Unfortunately, Losing Fat Just Changed Forever

Losing fat just changed forever, and most people haven't caught up yet. I coach thousands of people every month in my online coaching business. 2 years ago, almost none of them were taking a fat loss drug. And today, the ones who are and are losing weight the fastest are the ones I'm most worried about. And here's what's changed. Every diet most people do, usually something knocks you off track. Work got busy. The holidays hit, you were traveling, and that's not you being weak, that's just life. But every time, you kept something from those diets. You might have learned how to cook a few meals that you like that can stick within your calorie deficit. Maybe you learned how to go to the gym consistently. You were weighing your food and you learned what a real portion size looks like. And that stuff stayed with you even if you fell off your diet. But this time around is the first time you might get knocked off and you're left with nothing. Think about it like a kid riding a bike with training wheels. A kid might ride a bike with training wheels for 2 years straight, and from across the street, he might look like every other kid who's riding their bike. But what he's never learned to do yet is ride the bike balance it without the training wheels. So eventually, when those training wheels come off, that kid has a higher likelihood chance to fall. And that kid isn't weak, he just never learned what the training wheels were doing for him. So training wheels aren't bad, they could actually be great. But riding with them for 2 years and never actually learning how to balance the bike, that is what is bad. And to be very clear, I am not against weight loss drugs. In fact, I just had a conversation with my dad about him getting on them, but I gave him one condition, and I'll tell you what that is at the end. So if your training wheels come off of your bike and you fall, in the diet world, that means you might lose some weight with these drugs, but then the weight would be gained All back and then some. And what happens is, when you're losing weight fast with these drugs, you're not just losing fat, you're losing fat and muscle. And what nobody tells you is, the people who gain a lot of the weight back, they're not gaining back fat and muscle, they're just gaining back all fat. So even if you lost 40 pounds and unfortunately gained 40 pounds back, you are actually more fat by gaining back the 40 pounds And one of our clients, Leanne, lived this. Before coaching with us, she started on a GLP-1, and she was losing weight faster than she was in her entire life. And it wasn't cheating, she was just doing what she was told to do. But during this time, she wasn't focused on changing her lifestyle habits because she didn't need to. The weight was coming off without it. And so eventually, when she had to stop taking the GLP-1 because insurance would no longer cover it, she ended up gaining all of the weight back and then some. And she thought it was her fault, but it wasn't, because she had just never built her plan in a way that was going to be sustainable with or without the drug. And so when she joined coaching, That's exactly what we did, and now she's down over 45 pounds with no weight loss drug and keeping it off this entire time. So why am I so worried about people who are taking GLP-1s and losing weight fast? Well, it's not just the muscle loss that we just talked about. There's a part I don't think anybody explains right, because these drugs don't just reach in and take your muscle; they take your your appetite, and then something else happens that nobody warns you about. Think about if you were carrying your groceries in from the car, as we all do. You have one trip and you're gonna get all of these bags, and you're piling up these bags, but you forgot you got a case of water. It's not that you decide the case of water doesn't matter, but it's just the heaviest thing there, and you only have 2 hands. And that's kind of like your appetite when you take these drugs. You've got way less room and way less of an appetite, so you typically just eat the easy, light stuff— crackers, toast, snacks, chips, a little bit of yogurt maybe— and the heavier stuff like steak or eggs or chicken. That's the case of water. It stays In the trunk. So these drugs don't just change how much you eat, they also change what you're willing to eat. And protein is usually the first thing to go because it's the heaviest, most filling food on your plate. When you've got no appetite, you don't reach for chicken. So muscle loss isn't a side effect of taking a GLP-1, it's a side effect of what you stop eating when you take a GLP-1. And that's actually good news because you can change what's on your plate and how you consume it, which we'll talk about towards the end of the video. But right before we do, I wanna talk about losing muscle costs you something, and it's not what everybody says. You've heard losing muscle slows down your metabolism, and this is true, but usually not in the way most people explain it. Because people think, oh, you lose muscle