you probably know somebody who is thinking about it or is taking a GLP-1, so you can share this episode with them. That being said, let's dive into the first segment, which is Why does your muscle disappear while taking a GLP-1? The function of a GLP-1 is it will decrease your appetite, which is exactly what it's supposed to do because you will eat less, putting you into a calorie deficit. And the research is varied on this, but for some people, you could literally eat half of what you were eating before. So if somebody was eating 2,200 calories per day, you would eat half of that amount. You need 1,100 calories per day, which I do not recommend, by the way, but that's what's happening. And this is why people would be losing muscle along with losing body fat. And the bigger the deficit, the faster the weight loss. People usually cheer and they think, oh, this is good. This is working really, really well. But the issue is when that happens, that is when you're most at risk for losing muscle. And here in a second, I'm going to tell you what your rate of weight loss per week should be so that you're not losing muscle. But right before we get into that, if you start to line all of these things up, a big calorie deficit, if you're in a big calorie deficit, you're also probably not eating a ton of protein, which because your appetite is so low, you're not going to be craving or wanting like a steak or 6 eggs or a big chicken breast. You'll probably want things that are easy to kind of snack on and grab, which are usually more of your carbs, which is why your protein ends up lower. And then last but not least, a lot of people in general don't lift weights, let alone when they start taking a GLP-1 drug. And so all of these reasons are why muscle loss happens. And the analogy that I kind of wrote down here was think about if you were paying off your debt, that would technically be a good thing. Probably you would get out of debt, but You're paying off your credit card debt by selling all the furniture in your house. The debt number is going down month over month, but then you end up with an empty house. You're just standing in your house and there's nothing there. That's what losing 40 pounds would look like with you also losing muscle. You get a smaller number, but you just kind of end up soft. and smaller and more at risk for things like bone density damage, slowed down metabolism, disrupted and unoptimized hormones, and a slew of other issues that can happen. And especially for those people who are 35 and older, you are already at risk for something called sarcopenia, which is muscle loss every single year. So this would just speed up your amount of muscle loss, which is why I am here to hopefully help you in this episode today. And so I told you I was going to give you a number of roughly how much weight you should be aiming to lose per week. And let me put a caveat on this. When you first start a GLP-1 or you first start a diet in general, you might lose a couple more pounds in the beginning for a couple of reasons. Number one, there's just less food in your stomach. So that makes your human being weigh less. And number 2, you typically cut back a bit on the higher carb foods. You'll usually increase your protein. You're eating a bit healthier, which may have a bit less sodium. So you also may be storing less water weight when you first start a diet, for example. So outside of the first couple of weeks of a calorie deficit, you should be losing About 1%, maybe up to 2% of your total body weight per week. Notice how that isn't an exact number. So it's not like, oh, you should only lose 1 to 2 pounds per week. If you are a 200-pound person, 1% of your total body weight would be 2 pounds. That would be a great fat loss rate of progress Without losing muscle. Once you start to get to losing 4 pounds, 5 pounds, 6 pounds per week for multiple weeks in a row, that is actually not a win. That would be a sign that you are losing muscle. Yes. Even if you're eating enough protein. Yes. Even if you're lifting weights, because that rate of progress continuously week over week, your body will have to pull from other tissue on your body other than stored fat. And the most expensive tissue you have is muscle. So it's going to want to pull from that more. So track that when you're going through your weight loss journey. And this is something that we do with our online coaching clients every single week. We look over their weight loss progress. We don't care what they weighed from Tuesday to Friday, but you know, Monday to next Monday, what were your daily weigh-ins? What was the average for the week? So your weight is going to fluctuate up and down, but what is the average? You take all 7 days, you add them up, divide them by 7, you will get the average. So what is the average this week to the previous week to the previous week before that? What is the average this week to next week? And we look over the average of roughly how much weight are you losing as a total percentage of your body So I would encourage you to do the same. And if you're listening to this and you're like, wow, I would love to have somebody help me with my fat loss journey, you can click the link in the