A good week of getting lean is unglamorous and repeatable: a protein target hit on most days, two or three resistance sessions containing genuinely hard sets, daily walking, the injection on its scheduled day, and one short session with a tape measure. Nothing in it is dramatic. The reason it works is that all five things happen again next week, and the week after. This article puts numbers on the parts where the evidence supplies them, and says so plainly where it does not.

A good week: the protein target met on most days, two or three resistance sessions with hard sets, walking that accumulates without being scheduled around, the medication taken on its day, and one measurement. It is judged on whether it repeats, not on how it felt.

What does the week look like on one page?

Here is the whole thing, and the rest of the article is detail on each line.

  • Protein: 1.2–1.6 g per kg of body weight per day, in meals of at least about 25–30 g (Leidy 2015).
  • Resistance training: two or three sessions. Hard sets, taken close to failure, on the major movements.
  • Walking: daily, accumulated. No step target here — see below for why.
  • Medication: on its scheduled day, at the dose your prescriber has set.
  • Measurement: weight and waist, on a fixed day, plus whatever loads you handled in training.

That is five lines. The failure mode is almost never the plan — it is that one line quietly drops out and nothing notices for six weeks.

How much protein, and per kilogram of what?

1.2 to 1.6 g per kilogram of body weight per day, during active weight loss.

That range comes from a review of protein and weight management, which found that intakes of 1.2–1.6 g/kg/day, with meal-specific quantities of at least around 25–30 g of protein per meal, improved appetite, body-weight management and cardiometabolic markers compared with lower-protein diets (Leidy 2015). The paper's own worked examples land at roughly 89–119 g a day for women and 104–138 g a day for men.

The denominator is the part people get wrong, and it is worth stating flatly: this range is per kilogram of body weight. There is a second, much higher figure in circulation — 2.3 to 3.1 g/kg/day — and it uses a completely different denominator, fat-free mass, and comes from lean resistance-trained athletes in caloric restriction (Helms 2014). Applying that number to body weight produces a target far above anything the evidence supports for someone starting treatment.

There is also a ceiling. Pooling 49 trials and 1,863 participants, protein supplementation added on top of resistance training produced a modest but real increase in fat-free mass — and no further fat-free-mass benefit above roughly 1.62 g per kg of body mass per day (Morton 2018).

Spread it out. In a controlled crossover study of eight healthy adults, an even distribution of about 30 g at each of three meals produced a 24-hour muscle protein synthesis rate 25% higher than the same daily total skewed into one large dinner (Mamerow 2014). Eight people is a small mechanistic study rather than a large trial, but the practical instruction it points to costs nothing: protein at breakfast and lunch, not only at dinner.

This matters more on GLP-1 medication than off it, because there is less room. In a crossover trial, semaglutide reduced measured food intake across a single laboratory test day by about 24% versus placebo (Blundell 2017) — a single laboratory test-day measurement rather than a record of tracked daily eating, so it should not be read as a daily percentage. When total intake falls, protein has to be placed deliberately or it gets squeezed out first.

What does that look like at a hawker centre?

Some dishes carry the protein and some do not, and the gap is larger than it looks.

A laboratory analysis of 45 dishes from a Singapore food court measured energy and protein per portion. Among them: steamed chicken rice at 412 g per portion, 777 kcal and 38.3 g of protein; char siew wanton noodle at 335 g, 402 kcal and 26.5 g; minced meat mee pok at 383 g, 620 kcal and 31.8 g; roasted chicken rice at 285 g, 523 kcal and 23.7 g. At the other end, char kway teow at 362 g gave 659 kcal and 14.5 g of protein, and roti prata at 246 g gave 511 kcal and 6.2 g (Yeo 2021).

Two cautions on those figures. They are one food-court outlet per dish rather than an average across stalls, and the variants are specific — it is the char siew wanton noodle, the minced meat mee pok, and two different chicken rice preparations, which are not interchangeable with every version on every menu.

