GLP-1 & body composition
About to start a GLP-1?
Up to 40% of GLP-1 weight loss can be lean mass, not fat. Here's how to start right.
Before your first dose, we need to tell you about our mom.
We're Henry and Jackson, two brothers from Wyoming, and this is the story of the seven months we spent celebrating the wrong number.
You already know a GLP-1 can cost you muscle. Everyone told you. Your prescriber, your feed, the protein aisle at the grocery store.
Nobody gives you a real plan to protect it.
Our mom didn't have one either. Protein powder, gym membership, meal-prep containers. She thought she had it covered.
In the landmark trial that launched the GLP-1 category, researchers measured not just how much weight people lost, but what kind.
Other studies put it closer to 1 in 4 pounds. They disagree on how much. They agree it is a lot.
So the question is: how much will you lose?
Every scale on the market can show you a number. None of them hand you a plan to act on it.
Our mom started on her GLP-1 at 56.
After twenty years of diets that never held, the weight finally came off. Fast.
A pair of jeans she had kept in the closet for fifteen years fit her again. That was real, and we were happy for her.
A pair of jeans can tell you that you are smaller. It cannot tell you what you are made of.
Three months and 23 pounds in, she asked us a question we couldn't answer.
"Am I doing this right?"
Not the medication. That part was working. She meant what was underneath: her energy was dragging, and she felt weaker, not stronger.
Every friend, every doctor, every check-in said she was doing amazing. But she didn't feel it.
Then one afternoon she tried to get up off the floor after playing with her grandkids. Her legs wouldn't do it.
"Just give me a minute," she said. She needed the couch to pull herself up.
She blamed the "dips in energy" everyone talks about on these medications. We blamed age.
It was neither.
She booked a session with the physical therapist she'd seen for hip pain earlier that year, so her old strength numbers were still on file.
He ran the same simple leg test she'd done in the spring. Then he stopped, and asked her to do it again.
She had lost close to half of the strength in her legs.
Half. In seven months.
And here's the scary part: if she hadn't hurt her hip that spring, nobody would have picked up on it.
Here's why it mattered so much.
Muscle burns energy while you rest, which makes it one of the most important parts of your metabolism.
When it drops, your body needs less food to hold the same weight, meaning more stall weeks and less progress.
Muscle is the part of you that burns energy while you do nothing at all.
Month 0
Her floor
Month 7
Same woman, lower floor
Every day, sitting still, she was burning less than she used to. Nothing about her routine had changed.
Illustrative, not to scale.
Our mom felt it long before anyone measured it. Slower out of chairs. Tired by the afternoon. Weaker on the stairs.
Researchers have compared the muscle lost over a full course of treatment to around 20 years of natural muscle aging. Nobody starts a GLP-1 planning to lose twenty years of anything.
Mechanick et al., Obesity Reviews, 2025.
The good news is: this works just as powerfully in the other direction. If you give your muscle a reason to stay, the slowdown is smaller, and your journey becomes a lot easier.
The thing is, none of this was her fault.
Her whole life, when something went wrong with her body, she blamed herself. Not enough willpower. Not enough discipline.
This was not that. She had done everything right. The one thing she missed was never on any list she was handed.
And this is the part we'd give anything to go back and change.
Every parent draws a mark on the doorframe before the school year starts. It works because of when it was drawn: at the start.
A baseline measurement, before you start a GLP-1, is your mark on the doorframe.
Here is the other thing the trial numbers cannot tell you. A small 2025 study of 40 adults found that older adults, women, and people eating less protein lost more muscle on these medications. The population number is not your number. The only way to find out which side of it you are on is a baseline, and you only get one chance to set it.
Haines et al., ENDO 2025 · J Endocr Soc, 2025.
Two women, the same seven months, one difference.
With the mark
Fat and muscle, recorded before day one.
Day 1Month 7
Without it
One number from a bathroom scale.
No day 1Month 7
Illustrative. They lost the same weight. Only one of them can tell you what it was made of.
From that first morning, you can see whether what you're doing about it is actually working.