and your engine in your car gets smaller, you burn less calories. And it's actually not just the muscle loss. There are 3 things that cause this to happen. And you can think about it like a nail in your tire. If there's 1 nail in your tire, there's a small, slow leak that is letting the air out. But if there are 3 nails in the tire, you might try to go to the gas station every morning and put air in, but eventually that tire is just going to go flat. Nothing big happened to your car, but it was 3 small nails that ruined it. And so what happens when you're taking a GLP-1, you don't have a huge appetite, and you're potentially losing muscle is, yes, less muscle means less calories burned, But also number 2, you stop eating so much protein. And most people don't know, for every 100 calories of protein you eat, your body can burn up to 30 of those calories. So now you've lost calorie burn from losing muscle and you've lost calorie burn from eating less protein. And if you stack on top of that what most people are doing when they take a GLP-1, which is Not lifting weights. Now you're not pushing yourself in the gym, burning as many calories in your workouts. And these are your 3 nails that are slowly draining your tire air. But 2 of them you can flip this week. And here's where everything changes for the better. Everything I just said sounds like an argument against these drugs. And it's the opposite. For as long as we can remember, the thing that killed every diet was hunger, not knowledge. People know what to eat. Nobody ever quit because they didn't know they should be eating healthy or eating in a calorie deficit. They quit because at 8:00 PM, after a long stressful day of work, they were hungry and had cravings and they would just overeat. Or on the weekends, they would go out, indulge in high calorie foods, And they would overeat. And so these drugs kind of turn that off, and most people do nothing with it. They just kind of eat less of the same foods they were already eating, but they build nothing. Think of it like scaffolding on a building. Nobody walks by and says, oh, that's really nice scaffolding. The scaffolding is only up so that people can work on what's underneath the scaffolding. Scaffolding. And eventually, the scaffolding is always going to come down whether you did the work underneath or not. So if you are on a fat loss drug right now, you'll be in an easy window for the first time. Hunger isn't going to be fighting against you. You're going to have less food noise and cravings. So this could be the best time to build long-term sustainable habits Because there's less things fighting against you. But almost everybody spends this window doing nothing. You don't get into a good strength routine. You don't figure out how to prioritize high protein meals, and you just lose weight and muscle, don't build any habits, end up as a soft skinny fat, and then you gain all of your fat back. The drug isn't going to build a habit for you. It might make it easier to build these habits, But it's still up to you to put in the work. And so what habits should you be building? There's 3 main ones. Number 1 is protein. But here's the trap. Because your appetite is stripped away, you're gonna feel like you're eating enough and you don't need more. And you'll be losing weight each week feeling like you're winning. But remember, the less you eat, the more of it Has to be protein. So here's your number. Take your goal body weight in pounds, multiply that by 0.7, and that's how many grams of protein you should be eating per day as a minimum if you're taking a GLP-1 weight loss drug. So if you want to weigh 150 pounds, you would eat at least 105 grams of protein per day. And a pro tip to help you get in more protein Eat protein more times throughout the day. If you only have two meals per day, that would mean you'd have to eat 50 plus grams of protein at every single meal, which is hard enough without a GLP-1, but even more hard with it because your appetite is so low. But if you eat protein three, four, five times per day, you have some eggs and yogurt in the morning, you have chicken at lunch, you have a protein shake, you have. Salmon at dinner. Now you give your body four or five opportunities to eat more protein, which will make it easier to stack up the protein in smaller quantities in each meal to then hit your protein goal for the day. And right here is the protein supplement brand that I use. It's low calorie, no sugar, whey isolate, which is the easiest form of protein. Protein powder to digest. If you're interested in grabbing one of those, I will put the link in the description of the video below. Now, the second habit you should be overly obsessed with is lifting weights, and not just lifting weights, because the problem is most people think, oh, I'll just do lightweight for high reps and that will help me lose fat and tone up. Especially on a GLP-1, this is not true Because your body needs a reason to keep and/or build muscle. If it doesn't have a reason, it is going to get rid of it. So you need to make sure you're lifting 2 to 4 days per week for 30 to 60 