I don’t think I’ve seen much discussion here on anyone that has actually used Tirzepatide (or Semaglutide) whilst also training with TrainerRoad, so thought I’d share my experience. Apologies, it’s turned out to be a long read.
Tl;dr: 282w FTP, 110.9kg rider starts Tirzepatide; rapidly loses weight AND fitness; recovers fitness to ~280w 3 months later, with 14kg weight drop. Struggling to raise FTP any further, with weight still dropping but at slower rate.
Brief context: I’ve always been a heavy lad. Classic rugby player build with plenty of muscle, plenty more fat - especially around the middle. Tried every type of diet and had intermittent success. Went keto in 2018 and went down from 105kg to 85-90kg, but soon ballooned back up and sat unhappily around 110kg for years.
I’ve never been a particularly great cyclist but I was pretty consistently training around 2018/19 and hit an FTP of 291 (which is only about 3w/kg for me) and did some triathlons with limited success. 2020-2022 were incredibly inconsistent with bursts of enthusiasm followed by literal months off the bike. But I was more consistent in 2023 and pretty good in 2024 (I should be clear - my consistent is 2-4 times a week, nothing crazy!) so my FTP rose from 239 in January 2024 to 282 in July. But the same day, I weighed in at 110.9kg for a distinctively average 2.45w/kg FTP.
Starting Tirzepatide (Mounjaro here in the UK): Coincidentally, the next day I started jabbing myself. Here in the UK you can get a private prescription of Mounjaro for about £175-200 a month and other than the embarrassment of having to send topless photos to the GP, it was a pretty painless process.
Unless you’ve been fat before, it’s hard for me to explain the mental shift. Literally that day, all of the food noise that I’ve had 24/7 in my head just vanished. I didn’t feel the need to snack at all that day. The next day I couldn’t finish a sandwich for lunch. That was the first time in living memory that I have not finished what was on my plate. Suddenly, I didn’t feel the overwhelming compulsion to binge. I could just… eat normally. It was literally game changing. Turns out eating well is easy when your brain is constantly telling you to eat another biscuit (or maybe the whole pack) or a bag of crisps, or a chocolate bar. Again, if you’ve never been fat this is probably difficult to understand.
Training impact: But I wanted to talk more about the impact on my training. And again, the impact was pretty immediate - but not for the better.
It genuinely felt like someone had yanked 30w out of my body overnight. I struggled to complete a 45min sweetspot. I had to reduce the intensity of an endurance ride. I completely lost my confidence in successfully riding a TR workout without drastically reducing the intensity each time. So right or wrong, I opted out of structured training. I went to the woods and rode my bike around for a bit, just enjoying myself. I don’t have a power meter so no idea how well I was riding. It took me 6 weeks to do another TR workout and although they were hard, I could complete them. End August I measured in at 271w FTP and a month later I was back up to 278w. But that 278w was now at 97kg, so my w/kg was vastly improved.
To be honest, my FTP hasn’t changed much since then. I’m sitting at 282w today. My weight loss has slowed (my wife had a baby in November so frankly I was appreciative that I’d stayed at the same weight as normally it would have skyrocketed with the stress). But I’m now sitting at 92kg and once again trending downwards. What was an FTP of 2.45w/kg is now 3.06w/kg.
Where now? Well I’d like to see what I feel like around 80kg but I’m not rushing anything. Similarly I’d like to see a 300w FTP for nothing but pure ego, but I’m not in a hurry. Consistency at low volume is what I’m aiming for. I might do some races this Summer. I’ve never done any organised ride, let alone a race, on a MTB before, nor gravel. So that sounds like fun. And if I can get somewhere near 80kg, I might even be relatively fast!
Anyway, hope that’s interesting to someone out there. Be interested to hear others’ experiences if they’ve dabbled in the Magic Jabs.
