Ozempic Makes You Lose More Than Fat

The newest and much-hyped obesity drugs are, at their core, powerful appetite suppressants. When you eat fewer calories than you burn, the body starts scavenging itself, breaking down fat, of course, but also muscle. About a quarter to a third of the weight shed is lean body mass, and most of that is muscle.

Muscle loss is not inherently bad. As people lose fat, they need less muscle to support the weight of their body. And the muscle that goes first tends to be . Doctors grow concerned when people start to feel weak in everyday life—while picking up the grandkids, for example, or shoveling the driveway. Taken further, the progressive loss of muscle can. People trying to slim down from an already healthy weight, who have less fat to spare, may also be prone to losing muscle. “You have to pull calories from somewhere,” says Robert Kushner, an obesity-medicine doctor at Northwestern University, who was also an investigator in a for one of these drugs.