The Dark Side of Rapid Weight Loss: Why “Skinny Shots” Might Age You Overnight

Think losing weight fast is the answer? Here’s what no one’s telling you: those high-dose injections and crash diets could be making you look older—fast. Dr. Ryan Partovi, JD, NMD, MIFHI, and Mrs. Madi Partovi break down how rapid weight loss drains facial fat, why mega-dosing semaglutide backfires, and what happens when you push your body too far.

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Transcript

  📍  📍 And if it doesn't have it, if it's super rapid weight loss, you're gonna get that, whether it be through a gastric bypass or whether it be through one of these medications. Yeah. 

And one of the main complaints with women is that it's making them look much older. 

And I wanted to talk about the fat in the face part too.

That's very common with fasting. People who are on super low calorie diets or do too much fasting, they will often lose facial fat. And facial fat is one of the main ways that you stay looking up, right? So one of the dangers of prolonged fasting or too much too low calorie diets which is what can happen on these super high doses of, these milligram doses of semaglutide.

You end up with a lot of, days where you're either not eating or you're eating just not nearly enough. So certainly not enough protein. 

The, so the dose is quite high with the conventional approach and the injection, the once a week injection protocols. Could you outline what the standard dosing looks like, just to have a comparison?

Sure. Yeah. We're looking at, milligrams for the injection, micrograms for the sublingual. Literally a hundred times less for the sublingual, but we'll get into that in a second. The standard protocol for wegovy, which is semaglutide for weight loss, is an escalation to reach this high dose of 2.4 milligrams a week.

So usually they're gonna start out at 0.25 milligrams a week for about a month, and that's, they call, that's the starter dose. And then you increase to 0.5 milligrams a week, and then one milligram, 1.7, and then finally 2.4. So each time you increase, you stay on it for a few weeks to acclimate, but the goal is to try to ratchet you up to 2.4 as quickly as possible, or as close as you can get, and still tolerate it.

And the reason, the only reason why they do it. Over time is to try to reduce the nausea that a lot of people experience, if not most people experience, when we use it for diabetics, the target dose is typically maximum historically has been one milligram a week, although there's now a two milligram version that's come out.

But essentially we start with the weekly dose and titrate up. And yeah that's the approach that, it's the same approach, but I would say that, which we, with the weight loss, we get to that higher dose a lot faster because that's what's often, gonna get this dramatic result, which is exciting to people.

And I get that, but it's like often unhealthy and often comes. Yeah, that's a side effects, 

that's a huge range, from point 25 milligrams to two milligrams or more per week. Even at the starting dose that's 50 or five to 10 times higher than the micro doses that we're gonna be offering.

So even at the 0.25, we will be starting people off really at 0.05. So that's I think what, that's 50 micrograms. Or no, maybe even lower than that actually there's a there's a lot of flexibility 

between five to 50. 

Yeah. 

Micrograms and a microdosing regimen. That's a massive, that's 

typically, yeah, typically where we're going is much, much lower.

Okay. That's a massive difference in quantity. Just wanna say, 

yeah, we're looking at much, much higher doses. And I think that's part of the problem. It's one of the reasons why people max out. It's why, they get, you get this rapid weight loss, but then now what? Are you gonna stay on it to maintain that?

Is that really sustainable? Can you afford that? So there's a lot of elements to it that frankly don't work. And I think, to me the same issue we have with Ivermectin. I have, I do ivermectin for cancer and I had a patient that just totally ignored what I told 'em to do and ratcheted up as ivermectin to 120 milligrams a day.

And now he can't take ivermectin. He can take 12 milligrams, but he overshot the therapeutic window, saturated his tissues, and now he can't take it. So I think the same thing happens with these medications where it's basically like your body develops a tolerance to such a high dose and then you either have to stay on that high dose or you have to, to maintain the weight loss or you start gaining weight again, okay. So the 

moral of that story is don't do, so many people are doing this on their own, unsupervised, no, no guidance with somebody that cares. 

And I think that the other thing I would say the other piece that's so important is to do the minimum effective dose.