How are personal trainers that shout at you and make you feel bad about exercise similar to weight loss injections?

I have felt the need to write this blog, despite it being a bit away from what I usually do because it’s such a popular topic, and, as a physiotherapist, the HEALTH effects worry me.

It’s an obvious statement, but changing your health and fitness levels are not a short term desire for people, we want to be fit and healthy forever. And as such, a short term measure with the expectation that it gives a long term, long lasting impact, is unrealistic.

It is also true and perhaps an obvious statement that weight loss does not make you healthy or indeed fit.

From a biological stand point, generally speaking, processes in the body take time to have an affect. Think about how long it takes to build muscle, or grow your hair long. When you create a quick biological reaction, you are usually cutting corners somewhere; something in your body isn’t working in the way that it should do in order to allow for a faster adaptation.

Before talking about Mounjaro, I want to talk about this in terms of quick weight loss through exercise and diet restriction, in whatever form you apply it. I want to address this first as I see people all the time that have stripped huge amounts of weight very quickly, and now aren’t doing well.

So the ‘secret’ to weight loss is calorific deficit, if you eat less calories than you burn, then you will lose weight.

However, this is not a situation where the less calories your consume, and the more calories you burn the better, it doesn’t really work like that. Your body has to receive a minimum number of calories (which is different for each individual) every day in order to function. These calories are used to ensure your brain is maintained, all your vital organs and keep all cellular activity in your body working.

Now, the interesting thing (in my opinion), is that before using this energy for the essential things we need it for in order to stay alive, the body actually prioritises exercise! Perhaps this is because when we lived in caves, and were running it was probably to either get away from something that would eat us, or trying to catch something that we would eat!

Anyway, if we restrict calories, and maintain high levels of exercise for sustained periods then our body doesn’t have the energy to sustain the vital organs and we become unwell. This is evident in problems such as relative energy deficiency syndrome, previously known as the female athlete triad. Where hormonal responses are suppressed, ladies often end up with a change or cessation of menstruation and the organs can shut down. So you end up with low energy levels, low mood, grey skin and poor hair quality, among many other things. All the things you were trying to avoid by losing weight!

So bottom line, don’t create calorific deficits too low in an attempt to lose weight quicker – it will make you unwell. A good number to go by is about 500Kcal below your daily total energy expenditure (the total amount of energy you use in a day to sustain life AND exercise).

Looking at that equation of energy for living + energy for activity, it is therefore important to note that you may not be restricting calories, but just exercising LOADS which moves you outside of a safe zone. So find something you enjoy doing exercise wise – if a PT is shouting at you, and you don’t enjoy it, you’re unlikely to stick with it and you need to find another way, because this takes time.

Now, weight loss injections!

This seems to be an incredibly common thing to hear about now, and in my opinion it is very worrying.

Weight loss injections absolutely have their place in people who have conditions such as (but not limited to) diabetes and heart disease, where their weight affects their condition and they are struggling to lose it. But it’s worrying how many people I hear of that are taking this to lose weight.

To be absolutely clear, I am not of the mindset that people who take it are lazy, and I am not saying these people are looking for a quick fix necessarily. I would imagine, in order to be happy to inject something into yourself they will probably have tried lots of other approaches which haven’t worked for whatever reason.

I think the worry I have is, as discussed at the beginning of this blog, in order to speed up a process, you normally have to short cut somewhere and ‘rob Peter to pay Paul’. Let me explain my thoughts:

Weight loss injections such as Mounjaro activate receptors in your body called glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) and glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide (GIP). These receptors are responsible for the release of hormones that both control blood sugar levels and reduce appetite, which triggers weight loss.

So this is great, except you are messing with the bodies chemistry and there has to be knock on affect, and the truth is, very little is currently know about the long term affects of taking these drugs.

However, there are several suggestions as to some pretty significant potential side effects:

This study linked GLP-1 receptor agonists with thyroid cancer.

This study linked GLP-1 receptor agonists with pancreatitis

This study linked GLP-1 receptor agonists with gall bladder issues.

This study linked GLP-1 receptor agonists with kidney issues through dehydration due to the gastrointestinal affects that it has.

Remember, these drugs are used to help people who have health conditions, where the risks are weighed up against the benefit and NICE and other bodies have suggested that the risk is probably worth it.

If you don’t have these conditions, you need to weight up the risks vs benefits yourself, and I would encourage you to consider:

1. Is the risk worth it for you?
2. Are you happy with the lack of knowledge of what this means to your body in years to come?
3. What happens when you stop taking it?

I hope that helps and if nothing else, gets you thinking, I’m not saying don’t do it, but definitely don’t think that weight loss = health.

And yes, I have put personal trainers that shout at you and make you dislike exercise in the same blog post as weight loss injections – the very thing they probably tell you is terrible, because in my mind they are the same – they are a short term solution to a small part of your health that potentially creates a long term problem – like a negative belief and mental health about health and fitness.