The Risks in Weight Loss with Mounjaro
Now that Surmount-3 has been out for a bit, I think we can extract two important things from Surmount-1 and Surmount-3.
What are these two important things?
- Mounjaro users will face a 320% greater loss in muscle mass over control. (Figure S8, I’ve asked the corresponding author of Surmount-3 if they captured similar body composition data.)
- In order for Mounjaro to work, you need to enact lifestyle changes, in Surmount-3 those changes were, food logging, nutritional coaching, implementing >=150 minutes of activity a week, a caloric deficit
In Surmount-3, the authors showed that weight loss was directly impacted by adherence to lifestyle changes, with the people not achieving >5% body mass loss during the study were the ones with little to no adherence to the lifestyle changes.
What this highlights too is the risk of sarcopenia for people who are taking Mounjaro. Anyone < 30 years old can ignore that for now. However, for people over 30 years old, you’ve hit a period in your life where muscle preservation is possible with correct activity and adequate protein intake. However, it’s also a period in your life where it’s very easy to lose muscle mass if you do not engage in muscle preservation practices. Pair that with the significantly (3.2x) increased muscle mass loss on Mounjaro, and there’s a real risk to older populations who are using Mounjaro to lose weight. Sarcopenia will rob you of quality years of life.
As we’re trying to get our lives back, and the bodies we want, it’s likely a good idea to consider how we are doing that, and our goals. Do we want to lose weight? Or do we want to lose fat? How do we preserve that muscle? What kind of dietary and activity changes are needed?
I’ll be delving deeper into those changes over the life of this blog, in an effort to show the important of diet and lifestyle change along side using a weight loss tool such as Mounjaro / Zepbound, or Ozempic / Wegovy.
