3 Ideal Workouts for When You’re Taking GLP-1 Medications
Starting a GLP-1 agonist medication is only the beginning of your journey to better health. Whether you’ve elected to take Ozempic, Wegovy, or Mounjaro, you can maximize the impact of these medications on your life by continuing to make healthy and fitness-minded choices.
What GLP-1 Agonist Medications Do
GLP-1 agonist medications were originally used to treat Type 2 Diabetes, but since their introduction, doctors and medical professionals have seen how they can promote weight loss in overweight or obese individuals. This is important since many people who are overweight or obese have a hard time getting started with body fat reduction. Taking GLP-1 agonist medications helps these individuals jump start their weight loss and begin to make strides in their personal health.
A GLP-1 agonist medication, like Ozempic, has many functions. In individuals with diabetes, it helps the pancreas regulate the amount of insulin in the body. The medication also slows digestion and reduces appetite. These two things combined lead to weight loss as people who take these medications are likely to eat less and stay fuller longer. Eating fewer calories than you burn in a day will usually lead to weight loss.
Decreasing overall body fat is important because too much body fat can lead to many different health problems including heart disease and complications from chronic inflammation.
Exercising While Taking a GLP-1 Agonist
Exercise is an important part of a healthy lifestyle. For someone on a GLP-1 agonist looking to lose weight, exercise is a tool to increase weight loss. While exercise by itself isn’t the most effective way to lose fat, burning extra calories through exercise while strengthening can lead to the one-two punch of burning fat and gaining muscle that will tone your body.
One of the things to watch out for, though, is ensuring that weight loss using GLP-1 agonists is not leading to a loss in muscle mass. For many people, rapid weight loss does lead to decreased muscle mass. However, if you are working toward a healthier lifestyle, maintaining muscle mass and staying strong is an important piece of that.
With that said, exercising while taking GLP-1 agonists can ensure that you maintain muscle mass and the weight you do lose is fat. Not all exercises are created equal, however. Someone taking Ozempic, Wegovy, or Mounjaro will want to focus on a well-rounded approach to fitness that includes both aerobic and anaerobic exercises meant to build endurance, stamina, and strength.
Weight and Resistance Training
Weight and resistance training is an excellent complement to the weight loss initiated by the GLP-1 agonist you are taking. With weight and resistance training, you can build up muscle, making yourself stronger and more resilient while toning and sculpting the body. This will help you in your weight loss goal while also firming up many of the “problem” areas we deal with when losing weight.
There are a few different ways to pursue strength training: bodyweight exercises, weight machines, and free weights.
Bodyweight Exercises. If you are completely new to strength and resistance training, then consider bodyweight exercises. These exercises don’t use any additional equipment and help you build muscle using the resistance of your own bodyweight. This is a good place to start building a base of strength.
Weight Machines. If you have a gym membership, then you may be interested in using the available weight machines. These machines are perfect for individuals who want the next step up in building strength, but do not feel comfortable with free weights. Additionally, many of the machines are easy to use with instructions built in!
Free Weights. While going to the free weights area of your gym (or just using free weights at home) can seem intimidating, a training routine with free weights is also the most customizable. With free weights, you can really build the resistance and start to see more and more pronounced results.
Cardiovascular Training
Cardiovascular training includes things like running, swimming, and cycling. Many cardiovascular exercises help build endurance and stamina. While they can also build strength, increasing strength isn’t the focus of cardiovascular exercise.
3 Ideal Workouts for When You’re Taking GLP-1 Agonists
Workout #1: Circuit Training
The first ideal workout is circuit training. For your circuit, you want to choose four exercises: one upper body strength, one lower body strength, one core strength, and one cardio exercise. For example, your four exercises might be chest press, jump squats, dead bugs, and jump rope.
Set a timer for one minute and do as many as your upper body exercise as you can until the timer stops. Rest for 30 seconds. Then, move to the next exercise. Do this for every exercise and then repeat two additional times.
Workout #2: Running Intervals with Core Strength
For this workout, start with a 10-minute warm-up walk. Then, sprint 200 meters followed by 200 meters of a slow jog. Repeat this 4 times.
After you’ve finished the running, it’s time to focus on core strength. Do a rotation of three core workouts. We recommend a traditional plank, side plank, and twists.
Workout #3: Hot Yoga
Hot yoga is a great full-body workout that will improve your strength, stamina, and endurance all in one! Get ready to get sweaty and get into the flow.
While hot yoga is difficult, many yoga studios offer beginner friendly classes and a welcoming environment no matter your skill level making this an easy way to get started with increasing your fitness.
Use ZOZOFIT to Track Your GLP-1 Medication Weight Loss Journey
Losing weight is exciting and keeping track of your progress is one of the best ways to both celebrate your successes and continue to work toward your goal.
A tool like ZOZOFIT, which takes real-time measurements of your body and body fat percentage, can give you a picture of your overall health. In the ZOZOFIT app, you have the opportunity to see a 3D mesh model of your body after every scan. Overtime you can compare these scans using the Side-by-Side Comparison and ColorMetric functions to really see how far you’ve come.