Ozempic & Friends: How these Shots Affect Muscle Mass
Jill Brown (Jill Brown Fitness) explains what GLP‑1 drugs (like semaglutide, tirzepatide, and newer agents) actually do, who should consider them, and important precautions - especially how rapid appetite suppression can cause muscle loss if you don't prioritize protein and resistance training. She also discusses cycling effects, expanding medical uses, and why these drugs aren't a one‑size‑fits‑all solution.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Joining me now is Jill Brown of Jill Brown Fitness. Jill, welcome back to the program.
Great to see you this morning.
Jill Brown, Jill Brown Fitness
Thanks, Jeffrey. Thanks for having me back on again.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
And well, of course, and you're looking as fit as a fiddle, if I do say myself.
Jill Brown, Jill Brown Fitness
I just had my fourth out of four surgeries in a row. So thank you, because it's a lot of work. And I'm sure a lot of people in your audience know, like if you've ever had to have a surgery, like trying to come back as strong as possible is key.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
And thank you for that. Yeah, I mean, perseverance is probably one of the most important characteristics, I would think. Jill, part of reaching out to you, I have been deluged here in Charlotte, North Carolina on my television with GLP-1 ads.
I don't know if you have gotten the same thing in California where you are, but it's like a bombardment. I want to get your reaction to that. There are probably some things that we need to know.
Jill Brown, Jill Brown Fitness
Yeah, they're here to stay, number one. So GLP-1 stands for glucagon-like peptide one. It is a hormone that is secreted by your stomach.
This is the hormone that tells your brain that you're full and to stop eating. People who are very overweight and have obesity or have eating disorders don't get that message to the brain. So what the brilliant scientist at Novo Nordisk who discovered it, she was a woman, she found a way to stabilize this molecule so it lasts longer.
That's why you only have to get the shots every two weeks because normally, you know how hungry you get? You have breakfast, and then three or four hours later, you're hungry. Well, they found a way to make it last for like two, originally it was a week, then two weeks, and maybe even a month in some of these cases.
These are gonna be the GLP-1 drugs. There's three types right now. There's semaglutide, which is wogoviosempic.
There's trazepatide, which is zep bound to manjaro. And now, the new kid on the block is redotrutide, and that is like the Cadillac of this class of medications. And they're gonna be as ubiquitous in a few years as statins.
Like everyone, they're testing it for everything, not just weight loss. They're testing it on osteoarthritis, metabolic disorders, fatty liver, you name it, inflammation in general. And if you're older, like many of your clients might be, I'm 59 now.
Last time I talked to you, I think I was 58. But so even for aging, they're looking at it to help with metabolic diseases, because as we get older, we have more things like fatty liver and problems with our pancreas producing enough insulin. These help you produce more insulin, et cetera.
So they're here to stay, and they're gonna be marketing not just to overweight people, not just to diabetics, but they're gonna be marketing it to the aging population.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
So can I at least first say, I'm so impressed with how you're able to roll that off of your tongue, all the underlying ingredients. So kudos to you, I would never be able to do that. It would sound like a onomatopoeia.
But is this for everybody? Meaning, should I rush down to my doctor? I was telling you off camera, some of my markers came back a little skewed.
I work out, I row every morning. You work out a lot as well. But should I run down, should everyone just run down to the doctor and sign up?
Are there some long-term things we need to think about?
Jill Brown, Jill Brown Fitness
Absolutely, so the newest research we're gonna talk about, just in one second, let me preface that with saying they're going to tell you that, just like a statin, when statins were the biggest thing since sliced bread, that everyone should be on a statin. They used to even joke at pharmaceutical conventions that they should put statins in the water. That was like a going joke.
Everyone should be on a statin. Same thing, I promised you was gonna happen with these GLP-1 drugs. But no, not everybody needs to be on them.
And there are some precautions that not enough doctors warn you about. If you're trying to lose weight, and being at a healthy weight is really key to being metabolically healthy, that's like the first step, is that you need to be doing the same things, whether you're on a GLP-1 or not, that are gonna lead to healthy weight loss. You need to be watching the types of foods that you're eating.
So for example, if you're a junk food junkie, and I do have clients like this, they became obese because they only eat processed food, junky food, lots and lots of sugar foods. Now on a GLP-1, they just eat less of it. So you still need to change.
If you ever wanna come off the medication, if you don't wanna be on it for life, or you wanna be able to go down in dosage or just be on minimal amounts, you need to make those changes. You need to switch from eating highly processed foods to healthier foods. You also need to, as you get older, train your body to first, or train your mind, to first eat protein, protein, protein, protein.