show notes of the podcast below to learn more. We actually have an 8-week fat loss challenge running right now where you could win up to $3,000. So if you click the link below, you will learn all about our 8-week challenge that is running. You'll be able to apply, and if you qualify, you'll book a call with me personally. We'll chat a bit more, and if it's a great fit, we'll get you started. But we're going to dive into the second part of the podcast here, which is the workout prescription. So you may have heard before, you probably have, you should be lifting weights, and this is correct, but especially to somebody who is maybe not as well-versed in lifting weights or exercise in general, just Lift more weights or just go to the gym or just do resistance training isn't enough in my opinion. So I want to give you some very simple numbers and very simple guidelines that you'll be able to follow to make sure you do not lose muscle. So the first one, how many days per week should you be working out? You may think you need to work out 5, 6, 7 days a week. Could not be farther from the truth. Two to four days per week of lifting weights is more than enough to not only keep your muscle, but also to build muscle, especially if you're somebody who is more of a beginner to following a proper strength training program. Typically for our clients, we split this up into something like if they're doing two days a week. It's 2 full-body days. You don't wanna do those full-body days back to back because you don't wanna hit your muscle groups back to back. So this could be something like Monday, Thursday, or Saturday, Tuesday, 2 full-body days. If you're training 3 days a week, this would look something like lower body, upper body, full body. So that may be a Monday, Wednesday, Friday. And if it's 4 days a week, it would look something like lower body, Upper body, lower body, upper body. Notice how with each of those workout splits, you're hitting your muscle groups 2 times per week. And that is the frequency that I would suggest for you if you're trying to not only keep muscle, but also build some muscle. Because splitting up your frequency to where you hit your muscle groups 2 times per week, you'll be able to get Without going too in-depth, more volume. So let's say you do eight sets of glute exercises on Monday, and then you do another eight sets of glute exercises on Friday. That is sixteen total sets that is split up throughout the week, and that would be better than just doing eight sets on Monday or trying to do all sixteen sets on Monday because the research shows. For natural lifters, meaning you're not taking steroids, there is a point of diminishing returns that comes along with how many sets per muscle group per workout that you do. And they have found the sweet spot is between 8 to 12, 8 to 12 sets per muscle group. So this would look something like if you did 3 sets of a hip thrust, 3 sets of Bulgarian split squats, and then 2 sets of an RDL. That would be 8 total sets for your glutes in that one workout, which by the way, that would be a lot. But that's one workout. If you start to go past that, that's when you start to get diminishing returns. But if you only work out your glutes once per week, then that's not As good as if you worked out your glutes 2 times per week. So if you just split that up to 8 and 8, now you're getting the best of both worlds. So that's why I recommend those 3 different workout splits. That went a little bit more in depth. And so hopefully that made sense to you. And then the next part of that is how long should these workouts be? Again, you may think if you don't work out for 60 minutes at least, Then it's not even a real workout and it doesn't even count. And why would you do it anyway? Could not be farther from the truth. I can't tell you how many clients that we have coached who have worked out 3 times a week for 30 minutes, and they have seen tremendous fat loss and muscle building progress. So anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes and By the way, if you only have 20 minutes right now, and that's actually what is realistic for you, 20 minutes will be better than 0 minutes. And on the flip side, if you're someone who like, hey, I really enjoy, you know, kind of getting into the gym, it's, it's my escape, it's my therapy. Maybe you could go to 75 minutes, but a sweet spot is 30 to 60 minutes. You don't need more to see better results because again, there is a bell curve. Once you start to work out for 2 hours. Like, you're just— you're getting to a point where you're doing more than your body can recover from, and your intensity, which we'll talk about in a second, is probably not where it needs to be to actually see results. So that's how long you should work out for. What exercises should you be doing? You should think of— hopefully I can make this as simple as I can for somebody who may be more of a beginner. There's a couple of different Movement patterns that you should focus on. So you should be doing some sort of a squat movement pattern. This could be a goblet squat. This could be a box squat. This could be a barbell back squat. This could be a hack squat. This could be a leg press. This could be a