Why GLP-1s Are Costing Men Muscle - 123

Coach Brian Parana (0:4.770) Picture a guy in the gym, the locker room. His shirt is half off. He looks at himself in the mirror. His pants are three sizes smaller than a year ago. He should feel and look like he has been winning. Instead, he turns sideways. He looks smaller in the chest. He looks smaller in his arms, too. That's a lot of guys right now. That's some of the big challenges that we're seeing in the marketplace. Coach Brian Parana (0:35.322) And you start one of these GOP1s with the goal of weight loss to lose your gut and the scale is moving down. Your doctor's happy, and you haven't looked at what's underneath those scale numbers and the weight loss. By the end of this episode, you'll know what these drugs do to your muscle. You'll know the two things that stop it from happening to you. Coach Brian Parana (1:1.730) Welcome to Driven for Health. I'm Coach Brian Piranha. This is episode 123. Here's where I stand. GOP1s are a drug that works for fat loss. It's been proven and we've seen it. And the earlier episode 121, the good, the bad, the ugly of GOP1s. You can certainly go back through there and look at some of the potential wins and potential side effects or challenges that these GOP1s face for real humans. Now that's the real part. Coach Brian Parana (1:31.983) And I'm not here to talk you out of using a tool that helps people, especially if you're someone who is in a very disadvantaged state, meaning you have lost a lot of you need to lose a lot of weight or you have chronic blood panel issues like diabetes of a 10 A1C, that is for you. If you're morbidly obese, the ozempics and trusepatides and zip bounds and all these things can help you. But using that alone. Coach Brian Parana (2:0.482) These drugs can cost you your strength as well. Strength keeps you carrying things around, like your own groceries at 75. Helps you be able to pick things up off the floor. Heck, even get yourself off the floor at that point. Let me introduce you to Dale. Dale's 49. He manages a regional sales team and software. He's married, two teenage kids. And dinner happens standing up most nights. I actually feel that. Coach Brian Parana (2:28.504) Pain sometimes too. It's just constantly on the go with four kids. There's a lot happening. Dale started taking trzepatide seven months ago at the weight of 238. Today he's at 204 and 34 pounds gone. Doctor's super happy. Dale also has been keeping a log of his lifts at his home gym that he has in the basement. And it shows that his squad dropped nearly 50 pounds from 225 to 175 in that same. Coach Brian Parana (2:58.382) Time range. Now that's kind of significant here and a big challenge for Dale because if you're a guy listening in, you want your squat to be heavy. Right? It's just one of the mainly things, how much you bench and squat and all those things, especially at 225, it's a good weight for you to be moving. Just as a reminder, I'm a health coach and not a doctor. Nothing in here is medical advice. Always have to throw that out. So let's talk about. Coach Brian Parana (3:27.116) Some of the the good points of what has happened well with Dale. And he's winning. And I want to give him credit where it's due before we find what the catch is. Number one, the drugs produce weight loss most diet plans can't touch. Meaning a 2025 real world studied followed patients on trisepatide and semi glutide in a remote weight loss management program. Coach Brian Parana (3:56.815) Trzepatide users lost an average of 22 kilos. That's about 22% of their starting body weight over a 12 month time frame. Now, kgs to pounds, 22 times 2.2. So that's going to be about 45 pounds in 12 months. Semiglutide users lost an average of about 18 kgs. So that means that they were more like 40 pounds. Coach Brian Parana (4:26.688) 18 times 2.2. That's about 17% of body weight. All right. So still, mean average between the two is roughly 20%, plus some on trisepatide, a little less on semiglutide. What does that translate to? In plain terms, that's the difference between losing a few pounds or stalling out for a longer period of time and hitting the dreaded weight loss by top. Coach Brian Parana (4:52.288) It's a difference between spending a year frustrated and dropping a full pant size while still moving forward. So those are the differences. You can just stall out and not feel the difference here. His knees stopped aching on the stairs by month four. That's really good. If if you're 5'10 and you're 240-ish pounds, your body hurts. It aches. You have trouble breathing going upstairs or doing anything without sweating. It's like you're wearing a jacket around. Coach Brian Parana (5:22.190) Because body fat is insulating. So you get hot and sweaty a lot easier. Number two, this is one that explains why the first one works so well. These drugs work through appetite regulation. That's the cats out of the bag. That's why they're good. They keep you to feel full longer, or cut out food noise, or you just don't think about