However, a crucial piece of the long-term success puzzle is often overlooked: protecting your muscle mass. Combining GLP-1 medication and personal training is the key to transforming temporary results into sustainable lifestyle success.

The Hidden Trade-Off of Rapid Weight Loss

GLP-1 medications work wonders by mimicking a natural hormone, helping you feel fuller faster and stabilizing blood sugar. The resulting calorie deficit leads to rapid weight reduction.

But here’s the catch: when your body is in a significant calorie deficit, it doesn’t exclusively burn fat for energy. It also breaks down muscle tissue.

• The Muscle Mass Problem: Studies indicate that up to 40% of the weight you lose while on appetite-suppressing medication might be precious muscle mass.
• The Metabolic Slowdown: Muscle is your metabolic engine. It dictates your Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR)—the number of calories you burn just by existing. Losing muscle slows this engine down, making it incredibly difficult to maintain your new weight once you stop the medication or hit a plateau.
• Beyond the Scale: Less muscle means less functional strength for daily life, a higher risk of injury, and weaker bones over time.

The Simple, Non-Negotiable Fix: Lift Weights

This is precisely where the structured support of a personal trainer becomes non-negotiable. Incorporating resistance training (using weights, resistance bands, or even just your bodyweight) sends a clear, powerful signal to your body: “Keep this muscle; we need it for activity!”

By integrating targeted strength training into your routine, you ensure your weight loss is coming primarily from fat stores, not muscle tissue.

How Studio41 Optimises Your GLP-1 Journey

At Studio41 Personal Training, we specialize in a holistic approach that maximizes fat loss while aggressively prioritizing lean muscle preservation.

Here is how we integrate GLP-1 medication and personal training for optimal results:

1. Tailored Nutrition Guidance: While GLP-1s manage how much you eat, we help you optimize what you eat. We focus on adequate protein intake—the building block necessary to preserve muscle while in a calorie deficit.
2. Strategic Resistance Training: We design bespoke strength programs that adapt to your energy levels and progress. Our focus is on progressive overload, challenging your muscles safely to stimulate growth and maintenance.
3. Metabolic Protection: Our approach is designed to protect and even improve your RMR. By building or maintaining muscle, you keep your metabolism high, future-proofing your weight loss journey and making maintenance significantly easier.
4. Accountability and Support: The journey isn’t just physical. We provide the expert guidance and accountability needed to bridge the gap between medication effectiveness and long-term behavioural change.

Don’t let your successful weight loss lead to metabolic vulnerability. Combine the power of modern medicine with the proven science of strength training.

Ready to ensure your weight loss is healthy, strong, and sustainable? Contact Studio41 Personal Training today to schedule your consultation and build a leaner, stronger future.

What Is Osteoarthritis?

Osteoarthritis is a degenerative form of arthritis whereby the condition will worsen over time. This degeneration commonly affects the cartilage of the spine and joints of the hands, hips, knees and ankles.

How Can we Help when you suffering from osteoarthritis?

Before I talk about what we can do here at Studio41 to help you improve your O.A, let’s look at what exactly is osteo arthritis and I will be just focusing on the knee as this is the most common joint to be affected. Articular cartilage (the rubbering bit in the middle of a chicken carcass) sits between bones that meet in the body, over time this rubbery, flexible tissue starts to get little tears in it and becomes rigid. This can be sped up through certain process: aging, injury, foot biomechanics & weight gain—for every 3lbs put on you put on 10 lbs of pressure on the knee.

One in three of the clients who attend the studio have started with us presenting with a form of O.A, usually in the knee, shoulder, hip and ankle. In this article I will run through small steps that you can do to improve the function of the affected joint:

Properly selected exercises:

(knee): Terminal Knee Extension, VMO wall squats, single leg step up’s.

Weight loss:

As I mentioned above, for every 3lbs of weight that we put on it equates to 10lbs of pressure on the knees. Not only does the excess pressure cause issues but generally when people put weight on it tends to go onto the midsection, which will affect our gait (walk) and will lead to further biomechanical damage to the knees. Putting yourself into a slight calorie deficit and starting pain free exercise, will improve your composition.

Supplementation when suffering from osteoarthritis:

Certain supplements can slow down the degeneration of the joint and reduce inflammation, such as glucosamine, omega 3, vitamin c & surprisingly Turmeric.

From the age of 30 both men & women can lose up to 5% of muscle per decade, unfortunately also as we age our testosterone levels start to decrease with lower levels of testosterone our ability to grow muscle gets compromised.

