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True to my word, I recently acquired oral semaglutide. I've been aware of the drug since initial weight loss trials, and the moment it was available, I got my diabetic and overweight mom to begin it. She had a rough start, the nausea and GI upset was unpleasant to say the least, but it settled down and she's fine now, probably lost 5kg. My current goal is to convince her to increase her dose from 7mg to the next step up, which is long overdue.
I gained about 5-6 kilos over about 4 months, both because of starting an antidepressant that increases appetite, and because a change in workplace made me far more sedentary.
This, alongside a recent breakup, jogged me into gear. I've begun working out, aiming for muscular hypertrophy rather than strength. No point being able to lift a boulder if you don't look it. However, the semaglutide works, and has drastically slashed my appetite. My body only wants about half what I'd normally eat, and I have to force myself to eat more despite feeling full.
My question is, to what extent can I achieve both significant weight loss as well as some muscle gain? Due to recent weight gain, I believe I could manage a mild to moderate caloric deficit (~10%) without overly compromising my gains, as long as I consume enough protein. To the more experienced gym goers here, does that sound correct? Any tips or tricks?
(I'll buy some creatine soon enough, stuff works)
The conventional wisdom and proper scientific studies will tell you that you can't do it. I'll tell you that you can in certain limited circumstances but that getting on Semiglutide and trying to force yourself to eat more protein to gain muscle feels like a bit of a self-licking ice cream cone. You'd be much better off cycling from trying to build muscle to trying to cut weight. When you try to build muscle while also trying to restrict your appetite to lose weight, there's a risk you aren't going to do either, and you're going to find yourself months from now having achieved neither. I've never tried it with semaglutide, but I speak from experience on the topic. That said, here's my largely woo-woo experience with recomping.
I assume when you're saying you're doing hypertrophy-focused workouts you mean moderate-to-high reps in lots of exercises? Don't do that. Everyone I know who hops on semaglutide, and most people on cuts anyway, lack energy so you don't want to be trying to do long workouts with tons of sets of tons of exercises. You'll wear yourself out and increase the likelihood of injury.
What you want to do if you want to retain muscle and maybe build a little, while losing fat is two things: convince your body that it needs as much muscle as possible, while also convincing your body that it needs to be lighter. Do the former by doing low-rep high-intensity work in the weightroom, do the latter by doing bodyweight exercises.
I'm convinced that the body is "smarter" than we think it is in terms of building muscle or burning fat, in repsonse to the stimuli it gets from the outside world. Your body interprets calorie restriction as famine, food is less available. In that scenario, if you don't need maximum strength, your body is going to discard muscle as unnecessary. But just a few sets of high intensity lifts, and your body is going to assume that it needs that muscle to keep getting food in a famine environment, and will preserve it.
Similarly, if you're doing a lot of pull ups and push ups, climbing, muscle ups, etc your body knows that the resistance it faces is relative to its own weight and wants to reduce the load, or at least not increase it, and responds by leaning out. Exercise science tells us that resistance is resistance, but popular myth will point out that push ups and pull ups lean you out in ways that lifting never does.
This is my wild speculation on the topic at hand.
I think that's what I'm doing, 3x10 or till failure, with progressive overloading.
Ozempic drastically reduces my appetite, but I can still eat more if I want to.
Once I'm back in the UK, I might have difficulty going to the gym 5x a week as I'm currently doing, so maybe it'll balance out?
To a degree, semaglutide suppresses that famine response, or perhaps just the hunger itself. You still lose muscle with the fat, but that's true of any weight loss technique. Unfortunately, all the studies I've seen suggest that it's possible to retain muscle on semaglutide while working out, with nothing on trying to gain more. That's to be expected, since the primary demographic of interest are obese people and not gym nuts.
Thanks for the advice! I think I'll try and do it all for a month or so, but if turns out that's not helping, then I'll choose between cutting and bulking till I get good results.
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