Bulgarian split squat. This could be a lunge, any sort of— you're bending your knee, Going down and coming back up. You want to hit some sort of squat movement pattern. And the reason I'm giving you movement patterns is because you can be flexible. You can, you can have different exercises within this. It doesn't need to be so rigid. So a squat movement pattern, and this is throughout the week. Next is what we call a hinge movement pattern. This is something like a Romanian deadlift. A regular deadlift, a single leg deadlift, a hip thrust, any sort of you're kind of bringing your hips down or back and then standing back up, bringing your hips back to neutral. So you have a hinge movement pattern. You have a press upper body pressing movement. So think like you're pressing away from your body. This could be a chest press. This could be a shoulder press. This could be a push up. This could be a TRX push up. This could be a chest press machine. A machine, a barbell bench press, any sort of pushing away from your body. And you'll also do an upper body pulling exercise. Examples would be a lat pulldown, a dumbbell bent-over row, a seated cable row, a machine row, an assisted pull-up, any sort of where you're kind of pulling to your body. So, so far we have squat, hinge, press, pull. Those are the 4 main movement patterns that you should be looking to get in. I could go more in depth, but I don't want to overwhelm people who may be a bit more new. But if you're hitting those movement patterns throughout the week, you are golden. And somebody might ask me, well, Eric, what about like a bicep curl? What about a tricep extension? When you do a chest press, you're working your triceps. When you do a shoulder press, you're working your shoulders. When you're doing a seated cable row, you're working your biceps. So these muscles are getting worked with your bigger movements. If you would like to add some additional bicep curl or tricep extension or shoulder raises, you can certainly do that. I wouldn't say it's 100% necessary, but you can kind of tack those on at the end of your workout. So you might do one bicep exercise and one tricep exercise at the end of a workout, and that would again be enough. How many sets and reps should you be doing for these exercises? I like to stay within the 5 to 12 rep range, and technically you can build muscle in any rep range. But I like the 5 to 12 rep range because it's heavy enough where you'll be able to push yourself with the weight, but it's not so heavy that you're going to end up just injuring yourself or getting burnt out. Whereas if you only did 15 or 20 reps, the weight you'll have to use is so light and the amount of reps you'll have to do, you'll typically end up more on like a cardiovascular Exercise versus a strength and muscular exercise. And then if you only do 1 rep, 2 rep, 2 rep, 2 rep, 3 rep, 4 rep, it'll have to be so heavy. Your joints will eventually take a beating and your central nervous system will take a beating. So I like the 5 to 12 rep range, and really all you need is 2 to 3 working sets. So there's a difference between warm-up sets and working sets. You should be doing maybe 1 to 3 warm-up sets, just kind of lighter weight, getting the movement down, making sure you have the correct form, making sure everything feels okay. Once you're done your warm-up sets, and these should not be heavy and they should not be a lot of reps, so like maybe 3 to 5 reps at a weight that is light for you, that is pretty easy. You'll do a couple of sets maybe. And then if your workout calls for 2 sets of an exercise, that is 2 sets where you— it's a working set. You're pushing yourself close to failure. How do you know if you're pushing yourself close to failure? The last couple of reps of your set would slow down. So if you're doing a shoulder press and it took you a half second To do the first rep. By the time you get to your last rep, let's say you're doing eight reps. That rep should be going like two seconds on the way up. That's how you know you're getting close to muscular failure, which is what you need to be doing because without going close to failure, your muscles. Will not have— your body won't have the signal to keep your muscle. I mentioned earlier in the episode, muscle tissue is expensive. So it's the first thing your body is going to want to get rid of. It's also why it's so good for weight loss and maintaining weight loss, because muscle requires more calories to burn to keep it. Unlike fat, which requires basically nothing to maintain. Muscle requires more calories to make to keep it, so your body is going to want to get rid of that if there's not enough calories coming in, aka calorie deficit. So you need to give your body a reason to keep that muscle, and that reason is all the things we just said and lifting close to failure because it will say, "I can't get rid of this. This person is there. There's a stress that is being placed on me multiple times a week. I need to be able to." Withstand that stress. So I need to keep this muscle. But if you don't give your body the stress, it won't need to keep the muscle. That makes sense. So those are the main building blocks there of lifting weights and what you