For the calorie side rather than the protein side, HPB's Healthier Dining Programme identifies dish categories providing 500 kcal or less, including yong tau foo soup with no more than two fried items of six, fish sliced soup, fishball noodles, minced pork noodles, Hakka thunder tea rice, and economy rice with two non-fried vegetables (HPB Intrinsic Lower Calorie Food list). That list confirms a category ceiling; it does not give a protein figure for any of them.

Our ranking of hawker dishes by protein per calorie goes dish by dish.

How much training, and what kind?

Two or three sessions a week, built around sets taken close to failure. That is the whole prescription; the rest is preference.

Why it is in the plan at all. Across 114 trials covering 4,184 people with overweight and obesity, lean mass was statistically unchanged when resistance training accompanied caloric restriction (Lopez 2022). This is the single input that changes what the weight loss is made of.

How little is enough to count. In resistance-trained men, one hard set per exercise of 6–12 repetitions at about 70–85% of one-rep max, two to three times a week, taken to failure, produced significant strength gains across 8–12 weeks (Androulakis-Korakakis 2020). The authors describe that as suboptimal — a floor, not a target — and they tested resistance-trained men, flagging that it is unclear whether it generalises to trained women or to highly trained strength athletes.

More sets do more, with diminishing returns. Each additional weekly set per muscle group was associated with about 0.37% more hypertrophy in the continuous analysis (Schoenfeld 2017). The often-quoted "10 sets a week" threshold comes from a categorical comparison in that same paper which was not statistically significant, so treat it as a habit rather than a line.

Two sessions is not a compromise. When weekly volume is held constant, spreading it across one, two or three sessions produced similar muscle growth (Schoenfeld 2019).

The weight on the bar matters less than the effort. When sets are taken to muscular failure, light and heavy loads produced similar muscle growth, though heavy loads produced greater maximal strength (Schoenfeld 2017). Someone training at home with limited equipment is not locked out; someone doing comfortable sets of 20 is.

A workable Monday: one session on legs and back, one on chest, shoulders and arms, a third if the week allows. Log the loads. See the minimum effective dose of resistance training for the session structure.

Where do walking and sleep fit?

Both belong in the week. Neither gets a target number here, for different reasons.

Walking. There is no step-count figure in the evidence this article rests on. What exists is a minutes figure, and it is about maintenance after weight loss rather than about fat loss: the ACSM position stand associates more than 250 minutes a week of physical activity with improved maintenance, on cross-sectional and prospective evidence — and the same document states that no well-designed randomised trials exist to judge whether physical activity prevents regain (Donnelly 2009). Walk daily, accumulate it, and treat 250 minutes a week as a reference point rather than a rule.

Sleep. No hours target appears here, because what the evidence describes is composition rather than a number to hit. In a two-week randomised crossover, ten adults with overweight dieted at the same energy deficit under an 8.5-hour and then a 5.5-hour nightly sleep opportunity. Total weight lost was statistically identical across the two conditions — but on short sleep a smaller share of that weight came from fat and a larger share from fat-free mass (Nedeltcheva 2010). That was ten completers, only three of them women, over fourteen days, at a mean BMI of 27.4, and the underlying proportions carry standard deviations that overlap substantially — a small mechanistic study rather than a rule. It is enough to place sleep alongside protein and training: an input that acts on what the deficit is made of, not on how fast the scale moves.

What about the injection day?

Fix it, keep it, and let the prescriber own the dose.

Pick a day that suits the week and stay on it, so the dose becomes a habit rather than a decision. If a dose is missed, Singapore's registered instruction is to take it within 5 days of the missed dose for semaglutide, and within 4 days for tirzepatide — noting that the tirzepatide product registered in Singapore is registered for type 2 diabetes rather than for weight management; past that window, skip it and resume on the regular day (National Drug Formulary Singapore). That is label information, not an instruction to act on alone — dose decisions belong with your prescriber. We cover the detail in what to do about a missed dose.

