I Microdosed Ozempic for 4 Months. Here's What Happened.

I micro-dosed Ozempic for four months and dropped from 9.5% body fat to 6.7% without losing muscle. That's a 30% fat reduction. In this video, I'll give you my exact dosing regimen, my before and after body scans, my before and after blood work, I'll explain how drugs like Ozempic work, their benefits and dangers, and how micro-dosing specifically changes the risk-to-reward balance, and whether I'd ever do it again. But first, this video is not medical advice. GLP-1s like Ozempic are prescription medications with real risks, and we'll discuss one side effect in particular later on in the video that very few people know about but is the sole reason why I would personally never take full doses. Also, technically, I didn't take Ozempic, I took Terzepatide, which works through the same GLP-1 pathway with one difference I'll explain in a second. I'm just calling it Ozempic because that's the term most people recognize. Finally, when I say micro-dosing, I mean sub-therapeutic doses, which by definition is not yet a widely accepted medical practice, although some newer studies that we'll touch on might soon change that. Now, here's the real reason I wanted to try this. I've always been very disciplined, except for one thing. Nighttime carb and sugar cravings. The kind where it's 11.45pm, suddenly cookies become your spirit animal, and your plan to eat one turns into seven. And, unfortunately for me, sugary carbs right before bed is basically the heavyweight champion of things that sabotage your fitness. I didn't want to completely squash my appetite though, I just needed something that would take the edge off those cravings just enough that I could choose to ignore them. And, spoiler alert, that's exactly what micro-dosing did. Here's the exact protocol I followed. For the first two months, I took half a milligram of trizepatide twice a week, usually around dinner time, one of those doses mid-week, and one on Saturday or Sunday, because weekend dessert temptation is undefeated. For reference, a typical therapeutic dose of trizepatide, for weight loss and diabetes, is between 10 and 15 milligrams, so I was taking a tiny fraction of that. In month three, I took that same dose once per week, then in month four, I gradually phased it out completely, because I stopped needing it. More on that shortly. Now, before I explain the science, let's take a peek at my actual results. We'll start with my body composition tests, then look at the blood work in a minute. Here are my in-body scans at the beginning and end of that four-month period. As I stated earlier, my body fat percentage went from 9.5% to 6.7%, which, in my case, was a loss of 6.2 pounds of body fat, with 4.2 of that coming from the trunk. More importantly, my visceral fat level dropped from a 3 to a 1. Okay, Karen, I heard you complaining. In-body isn't as accurate as a DEXA scan. The medical-grade models are actually pretty close, and in-body is excellent for trend tracking when you standardize conditions and use the same machine, like I did. And just as importantly as the fat loss, my lean muscle mass was unchanged. Technically, the measurement went down by 1.2%, but that's well within even a DEXA scan's margin of error. Also, my training focus during this phase was fat loss with muscle maintenance. If I wanted to build muscle during this exact same experiment, I could have. To put my results into perspective, though, on standard therapeutic ozempic doses, on average, an entire third of the weight people lose is muscle. Worse, if they stop cold turkey, they'll usually regain that weight, and that regain tends to skew heavily towards fat, making them worse off than before they went on the medication. And that regain is actually something that microdosing is currently being studied to prevent. But all of that is why if you are on GLP-1s, even microdosing, it's essential to be constantly monitoring your body composition, not just the number on the scale. Now, yes, I used a professional in-body machine for this experiment. However, they now have an at-home unit that also uses triple frequency tech. So I decided to run my own little study comparing the at-home in-body machine with the popular Hume BodyPod, which I already had, and how both compare to the professional in-body analyzers and a DEXA scan for accuracy. Comment body scan below if you'd like me to publish a video on those results when I'm finished. The other critical thing to monitor is your food intake, especially protein, if you don't want to lose muscle. And you can't just eyeball this stuff if your appetite is suppressed. You have to actually measure it. I'm currently working on an AI-powered training app that will seamlessly integrate body scan data with automatic macro tracking, similar to CalAI, to generate personalized supplement doses and training protocols. And I'll link that in the video description below once it's available. Next, we'll go over my blood work before and after, which is striking in itself. But first, I want to hone in on the single most important key to my success. And this is what truly makes GLP-1 microdosing so potentially powerful. And it's not the physiological benefits themselves, it's what I mentioned earlier about not needing it anymore after about three months. Studies have repeatedly shown that if you want to start a new habit or break an old one, it takes the average person between two and three months of forcing the pattern you want for