should be following. And when it comes to cardio, this is not to discourage you from doing cardio because especially for your heart health and longevity, you should be doing cardio. But lifting is a non-negotiable. Like it's, you, there's no, somebody was trying to argue with me on social media that, oh, well I can just walk and I'll be fine. The answer's no. I just, the science and the research and everything that we have proves resistance training close to failure is the only way you're gonna be able to keep that lean muscle mass. So if you're not doing it, Quite frankly, you will lose muscle. Cardio is still good, but you need to have your strength training worked in. And a couple of things, I think what, what to expect if you are going to take a GLP-1 is depending on how much it affects your appetite and how much it affects your calories, it may be difficult To push yourself close to failure. And a couple of ways you can work around this would be making sure you time your carbohydrates properly. I always like the sandwich method where before your workout and after your workout, you're having the majority of your carbs. So it's like pre-workout meal with carbs, Workout, post-workout meal with carbs. That's why it's the sandwich effect. I like this because you will get the carbohydrates for your workout because carbs are your muscle's main source of energy. So you can front-load that and have a really good workout and have more energy. And then after, when you have carbs, you'll immediately be able to replenish the glycogen and the carbs that you just used. To be able to then push yourself in the following workout coming up, you know, tomorrow or the next day, whenever your next workout is going to be. So expect it to maybe not feel the best. And this is a part that I don't think AI would probably tell you, but if you sandwich your carbs, that should help you out a lot. So try that out. And then number 2, if you are taking a GLP-1, sometimes you may have Some days that are like higher with nausea or digestive issues or just like very low energy. And this could be because of the drug, it could be because of the calories you're consuming, it could be because of multiple different reasons. But I would just remind you that a half workout is better than no workout. A workout where you lift lighter than you normally do is better than not going at all. So just remember, you still want to stay in the habit and stay in the routine of getting this weightlifting in. Because that's one thing the drug is also not going to teach you is changing your habits. It could potentially make you change your habits easier, but it doesn't change your habits automatically. So you still need to put the work in to change habits and the habit of lifting weights, the habit of I'm going to the gym at this time, or I'm going down to my garage or my basement at this time to get my workout in. That is the habit you need to solidify. And that's why I say no matter good, bad, or indifferent, you need to make sure that you are lifting weights. And the last thing I'll say this before we get into the protein aspect, which I know, you know, I have a lot to say there. So I think that'll be a good segment as well. I just gave you a lot. I know if you're like, I don't know how to put all this together and I just want someone to do this for me. Again, that is what we do in our 8-week challenge. You will get onboarded, you'll fill out a questionnaire, we'll learn all about what exercises you like and don't like, or what equipment you have available to you. How much time do you have to work out? How many days can we work out? We'll get all the information and we just build you a fully personalized plan. All you'll have to do is look at your phone, do the workouts that are made specifically for you. And you'll know you're doing the right things. There is no guesswork involved. You don't have to come up with it. So if that sounds interesting to you and helpful, click the link in the description of the video below to learn more about my 8-week fat loss challenge. All right, now let's get into protein. And this is where I think there's a lot of bad information. So hopefully I can clear this up for you. When it comes to protein, how much should you be eating First off, because the generic advice, or maybe what you've seen on the internet, is you should be eating 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight. And there's a couple of things wrong with this. Number one, that's just inaccurate. You don't have to do that, especially if you have 30, 40, 50 pounds that you want to lose. But second, if you're taking a GLP-1, like we said earlier, your appetite and how much you can eat In one sitting and throughout the day is usually so much lower. So what are you— how are you going to hit 200 grams of protein when you're on a GLP-1? Even if you're not on a GLP-1, how are you going to hit 200 grams of protein per day? So you don't need to do that. What I want you to do is take your goal body weight, and I know the number on the scale isn't everything, but just think about if you were to have a goal body weight, what would that be? You're going to take that number, multiply it by 0.7. That is the absolute