You’ve consulted with your doctor and the appropriate professionals and come to the decision that a GLP-1 medication makes sense for your situation. Great! Let’s prepare for the changes and get you on the right path!
While on this style of medication, your appetite may decrease, your body weight may drop, and activities of daily living may begin to feel easier!
But there’s something more important that we need to consider: What are you doing to ensure you’re not just losing weight but building a stronger, more resilient you? That’s where a specific plan that’s built around your life right now comes into play.
As significant weight loss occurs, not all of that weight you lose is going to be body fat. Some is going to come from muscle, and muscle is what we want to preserve most!
So, our goal isn’t just about losing weight. It’s improving overall body composition while preserving strength, lean muscle mass, greater and easier movement, and enhance physical capacity.
Strength Training is Your Number 1 Priority
Muscle matters. And not just because of appearances. It helps us get out of a chair, carry groceries inside our house, produce power to chase our kids around the yard, maintain balance, and supports our joints amongst so many other things!
This is why the number on the scale can improve but your physical fitness could decline. What if you lost 30 lbs but also become weaker in the process? What if you lost 30 lbs but maintained or even improved your fitness habits, gaining strength and more independence? Those are two very different outcomes.
And what’s interesting is that the greater muscle mass that you have, the more calories you’re able to burn at rest. Muscle is more metabolically active which means, just living, your body burns more. This is called your basal metabolic rate and it’s dependent on how much muscle you have.
This is why a structured strength training program matters so much because we’ll be able to lose more of what we want to lose (which is fat) and less of what we don’t want to lose (which is muscle).
Here is Your GLP-1 Fitness Game Plan
- Make strength training a priority – 2 days a week for 60 minutes each session, lifting full body. Simple. Effective. And will yield really great results for you!
- Make sure to include the following movements in your program
- Squat | Hinge | Push | Pull | Single-Leg | Carry & Core | Rotation
- Make sure to include the following movements in your program
- Measure progress not just exercise
- Progressive overload – a fancy way of saying, “Make things consistently harder each week”. This can be done through adding more sets, reps, or weights to your exercises. Three sets of 10 reps last week? Cool! Do 3 sets of 12 reps with the same weight this week!
- Keep Cardio – but make sure you give it the right job
- Cardiovascular conditioning is still really important! But its primary role shouldn’t be, “Let’s see how many calories I can burn.” Rather, we want this to be, “How healthy and strong can I make my heart and lungs for years of endurance and long-term health?”
- Cardio will add years to your life, strength will add life to your years!
- Build regular movement into your day – take the stairs more often, walk when on a phone call, park farther away in the parking lot, walk as a part of your daily lunch. All of these extra movements, although small, build up compounding interest and help to continue to maintain a caloric deficit and daily movement habits.
Your overall goal while on this medication should be to not just become lighter, but to become stronger, more resilient, and improve your overall health, which is much more than just your weight alone!
You are more than a number on the scale! Your focus should be on becoming the version of yourself you’d like to be and even if you don’t look the way you’d like to right now, you can still perform those behaviors that will get you there right now!
If you have any additional questions or want to develop the right plan for you, come talk to one of our personal trainers so we can identify the next right step for you!
