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← Return to GLP1 to combat weight gain and A1C increase while on ADT?
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GLP1 to combat weight gain and A1C increase while on ADT?
Prostate Cancer | Last Active: Jul 25 12:06pm | Replies (34)Comment receiving replies
@chippydoo This is a huge battle between the ears. I’ve been obese most of my life from childhood. In 2020 I was getting within sight of diabetes. My doctor told me that losing 20 lbs. would correct it, and with my wife’s help and an old Weight Watchers menu I instead lost 40. In a couple of years I had gained back 10 and was holding on until diagnosis, and I’ve gained 25 since, mostly around the belly. So I’m basically back where I started. I’m exercising vigorously regularly but my fork is betraying me. My wife doesn’t want me to start GLP-1, because it seems only temporary, but I have to take action somehow.
Replies to "@chippydoo This is a huge battle between the ears. I’ve been obese most of my life..."
@jime51
Unfortunately, if you are on ADT and have low testosterone, the problem is much bigger than you expected.
Low T causes a sluggish metabolism, reduced muscle mass, increased abdominal fat storage, and low energy for exercise. Low-T creates a cycle where weight gain further lowers testosterone, requiring lifestyle changes or medical intervention to break.
Cutting out meals for weight loss often backfires by causing your metabolism to slow down and promoting fat storage as the body enters a survival-oriented "conservation mode". It leads to nutrient deficiencies, intense hunger causing overeating later, energy crashes, mental fatigue, and potential muscle loss.
Between low T and the inability to cut out meals. It’s really annoying how hard it is for prostate cancer patientsto lose weight. When it comes down to is we really need to change our diets.
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@jime51 Losing fat takes stress off of the capacity constraints that keep pre& diabetics from clearing glucose from the bloodstream in a rapid fashion. However, it does not increase the capacity. Losing 40 pounds should have lowered your A1c to normal levels. With regained weight that stress has returned and the capacity is probably lower than it was 5 years ago so you should do something.
On any diet it is use it or lose it. Resistance exercise is required to maintain muscle and increase the percentage of fat lost. There is nothing different when you end a diet either from Weight Watchers or using GLP-1s. If you go back to your pre-diet norms you will regain the weight. The problem is that to lose the weight on a normal diet probably took some changes in habits that will continue after the diet ends. GLP-1s suppress hunger signals that will return when they are discontinued. On a normal diet you probably gain some resistance to those signals. When I lost 40 pounds on a classic diet, I was hungry all of the time. That is the big difference with GLP-1s. You lose the weight but are not hungry. If you quit GLP-1s you have to have a lot of discipline to resist hunger signals and not go back to the habits that caused the weight gain. There is nothing magical that makes people regain weight lost on GLP-1 drugs. It is more that it was so easy losing the weight they do not realize the hard part in any diet is going to be keeping it off long term.
GLP-1s are natural hormones that your body produces. The drug versions are resistant to the DPP4 enzyme so are long acting. DPP4 destroys natural GLP-1 in 1-2 minutes so not the same hunger suppression. Before GLP-1s, the ...gliptins were developed to suppress DPP4, extending natural GLP-1 life and lowering blood glucose.