Your first 90 days on a GLP-1
Week by week: what the starter dose actually feels like, when appetite changes show up, when your provider will titrate, and the three weeks most people find hardest.
GLP-1 medications shrink your appetite before they shrink your nutritional requirements. That gap is where the problems live: muscle loss, fatigue, hair thinning, and the kind of weight loss that comes back the moment you stop.
Protein first, always
Aim for roughly 0.7 to 1.0 grams of protein per pound of your goal body weight, daily. For a 200 lb person targeting 160 lb, that is about 110 to 160 grams. On a suppressed appetite this is genuinely hard, which is why it goes first in every meal.
| Goal weight | Daily protein target | Rough per-meal split |
|---|---|---|
| 140 lb | 100–140 g | 35–45 g across 3 meals |
| 160 lb | 112–160 g | 40–50 g across 3 meals |
| 180 lb | 126–180 g | 45–60 g across 3 meals |
| 200 lb | 140–200 g | 50–65 g across 3 meals |
If you eat only one thing at a meal, make it the protein. Carbohydrates and fat will find their way in. Protein will not.
Time your week around your injection
Most people feel worst in the 24 to 48 hours after dosing. Build the week around that rather than fighting it.
- Injection day and day after: bland, low-fat, high-protein. Greek yoghurt, eggs, chicken broth, protein shakes.
- Days 3–5: appetite returns. This is when you cook properly and hit your protein hardest.
- Days 6–7: appetite may be near normal. Do not overcorrect — this is where the week's calories quietly reappear.
Foods that reliably trigger nausea
Individual tolerance varies, but the pattern is consistent enough to be useful.
- Fried and high-fat food — the most common offender by a wide margin
- Large volumes of anything, even healthy food
- Alcohol, which also hits harder on a GLP-1
- Very sweet foods and sugary drinks
- Carbonated drinks, which add volume to an already slow-emptying stomach
When you genuinely cannot eat
There will be days when nothing appeals. Have a fallback that requires no decision-making.
- A protein shake with milk — 30 to 40 g in something you can drink cold
- Greek yoghurt with a scoop of protein powder stirred in
- Cottage cheese, which is high protein and low effort
- Bone broth with an unflavoured protein isolate
The four-week build
Week one, track protein only and ignore everything else. Week two, add a vegetable to two meals a day. Week three, add resistance training twice a week — see the training guide. Week four, look at fibre, aiming for 25 to 35 grams daily.
Stacking one habit at a time works. Attempting all four in week one is why most people abandon the plan by week three.
This is education, not a prescription. Doses, targets and schedules described here are illustrative. What is right for you depends on your history, your labs and your provider’s judgement.