What Are Trainers For in the GLP-1 Era? with Dr Eric Helms

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Episode Summary
Dr Eric Helms returns to Mikkipedia for an unscripted conversation about GLP-1 medications and what they mean for anyone working in nutrition and fitness. Eric is a coach, athlete, author and educator, part of the 3DMJ coaching team, co-founder of the MASS research review, and co-director of the Sports Performance Research Institute New Zealand (SPRINZ) at AUT, where he is also a senior research fellow. Mikki opens with a personal trainer who was accused of stepping outside her lane for talking about GLP-1s, and the two of them work outwards from there.
The conversation covers whether coaches and nutritionists are within their scope supporting people on these medications, what obesity medicine can miss when a patient's weight loss stalls, and why reduced everyday movement belongs under the heading of metabolic adaptation rather than being treated as a separate problem. Eric separates appetite into distinct drivers — energy signalling, hedonic food seeking and food noise — and explains why that distinction matters clinically. The second half turns to protein, where Eric makes the case that it is a minor player for most people's health outcomes unless intake is genuinely low, and that "which macronutrient is most satiating" is the wrong question in the first place. He is candid throughout about the limits of what is currently known, including several things he says he cannot answer. The episode closes on his argument that trainers have an opportunity to stop being weight loss coaches and get back to promoting health, fitness and movement.
Key Topics
  • Scope of practice. Eric argues the behavioural, lifestyle, nutrition and exercise side of GLP-1 use is squarely within a personal trainer's remit — while cautioning that nobody yet has the twenty years of practitioner experience we have with medications like exogenous insulin.
  • Where the usual trainer skill set doesn't transfer. Most trainers are practised at helping clients restrain appetite. Clients on GLP-1s often have the opposite problem: struggling to eat enough, and needing nutrient quality raised on a low intake.
  • What a stall actually signals. When someone stops tracking calories and their weight loss plateaus, Eric's first read is not under-fuelling — it is that tracking had become tedious and unsustainable, and no second skill set has replaced it. He treats the stall as an opportunity to build other skills rather than a reason to resume tracking.
  • Movement, NEAT and metabolic adaptation. Reductions in spontaneous physical activity and non-exercise activity thermogenesis come from the same mechanisms as the older, narrower idea of a falling metabolic rate. Eric's view is that most of the "side effects" attributed to these drugs are the side effects of successful weight loss.
  • Appetite is not one thing. Eric separates energy signalling (feeling depleted), hedonic food seeking (actively wanting a particular food or experience) and food noise (constant, distracting preoccupation) — then notes satiety has several definitions of its own on top of that.
  • Why near-universal drug response is interesting. In trials of a newer triple-agonist medication, every participant in the higher dose groups lost at least 5–10% of body weight. Eric speculates — and flags it clearly as speculation — that this implies the drug targets more than food noise alone.
  • How much protein actually matters. Eric's position is that protein is a minor player for general population health outcomes unless someone is starting low. Moving from around 0.8–1.1 g/kg to 1.3–1.5 g/kg has a reasonably moderate effect; moving from 1.6 to 2.2 g/kg is minor outside physique sport, where it is "a game of inches".
  • Meeting people where they are. Someone on an intermittent eating pattern may be reaching only 1.1 g/kg, and a poorly constructed plant-based diet 0.9 g/kg. Telling them to double it can read as an impossible barrier. Mikki describes targeting 1.2 g/kg for GLP-1 clients against the 1.8–2.2 g/kg circulating online.
  • Satiety is a meal question, not a macronutrient question. Food weight and volume, texture, hardness, eating rate, energy density, fibre and fluid all matter, and Eric raises an open question he says he cannot answer: whether those levers become more effective in someone on a GLP-1 once the environmental drivers of overeating are suppressed.
  • What trainers are for. Eric suggests fear of professional redundancy drives some anti-GLP-1 feeling in the industry, argues obesity is primarily a built-environment problem needing a societal-scale solution, and makes the case that trainers should return to promoting health, fitness and movement.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
03:36 No small talk and no script
06:59 Are trainers in their lane on GLP-1s?
12:17 Low carb pushback and the naturalistic fallacy
14:38 When weight loss stalls
21:18 Reduced movement, NEAT and metabolic adaptation
24:36 Food noise, hedonic eating and appetite
29:36 What personal trainers are actually for
32:31 Bodybuilding, diet culture and physical culture
38:55 How much protein do we really need?
46:36 What actually drives satiety
55:57 Where to find Eric
Guest / Resources
Dr Eric Helms
  • Coach, athlete, author and educator; a personal trainer since the early 2000s, with a background in the US Air Force and commercial gyms.
  • Part of 3DMJ, coaching drug-free strength and physique competitors.
  • Co-founder of the MASS research review (Monthly Applications in Strength Sport), produced with Dr Eric Trexler, Dr Lauren Colenso-Semple and Dr Michael Zourdos, running since 2017 — massresearchreview.com
  • Co-director of the Sports Performance Research Institute New Zealand (SPRINZ) at AUT, and a senior research fellow supervising Masters and PhD students.
  • Instagram: @Helms3DMJ
  • Co-host of the Iron Culture podcast.
Also mentioned
  • Mikkipedia episode 390 — "Living the Bodybuilding Lifestyle with Eric Helms", the previous conversation Mikki refers to: podcast.mikkiwilliden.com/390
  • Docs Who Lift — the podcast from Dr Spencer Nadolsky and Dr Karl Nadolsky, recommended by Eric.
  • Barbell Medicine — Dr Austin Baraki and Dr Jordan Feigenbaum, recommended by Eric for their work on HRT, testosterone replacement therapy and GLP-1 medications.
  • The protein leverage hypothesis — the idea that people keep eating until they reach a protein threshold; Eric notes that threshold sits around 12–13% of energy.
  • The Minnesota semi-starvation study — referenced by Eric as background on the transient, biologically driven effects of dieting.
  • The physical culture movement of the early 1900s, and Bernarr Macfadden as a figure within it.
  • A recent conference abstract indicating people on GLP-1s may be less active than they otherwise would be — described by Mikki, not named in the episode.
  • A paper on protein requirements that Eric co-authored — referred to by Mikki but not named in the episode.
  • An Iron Culture episode on protein and satiety above roughly 1.6 g/kg — recalled by Mikki, episode not identified.

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