How to Look Toned on a GLP-1, Not Just Smaller

Nikkiey: If you're on a GLP-1 right now and you want to be quote-unquote toned, not just smaller, then that's what this episode is all about. Toned is not produced by weight loss. Getting toned is produced by you building muscle. The definition, the shape, the firmness, all of that comes from the muscle that exists under the skin. So you remove the fat without the muscle being there and what you have is just a smaller body. It's not a toned one. This is the exact outcome that GLP-1 medications are giving.

Hey, hey, hey. What's going on, everybody? Welcome back to The WarriorBabe Show with your host, Nikkiey Stott. Today's episode is going to be for women who are on a GLP-1 or have been on one before, and they want more from the result than just looking at a smaller number on the scale. Because here's what I'm seeing more and more and more in the industry, and we cannot get away from these injections.

Women on these medications, yes, they are losing weight. The scale is going down. But when they look in the mirror, they look smaller. They don't look more toned. They don't look more defined. I hear so many women come to us at WarriorBabe and they're like, I want to be toned. I want to be defined. I want to look lean. I want to be strong. These medications are helping them lose weight, but they're not giving the woman the result that she had imagined she would look like after that weight came off. And the reason for that is something nobody really told them when they got on the medication or the injection.

It's something that their doctor, I'm sure, didn't explain or have the conversation around. And if this main thing that I'm going to talk about with you guys today is left unaddressed, it means that the weight loss they worked so hard for is built on a foundation that will not hold long term and sustainably. And what I mean by that is something I'm going to talk about with you guys today, more practically and specifically. If you're on a GLP-1 right now and you want to be, quote-unquote, toned, not just smaller, then that's what this episode is all about.

So let me start here, because I think the distinction is the entire point of today's episode. When most women imagine reaching their goal weight, they picture that toned body. They picture defined arms. They picture a firm midsection. They picture looking lean, strong and toned. Shoulders have shape. Legs look strong. That's the image most women hold that motivates their journey.

But toned is not produced by weight loss. Getting toned is produced by you building muscle. Specifically, toned is what a body looks like when there is adequate muscle mass underneath a reduced layer of body fat. The definition, the shape, the firmness, all of that comes from the muscle that exists under the skin. So you remove the fat without the muscle being there, and what you have is just a smaller body. It's not a toned one.

This is the exact outcome that GLP-1 medications are giving. Used with the right strategy alongside them, they can produce this. If you are on a GLP-1 medication and you put the right strategy alongside it, you can produce that outcome you are imagining in your mind. The medication is extremely effective at suppressing your appetite and producing a caloric deficit.

So the body loses that weight. But in a lot of these conversations that are now surfacing, because this is a new drug, so when it's been out for X amount of time new research and new studies come to the surface, it's showing that women are losing up to 40% of muscle mass as well. They're losing the weight on these medications, but they're losing lean muscle mass, not just fat. So the woman who loses 30 pounds on a GLP-1 without a muscle-preserving strategy may have lost 12 of those pounds from muscle.

So yes, that scale is going to show you a lighter number. But her body fat percentage may not have improved as dramatically as that scale would suggest. And what she sees in the mirror is just a smaller but soft body, not the defined body she had imagined. Guys, that's just the way I look at it, because I've been in this for 10 years, and I've been strength training for 10 years, because I know that is the strategy and the science behind how the body will transform, how it will build muscle and how it will get to the ultimate goal of what so many women want and imagine in their mind when they go on a weight loss journey.

These things are just more of what we have been handed. I fell into the trap before getting into this a decade ago, with all of the things the world was saying to try and do, the diet culture. Yes, those things are going to help you lose weight, but the missing strategy piece here is that it doesn't matter how much weight you have lost.

Truthfully, I've seen women inside of WarriorBabe where you look at their before and after photos and it looks like they lost 20 or 30 pounds, but they step on the scale and they've actually gained. They gained a pound or two, or they lost only three pounds, but their before and after pictures look drastically different. That is because of the world I'm talking about now and what I've been in for the last decade. Before that, these things just give you the weight loss strategy.

So if you pair it with the strategy I want to talk about with you guys today, which I've talked about in many, many episodes before, and you put the two together, that's a world where, yes, that GLP-1 will help you lose weight. There's no diss on that whatsoever. Some people need that to motivate them and kickstart them and get them going. But if you continue to rely on that solely as the way to produce the result you want, it's not going to produce what so many women are imagining in their mind. This is just what the medication does.

