Ep25 - How Will Taking a GLP-1 Affect My Distance Riding?

Are GLP-1 weight loss drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy, and Zepbound a good idea for equestrians? In this episode, endurance rider and personal trainer Tamara Baysinger takes a balanced look at GLP-1s for riders: when they may be helpful, why they are not necessarily a “lazy way out,” how they can backfire...and how to get the benefits without negative consequences for your riding.

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Welcome to Equestrian Fitness for the Long Ride with the Sweaty Equestrian. I'm personal trainer and endurance rider Tamara Basinger, and I'm here to help you ride stronger in a day and longer in your life. Alright, guys, welcome back to the podcast. If you have been listening for a while, you know that I have been in a bit of a glue-on horseshoe saga that has involved lots of the shoes glued on with the Hooflocks acrylic glue coming off. Like 90% of them were off within a week or two. So I switched to the adhere glue, and good news, some of those shoes are still on. I took some off on purpose. So that glue is working way, way better for me, and that's good because I took my younger horse, who I've been having ongoing intermittent minor lameness issues with, to the vet to get radiographs of his front feet. And sure enough, he has very thin soles. I'm not shocked by this, it's what I expected to see, but I just wanted to confirm that there wasn't something else going on that would make me deal with it in a different way. So, among other things, including making sure that he has a really correct trim and no leverage on any flare, I need to super protect his feet. So I've taken the Easy Care Versa Grip glues and put some of the new mesh pads in them and then put dental impression material inside his uh packed into the hoof with copper sulfate in it because I don't want to encourage thrush, and then glued that whole package onto his feet. And I did use um, well, actually, it was the what is it called? Ferrier's Choice. It's a glue that's similar to it here, but it comes in a clearer color since he has white feet. Now I will say that the tips I had that are by the brand that makes it here, um, I think it's Equilox, don't fit quite right on the other brand of glue, and so I had some issues with that. Um, but otherwise, I it went pretty well. So fingers crossed, stay tuned. Um, I'll let you know how it goes. But right now he he's moving much, much better uh having just had those shoes glued on with the extra padding. Anyway, we're not here to talk about um horseshoes, but I know a lot of you also glue shoes and have tried all sorts of things. So thought you might want a little update there. Uh, but really what I want to talk about today is whether taking a GLP1 will affect you as a rider. Is it a good idea? Is it a bad idea? Can it be a good idea or a bad idea? And I actually get quite a few questions about what I think about GLP ones. And usually the person asking looks a little nervous because I can tell some of them are just curious, but others um kind of want to try it, and they expect me to hate the idea. I think that since I'm a fitness professional, a lot of people think that I'm going to say that a GLP one is the lazy way out, and you don't want to actually work for your fitness and take care of your diet. Um but actually, as a fitness professional, what I see is a lot of people who are trying really hard and are still struggling to keep body fat in a safe and healthy range to the point that they face real health and life enjoyment consequences. Like it's limiting them from being able to do the things that they want to do in life. So I do actually think that GLP1s can be a viable option for many people, but it's not a decision to be taken lightly because it doesn't come without the same consequences that any low-calorie diet or weight loss attempt is going to have. It's going to have those same complications. Now, I do think that GLP1s are unnecessary in many cases. I think they're potentially overused by a percentage of the population. I'm not really a fan of jumping straight to drugs over an extra 15 pounds that really a lot of times could be dealt with more safely and appropriately by making some food quality choices or different choices and adding some weightlifting to your week. And like any drug, GLP1s can be harmful in the long term if not used correctly. Not just the drug needs to be handled correctly, but also the lifestyle that surrounds it. See, taking a GLP1 does not actually change your habits around movement and food. So the upshot is that while I believe, at least based on the information that's available right now, that GLP1s can very well be a helpful option for riders. They can also arguably leave those riders worse off than they were before if they don't make some specific changes to support their bodies through the use and importantly, beyond the discontinuance of the drug. So if you have been living under a rock, GLP1s are the latest and greatest weight loss drug on the market. I'm sure you know this. It's been out for a few years now, it's grown dramatically in popularity, especially now that you can get GLP1s not just as injections, but in pill form. And many doctors are out there prescribing them readily to anyone who can afford them. You may recall, if you're old enough like me, that weight loss drugs have a long and sordid history. Maybe you remember Fenfen. GLP1s, though, have been around for a long time, but not so much