The HSC/NHS recommend that people aged 50+ should be consuming 1.2-2.0 gr of protein per kg of bodyweight daily. Let’s put that into perspective, one medium sized chicken fillet gives you between 22-24gr of protein.

Let’s look at an average client who would come to start with us weighing 100kg and their standard diet that they have been following would be:

1. Breakfast: 2 slices of toast & a small bowl of cereal
   Total protein: 6gr
2. Lunch: a piece of fruit & a ham & cheese sandwich.
   Total protein: 10gr
3. Dinner: potatoes, some meat & veg
   Total protein: 25gr
4. Few biscuits, more fruit
   Total protein: 3gr

So, as you can see from the above an average person over the age of 50 who weighs 100kg they should be consuming anywhere between 120gr-200gr of protein but in face they’re only getting in 44grs of protein daily.

These eating habits over a sustained period of time will result in the body trying to fight a losing battle trying to hold onto muscle.

What can you do?

1. Try to consume more protein but not only that try to increase your fat intake, such fats as extra virgin olive oil, avocado, flax seeds etc, this will lead to improving your endocrine system which will help the body’s natural hormone balance to be in a better muscle building state.
2. Light resistance training, either body weight exercises or using weights, resistance training has been proving time and time again to reduce necrosis (breakdown) of bone tissue as well as muscle.
3. Supplementation can also play a role in slowing down the aging process, taking daily amounts of vitamin c, omega 3 & vitamin d3 have all been shown to compliment both training and the body’s hormonal balance.

The simple answer is: zero to very little.

While I would recommend a basic multivitamin all year round and a liquid vitamin D3 in the winter months. Certain supplements like probiotics, beet root powder, protein powders, co enzyme Q10 etc are not really necessary.

Multivitamin food supplements.

The reason why I recommend a basic multivitamin is that majority of our clients are looking at getting leaner, losing adipose tissue, tightening up etc but that is basically improving their body composition.

In order to improve your body composition, you must do one or both of these two things:

• Decrease your calories.

Or

• Increase your output.

Food supplements stress the body?

Both of these actions unfortunately stress the body, which increases the need for a basic food supplements multivitamin that has (vitamin C, vitamin D, Iron, vitamin A, vitamin B12) to name just a few. Although you can get these from your food, if you want to look your best for a specific deadline, we would style your training to implement both steps mentioned above.

As mentioned before this fast tracked way will indeed stress the body and having an extra help in keeping your body tip top using a multivitamin

Unfortunately with living in Ireland, in the winter months we don’t see the sun. A lack of vitamin D3 has been proving to decrease muscle and bone mass and increase fatigue and even depression.

What is a compete protein/ whole protein? It’s a food substance that contains all 9 essential amino acids.

At Studio41 we recommend that you vary your sources of foods (lentils, beans, dairy, legumes, quinoa, pea protein powders) a good mixture of these will greatly improve your ability to get all your 9 amino acids.

Getting the right levels will also help with your recovery, weight loss, energy levels & strength.

Delaying and reversing frailty: a systematic review of primary care interventions in the British Journal of General Practice concluded that “a combination of muscle strength training and protein supplementation was the most effective intervention to delay or reverse frailty and the easiest to implement in primary care”.

Twenty to 25 minutes of activity, four days a week at home, with an emphasis on a high-protein diet, is ideal.

Dorian Jones, who runs the London-based Marigold Fitness classes, is a certified boxing coach and level three personal trainer, but he developed a passion for working with older people. Most of his clients are in their 70s or 80s. A handful are in their 90s. “I had a woman who was 102, and she unfortunately passed. But she looked amazing!”

Assuming a base fitness level of being able to get up, sit down and get to the kitchen, here is the best way to start.

1) Stay in your chair

“Lifting a leg, lifting an arm, doing anything that you don’t normally do in a repetitive way is better than nothing,” says Jones. “If you lift your arm over your shoulder 10 times, both sides, you’re going to improve your muscle mass.” Lift your knee towards your chest. Lift your foot off the ground and extend it out straight. Hold your arms out like an aeroplane, and keep them there for two seconds longer than you can bear.

2) Keep the weights light

Generally, Jones will use weights only for his intermediate classes, and those are one or two kilos. “You can build muscle at any age,” he says. “You can maintain and strengthen at any age. But you’re not going to try to lift a 5kg dumbbell when you’re 70 years old because you’re going to injure yourself.”