food, or you skip meals and things, and that constitutes a calorie deficit. Pretty simple. Coach Brian Parana (5:52.067) They turn down the food noise, the constant hum of thinking about your next meal is what we want to avoid. Now, Dale told me the fight at 9 p.m. at night just disappeared. And for a lot of guys, that is a one of the hardest, challenging times that they have for themselves, is right at that point. He used to stand at the fridge and talk to himself and try and really just. Coach Brian Parana (6:20.328) Amp himself up about not eating the snack every night. But that wore out, and every single night it would wear on him. He just wouldn't make the best choices here. And that ended up causing a lot of problems because he would just eat too many calories then. Now we have lots of different episodes throughout this podcast that are on willpower and motivation, why they don't work. Coach Brian Parana (6:46.776) Okay. Even going back to the nutritional pyramid, episode five through 17, five through eleven, excuse me, five through eleven will outline just the basic principles of nutrition themselves. Number three, the labs moved down to a real world analysis tracked patients on GOP1s over two and a half years. It found an average of the A1C dropping by 0.89 points. So it's almost a full point. The systolic blood pressure dropped about Coach Brian Parana (7:16.738) 2.4 points, so it's going down. You have systolic, which is the top number, and the diastolic is the bottom number. Now we do want to make sure we're paying even more attention to diet diastolic. It's like 120 or 80. That 81, if that's 90, that means you're putting a lot of pressure at rest. So, guys, the systolic, the number on top is when your muscle is squeezing and pumping, that's the pressure there. And when it's at rest, that's the lower number. We don't want that one to go up either. Coach Brian Parana (7:47.803) Something is changing inside of Dale's body. And by month five, his doctor starts cutting his blood pressure medications in half. And this is a huge win. Getting off medication is one of my clients and guys that I work with, primary goals. Yeah, sure, we want to lose, say, 20 pounds or more in the 100-day fat loss challenge, the call to rise. That's my men's program. But we want to see blood panels too. I have constantly had people with struggling with diabetes. Coach Brian Parana (8:16.248) Cholesterol, blood pressure, they're on medicine, they don't feel confident in their bodies, their clothes don't fit. There's they're not, they don't feel like the men and leaders that they should in their household or at work. They're making less money, less focus. All these things are typical things I hear from all the guys. Ultimately, their confidence is taking a beating. And so we want to do this. Now, Dale texts me about six months in. He's down 30, best he's felt in a decade. And that's the best of the good news. Coach Brian Parana (8:46.350) It's also the last win before what happens after the the the lowering down. That's the good. So let's talk about what the scale isn't telling you. Here's the catch. There's a catch, right? It's just you can't just take something and it's not a magic pill. That's not how any of this ever works. You have to, there's work that gets involved for anything in life. Coach Brian Parana (9:15.480) That you want to be successful at. There has to be work in in your career, in your relationships, in friendships, in your body. You have to put the work in, develop the skills, the understanding to have the results. So having just like the millionaire lottery ticket winner, they don't have money skills, so they end up losing it consistently and reliably. The studies have shown that people end up worse off after they won the lottery. So here's why I'm really recording. Coach Brian Parana (9:44.919) This episode. Number one, a chunk of the weight from these drugs that comes off is from muscle. The so this will be a study in the show notes, but the semalin study studied semiglutide in 2025. It tracked lean mass over 12 months. Coach Brian Parana (10:11.244) Lean mass dropped roughly three kgs by month seven. So three times two point two, that's six point six pounds, then leveled off. So that's about month seven. That's about six to seven pounds of muscle, just so you know. And Dale's thirty four pounds down turn includes some of that muscle that he'll want to gain back later. Coach Brian Parana (10:37.538) Gaining weight back when you're in your forties or fifties, so the gaining the muscle back is a long, slow part. Number two, listen up. Muscle loss is already working against you before any drug enters the picture. Research on aging muscle puts the loss of roughly three to eight percent per decade starting in your 30s. That pace speeds up again around age 60. So your metabolism Coach Brian Parana (11:5.334) Is slowly falling off you, and that's a big challenge. These drugs don't create a new problem, but they speed it up. And this is one of the challenges that you're