There is a lot of buzz about peptides like BPC-157, TB-500, MOTS-C and obviously GLP-1 agonists in the health and fitness world. Every influencer seems to have their favorite “stack” of them that promise energy, endurance, fat burning and general injury healing.
As Matt Kaberlein explains thinking of “peptides” as one thing is silly the same way that talking about “drugs” or “medications” is silly and simplistic.
While I personally have no interest in body building or getting juiced on steroids, I find that many folks in the body building world provide a lot of interesting insights into various treatments and their side effects. The best example are Vigorous Steve who produces fascinating deep dives on various compounds and Chase Irons who does ridiculous self experiments while carefully keeping his bloodwork under control.
From my research (if you can call watching a bunch of YouTube videos and googling things that) it seems the most interesting peptides that are worth exploring are:
– L-Carnitine: helps with endurance and fat metabolism.
– BPC-157/TB-500: often referred to as the Wolverine stack, this combo seems widely regarded as useful in improving soft tissue healing after injury or surgery.
– MOTS-C: considered an energy booster that improves mitochondrial efficiency.
Category: Weight loss
Reality hits at annual physical
After years of not getting a physical (out of laziness and the fear “they will just tell me to lose weight and eat broccoli”), I finally got a physical last October.
I knew I had gained a lot of weight but seeing “373lbs” on the scale gave me a profound shock. I had fastidiously avoided weighing myself for years… in that moment I decided something had to change. My doctor (actually a great NP) gave me the usual speech “you should lose some weight” but to her credit she also suggested that a GLP-1 agonist could help.
Being an engineer I started reading everything I could and looking for tools to help me that day. I started counting calories and living at a 500-1000 calorie deficit the next day. I almost immediately started losing weight. Getting the Zepbound subscription took a few more weeks.
For me the calorie deficit and focus on getting lots of protein is the trick. This obviously requires some willpower but that is where Zepbound came in and took away a lot of “food noise”.
It’s really not *that* hard, decide you will stick to what the tracking app tells you (I use MacroFactor), weigh yourself every day and track with a tool like Happy Scale.
For me this has been spectacularly successful but of course the trick will be to keep the weight off.