3) Use music

Remember to pace yourself. “It’s always good to start from the basics and gradually increase to what you think that you can handle,” says Jones. With resistance, you can push yourself safely, a little way out of your comfort zone, by setting a time target, such as: “I’ll keep going to the end of this song.”

4) Get your protein from food

“Cook for yourself, and eat the way your great, great, great- grandparents ate, and you’ll live a long life.”

5) Be realistic

Flexibility, circulation and movement are the things that deteriorate as you get older. Make an inventory of the core movements you can still make – bending down to touch your shins if you can’t reach your toes, putting your hands on your waist and bending from side to side – and practise them regularly. They won’t vanish unless you stop doing them. Improving your circulation doesn’t have to be arduous: Jones’s classes start, especially in the colder months, with everyone rubbing their arms from shoulder to wrist, rubbing their calves from knees to ankles, rubbing their shoulders, rubbing their thighs.

6) Anyone, any age, can get fitter

“Sometimes, when people leave my class, they forget they arrived with a walking stick and they have to come back for it. That happens a lot.” – Guardian

Source: The Irish Times

Exercise. We all know we need it. Many of us dread it. And nearly all of us struggle to find time to do it.

Unlike sleeping, exercise isn’t necessarily something that’s going to happen to us every day. We have to actively find time to fit it in. And many people are finding ways to do it during the activity that takes up most of their day: work.

‘Golden opportunity’

Exercise during the day and you’ll look better, feel better and even work better. These benefits have long been known.

Researchers conducting a 2008 study in the UK found that that more than 200 employees who had access to and used a company gym were more productive during the day, and went home feeling more satisfied on the days they exercised during regular work hours.

In 2013, another study showed that regardless of age, people experience “immediate benefits” for cognition following “a single bout of moderate exercise”, such as 15 minutes of moderately intense cycling on a stationary bike. These findings suggest that working out during the day could be even better than bookending gym time before or after the office.

That’s on top of all the regular benefits to physical activity, including weight loss, better sleep, better sex, better mood and keeping diseases at bay.

Squeezing in a jog or walk around the block during your break is one way of tacking on exercise during the day (Credit: Alamy Stock Photo)

Peter Antonio, a personal trainer, fitness instructor and registered nutritionist at the University of Birmingham Sport, the physical fitness arm of the UK university, calls ducking out of work during your lunch break to exercise a “golden opportunity”.

 People experience ‘immediate benefits’ following ‘a single bout of moderate exercise’

Not only does it help his clients’ over-arching fitness goals, but it “gives you a mid-day sense of accomplishment which can last for the remainder of the day”, he says. Antonio adds that clients who exercise during the day find they get more work done and take fewer sick days. Plus, it’s good for mental health, providing a stress-free getaway from the daily typhoon of meetings and emails.

Some people make a similar argument to preserve break time and physical education at primary and secondary schools. Research there, too, suggests that taking a break from repetitive tasks and getting away from the classroom grindhelps pupils pay attention and perform better.

But the personal perks are just the beginning. Workday exercise could also provide benefits on a more macro level.

There’s been discussion among health organisations and business leaders around whether we should make exercise compulsory at work to fight bigger societal health problems that filter into the workplace. More than 20 million people in the UK, for instance, are physically inactive, which costs the National Health Service £1.2bn ($1.5bn) a year, according to the British Heart Foundation.

Tech CEO Ryan Holmes, who runs social media platform HootSuite, wrote an opinion piece a few years back that went viral, titled “Why It’s Time We Paid Employees to Exercise at Work”.

In it, he called for on-the-clock exercise that’s implemented from the top. After all, he says, it’s hard to maintain a robust team if people are dying of preventable heart diseases, cancers and respiratory afflictions because they’re out of shape.

A fitness instructor teaches offices workers yoga techniques in Toronto (Credit: Getty Images)

How to do it

Christian Allen lives in Boston, Massachusetts, and runs a start-up that provides companies with customer service tools. He says his preferred time to lift weights, do yoga or run is during the work day. But finding groups of like-minded people who prioritise fitness breaks during working hours has made it easier.

It’s hard to maintain a robust team if people are dying of preventable diseases

“I can say without reservation that I’ve always felt happier and healthier during my 19 years at a desk job when I’ve been working out regularly,” he says.

For the last six years, he’s organised a group through the website Meetup that gathers at noon every weekday for a game of football. He got the idea during one lunch break at his old job, when he stumbled across a group playing midday soccer.

