By Aline Bouto, Certified Personal Trainer Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
Is Ozempic a “miracle” for weight loss? While Ozempic (semaglutide) was developed to help people with type 2 diabetes manage their blood sugar and weight, there is a crucial conversation missing from the headlines: The difference between losing weight and actually slimming down.
As a Certified Personal Trainer with 14 years of experience, I see a dangerous trend of rapid weight loss that leaves women weak, fatigued, and prone to the “rebound effect.”
How Ozempic Acts on Your Body
Ozempic works by stimulating insulin production and reducing glucose levels through three main pathways:
Hypothalamus: Controls satiety, helping you feel full longer.
Liver: Reduces glucose production.
Pancreas: Stimulates insulin to regulate blood sugar.
This combination of actions helps people with diabetes to control the disease and also lose weight.
However, it is essential to understand the difference between losing weight and slimming. Ozempic promotes weight loss, but that does not mean slimming.
Weight Loss vs. Fat Loss: What’s the Difference?
Losing weight: means reducing any component of the body, such as fat, muscle or liquids, which is visible on the scale.
Slimming: occurs when there is loss of fat while muscle mass is maintained or increased. This is not always noticeable on the scale, because fat loss can be compensated by muscle gain.
The big problem of just losing weight is that you can lose muscle, which is harmful. The reduction of muscle mass slows down the metabolism, causes indisposition, increases stress, accelerates aging, generates flaccidity and favors the “rebound effect”. To prevent this, maintaining a high protein intake is non-negotiable.
[Isopure Zero Carb Whey Protein Isolate – This is my favorite “clean” protein choice. It’s light on the stomach, zero carb, and perfect for protecting your muscles during rapid weight loss]
This is the cleanest protein source I recommend to my clients to protect their muscles while on Ozempic.”
Losing muscle is not interesting, since it contributes to long-term weight gain. Thus, Ozempic can help in weight loss, but does not promote slimming.
In addition, you will have to deal with the problems associated with simple weight loss. Not to mention the possible side effects of Ozempic, which are not yet fully known, as it is a relatively new drug on the market.
If your goal is to lose weight without side effect you need to do resistance exercises, in order to gain muscle.
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You don’t need a gym at home, you can start with these elastic bands to start gaining muscles and accelerate slimming. Just keeping a healthy diet will not be enough, because the only way to gain muscle and speed up metabolism is to include exercise in your routine. In addition, it is the only way to lose weight healthily and without side effects. Exercise brings benefits such as mood, improved sleep, high self-esteem and improved overall health.
I often say that the great focus currently is to gain muscle, because it is a health reserve. In cases of illness, your body will use this reserve to speed recovery. If you do not exercise, your musculature will be minimal, and your recovery will be slower and possibly more complicated.
Muscle is life! So it’s not worth losing weight at any cost just to see the hand of the scale down. This exchange can reduce your quality of life.
If you need to lose weight, do it in the right and sustainable way. Losing weight means improving your health. If the process of “slimming” is harming your health, you are probably just losing weight, not losing weight.
Make no mistake: if the method is suitable, your health will improve in several areas.
The secret to losing weight correctly:
Train and eat healthily most of the time. If you are persistent and have this as a priority, the results will come. This routine should not be a temporary project or a “summer project”, but a life project. Taking care of health is a lifelong commitment.
Remember: slimming is taking care of health, because too much fat, sooner or later, will cause problems. Excess fat is not healthy. This has nothing to do with standards of beauty, but with physical and mental health.