already having running in the background. A lot of guys that I work with are concerned about muscle mass and their future and just how I started off. When you're 75, can you get yourself off the floor? Because if you can't, that's a huge predictor of longevity, being able to be strong and have muscle on your body. Now his squat. Coach Brian Parana (11:35.149) didn't drop. He wasn't weaker in the head or wasn't less motivated. The plates and the bar just don't lie. It's it was heavy. And now at the number three, at the same weight loss can leave you with a worse body composition. We've heard this term before, skinny fat, less muscle sitting under a smaller frame. That's why Dale Schertz fits strange, even though he's down 30 some pounds. His chest and arm shrank. Coach Brian Parana (12:5.066) Along with his stomach, which is what no man wants. They want big chest, big arms. Fourth one, lower muscle mass ties directly to how long you stay independent. Just like I was saying, a global study over 139,000 adults found that grip strength predicts all cause death and mortality even better than blood pressure does. So squeezing and be able to hold things. Coach Brian Parana (12:32.760) Muscle lets a man be able to carry, function, play with the kids, do everyday tasks, move stuff around for your wife in in the living room. Like that's super important. All right. And this is a number that you and Dale should be worried about, even more so than the weight loss. All right. So this is a real case and challenge. Now, Dale told me straight up he can't do the push-up test. Coach Brian Parana (13:2.040) He used to be able to do a year ago. And he would be able to rip off 20 to 30 push-ups and now he's struggling to get to 15. Same weight. He he lost the weight, but he's weaker. And both can be true at the same time. One of the biggest things is skipping the gym while under drug is a huge challenge for you to really avoid and make sure that you do not do. Please, for the love, get to the gym. Coach Brian Parana (13:31.939) Lithuan weights. Now, part three. Here's the good news: the simple part. It's fully in your control. Resistance training is a big countermeasure that you have control over, and it really does improve the quality of the fat loss and making it fat loss, not just weight loss and muscle loss. A recent study reviewed a muscle health in the in men's health in the era of these drugs called GOP1 medications reduce fat mass more than. Coach Brian Parana (14:1.802) lean mass on average. So we're still losing some muscle, but not as much. And resistance training while having protein in helps you protect your muscle. It keeps your function of your body strong and and keeps you melting off. Try to keep that size on your chest and your arms. So lifting while you're doing the drug is really important. So you need to hit the weight room three, four days a week minimum consistently. All right. That's super important. Coach Brian Parana (14:31.790) Now, number two, the protein targets have to even go up higher. So I always like guys to have at least 150 grams of protein, but we might need 170, 180, 200 depending on your body size and muscle mass. And research on protein weight loss shows higher protein intake preserves more lean mass during a calorie deficit than a standard intake does. This is just science. And when your food intake shrinks, Coach Brian Parana (14:57.454) Protein stays has to stay high. And when you're not hungry, you still have to go out of your way and maybe even eat more protein in the the the course of this process so that you keep muscle on. We want to lift full body at least twice a week and then do a large series of other lifts in more say body part, body split, chest, back, shoulders, legs, so that we can maintain and manage. Coach Brian Parana (15:26.434) This strong grip for longevity purposes, but strong muscles as well. And track your numbers for the love. we've got these smartphones, you can just literally track it in notes, or you can get a fancy app for that as well. And that's fine too. But the scale can hide what type of weight left your body. And that's why, even another reason is to make sure you're doing body fat measurements. Sure, you can do the Coach Brian Parana (15:54.751) smart scale off of Amazon or a Hume scale or something. But you might also want to think about an in body that you can find. Usually if you just search in body near your zip code, then you can find a place that has one or a bod pod. A DEXA scan is a definitely a gold standard as well. But you'll at least want to write down your weights so you can stay consistent on what that all looks like. All right. Coach Brian Parana (16:22.070) I have had clients come off these drugs six months and they they have strong scale winds and they're down 30 some pounds and they felt great now. I also have clients that don't use the drugs and I have con what one thir one thirteen, one seventeen, ninety-three, episode fifty-three, forty-three, thirty-four. Coach Brian Parana (16:48.898) There's