minutes at a time, and it needs to be lifting heavy weight. Now, what is heavy weight? This will be dependent on each person, but a good rule of thumb, lift in the 5 to 12 rep range. And if you're doing a set of 10 reps, the 8th rep, 9th rep, and 10th rep should be difficult, challenging reps to complete. So if you're just lifting the weight and it's super easy all 10 reps, you're not lifting heavy enough and you need to bump up the weight. And the third habit you must focus on if you're taking a weight loss drug is walking and your daily steps, because research has shown one of the best ways to not just lose weight, but especially maintain your weight loss, is by keeping up with at least 7,000 daily steps per day. It's the best way to keep your metabolism and calorie burn higher without having to dedicate a ton of exercise. And these steps can be broken up throughout the day. Maybe it's a 10-minute walk in the morning. Maybe it's a 20-minute walk at lunch. Maybe you take one of your phone calls walking around or on a walking pad. You don't have to go put on your walking shoes and go take an hour-long walk. Just move more throughout the day if you want to not just lose the weight with this drug, but keep it off forever. And if you're focusing on building these habits, Here's the day where it's going to get tested. Because one day you may stop taking these drugs. And maybe you choose to keep it up, and that's totally fine if you want to do that as well. But after coaching thousands of people, I have seen, like our client Leanne, she had to stop taking it because her insurance no longer covered it and she wasn't gonna be able to fit it into her monthly budget. So as much as she may have wanted to keep going with it, she just simply couldn't. And if that is the case, 2 things are going to happen. Number one, your appetite is going to come back because you're no longer taking the drug. And number 2, the food noise is going to turn back on as well. And if you don't plan for it, your chances of regaining your weight back are very high. Combined with if you didn't focus on changing your habits, it's much more likely your weight will come back. And you can think about it like if you had a cast on on your arm for 12 weeks, when you take the cast off, nobody goes into the gym that same day, puts 200 pounds on the bench press, and just starts repping it out. Yeah, your arm is technically fine, but it's just weaker than it was before. You have to go in and slowly work your way back up. You need a ramp. Your appetite is the same way. So if and when that day comes where you stop taking a GLP-1, First, you should be tapering off. Talk with your doctor. Try not to just stop cold turkey. Number 2, you should expect yourself to be a little bit more hungry. And this is where, with our online coaching clients, we will help them taper off and come off a weight loss drug, change their plan, adjust their calories, and make sure we can work with them and their body's hunger to get more back to normal so they don't rebound with weight gain. And number 3, have your protein, lifting, and walking in check by then. Because you can't try to start new habits and regain all of your appetite back in 1 week. That is a recipe for gaining your weight back. Which brings me back to my dad, who's in his 60s. He's carried some extra weight his whole life, and we've been going back and forth about if a GLP-1 drug might be right for him. And I basically told him, if we are going to decide to do this, there is one condition. You gotta hit a protein number every day, you gotta lift weights 3 times a week, and you gotta keep up with your daily walks. And you have to do this not after you lose the weight, you have to do it before you start the drug and while you're doing the drug. Because I don't care if my dad loses the 40 pounds, If he loses all of his muscle, all of his bone density, and doesn't actually change his habits, he'll actually be worse off than he is right now. So no, I am not against these drugs. I am against taking these drugs without any education or intention to change your lifestyle habits so you can not just keep the weight off but actually become a stronger healthier version for the rest of your life. And if you're on a weight loss drug or you're thinking about it, or you're just like, wow, this guy Eric kind of knows what he's talking about, I would love to get some help from him with my journey— that's exactly what we do in my 8-week fat loss challenge. There's a link in the description of the video below to learn more, but we will take care of all of your workouts, all of your nutrition guidelines, and most importantly, be there all throughout the week checking in, holding you accountable, answering questions, and making sure you're doing the right things to see the most progress as humanly possible. And if you're thinking, okay, Eric, I gotta get started with changing my habits, but what are some small things I can start doing today? Well, I made a video on 7 micro habits you can start, especially to get your belly fat off faster. So you can watch this video here coming up next.