Between 26% and 40% of the weight you lose on a GLP-1 is lean tissue, not fat. That's the tissue keeping your metabolism running. Losing it is why the weight so often comes back.
Coaching only. I don't prescribe, dose or advise on medication — that stays with your prescriber.
26–40%
of weight lost on GLP-1s is lean soft tissue, not fat
68%
stop the medication within 12 months. Weight regain is the main reason people restart
BSc Kin · CSEP-CPT · MSc PT
Coaching from someone with genuine clinical education
The medication does its job. It quiets the appetite and the weight comes off. What it doesn't do is decide what kind of weight comes off.
Recent trial data shows that 26% to 40% of the weight lost on GLP-1 and GLP-1/GIP medications is lean soft tissue rather than fat. If you're on tirzepatide, the numbers are worse than semaglutide — measurably more lean mass lost at every checkpoint through the first year.
Nobody hands you that figure with the prescription. You just notice you feel weaker, or that you're smaller but somehow softer, and you assume that's part of it.
It isn't. And it's largely preventable.
This is the part worth understanding properly, because it explains something most people blame themselves for.
Lean tissue is metabolically active. It costs energy just to exist. It is a meaningful part of what you burn at rest, every day, doing nothing.
A quarter to two-fifths of what comes off is that tissue. Nothing on the scale tells you. Your resting metabolic rate falls with it.
Around 68% of people stop within twelve months, whether from cost, side effects or reaching a goal. Appetite comes back.
Normal appetite meets a lower metabolic rate. The weight returns. That's arithmetic, not weakness — and it's why weight regain is the main reason people restart.
If you've been through this cycle and concluded something was wrong with your discipline, please read that sequence again. Nothing was wrong with your discipline.
It isn't a supplement and it isn't a different drug. Strength training plus adequate protein is currently the only intervention with good evidence for holding onto lean mass during rapid weight loss.
In work presented at the European Congress on Obesity in 2025, patients who received education on resistance training and protein intake alongside their GLP-1 therapy had minimal lean muscle loss across six months. One participant lost just 8.7% of their weight as lean tissue.
Two of them actually increased lean tissue while losing weight.
That's the outcome worth aiming at: the scale goes down, the muscle stays, and the body you end up with can hold the result.
We take a baseline at week zero and repeat it at week twelve — not just the scale, but body composition, tape measurements and your strength numbers together.
Consumer body-composition scales aren't precise enough to give you an exact lean-mass figure, and I won't pretend otherwise. What they do reliably show, on the same device under the same conditions, is the direction and size of the change. Cross-referenced against your measurements and your lifts, that's a genuinely useful picture.
Want a gold-standard number? Get a DEXA scan at the start and end, and I'll build the plan around it.
Most people on these medications have never had any of this measured. Not once.
Twelve weeks, built around the energy you actually have on the medication — not the energy a textbook assumes.
You're losing weight and it's working. The job now is making sure what comes off is fat, and what stays is the muscle that keeps your metabolism running.
The earlier you start, the more you keep. Starting in month one is better than month six — but month six is much better than not at all.
You've reached a goal, or the cost stopped making sense, or the side effects did. Now you're worried about everything coming back.
Rebuilding lean mass is what raises your metabolic rate again. This is the window that decides whether the result holds.
You must be under the care of a prescriber to work with me. I'm the strength and nutrition-habit side of your weight loss. Your physician is the medical side. Those are different jobs and I stay firmly in mine.
One-to-one. Twelve weeks. Nine parts, and every one of them exists because of something that goes wrong on a GLP-1 and nowhere else.
Your programme is in your hands within five working days of your intake, or your first month is free.
Hit eighty percent of your practice days across all six blocks, and if your week-twelve strength retest is not better than week zero, I coach you free until it is.
If the first practice is not right for you, say so inside two weeks and I refund you in full.
I will not promise you a number on the scale or a body-fat percentage. Those belong to your medication and to a machine I do not have. Strength is mine, and that is what I will put in writing.
Most people are already paying $200–$500 a month for the medication. This is what protects it.
The first 5 clients pay $350/month, and hold that rate for as long as they stay enrolled. When those 5 founding places are gone, so is the founding rate.
Apply for a founding placeNo, and I never will. I don't prescribe, dose, adjust, start or stop any medication, and I won't advise you on which one to take. That's entirely between you and your prescriber.
I coach the training and the protein habits that sit alongside it. You need to be under the care of a prescriber to work with me.
Recent trial data indicates 26% to 40% of total weight lost on GLP-1 and GLP-1/GIP medications is lean soft tissue rather than fat.
Tirzepatide appears to take more than semaglutide — excess lean body mass losses of roughly 1.1% to 2% at intervals through the first twelve months.
Muscle is metabolically active. If a large share of what you lost was muscle, your resting metabolic rate is now lower than before you started.
When appetite returns after stopping, it returns to a body that burns less at rest. The regain is arithmetic, not a failure of willpower.
Around 68% of people discontinue within twelve months, and weight regain is the main reason people restart.
The evidence is encouraging. At the European Congress on Obesity in 2025, patients given education on resistance training and protein intake alongside GLP-1 therapy had minimal lean muscle loss over six months.
One participant lost only 8.7% of their weight as lean tissue. Two actually increased lean soft tissue while losing weight.
Resistance training plus adequate protein is currently the only intervention with good evidence behind it.
This is the most common problem and it's practical, not motivational.
We work with what you can actually tolerate: protein timing around the parts of the day you can eat, texture and temperature adjustments, liquid sources when solid food is unappealing, and front-loading earlier in the day.
I coach habits and structure. Anything needing clinical nutrition assessment goes to a registered dietitian.
Yes, because the programme is written for the energy you actually have.
Two to three short sessions a week is enough to protect lean mass. We prioritise a small number of high-value compound movements and drop volume when you're running on empty. The programme adapts to your week, not the other way round.
No. Tell me what you have — a full gym, some dumbbells and a band at home, or nothing at all — and the programme is written to it.
We take a baseline at week zero and repeat it at week twelve — body composition, tape measurements and your strength numbers together.
A word on honesty: consumer bio-impedance scales carry roughly 3–5% absolute error, so they can't tell you your exact lean mass, and I won't pretend they can. What they do show reliably, on the same device under the same conditions, is the direction and size of the change. Read alongside your measurements and your lifts, that's a genuinely useful picture.
If you want a gold-standard figure, get a DEXA scan at the start and end and we'll build around it.
No. This is exercise and fitness coaching. My background is in physical therapy education, which is why the screening and programming around your history are thorough, but the service is coaching.
I hold a Master of Science in Physical Therapy as a degree and I'm not currently registered as a physiotherapist in Alberta.
Not ready to apply? Take the guide instead. Protein targets, the two-day training template I actually use with clients, and what to measure so you can tell a good result from a bad one.
It opens in your browser the moment you enter your email. No waiting on a message, no sequence of five more emails before you get to the useful part.
Twenty-five free minutes. Tell me where you are with the medication and what you're worried about. I'll tell you honestly whether coaching would help, and if it wouldn't, I'll say so.
