The Prescription Is Not a Plan.

Deciding to go on a GLP-1 isn't an easy call, and it doesn't often get treated like one. There's the cost, for a start. And you'll typically spend several months building up to a maintenance dose before much happens at all.

How long you stay on it after that is genuinely open. There isn't enough science yet to say how long anyone should or shouldn't be on these — the data's still new. Anyone telling you they know is guessing.

At some point your weight loss will slow. And it might just be a conversation with your doctor about easing off. That's usually where the anxiety turns up. What happens to my body. Will I put it back on. How do I keep it off.

Which is why I'd want you making changes to your habits during that maintenance phase — or better, from the day you start. Not because of anything clever about the timing. Because your body needs a long time to adjust to new habits. That's just how long it takes. And as the weight comes off, doing it gets easier, not harder.

There are biological changes that come with losing weight this quickly, and some of them are losses you'd rather not take. Lean muscle. Bone. I want to protect as much of that as we can, so that when you do start coming off, your body is in a much better position than it would have been if you'd changed nothing at all.

The things that do that aren't exotic. Resistance training. Enough protein in the diet. Decent amounts of fibre, so you stay satiated for longer on less food.

How often should you train on a GLP-1?

Less prescriptively than you'd think, and it's the question I spend the least time on.

When I programme resistance training for someone — on a GLP-1 or not — it's about how it suits their life more than anything else.

One person has a home gym. So we run a minimum dose plan: six exercises, one set each, hitting individual muscle groups across those sets. Ten to fifteen minutes tops, five or six days a week.

Someone else has to get themselves to a gym. So it's a full-body plan instead, two or three times a week, forty-five minutes.

Same volume across both. Just a different way of presenting it.

Which is why I talk about those three things far more than I talk about how often you should train. The schedule is the part that bends around your life. The three things are the part that doesn't.

Protein on Ozempic or Wegovy

Nutrition runs alongside the training. It has more variables in it though, which probably makes it the more important half to get right.

If you look at what Wegovy or Ozempic do to total body mass, protein is what supports you through the lean mass side of that loss. That makes it the macronutrient that matters most — ahead of carbohydrates and fats. And it's more true again when you're losing weight at the same time.

If you've never tracked your food and have no idea how much you're eating, numbers aren't going to mean much anyway. I've written the full numbers up in How Much Protein Do You Actually Need?, so I won't repeat them here.

In real terms: a palm-sized piece of lean protein like chicken breast at each meal is most likely enough. Maybe a protein shake thrown in on top.

Fibre, and the 3pm crash

There are side effects with these drugs — constipation among them, because your digestion slows right down. Your doctor will talk you through that, and may or may not offer advice on managing it. I'm going to skim past it here, because this article is about what you do when you come off.

The reason I bring fibre up at all is that it's pretty important for bowel movements and general gut health. It's also something I work on with clients who are struggling with the 3pm crash, when the snacks come out.

Fibre takes longer to digest, so eating enough of it across the day keeps you fuller for longer. You don't get the energy and blood sugar spikes you'd see from carbohydrates with little or no fibre in them.

The Australian and New Zealand Nutrient Reference Values put the target at 25 grams a day for women and 30 for men. For scale: a banana has about 3 grams. A hundred grams of broccoli, about 3 as well, for a fraction of the calories. Which is exactly why vegetables matter so much in a diet — low in calories, good amounts of fibre.

Move the dial on protein and fibre together and you'll stay fuller for longer, you won't get those 3pm hunger spikes, and by the time you're ready to come off Wegovy or Ozempic you'll already have the nutritional habits in place — working for you at exactly the point your body wants to head back to baseline.

Which means the anxiety about what to do next is almost non-existent. You're already set up. You did the work while it was easier to do.

I want your investment to be worth it. Not thousands of dollars thrown at six months or a year you don't hold on to.

That's also why there are no lock-in contracts here. There's no such thing as a fixed-term diet for a lifelong change.

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