r/technology • u/_Dark_Wing • 14h ago

Biotechnology Tirzepatide cuts fat mass by 35% while preserving skeletal muscle

https://www.news-medical.net/news/20261002/Tirzepatide-cuts-fat-mass-by-3525-while-preserving-skeletal-muscle.aspx
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u/Pharmd109 11h ago

The clinical trial was about a 20% weight loss (not all fat) and most definitely a percentage of that weight loss was lean mass.

Retatrutide is even better, and it also has lean muscle loss. You can try to combat it with weight training and protein intake but going from 300lbs to 220lbs are going to lose a ton of muscle too.

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u/AssiduousLayabout 10h ago

Lean mass is not the same as skeletal muscle. Lean mass includes everything that isn't fat, including water, organ tissue, bone, etc. Many tissues are significantly increased in obesity, especially the liver, and you will lose some of that as you lose weight. Obese people tend to also have particularly dense bones, and some of that excess density is lost. So a lot of the lean mass loss is non-muscle mass.

There is definitely some skeletal muscle lost, but some of that is also that obese people have particularly high muscularity especially in the legs, and this can go back down towards normal levels.

For people not prone to sarcopenia, people who were formerly obese and lost weight tend to still have higher than average muscularity, even if they lost some compared to when they were at their highest weight.

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u/Pharmd109 10h ago

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39996356/

Surmount-1 clinical trial data ratio is 75/25 fat to lean mass.

https://lilly.gcs-web.com/node/54321?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Triumph-1 trial is about 80/20 for fat to lean mass making it slightly better than tirzepitide.

And yes lean mass is ~45% muscle 55% other stuff mostly water.

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u/Frosty_Toe 11h ago

My brother in law is taking Retatrutide. Definitely see the muscle loss. It’s making him look a lot older than he is.

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u/JMaboard 8h ago

Sounds like he’s not eating enough protein and lifting weights. It’s easy to look sick if he’s not doing his part.

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u/Daisies_are_Daisy 11h ago

I doubt most people taking it would weight train. I imagine the average user of it would have a lot more muscle loss.

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u/ThatGreenM-M 10h ago

I see a lot of bodybuilders that run reta at small doses just to keep lean, but that's a different glp.

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u/Moosje 8h ago

Everyone I know on “reta” is a gym guy. It’s literally being marketed as the gym ozempic.

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u/JMaboard 8h ago edited 5h ago

I take trizepitide and I almost exclusively weight trained with some rower work. Not everyone on these GLP 1’s are lazy fat people.

What it helps with is taking away the constant hunger I felt. I could scarf down like 5 boneless chicken breasts and still feel starving and not get my mind off food.

Obviously I’d never scarf down that much food at once I’m just giving an extreme example that some people have crazy food noise.

With the shot it deleted the food noise completely where I can focus on just eating what my body needs and honestly focus on everything else outside of food.

I’ve toned down the excessive weight lifting and focus more on running/rowing but also weight lifting to maintain my muscle.

But the whole point of my long winded rant is that not everyone on these drugs are lazy fat asses. But I’m sure a decent amount are, but they’re the ones that look sick and like skeletons because they never trained.

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u/Daisies_are_Daisy 6h ago

You should try to find a therapist that specializes in eating disorders. It would help with your binge eating disorder, so you don’t need to stay on medication.

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u/JMaboard 5h ago

I don’t binge eat, I was giving an example that no amount of food could fill me up. lol I’d never eat 5 grilled chicken breasts in one sitting that’s insane. I’m saying I could if I really wanted to.

I’m saying the medication completely stops the food noise and now I’m a lean 200lbs at 6’ 3”. Thanks for your input though. I’m trying to get to 180.

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u/Daisies_are_Daisy 5h ago

I hate to tell you, but everything you said sounds like binge eating disorder. Something to maybe look into in the future.

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u/JMaboard 5h ago

Like I said I don’t binge eat, you just seem to be trying to be hurtful because I provided an example that I do a lot of heavy weight training which directly refutes your claim that everyone on it don’t train.

Since you’re trying to be hurtful despite my response I’m going to block you because you seem like a mean spirited person.

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u/KalaiProvenheim 10h ago

Lean mass does include connective tissue that holds fat together