Gastrointestinal reactions cluster around dose escalation. In the US prescribing information for semaglutide 2.4 mg injection, nausea was reported in 44% of treated adults versus 16% on placebo, with constipation at 24% versus 11%, and the label states these reactions were most frequently reported during dosage escalation (prescribing information). The tirzepatide US label states that the majority of nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea events occurred during dose escalation and decreased over time (prescribing information) — without specifying how long that takes. These are US label figures; Singapore's warnings and interactions sections are not published on the public formulary portal.

If symptoms are severe, persistent, or you are unsure whether something is normal, contact your prescriber rather than pushing through a week. Our list of red flags worth a call covers what should not wait.

At GetLean, a patient has a monthly check-in with Dr Quek, and between those reviews the route is the clinic's WhatsApp number. Someone replies between 9am and 9pm, seven days a week, and anything clinical goes to Dr Quek. Outside those hours an urgent symptom does not wait for a reply: go to an emergency department, or call 995 if it is an emergency.

What should you measure, and how often?

Three things, on a fixed day, so the week has a scoreboard.

  • Weight, at a consistent frequency. Among 3,003 registry members followed for a year, those who reduced how often they weighed themselves regained a mean of 4.0 kg, against 1.8 kg in those whose frequency was unchanged and 1.1 kg in those who increased it (Butryn 2007). Observational, in a self-selected group of people who had already succeeded — but the association held independently of the other factors measured.
  • Waist against height. Across 78 studies in 14 countries, a boundary of about 0.5 — waist under half your height — best discriminated cardiometabolic risk (Browning 2010). It is a screening heuristic rather than a diagnostic cut-point.
  • Loads in training. Track them because strength is worth keeping in its own right. Rising loads are not evidence that muscle is being held — in a randomised trial, about 7% weight loss by dieting reduced lean mass measurably while strength did not change at all (Weiss 2017).

At GetLean, our philosophy is that GLP-1 medication should act as a catalyst — not something to depend on indefinitely. A week like the one above is what the catalyst is for: the medication makes the deficit easier to hold, and the protein and the training are what decide what that deficit is made of. Individual results vary, and clinical-trial figures describe the populations that were studied. Anyone with an existing medical condition should speak to a doctor before starting resistance training or substantially changing their diet. If you are considering treatment, check your eligibility.

Common questions

How much protein a day should I eat while losing weight?

Guidance during energy restriction lands at 1.2–1.6 g per kg of body weight per day, with meals of at least about 25–30 g of protein (Leidy 2015). That paper's own worked examples come to roughly 89–119 g a day for women and 104–138 g a day for men. The denominator is body weight, not fat-free mass.

Why do some sources say 2.3 to 3.1 g of protein per kilogram?

Because that figure uses a different denominator. It is 2.3–3.1 g per kg of fat-free mass per day, derived in lean resistance-trained athletes during caloric restriction — men at 23% body fat or less and women at 35% or less, with more than six months of resistance training (Helms 2014). Applying it to body weight overstates the target substantially, and the population it came from is not most people starting treatment.

What is the minimum training that does anything?

In resistance-trained men, one hard set per exercise of 6–12 repetitions at about 70–85% of one-rep max, two to three times a week, taken to failure, produced significant strength gains over 8–12 weeks (Androulakis-Korakakis 2020). The authors call that dose suboptimal — a floor rather than a target — and it was tested in trained men only.

How many steps a day should I be doing?

No step target appears in this article, because steps have a mortality evidence base rather than a body-composition one — the largest synthesis of device-measured step counts studied death, cardiovascular disease, dementia and depression, and did not study body composition at all (Ding 2025). Walking is very well evidenced for how long you live and poorly evidenced for what you are made of. The figure that does exist is about maintenance after weight loss: more than 250 minutes a week of physical activity is associated with better maintenance, on cross-sectional and prospective data, and the position stand itself notes no randomised trials support it (Donnelly 2009).

What if I miss my weekly injection?

Singapore's registered instruction is within 5 days of the missed dose for semaglutide and within 4 days for tirzepatide; past that, skip it and resume on the regular day (National Drug Formulary Singapore). The tirzepatide product registered in Singapore is registered for type 2 diabetes rather than for weight management. Dose decisions are clinical — follow your prescriber's instruction rather than acting on a label summary.