A bathroom scale can't tell you any of that. It shows your weight, not what your weight is made of.
Our mom's first real measurement happened in month seven, in a physical therapist's office, on a machine she had to book an appointment to stand on.
By then it wasn't a baseline. It was a verdict.
And a verdict is just a baseline that arrived too late to do anything with.
If you're reading this before your first dose, you have an opportunity our mom didn't.
And it expires the morning you start.
We started calling it The Expiring Baseline.
Now, maybe you're already planning for this. Extra protein. 10,000 steps. Our mom's doctor mentioned all of that too.
It is also, almost word for word, what four major medical organizations recommended in 2025 for people on a GLP-1: more protein, resistance training, and tracking your body composition. The advice is known. What follows is why almost nobody manages to follow it.
Joint Advisory: ACLM, ASN, OMA, TOS, 2025.
It's the right instinct, and it's where almost everybody stops. Fewer than half of people on GLP-1s reach the protein target that supports muscle maintenance, and average intake sits around 77 grams a day. Frontiers in Nutrition, 2025.
Not because they don't care. Because generic protein advice was written for people who can eat, and for the days right after a shot, that isn't the situation you're in.
Our mom is living proof that knowing about muscle loss is not the same as managing it.
We couldn't fix it for her. So we built it for the next person. For you.
It's called the Orvi Protect & Grow System.
It does the one thing our mom's approach never could.
The Orvi Body Scan reads your whole body through 8 electrodes, measuring your arms, legs, and torso separately.
It's the same segmental configuration used in clinical devices.
You stand on it for ten seconds, and both numbers load on a simple app.
A home scale isn't a lab, and doesn't pretend to be. What it gives you is the honest weekly trend, so you always know which way your body is truly headed.
If you've already started, it's not too late. The best time to set your baseline was the day of your first shot. The second best is as early as you can.
The big-brand scale at the electronics store costs a lot more, and puts your own data behind a subscription paywall.
None of their products arrive with training and nutrition plans to protect your muscle.
Every Orvi Body Scan arrives with the plans our mom never had.
Works with your shot cycle, not against it: a full protein target for your stronger days. Soft, cold, easy protein on your lowest-appetite days. The target itself is the range the 2025 advisory sets, scaled to your goal weight. Every recommendation is backed by GLP-1 research, with the sources listed in the back.
Gives your muscle a reason to stay, from your own home, with a progression rule that tells you exactly when to go harder. Three home sessions a week, about 30 minutes, bodyweight, band or dumbbell.
Opens with your mark on the doorframe: ten minutes, your numbers, before day one. Runs the Four-Week Review, and compiles everything into a one-page Clinician Summary you can hand across the desk.
And when your body is ready, the Grow and Power plans are built to help you build muscle back, not just protect it. No other system covers both phases.
Measure, fuel, protect. Then rebuild.
Our mom went on to lose 56 pounds. Nobody ever measured what those pounds were made of, and now nobody can.
The only difference between her story and yours is: you have a chance to start this right.
For less than a single month of most GLP-1s, you can start with what our mom never had: a baseline, a protein target, a training plan, and the trends that confirm everything's working.
Try the whole system for 100 days. If it's not for you, email us and we'll organize a refund. The plans are yours to keep either way.
Nobody offers terms like that on something they have to talk you into.
And if you've read this far, you're not browsing. You are preparing. That's the exact instinct this was built for.
Less than a single month of most GLP-1 prescriptions.
You only get one chance to start this right.
Our mom started blind. You don't have to.
P.S. The first time our mom stepped on the Orvi Body Scan, she took a screenshot of the app and sent it to us. Two columns: fat on one side, muscle on the other. Seven months of watching a single number, and these were the first two that showed her what it was made of. Her message was five words: "I wish I had this sooner."
P.P.S. The first morning takes less than ten minutes. Step on the scan. Open the Workbook. Write down your numbers. You won't understand on day one how much that reading will matter. Twelve weeks later you won't be able to imagine having started without it.
P.P.P.S. You cannot set a baseline in month three. That is the only real deadline in any of this, and it is the morning of your first dose.