“At the time, I was running a few days a week at lunch with some co-workers, but I liked the idea of mixing something completely different into that routine.”

Allen’s not alone. Workplaces are increasingly changing in a way that might make a lunch-hour workout more feasible for many of us.

More companies are offering gyms on office premises. Some gyms themselves are attaching workspaces onto their main facilities. Luxury gym chain Equinox is one example, offering big tables and juice bars that lure remote workers and freelancers to set up laptops in sight of treadmills and elliptical machines. Some start-up companies are even setting up shop in these spaces as their main offices.

Still, what if you can’t afford to take a whole hour (or more) off? That’s okay – experts say there are smaller ways of weaving exercise into your day, and you don’t need a fancy office fitness centre either.

“Whether it’s five minutes or an hour of movement, there are real health benefits to any type of activity during the work day,” says Sandy Todd Webster, editor-in-chief of IDEA Health & Fitness Association, a San Diego-based organisation that connects more than 14,000 personal trainers and fitness professionals around the world. “If you are able to walk or power yourself forward by some means, do it. You don’t need a gym. Movement opportunities are everywhere,” she says.

This California-based designer sock company sports an on-site skate park, basketball court and gym (Credit: Getty Images)

“Keep a pair of athletic shoes and socks at work and just get out there and move on your breaks or whenever you can get away for five, 10 or 20 minutes,” adds Todd Webster. “If you work in a building with stairs, always use the stairs or take a longer route to your office. It all adds up.”

No matter what your individual goals or office circumstances, experts say getting an hour’s exercise during the day should be viewed with the same importance as a work meeting.

“The key is to schedule the time,” says Todd Webster. “Literally write the workout into your calendar – and then hold that appointment as sacred.”

‘Explain yourself’

Still, all this can be easier said than done. And not just because some bosses may be inflexible or you might not have access to a much-needed post-gym shower.

You don’t need a gym. Movement opportunities are everywhere – Sandy Todd Webster

Some jobs make it hard to be away from your desk. (This might be one of the many reasons why remote working is up in recent years.) Allen says he’s been lucky to work at places that promote work-life balance, but it hasn’t always been easy. Erratic work schedules can wreak havoc on exercise breaks, and there’s also the potential impact on colleagues.

“I’ve always worked as part of a team,” he says, so he’s needed to be cognisant of how leaving for a brief workout might affect his colleagues’ workload. “I’ve also needed to consider whether or not teammates who don’t take advantage of those policies feel jealous or annoyed that I am.”

But he says that shouldn’t scare you away from making physical activity a priority. “All of those are just reasons to be more communicative about what you are doing and why it’s important to you,” he says.

—

Bryan Lufkin is BBC Capital’s features writer. Follow him on Twitter @bryan_lufkin.

Source: BBC

The research, published in the international journal Nature Immunology, sheds light on what until now had been the little-known impact of obesity on immune surveillance.

Over 1.9 billion adults are overweight and obese across the globe, creating health and economic burdens because of knock-on health impacts including type-2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

As well as this, up to 50% of certain cancers are attributed to obesity.

However, new research led by Associate Professor in Immunology at Trinity College, Lydia Lynch reveals why the body’s immune surveillance systems – led by cancer-fighting ‘natural killer’ cells – stutter and fail in the presence of excess fat.

Working with ‘natural killer’ cells from humans and mice the scientists found that the molecular machinery of these cells get clogged-up by excess fat in obese individuals.

‘Increased urgency’

And while this clogging-up process did not prevent natural killer cells from recognising tumour cells, it was found to prevent the cells from killing tumours.

The research also pinpointed the specific metabolic step that was stifled in the fat-clogged natural killer cells.

That finding offered hope for the development of treatments further down the line, with the scientists able to re-programme these cells and restore their cancer-fighting abilities by providing them with a metabolic jolt.

Commenting on the research, Professor Lynch said that despite increased public awareness aboutobesity and related diseases, they continued to be prevalent.

“There is increased urgency to understand the pathways whereby obesity cause cancer and leads to other diseases, and to develop new strategies to prevent their progression,” she said.

“Our results highlight immuno-metabolic pathways as a promising target to reverse immune defects in obesity, and suggest that metabolic reprogramming of ‘natural killer’ cells may kick-start their anti-cancer activity and improve treatment outcomes.”

Source: The Journal

Source: The Irish Times