on the weight loss market as for as a treatment for type 2 diabetes. And so far, as of this recording, they appear to be free of the major side effects that have plagued other weight loss drugs, which ranged uh widely from things like heart damage to extreme depression. The biggest complaint that we tend to hear about GLP1s, um, besides some usually mild gastrointestinal symptoms when first starting the drug, is that they give you that Ozympic face. Have you heard people describe the that sagging and hollowed facial appearance that is caused by rapid loss of the fat under the skin? People are calling it Osimpic face. And also you hear people described as just overall diminished because they're they've dropped that weight so fast. And we'll talk in a second here about what that weight is and why it can create that diminished effect, which, okay, as writers, diminished is not something we want to be, especially as we get older. We need to be staying strong and healthy, not diminished. Maybe you even heard have heard somebody say that GLP1s make you lose muscle. That is not exactly true. They don't make you lose muscle. But what a GLP1 does is it makes it easy to dramatically restrict your calorie intake. Normally that's challenging, right? If you've ever tried to restrict calories, you know that that can be pretty challenging, especially to do consistently enough and long enough to cause the sort of dramatic weight loss that a GLP1 will help you achieve. All it is doing really is making it easier to restrict calories a lot. Now, any diet that dramatically reduces your calorie intake, whether a drug is involved or not, typically results in a lot of the weight being lost in the form of something other than fat. Now you do lose a lot of fat, but up to about 40% of what you can lose is going to be lean mass, mostly muscle. So if you lose 10 pounds, four of those pounds could be muscle. And that is where I get very concerned about equestrians or anyone else taking GLP1s. We cannot afford to lose muscle, especially those of us who are already noticing the natural muscle mass and strength declines that come with age. And we know how much harder it is to put that muscle back on than it was when we were 20-year-old athletes. And I know some of you are out there thinking, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but I really want to lose the weight. It's worth it. But is it really? Muscle mass is one of the best predictors of longevity. All-cause mortality is higher in people who have low muscle mass, and vice versa. Muscle also directly impacts our ability to ride well and care for our horses, to avoid injury and keep doing what we love. So losing muscle is a really big deal. And if what you are losing is 40% muscle, that's a real problem. That is what scares me about the ease with which GLP1s help people lose weight because weight can be more than fat. Okay, but there's good news. The good news is that you can lessen or eliminate the muscle loss side effect of calorie restriction, whether it comes with the help of a GLP1 or not. You can lessen that effect pretty dramatically, but you have to be very intentional about it. And we're gonna talk about how. So let's back up and review here what normally happens when we restrict calories. Remember, your body evolved for survival. It did not evolve to look good in your breeches. Your body wants to protect you from starvation. So as calorie intake goes down, your body is going to try to save your life. It is going to get more efficient in how it uses the remaining calories that are coming in the door. It's going to slow your metabolism. And one of the biggest ways it does that is by getting rid of body tissue that is optional in the short term, but expensive to maintain. You know what that means? It means muscle. Muscle requires a lot of calories to maintain. So does your brain tissue, but your body decides that's more important. So away the muscle goes, it's too expensive. We have to be more efficient here with the fewer calories that are coming in. And this is why you tend to plateau when you go on a low-calorie diet. It's because your body downregulates, it adjusts, and when it reaches equilibrium between your new lower energy intake and your energy expenditure, which it will also lower in subtle ways, by the way, then you no longer have a calorie deficit and you hit that dead spot, you hit that plateau. You can't lose anymore unless you cut the calories further. And you can't do that forever, right? You have to live on something. Now, being on a GLP1 is going to make it easier to stick with super low calorie intake for longer. But remember, you are getting rid of muscle tissue as part of being in that calorie deficit. So you may be getting smaller, but you're also getting weaker. And even if you don't care about the health and longevity impact of that, being weaker is not a good recipe for better riding. If you are lighter, but you are under muscled and exhausted, you are going to be less effective in the saddle, less helpful to your horse than if you were a bit heavier but able to manage your body appropriately because you are strong and healthy. So, how do we get the different outcome? How do we still reduce the calories with or without the GLP1, but keep our metabolism high and not lose the muscle, or at least not nearly as much muscle. Today I want to focus on the muscle piece. Keeping metabolism high is slightly more complicated than just this piece. I teach all about it in my Leaner Stronger Rider program, but