lessthanhalf
GLP-1 Specialist
I think that unless you are stopping the GLP drugs for the break period then you are using them wrong. If it continues to take conscious effort to restrict and control calorie intake while on GLP drugs, then as far as I see it, then you are just on a normal low calorie diet, with a bit of help from an inadequate dose of GLP drug.
The reason it matters is that what is needed is weight loss with long term maintenance of that loss, and relying on conscious effort to control food intake is not really a strategy that works long term, it does work short term, but in the longer term cognitive fatigue or real life gets in the way and people then tend to regain the weight. Assuming the weight is lost without requiring constant cognitive effort, the weight loss should be sustainable long term, assuming you stay on the GLP drug at the dose that works. Mental effort to restrict the types of food you eat rather than quantity might be a more sustainable approach.
I think it is inadequately studied, but my guess is that metabolic adaptation to long term calorie input is primarily determined by amount of weight lost and time, and most likely operates over long time scales, like 3 to 6 or even more months, so that brief days to 4 week periods of increased calorie input are probably not enough to reset to any substantial degree the the lowered energy expenditure from long term low calorie input. In my experience dramatic drops in energy expenditure or rates of weight loss took about 6 to 9 months to become measurable, losing 6kg per month in that time, then it slowed down on the same calorie input.
And stopping and restarting GLP drugs especially if weight is regained in that time might be a bad idea, given a recent study on mice doing exactly that, where total weight loss was much lower in the stop start group.
The reason it matters is that what is needed is weight loss with long term maintenance of that loss, and relying on conscious effort to control food intake is not really a strategy that works long term, it does work short term, but in the longer term cognitive fatigue or real life gets in the way and people then tend to regain the weight. Assuming the weight is lost without requiring constant cognitive effort, the weight loss should be sustainable long term, assuming you stay on the GLP drug at the dose that works. Mental effort to restrict the types of food you eat rather than quantity might be a more sustainable approach.
I think it is inadequately studied, but my guess is that metabolic adaptation to long term calorie input is primarily determined by amount of weight lost and time, and most likely operates over long time scales, like 3 to 6 or even more months, so that brief days to 4 week periods of increased calorie input are probably not enough to reset to any substantial degree the the lowered energy expenditure from long term low calorie input. In my experience dramatic drops in energy expenditure or rates of weight loss took about 6 to 9 months to become measurable, losing 6kg per month in that time, then it slowed down on the same calorie input.
And stopping and restarting GLP drugs especially if weight is regained in that time might be a bad idea, given a recent study on mice doing exactly that, where total weight loss was much lower in the stop start group.