minimum amount of protein that you can intake per day. So if your goal body weight is 150 pounds, the absolute minimum protein per day is 105 grams. Anything above that, cool. It's like extra credit. If you get 110 grams, 120 grams, 130, awesome. But at a minimum, it's 105 grams of protein per day. And this is, I believe, much more realistic and sustainable for a lot of people, because again, what ChatGPT or the internet won't tell you is when you set a protein goal that is too high, number one, it feels impossible to hit, which is like, is discouraging from the get. And number 2, when you're not hitting it, you feel like a failure. You feel like you're not doing something right. Who would want to keep going if they feel like they're never doing it right? Nobody. And then number 3, even if you were to hit that goal, you would have to be so restrictive with your diet in the sense of you could almost literally eat nothing else other than A chicken breast to hit your goal. And that's just going to be discouraging and it's going to suck and it's not going to be realistic for you. I know people out there who are listening to this are probably shaking their heads like, yeah, I've done that before. So this is why I say set a more realistic protein goal for yourself. Now, it's not just about the protein goal. This is where people get it wrong. The other issue with hitting a protein goal is, like I said earlier, You get much more full and you almost get like disgusted with food quicker if you are taking a GLP-1. And there's things like meat aversion or just like food aversion is very real and common when taking these drugs. And so the answer isn't, oh, just load up your plate with more chicken because that's not gonna work. Like you're not gonna, you're not gonna be able to stick with that. So what do we do instead? Well, it's kind of something I wrote down here as like the no appetite playbook, which is first and foremost, you gotta anchor breakfast with high protein. You can't skip breakfast because if you skip breakfast with protein, you're just not going to be able to hit your protein goal the rest of the day. I don't care what else you try to do. Like, if you miss your protein target in the morning, Playing catch-up is usually just never going to work. So 30 to 40 grams of protein at breakfast is a non-negotiable. How would you do that? Well, if you took 2 eggs and a scoop and a half of protein powder, that would be 45 grams of protein already off the bat. And that's not a lot of food because it's just 2 whole eggs. You could do egg, you could do the boiled eggs, scrambled eggs, over easy, whatever you want. 2 eggs and a scoop and a half of protein powder. The protein powder I use, it's from, if people are watching, it's from Legion Athletics. It's right behind me right here. Whey isolate. So it's also very easy to digest and it does not sit in your stomach. Again, if we're thinking about We need to make sure we can get enough protein. If you have this super heavy protein powder that just sits in your stomach, it's going to be harder to hit your protein goal. You're going to be even more full. The digestive issues are going to be even worse. So I would especially say investing into a very good, clean whey isolate protein powder is going to be worth your investment, especially if you're taking— it is regardless, but especially if you're taking a GLP-1. So again, there'll be a link in the show notes of the podcast if you want to check out the protein powder that I use, or you can head to legionathletics.com. It's the Whey Plus Isolate, and you can use my code ERIC at checkout. It will get you buy one, get one half off anything else. And so if you want to take creatine, or if you want to take vitamin D, or if you want to take a multivitamin, you want to take some pre-workout, they have a bunch of stuff there. Obviously, you can peruse around, but 2 eggs and a scoop and a half of protein powder. Very easy. Hit your 45 grams of protein per day. And now you're not trying to play catch up the rest of the day. You've already put yourself in a good spot. Then the other tips would be splitting up your meals into 4 to 5 smaller meals throughout the day, because again, good luck eating 250 grams of chicken breast at dinner. When you're not even hungry to begin with. So if you split the portion sizes up smaller, you'll be able to get in more protein throughout the day. Number 3 I wrote down was just like I said, protein shakes, they count and you should definitely use them to your advantage. You know, 1 to 2 scoops usually is anywhere from 25 to 45 grams of protein. And, you know, you can use Legion's and they're very, very clean, very easy to digest. You could even get Like a clear, it's called Clear Whey. Legion also has a Clear Whey that's even more like just very simple, very basic, very easy to digest, which would be really good. And then I think also just easy, easy in. And what I mean by that is foods that are easier to consume, like Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, deli meat, string cheese, You know, like pro— like making protein pudding, those sort of things where on the days where you're maybe not as hungry or you don't have as much of