plenty more. Episode 10. There's so many of episodes of client wins. And I'm about to have another two on this next week that I'm going to be interviewing clients from this round of losing over 20 pounds in 100 days while doing it sustainable without any type of drug. So you can do it with or without. And and that's where I stand. GLP1s can help you lose weight. Coach Brian Parana (17:14.924) But you have to be ultra protective of your muscle there so that you can be successful and they can be helpful for you to aid in this. Now, if you're only 20 or 30 pounds overweight and have okay, good blood panels, then I don't think it's the right move because you could potentially put yourself at bigger risk long term. But if you are of high A1C and just not doing very well with your overall health, then you need to do something. Coach Brian Parana (17:43.053) potentially with the GOP one to help you kickstart. There are a lot of other behavior patterns and reasons why you are where you are at. And that's something that you have to work through beyond the drug. Cause that's not going to help you change the way you think or how you interact with food or your education level around it. And that's something that I constantly do and you'll again get all throughout this podcast. Think of the drug as a scalpel. A scalpel cuts away the excess. Coach Brian Parana (18:12.000) It can't shape what's underneath though. The shaping what's left on you, like your body, that's the gin, that's your food, that's the high protein, lots of fiber foods. If you're on one of these drugs right now, you definitely have to lift ideally three or four days a week and keep that protein up. If you're not on and you're considering, make sure you do your research. Episode 121 talks about the good, the bad, the ugly of it. I also have, give me one second, see if I can. Coach Brian Parana (18:41.314) find it real quick. There's another QA episode that I did on it and it was somewhere around I'm looking right now. Coach Brian Parana (18:54.218) I think it's in the low hundreds. Coach Brian Parana (19:1.400) Well it's it's there as one of I can't quite reference exactly which one it is. Coach Brian Parana (19:12.238) So well, there's there's a bunch of ones. Just search driven for health. I thought I'd be able to have it. It's a QA question one, somewhere, I believe, in the 90s or the hundreds there. Now again, I'm just a health coach. I help people transform their life, their day-to-day living, their choices, their behaviors, their nutrition, their exercise, their level of understanding, and how they show up in the world. That's what I do on a really good basis. Coach Brian Parana (19:42.543) Nothing in here is medical advice. So you talk to your doctor, but do your research. Six weeks in, Dale added his lifting and his protein and his squatted going back up after he'd lost all the weight. And is sure to started changing the way it fit. Same drug, same weight loss, but a different result because of those missing components and pieces there that you may or may not be having. Now, if you want an actual real Coach Brian Parana (20:12.364) nutritional approach, I have this thing called lose three pounds in three days. It's not a fad diet thing. It's just literally the protocol that I use with my guys in the call to rise. And you can find it at thecalltoRise dot com backslash all one word, lose three pounds OBS in three days. I'll have that in the show notes for you to be able to grab and be able to click the red button in there and it'll get dropped off right into your inbox. So check that out. Coach Brian Parana (20:40.234) And if you really want the full accountability, all hands on deck to have a radical life transformation in my 100 day fat loss challenge, that is the call to rise. There's five pillars around the identity of who you are and how you show up for yourself most importantly and those people around you. We have the forge, which is your exercise. We have the fuel, which is your food. Eat the right food in the right amount and less exercise to burn fat and build muscle. We have the code, the way you think about Coach Brian Parana (21:8.384) All of this, the different perceptions and the the perspectives that you have. And lastly, the brotherhood. You do not have to do this alone. And so many guys try to when they're in their 40s and 50s. And ultimately, if you have a busy career and you have a family, you got a lot going on. You don't have time to just hang out with the bros at the gym for two hours a day. But inside this, I've collected a lot of really highly motivated men that help lift each other up, especially in this. Coach Brian Parana (21:36.462) specific area of improving your health, your fitness, your nutrition, and showing up. All right. Now I would love for you to leave a review on Apple or Spotify. I read every single one. It's so helpful. And check out the lose three pounds in three days. And let's get to it. All right. Thank you for coming in for this episode of Drivener Health. Off we go.