suffice it to say for today that muscle is a very, very important part of it. And to maintain muscle in the face of the calorie deficit, we need a couple things. We need the building blocks for muscle, and we need a stimulus to use those building blocks to build muscle. The building blocks are amino acids. We get those from dietary protein. When limiting our calories, especially in the low appetite state that is caused by taking a GLP1, it is extremely important to focus on a protein-centric diet. You've got to eat a lot of protein. And if you're on a GLP1, you will not want to eat very much. So you have to prioritize eating the protein first and let it push out a lot of other foods. Even though they may seem yummier, they are not nearly as important. Remember, protein is going to give you the building blocks that you need to support muscle tissue. If you don't have enough of those building blocks, the muscle is going to go out the door. How much protein? A really common, easy recommendation to remember is one gram of protein per pound of ideal body weight per day. Now I think that you would be okay with 0.8 gram per pound of ideal body weight per day. And by ideal I mean your realistic target weight. So if you weigh 200 pounds, but a healthy weight for you is 160 pounds, then you would be shooting for 160 grams of protein per day. Or 80% of that would be really, really good. And I guarantee that is more than you're eating now. Unless you have really been concentrating on eating high protein already, I guarantee you're not eating anywhere near that. Count it for a couple days, you'll see. Okay, so that's the building blocks. You need to prioritize protein in your diet and eat a lot of it to the exclusion of other things. Let it push out the junky carbs that you don't really need. Keep the veggies. But other than that, if you just ate protein and veggies, you would be remarkably healthy. But what about the stimulus side? You can have all the building blocks in the world, but if you are not sending your body a message that it needs to keep and build muscle, it's not going to. Now, your day-to-day activity won't do that. Even your farm work that you're used to doing isn't going to do that because you're already used to doing it. Your body is already efficient with those things. You need to send a stronger muscle-building stimulus. And I'm talking here, of course, about strength training. And preferably heavy strength training. I'm not talking about muscle endurance work like you'll do in Pilates or maybe combined with cardio, like circuit training. I'm talking about traditional heavy strength training where you do sets of, say, five to 12 reps of an exercise and you rest in between. That is how to send a strong muscle-building stimulus, which is then going to keep you building muscle from the amino acid building blocks that you are taking in via your high protein diet. Those are the keys to keeping your muscle while you lose body fat, and you need to apply both of them, not just one or the other. You need building blocks plus stimulus, high protein diet plus heavy strength training. Now, the nice thing is that making those changes while you're on the GLP1 is going to set you up to maintain much, much more easily when you get off the drug and return to normal calorie intake. Because let me tell you this, you should not be on a diet with or without drugs forever and ever. You can and should be able to maintain a healthy body weight at a normal calorie intake. You should not be spending the rest of your life restricting. Um, I'm really passionate about this because I see so many riders under-eating for years and years, and then they don't feel good and they continue to hold on to the weight and they wonder why. Um there's a lot to it. If you like the idea of this, but you don't fully have your head around it, or if you do have your head around it, you get it, but you want support and more understanding and exact direction on how to apply it, check out my Leaner Stronger Rider program. I will walk you through it all for 12 weeks and explain everything at a manageable pace, and that will get you set up for a lifetime of building muscle instead of body fat. It's a great program to do while you are on a GLP1, or even better, to set yourself up for success before you start the drug, and then you can keep applying it while you're on the drug, and by the time you discontinue the drug, you are going to be set for a lifetime of being a leaner, stronger rider. So if that is interesting to you, check it out. Um, it's at thesweequestrian.com slash leaner, and I will put a link to that in the show notes. Regardless of whether you do that, um you can strength train on your own, of course. You can eat high protein on your own, of course. But I do hope that you'll drop by the website anyway at thesweequestrian.com and make sure that you're signed up for my weekly newsletter. It's kind of like a private blog post straight to your inbox, and it's on a different topic from the podcast. So if you are not receiving my newsletter, but you are listening to the podcast, you are actually missing 50% of the content that I'm putting out there for you on the subject of rider fitness every week. So don't miss out because I know that you want to ride stronger in a day and longer in your life. Want to get more sweaty? Subscribe to my newsletter at the sweaty equestrian dot com slash newsletter. And remember, you have what it takes to be a full athletic partner for your horse. Saddle up strong.