an appetite, but you know, you need to eat protein. For example, like 170 grams of Greek yogurt, depending on the exact brand you get, usually anywhere from like 12 to 20 grams of protein. And like, it's, it's not a lot to eat, right? It's like soft. It's, and you know, some people don't like Greek yogurt, but you get my point. Trying to get something where it's not going to sound awful or be very hard to chew. Like for example, a steak that is, it's a, it's a very thick, it's very hard to chew. I mean, I love steak, but it's probably going to be harder to eat that versus eating a Greek yogurt, for example. So easy in foods. And then last but not least is just track it. You would be shocked at a couple of things. There's, in the world of behavior change and habit change, there's a saying that awareness creates change. So the more aware you are of something, the more change you will create around it. So when you just track your protein intake, you're going to get closer to hitting your goal. And you'd probably actually be shocked. Most people, most of our clients who start tracking their protein, they actually find that they're eating more protein than they think when they actually weigh out their portion sizes. So it might actually be like an enlightenment to you and be able to kind of put you in the right direction. So protein, very important, but it's not just about your total daily protein intake. It's about making sure you set up your day to hit your total daily protein intake. And that kind of leads me into the next part of that, which is basically building a day of eating. So Your appetite used to be like a big checked bag suitcase where you could just put anything in there and you just keep stuffing shit in apparently. But the drug kind of changed that to a carry-on bag where you can't pack everything in it anymore. You can't just keep stuffing it with whatever you want. You got, you got to pack your essentials first and you have to set up your day of eating To make sure you can hit your essentials. Does that make sense? So we're talking about protein, we're talking about fruits and veggies, we're talking about— and the protein would be like your passport. The fruits and veggies would be your phone charger and your clothes. The fun stuff, that's like the souvenir space. If you got some extra room, that's awesome, but you need to make sure you pack your essentials first. So how would you do this? Well, Again, at breakfast, this might look something like you have 2 eggs and a scoop and a half of protein powder. That'd be 45 grams of protein. At lunch, you might do something like 4 ounces of chicken breast or salmon or a quinoa bowl or something like that. You may even have like a deli turkey sandwich where again, you can have these easier to consume foods. Just make sure it's on the protein side. For a snack, you might have 200 grams of Greek yogurt. And then for dinner, you might have, again, 4 ounces of ground beef, because ground beef is typically a bit easier to chew and digest versus, again, a big chicken breast or a big chicken thigh or a big steak. So that whole day would be about 130 grams of protein per day, and it's split up into 4 different meals and/or snacks. And so that's how you might actually set up the day of eating to hit that. So that usually brings you to be like eating protein every 3 to 6 hours. That's usually a good like mind frame for you to think of. You don't, you don't want to go 8, 10, 12 hours without eating protein because it's, again, it's just going to be harder to hit your protein goal. And a little, a little bit of a warning here as well. I really wouldn't try to not eat throughout the day. And what I mean by that is we have coached so many clients who they'll go all day without eating, and because they're trying to lose weight, they think that's a good thing. They think like, oh, well, I must be eating in a calorie deficit because I'm not eating all day. And they're super proud of that. Again, that is your one-way ticket to losing muscle because the GLP-1 is going to create a calorie deficit for you for the most part, because your appetite is so much lower. So it's almost, you have to make sure you're eating enough throughout the day to hit your calorie and your protein goal. Don't go all day without eating and think that's a good thing. It is not in— it's not really in any scenario, but especially in this scenario, because that's how you will end up losing muscle. And if you don't know what your specific calorie and protein goal should be, I will also link our free calorie calculator below. It's the same one we use with our clients, so I'm holding nothing back from you. Use it, put your information in, and it'll tell you what that should be. So that's how you're going to set up kind of a day of eating to hit that and what that could look like in a very realistic way. And one of the last segments I want to talk about here is the part that nobody really wants to talk about and/or say out loud and give you some actionable tips for this is what the research shows is if people come off the drug, they tend to regain a chunk of the weight back after they stop because their appetite comes back. And just to be very