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The new GLP-1 and GIP drugs are fascinating, as they do seem to create feelings of satiety after reasonable nutrition in people who have never had that experience before.

With the help of these drugs, it's after consuming far fewer calories than predicted by TDEE regression models that people lose weight and become un-obese. It shows how abnormally slow metabolism may be to blame for obesity, not addiction.

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Given that the TDEE regression models generally predict what is necessary to maintain and not lose weight, it would not be surprising that a substantial lowering of calories over what is modeled for TDEE would be necessary to reduce weight.

This is to maintain the lower weight. So if the TDEE calculators put a 6-ft tall man at 2300 calories/day to be normal weight, a formerly obese person would have to eat no more than , say, 1700 to maintain the same BMI. GLP-1 drugs make this easier to do.

This is purely conjecture, but I strongly suspect that since the GLP-1 drugs lower appetite in general, individuals on them typically do not end up eating high protein diets, where a protein-sparing low calorie diet would be highly beneficial and could likely maintain LBM and TDEE.

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