It's what it's designed to do. It suppresses the appetite. It creates a deficit. The missing piece was a strategy that should have been running alongside it the whole time, okay? And that is a couple of things, but they have to be non-negotiable. If your goal is, I want to be toned, I want to be lean and I want to be defined, then these three things have to be non-negotiable.

Number one, you have to lift. You have to do weightlifting, consistently, with real, challenging weight and load on a barbell or a dumbbell. This is the most important thing I can tell you. Strength training, specifically progressive resistance training with external load, is the signal that tells your body to keep the muscle while the fat is being lost. When you are in a calorie deficit, which the medication is creating, whether you feel it or not, your body is looking for tissue to break down for energy. Muscle is expensive to maintain.

So without a signal that muscle is needed, your body will just sacrifice it. Weightlifting is the signal that tells your body, hey, I need this muscle, do not take it away. And it has to be heavy enough. It has to be challenging enough. It has to be consistent enough. You've got to do this three or four days a week. And no, it does not need to consume your life. You do not need to be in the gym six days a week for two or three hours a day.

It's a 45-minute workout. You've got to be intentional, you've got to be focused and you've got to have a plan. But three to four days per week: compound movements, squats, deadlifts, rows, presses, with other isolation exercises in there that get the smaller muscle groups, doing progressive overload. The weight needs to increase over time as your body adapts. That is not optional. If your goal is to get more toned and more defined, and that's the outcome you're after, then that is the whole game you have to be a part of: challenging your body to adapt.

And that's only going to happen by you adding more weight. You've got to do it in a way that is safe and you've got to keep good form. That's the most important part. But you've got to add the weight. And I want to address something directly. If your appetite is suppressed and your energy is low from eating less, which is a real side effect, the instinct for a lot of women is to reduce their workouts and their training. Do not. Look, reduce your volume if you need to. Go lighter if you need to.

But do not stop. The training stimulus is the only thing protecting the muscle that you are trying to keep.

Number two: you've got to hit your protein target every single day. No exceptions. You guys, I stand behind repeating some of this stuff over and over and over again, because some of you have been listening to this podcast for a really, really long time. Maybe it was two years ago that you were starting out on your journey, and now you've gotten a little more serious about it as it goes. And what maybe didn't resonate with you back then is probably setting off light bulbs in your head right now, right?

I say the same thing in different ways, and I stand by that. That's what makes you a really good coach: repeating yourself in different ways, because it helps the woman remember what you said. It's just the psychology aspect of coaching. It'll help you tie back things that you heard or saw, maybe a year ago, and a light bulb goes off and all of these things click. Oh, this all makes sense. Right? So anyway, end rant. But number two, you have to hit your protein target every single day. No exceptions whatsoever.

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Number two, you have to hit your protein target every single day. No exceptions whatsoever. The way I explain it, protein is the king of the macronutrients. It's the raw material the body needs to maintain and build muscle. Without the appropriate protein intake in a calorie deficit, your body cannot preserve the muscle tissue it already has. The training sends a signal, right? The protein provides the material to respond to it. You break down muscle inside the gym. You build it in the 24 to 48 hours after the gym session.

And that protein is what's going to provide the material for your muscle tissue to be built. For most women on a GLP-1 medication, the challenge is pretty significant here, because the appetite suppression makes eating feel like a chore. You're not hungry. Food does not appeal to you. And the last thing you want to think about is hitting a protein target. But here's the reality, you guys. If your body is losing weight and protein is low, a large portion of that weight is muscle.

Again, not fat. And that lost muscle is the exact thing that could have made you look toned when that fat came off. You tracking with me? So the target is at least 0.8 to 1 gram of protein per pound of your goal body weight every single day. I say goal body weight because some of you guys have 100 pounds to lose, and realistically, eating 200 or 250 grams of protein is going to be a double chore.

That is not going to be something you want to hit on a daily basis. So whatever your realistic goal weight is, whether that's 170 or 180, that would be the amount I would recommend you eat per day. And with that suppressed appetite, the most practical approach, even if you're just starting out, and I wouldn't recommend this long term, but I had this thought while I was driving in the car the other day: there are three easy sources for women to get at least 90 grams of protein in their day.

Are you guys ready for this? You can get at least 90 grams of protein in your day by having a 30-gram protein shake, a 30-gram protein bar and a 30-gram protein Chobani drinkable yogurt. That is 90 grams of protein right there. Now, I would not recommend this long term, because you've got to have whole food, and I will say that point blank. But if you need to learn how to get more protein in your day, this is a strategy.