transparent, they weren't focused on habit changes, lifting weights, eating the correct amount of protein, setting their day up to hit the enough protein throughout the day. So they end up regaining a lot of the weight back because the, the drug was doing most of The heavy lifting versus just being a tool. And so what really determines if you're going to keep the results or not is what you built while you were on it. That's both actually your physical muscle tissue, but then also your habits. Like we've been talking about, there's a reason I gave you eat every 3 to 6 hours. Have the protein anchor, how to set up the strength training workouts, all these habits that I'm telling you, that's going to determine if you actually keep the results you see on a GLP-1 or not. And a complete side note that I didn't write down here, but I was just thinking about earlier, there's a lot of coaches and trainers right now who are like badmouthing GLP-1s or saying it's a bad thing. But like, the reality is now more than ever, People need a coach and need a trainer because of, they need to make sure they're doing the correct workouts to build muscle. And number 2, you gotta still change your habits. It's not just about taking a drug. And there's a lot of people who are finding out, like we have a lot of people who join our 8-week challenge who either have done a GLP-1 and/or are doing a GLP-1. And they realize I thought the drug was basically going to do all the work for me, not in like a cheating sort of way, but like, that's just, that's just the thought process that they had. And now they're realizing, oh shit, I still have to change my habits. I still have to focus on behavior change. And so they're coming to us now wanting to see progress, but actually maintain the progress long-term because they know they need to change their habits. So That's why, you know, I don't care if you do or don't take a GLP-1. We work with people who do and don't, and our philosophy stays the same, which is you need to change your habits. The actual tactics may differ because of all the stuff we've talked about earlier, but now more than ever, it's the habits that are going to determine whether you actually keep the results you see or not on a GLP-1. And by the way, somebody might say, well, I'm never going to come off a GLP-1. Okay. Perfect. You still got to change your habits. If you don't have the habit of lifting weights, you'll lose muscle. If you don't have the habits of the protein we talked about, you'll lose muscle. So either way, you're gonna have to change your habits, which is why we overly focus on behavior change and habit change. And the way that we do that is we make sure we build a realistic plan for you because a lot of people will go gung-ho and try to do an hour and a half workouts, 5 days a week, you know, They set up this quote unquote perfect meal plan they got from ChatGPT, and they think they're going to hit that when in reality it's not realistic for your lifestyle and you know it. So like the day that comes where you can't be perfect or the kids are at school, they stay late or somebody got sick or you have to travel, you can't stick with that. All that goes out the window. We build a realistic plan for you for both your workouts and nutrition. And we hold you accountable and help you with the mental behavior change side of things, because let's be honest. You probably know what to do. It's not a matter of you not knowing. If you're somebody who you've tried everything, you've tried diets, you've tried apps, you've tried trainers, you've tried challenges, you've tried these things, but it just doesn't stick and you can't stay consistent. It's not a willpower problem because if you keep restarting, that actually proves you have willpower to keep going. The issue is nobody's really holding you accountable when life gets busy. And that's why most people fall off. And it's exactly what we fix in my 8-week fat loss challenge, because you'll get paired up with a real human being, one-on-one coach, who is there to hold you accountable and make sure you do not fall off track. So when life gets busy, you will still stick with it. Now, when life is great, or when life is busy, either way, you'll stick with it. And that is the only way that you will be able to keep the progress that you make Whether you take a GLP-1 or not. So if that sounds like something that you need and it could help you, click the link in the description below to learn more about my 8-week fat loss challenge. And guys, just a quick recap: lift 2 to 4 days a week. The last couple of reps should be hard. That's how you'll keep your muscle. Protein— take your goal body weight, multiply by 0.7. That's how many grams of protein you should be eating per day. Anchor high-protein breakfasts and split up 3 to 5 smaller portion meals throughout the day. Make sure you hit a calorie goal, eating enough. Do not skip meals and don't eat throughout the day. And then no matter what, you have to change your habits if you want to maintain the results that you get. That is the episode for today. I hope you enjoyed. And again, if this was interesting and/or helpful, please share this episode with somebody who could benefit from it.