sunday coffee vol. 5: Weight Loss Drugs + 6 ways to build lean muscle

If you could take a pill to lose weight, would you do it?

Another new weight loss drug was approved for human use the other day.

Ozempic and Zepbound are the 2 I’ve been hearing the most about lately.

These suppposed silver bullets have shown solid success in trials of helping people struggling with obesity to lose weight.

“Take this pill to lose weight”

Means that people may not have to work that hard to be lean + healthy anymore.

Don’t get me wrong, I really hope this can help a lot of people struggling to get on the right track.

But if you can take a pill to see results, you probably won't invest in the healthy habits that lead to a leaner, healthier life.

How much easier is it to just take a pill or an injection instead of exercising regularly, eating healthy foods, getting outside often, etc?

Quite a bit easier - but the thing is, this solves the symptom, not the cause of the issue.

Definitely intrigued to see where this goes a few years from now.

Here’s the FDA release on it if you want to read about Zepbound.

On the subject of developing good habits, let's get into 6 tips to gain lean muscle.

Between ages 20-23, I gained 30+ lbs of lean muscle while staying under 10% body fat.

I went from 190-225 at my heaviest, and made a lot of mistakes along the way. But these 6 tips were the bedrock I built my body on.

1. Weightlifting 3-5x per week

Strength Training helps you:

If you want to build muscle, 3-5x per week is key here. A lot of people think more time in the gym means more progress, but there’s a limit to what our body can recover from.

Make your workouts focused and intentional, fuel them well with good food ansd hydration, and use progressive overload principles to grow stronger and bigger quickly. Intensity > Volume.

ps: In 2 weeks I’ll be sending a newsletter focused on programming for optimal performance during your workouts where we’ll cover how intense your workouts can be before you start to see diminishing results.

2. HIIT (Sprints)

Sprinting seems to be a lost art if you aren’t training as an athlete these days.

A study published in the Journal of Endocrinological Investigation found that sprinting can increase testosterone levels in men by up to 26%. That’s a huge increase - and that boost will help you gain muscle quickly in a big way.

Sprinting not only boosts our testosterone levels, it trains our prime movers (big muscle groups like hamatrings, pecs, quads, glutes, etc) to be explosive and more efficient. Try working sprints in 2-3x a week to start.

3. Eat well, eat often

This one’s obvious. If you’re looking to gain muscle, or weight in any capacity, you need to eat more.

There are a lot of ways you can do this - but generally you should be striving to eat 1-1.2 gs of protein per pound of body weight per day, a solid dose of vegetables + fruits, and 2-3 gs of healthy carbs per pound of body weight (rice, sweet potatoes, quinoa, etc).

There is A LOT more nuance to nutrition than this - but these newsletters are meant to be brief. If you’re interested in discussing your own nutrition, or if you’re looking for some resources to read up on, go ahead and book a free call with me here.

bonus tip: Start taking Creatine. Not only is it good for your brain, but it helps improve performance by making it easier for your muscles to use energy.

4. 7+ Hours of good sleep

Recovery happens after the workout, not during. Most of it happens when we sleep!

This is probably the most important one - sleep like a baby.

If you’re looking for tips on how to sleep better, we’ll have a sunday coffee edition on this soon, but here are a few good starting points:

5. Cut out alcohol

Alcohols main issue with building muscle is that it heavily disrupts our ability to recover. It disrupts a lot of our internal systems, and makes #4^ very difficult to achieve.

When we drink…

I’m not here to demonize alcohol, but if your goal is to build muscle, cut it out as much as you can. Limit yourself to a few drinks a week for 1 or 2 nights if at all possible.

Pro-tip: if you’re a person who likes to have a few drinks to wind down from work or something, try replacing alcohol with another drink you love. Club soda, poppy’s, liquid IV, etc. This way you’re still giving yourself a reward - it’s just not alcoholic.

6. Be patient

The truth is, it just takes time. There is no silver bullet to gaining muscle and changing your physique, it just takes committment and hard work.

Some people will gain faster than others based on their body type, diet, hormones, etc. Don’t let that distract you, be patient and stay focused on your goal!

Building muscle is one of the best insurance policies you can have for your health.

We covered 6 ways to build lean-muscle quick here. Those are:

My friends and I just had our first Friendsgiving last night with another planned for next weekend, and then Thanksgiving the following week. So, next week we’ll talk a bit about staying on track for your health goals during the holidays.

Thanks for reading and to all our new subscribers, thanks a ton for being here!

Dane