the brain to rewire itself. After which, the new behavior becomes almost effortless, what science calls behavioral automaticity. The problem is, most people don't have enough willpower to last those three months, myself included, when it came to nighttime binges. GLP-1 microdosing didn't completely eliminate my cravings like a full dose would, but it turned the craving volume knob down from a 10 to like a 4, and I had enough willpower to handle a 4. So for a couple months, I kept winning those battles, during which time my brain slowly rewired itself until I no longer had the physiological or psychological need for pre-sleep brownies. This is why there's so much excitement around GLP-1 microdosing for other behaviors as well, like alcohol cravings and other addictive patterns. Not because the drug cures anything, but because it gives you the neurological runway long enough for the new behavior to become automatic. And because I only took a microdose, I got those results I wanted without the side effects, muscle loss, and other dangers of a full dose regimen. What dangers, you ask? Well, as I've said, there was one in particular that I wanted to avoid. And for that, we need a quick overview of how drugs like Ozentic actually work, why does a molecule originally made for diabetics make you less likely to annihilate a Costco muffin? Here's the simple version. GLP-1 stands for glucagon-like peptide 1, and it's a hormone your body already makes. When you eat, GLP-1 is released by your intestines, which tells your pancreas to release insulin and reduces glucagon, both lowering blood sugar, and it slows down how fast food leaves your stomach so you stay full longer. A lesser known fact is that GLP-1 is also released by neurons in the brain, which dampens appetite centers in the brainstem and hypothalamus, and suppresses dopamine-related motivation and reward centers in areas called the VTA and nucleus accumbens. This natural GLP-1 lasts for a couple minutes. Drugs like Ozentic don't contain GLP-1 itself, but mimic it. They bind to the same receptors, but far more strongly, and last about 5,000 times as long. Now, terzapotide, the one I used, mimics GLP-1 and another gut hormone called GIP, which may have additional effects on fat metabolism. That dual action is why terzapotide often shows slightly stronger metabolic effects in studies. And since I know a bunch of you are wondering, yes, there are natural compounds that can increase your body's own GLP-1 secretion. Those effects are much more subtle than even microdosing, but they are natural and don't require a prescription. And I'm also currently developing a supplement for exactly that. When it's ready, I'll link it in the description. Now we're ready to talk risk. Common side effects of GLP-1s include nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and stomach pain. Less common but serious risks are pancreatitis, gallbladder and kidney issues, and mental health effects like anxiety and depression. But the risk I cared about the most, and the reason I personally would never take full doses, is this pathway we mentioned earlier. An increasing number of GLP-1 patients report emotional flattening or numbness. Yes, their food cravings are gone, but so are their cravings for everything else. Pleasure, enjoyment, motivation, drive, ambition. It's subjective and there aren't really any existing measurements for this effect, so we don't really know exactly how common it is. But we know it's real, not just from patient reports, but because we know these synthetic GLP-1s are putting their thumb down on those dopaminergic reward centers in the brain. And you know, whether you're trying to build a business empire or just get motivated to go work out, you really don't want to blunt your dopamine. Microdosing will of course dramatically reduce the risk of that happening, along with all the other GLP-1 side effects and risks. I personally didn't experience any negative side effects at all, not even nausea, but I got all the benefits I was looking for, plus more. Which brings us to my blood work. Here are my test results before and after microdosing. My fasting glucose improved by 5.4%, insulin by 23.4%, hemoglobin A1c by 3.8%, ALT by 35.5%, total cholesterol by 13.7%, and free testosterone by 21%. Every single marker of metabolic health moved in the direction you'd want. Now, were there other factors at play during those four months? Of course. This wasn't a randomized controlled trial, so we can't say for sure that those results were due to the microdosing. But can we be confident they were a major factor? I think so. So, would I do it again? Yes, but only if I had a specific metric or behavior that I wanted to change, and GLP-1s were a clear fit for it. In which case, I'd use microdosing as a temporary springboard for that change under medical supervision and with constant body composition monitoring and macro tracking. What other behaviors might be a fit? Well, here are some of the use cases that people, including researchers, are currently exploring GLP-1 microdosing for. Again, this is not medical advice, just what some people are exploring. Questions? Comments? Drop them below. If you want more details on my upcoming app, or my supplement line, my other products, or anything else, check the links in the video description. Also, if you want more free science-based content from me, subscribe to my popular Fitness Tip Friday email newsletter, also linked below. Mahalo for watching. Until next time.