Other ways you can get it are Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, bone broth, eggs, chicken, ground turkey, ground beef, salmon, fish, tilapia, cod, all of those things. And then you need to front-load your protein in your first meal, before anything else. You've got to make this a non-negotiable before other food. If you hit nothing else, hit your protein. It's doing more work than anything else to protect the outcome you are after.

Number three is measuring your body composition, not just your weight. The scale is going to go down on this medication. That is almost a guarantee. But the scale cannot tell you what the weight loss is made up of. It cannot tell you whether you are losing fat, whether you're losing muscle or whether you're losing both. And without that information, you have no way of knowing whether your strategy is actually working.

So what you need to track instead is, first of all, your strength numbers: what you can lift. If your strength is holding or increasing while you are losing weight, then you are preserving muscle. If your strength is dropping along with the scale, then muscle is being lost and your approach needs some type of adjustment.

Or take your photos. I know some of you absolutely hate taking pictures because you hate the way you look. But let me remind you and reframe this narrative in your mind: that is the whole reason you are starting. So why not just take the dang photo? You're the only one who needs to see it. Think about how cool it would be after six months on this journey to take another photo, put them side by side and see your hard work.

And let it not be a point of frustration if you step on the scale. Let it be a source of truth that your photos are showing a bigger difference than the scale number is. So take the photo. Same light, same spot, in the morning, before you eat and after you go to the bathroom. Your eyes will tell you things that the scale and certain measurements just cannot.

I will also say do measurements. Look at your waist, your hips, your arms, your thighs. Focus on those maybe once a month. If your measurements are changing while the scale is going down, then your body composition is improving. If your measurements are staying the same while the scale is going down, then you may be losing muscle as well. You can also go deeper with InBody or DEXA scans. Those are going to tell you more specifically what lean mass you have versus fat mass, et cetera. But those are some ways, instead of the scale, that you can measure your journey a little more accurately.

So here's what I want you guys to understand about the window you are currently in, because it matters more than most women on these medications realize. The weight loss phase is temporary. Eventually the medication changes, or it stops, or you stop taking it, or dosages adjust. But the body you build during this window, the muscle you preserve or the muscle you lose, the habits you establish or you don't, that is what you are left with on the other side of this.

The women who come off a GLP-1 and maintain their results are not the ones who lost the most weight the fastest. They're the ones who used the weight loss window to build a real foundation: to build muscle, to build their nutrition habits, to build a strength training protocol and practice and put it into place. That is how their body can sustain the results long term without the medication driving them and then stopping.

The women who regain are almost always the ones who did not address the muscle piece in this journey. Again, this is where my brain goes: it's a repackaged version of how diet culture has had women lose weight for decades. Women are losing the weight and then regaining it, and sometimes regaining double the amount from where they were when they started the journey.

If you don't address this muscle piece, you're just going to be on the same hamster wheel over and over again. You've got to focus on putting this strategy into place. If you're on one of these or you're getting off of one, you're in that window right now. Every session you show up for, every protein target you hit, every week you stay consistent with the training, you are building something a medication alone cannot build. You are building that body on the other side. And something else popping into my mind as I think about this: yes, weightlifting is hard.

It's not easy. These medications give you that instant result, that instant gratification. Building muscle is not for people who want instant gratification. It is going to take time. If you are sick and tired of being on the hamster wheel, then lean into this and fully commit to it. Okay?

So the summary of all of this: yes, GLP-1 medications are going to produce weight loss. There's no diss to them. They work and they help a lot of people. But without a muscle-preserving strategy alongside them, a significant portion of that weight loss is muscle, and it's just producing a smaller body, not a toned body. So lift consistently with real load, hit your protein target every single day, and measure your body composition, not just scale weight. That toned body you're picturing, what so many women imagine and say they want, is built on muscle. The medication is going to create the deficit.

You have to build what fills the space the fat is leaving behind, and that is by building more muscle. If you guys want a strategy for how to structure your training, how to hit your protein, what that actually looks like and how to build a foundation that holds your results after the medication, then come join the free training I do on Thursdays at 7 p.m. Eastern. We go live every week and I walk through a 90-minute training with you guys. Then I hold hot seats for women who are on the call.

I pull three people from the live training and have a conversation with them, see what they're trying, see where they're stuck and give them some tips they can take away from the training. That could be one of you guys. It's completely free. The link is in the show notes. Go register for it, and I'll see you guys in the next episode. Peace out.

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