Can GLP-1 Drugs Enhance Athletic Performance?

• Debates are emerging over whether GLP-1 drugs boost athletic performance.
• However, experts say the loss of lean mass associated with using these drugs may cancel out any competitive advantages.
• They say it’s essential to consider the legitimate medical uses of these medications before setting policy.
• More data is needed before sports organizations can make a decision that protects both athletes and sports.

When do medications cross over from being about better health to providing an unfair boost to athletic performance?

As more and more people, including well-known athletes like tennis champion Serena Williams, use popular GLP-1 drugs like Wegovy and Mounjaro (her medication of choice), to lose weight and get back in shape, this question is being asked more frequently.

“I’ve got more energy for my workouts,” Williams proclaims in advertising for tele-health company Ro, with Ro further adding that it “helped her get back to her strongest self.”

But is that just adspeak? Or do GLP-1s actually give athletes a physical advantage over those who don’t use them?

Williams herself told Women’s Health that, “Being on a GLP-1 definitely doesn’t take away from who I am as a professional athlete.

“In fact, I am enjoying sports now more than ever. And my body feels good doing it,” she added, noting that she would “never take a shortcut to living a healthy life.”

Karthik Achari, founder and CEO of PepMD, said that the strongest argument against GLP-1s being PEDs is the fact that the drugs would likely harm athletic performance more than they would help.

“About 25 to 35% of the weight lost on GLP-1s is lean mass,” he explained. “For an athlete whose performance depends on power, explosiveness, and strength, that’s a real cost that may offset the body composition benefit entirely.”

This occurs, he said, because people on GLP-1s don’t selectively burn fat. Instead, the body draws from both fat and muscle.

“An athlete who is lighter but weaker isn’t necessarily a better athlete,” said Achari.

Another concern is that elite athletes often need a large number of calories to support their intensive training regimens and recovery.

“Appetite suppression and delayed gastric emptying make that intake genuinely difficult,” he said, adding that recovery is especially important since this is when the adaptations that lead to improvement in performance occur.

Achari further noted the lack of direct scientific evidence, since most trials have included patients with obesity and diabetes, not elite athletes.

“Extrapolating from ‘this drug helps a sedentary obese patient lose weight’ to ‘this drug improves elite athletic performance’ is a longer logical jump than the popular debate acknowledges,” he said.

Achari added that improvements seen by athletes like Serena Williams are probably downstream effects of losing weight and getting back into shape, rather than the drug providing any direct benefits to performance.

In other words, these improvements would occur even without the medication.

Achari said he believes that WADA has made the right call with its current monitoring approach.

“Surveillance without prohibition gives the field time for data to accumulate while avoiding enforcement problems against athletes who may have legitimate medical reasons to use these drugs,” he said, noting that making a distinction between medical use and performance-driven use is going to be essential.

Athletes with documented type 2 diabetes, obesity, or other metabolic diseases are using these medications quite differently from athletes who may be obtaining them to alter their body composition.

“The TUE [Therapeutic Use Exemption] framework already handles this kind of distinction for other prescription medications,” said Achari. “Adapting it thoughtfully to GLP-1s preserves access for athletes who need the drugs medically while creating a documentation pathway that addresses the performance-use concerns.”

Achari said he’d also advise paying attention to the gray market for GLP-1s, which he says is “enormous and largely invisible.” Athletes obtaining research peptides from offshore sources are taking vastly different risks than those who are purchasing FDA-approved medications, including contamination, mislabelling, and inactive compounds.

“Any regulatory framework that focuses on the molecule without addressing the source is missing where most of the actual harm comes from,” he said.

Finally, Achari reiterated the need for more research in healthy populations rather than extrapolating from existing studies.

“The honest position for sports organizations right now is that the science isn’t where it needs to be for confident classification calls,” he said. “Holding that uncertainty publicly while monitoring continues is the right approach, even though the pressure to act decisively is real.”