As we get older, our bodies, number one, become anabolic resistant. So we don't absorb the protein into our tissues as well. So as we get older, say after 50, we actually need to eat a lot more protein than we did in our 30s.
Seems counterintuitive, because we need less food as we get older, because our metabolisms are slower, but we need more protein. And so if you're on one of these medications, and you're not eating enough protein, you lose muscle very fast. You lose it fast from age, and then you lose it faster from rapid weight loss.
These drugs make you lose weight quickly because they blunt your appetite. So you have to just be like, if you're gonna eat anything at all, and it's gonna be a protein shake, or a protein bar, or eggs, or white meat chicken, you've got to make sure that you're eating enough protein, because you're losing not just fat, but you're losing muscle and fat together with these drugs. And if you don't eat enough protein and don't exercise, you're going to be losing up to 50% of the weight you lose.
If you lose 50 pounds, 25 pounds of that will be muscle. Here's the other clincher. So you need to be working out, obviously, the food, the protein, are the building blocks, right?
That's what you need. You're showing up to the construction site with bricks, and then you're building the house. So the exercise is what's going to actually build the house, but the protein are the bricks that you build the house with, if you think of your muscle as the house.
You need to be lifting weights and eating enough protein, extra as we get older, counterintuitive to what we think. And now here's the problem. A lot of people go on, like, I just want to lose 20 pounds, just want to lose 15 pounds real quick for the summer, to go on vacation, to look good at my daughter's wedding, whatever.
And maybe it becomes expensive, so they go on and off and on and off. And what they just found, and this was just released in a publication from UPenn, University of Pennsylvania, that they found that people who go on and off and on and off, every time you go back on, you cycle it again, it's less effective. So you actually diminish the effectiveness if you start and stop and start and stop.
So you need to go in and talk about it with your doctor and go in with the decision. I'm either staying on it for life, like if you're diabetic, and they're prescribing you Ozempic, or they're prescribing you retrotide or the Majuro, then you have to decide, like, all right, I'm a lifer, I don't make enough insulin, so boom, I'm on it. Or if you decide that, hey, I just wanna take off these 25 pounds, and then I wanna stay off of it, you just have to make sure that you've really made those habit changes that we've talked about, and then you'll be able to wean yourself off.
But if you go on and off, and you just treat it like a fad diet, like, oh, I'm doing this diet, I'm gonna lose 25 pounds, the same thing happens as a yo-yo diet. It is literally mimicking a yo-yo diet, and as anyone who's ever done a diet, and then went off it, then did a diet again, and then went off it, then went on another diet, and so on, yo-yo dieting, every time you go on a diet, it's harder and harder to lose the weight. So same thing happens when you're taking these medications.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
So with all that in mind, Jill, and we'll bring you back again next month, because I do have to run, but let me, you know, is it worth, so if I am not, if I do not need a GLP-1 for diabetes, for example, like a real chronic disease, is it even, and I'm not willing to commit to doing it forever, which it sounds like that you can't go on and off, can't go on and off, is that really the key? So it really isn't for everyone. It really is something, it's more about vanity, and there may be some other ways, traditional ways, working out, eating more protein, as you're talking about, and watching your calories to make sure you're not over-consuming, because you're not, your metabolism is not as good as it used to be.
So is that really the key decision here?
Jill Brown, Jill Brown Fitness
Well, the key is staying on top of what the use cases are for these drugs, because like I said, they're now looking at it, they just discovered that there are GLP-1 receptors in our joints, in our synovial fluid, and inside the joints, so now they're testing it on osteoarthritis, so maybe it'll take it to reduce the inflammation for osteoarthritis. They're looking at it for people with autoimmune diseases. They're looking at it, we know that it works for fatty liver disease.
So you might not be very overweight on the outside, but you can still have insulin resistance and be thin. So there's a lot of other things to be, that it might have use cases for, so it might not just be for weight loss, it might not just be for vanity reasons. I would say if you only have to lose about 10, 15, 20 pounds, go the natural way, don't get yourself like, don't start on these drugs for just a small amount of weight loss for just your daughter's or son's wedding.
But if you have other underlying metabolic things and they're discovering new uses for it all the time, then you have to go in, again, knowing that you're gonna be losing muscle if you are not lifting weights and prioritizing proteins. You just have to think every time I eat, protein first.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, really important. Like it or not, ready or not, here comes the devil use of commercials. I think they're already here, Jill.
Always great to see you. Thanks for joining us. Keep working out.
Your shoulder looks great. And we look forward to having you back again very soon.
Jill Brown, Jill Brown Fitness
All right, Jeffrey, take care.
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This story was originally published May 13, 2026 at 4:30 AM.