Oxytocin for Fat Loss and Muscle Preservation: What the Data Shows

0:09 Hey everybody, this is Hunter Williams. I hope you were doing amazing wherever you might be in the world today.

0:39 And I actually want to give credit where credit's due. If you check out Alex Kickle, you should look them up if you're on YouTube or Instagram or whatever. He had originally mentioned this to me and I had a lot of people start asking me about it. I was like, I don't know that oxytocin works for fat loss or works body recomp, but let me look into it because I'd always used it just more of a mood enhancer. something that Taylor and I could use to just maybe do before date night or something like that to spend better quality time together and kind of relax

1:09 and just kind-of induce a state of relaxation. It also works really well for constipation too as an aside I'm not really going to talk about that today. But anyway, I started to look into the data and I was like, oh wow, there's actually a lot of clinical data to suggest that oxytocin does work well for fat loss and particularly it helps with the preservation of muscle or potentially even building muscle. So it's pretty cool. And I put together a lots of data today for today's video. and wanted to show you guys and just kind of walk you through what that looks like, why it works for fat loss, but then also to how you would use it.

1:40 So I hope you enjoy this one as much as I enjoyed making it and making the slides and doing the research for it, and everything. Don't forget, if you're watching this, just make sure you are on the email list because I send out notifications now about new videos and things like that on that email lists because the YouTube channel is down and I know that was a way that most people found the videos. And I think based on the data that I can see, probably the video are getting about 90% less views, which I totally understand because the YouTube channel is out. But anyway, just so you can keep up with me because that is where I am publishing stuff now is through Spotify and through the podcast platform like iTunes

2:16 and all that good stuff. Thank you guys so much. This one's going to be a cool one. Let's drop in and I'm going share my screen. Today we're going learn about oxytocin for fat loss. All right, I am Hunter Williams. Today's video is all about oxytocin specifically for fat loss. So let's get into it. Just as a background and aside, let us examine what oxy tosine is. You probably heard of it, almost everyone has. However, lets look at what it does. Oxytosin is actually a peptide hormone produced in the hypothalamus and released by the posterior pituitary gland. It is often nicknamed the love hormone or the binding hormone.

2:47 First wrote when social bonding trust and maternal behaviors also oxytocin has an important physical has tons of important physiological functions about the body. It acts by binding to specific oxy tosine receptors and various tissues including the brain uterus breast heart gut and for the purpose of today's video even fat cells. And so it not only facilitates emotional connections, but also helps regulate eating behavior and metabolism. So how does it work? And basically what I'm going to talk, not necessarily in this video about endogenous oxytocin production, I am going talk about when we administer it exotically

3:21 either through a subcutaneous injection or a nasal spray, which is probably what most people do, even though I think the injections are better. Anyway, let's look at what happens when the body injects or someone inject oxytocin in their body. So oxy tosin binds to G protein coupled receptors throughout the brain and body, which then triggers cellular signaling cascades. It next works on brain modulation. So in the brain, it modulates neurotransmitters and neural circuits involved in reward, stress, and satiety.

3:51 And this is where we get this kind of brain effect of oxytocin, because it's really working on these neurotranmiters. However, peripherally it acts on adipose or fat tissue and the GI tract to affect metabolism and muscle contractions, which is again, for the purposes of this video, something that I didn't really understand and probably didn't notice as much practically speaking and I haven't really used it in the manner that I'll get into in The Protocol. But we know for a fact and that's what we're going to review today on how this works from a fat loss perspective.

4:23 So first, let's look at the appetite control. Oxytocin interacts with the brain's appetite controls centers by sending signals from the hypothalamic neurons to areas that regulate hunger and fullness. What else does that sound like? GLP-1 peptides, right? They work very similarly. And I think as we go through this, the conclusion you're probably going to come to is, huh, if I want to make sure that I'm cycling on and off GLPs, or if want make that sure I am staying on a lower dose of GLPS and not taking the dose too high, maybe oxytocin is an adjunct,

4:53 an off-cycle peptide that I could use in the meantime. So through these pathways, oxytocin enhances feelings of society and reduces the rewarding aspect of eating, especially for high calorie foods. Again, what else does that sound like? A GLP, right? And studies a single intranasal dose reduce calorie intake at buffet meals, particularly cutting fat intake and raise levels of CCK, which is a gut hormone that signals satiety. Remarkably, oxytocin also achieved this reduction without significantly altering self-reported appetite, suggesting it subtly makes people eat less by

5:28 increasing satisfaction. And I think when you contrast this with the GLPs, obviously GLP's, the appetite suppression that we get from GLPS is noticeable and it is also something that we say, hey, this GLP is directly affecting my appetite and I know it and i'm witnessing this in real time. Whereas when we look at the oxytocin and the data that, we have around oxy tosine, the people are not reporting that their appetite is different. They're just eating less. Where as with trzapotide specifically, or even retotrutide, people, are eating, less because in fact they say that my, appetite,

6:04 is gone. which I think is a good thing, right? Because it's helping people in the way we need to be helped. However, what's pretty cool about this is the people are subconsciously eating less than they would normally without feeling like they don't eat. And I when we look at GLPs, one of the, Complaints I hear sometimes is that people will say, I actually don't really want that much appetite suppression because I want to feel like I'm eating and enjoy the process of eating. And I think we would look at oxytocin, especially in a short window, because the effects of oxytoxin at least as it stands now when we administer it are

6:38 very short lived because it has a has short half life. You could use this right before a meal, enjoy your meal but then also end up eating less and still feeling satisfied. where I'll admit to this myself, even GLPs, you'll eat till you're full, but you are not actually satisfied, if that makes sense. And maybe if someone else has experienced that you can put that in the comments. But sometimes I notice that myself as I eat to a full but I'm not really actually and the GLP is working, but it doesn't give me that satisfaction. So anyway, just food for thought, that I thought it was pretty cool.

7:09 Now let's look at the metabolic enhancement side of things. Oxytocin causes a measurable switch from carbohydrate burning to fat oxidation during metabolism, helping the body burn calories from fats, fat stores more easily. Where else do we see this? Obviously, GLPs ones will see a little bit of this. L-carnitine, you'll see this a lot. I think L carnitin is the most prominent thing that comes to mind when we look at this oxidation of fatty acids. And then obviously things like doing faster cardio help as well. We also see improved insulin sensitivity from oxytocin to the hormone improves insulin, sensitivity, helping bodies manage blood sugar more effectively

7:41 and reducing fat storage potential, which I And so when we look at the main mechanisms of fat loss around oxytocin, we have one appetite suppression. So it acts on the hypothalamus and brainstem to curb hunger, amplify satiety signals and reduce appeal of high fat foods, which I think if we are being honest with ourselves and we looked at what causes people to get fat, it's the combination of hi fat with high carbohydrate. You can do a high carbohydrate diet that are clean carbohydrates with protein, as long as you're not adding in too many trans fats and vegetable oils.

8:15 I think people can a keto and carnivore diet and lose a lot of weight if they're doing low carb. However, it's these high fat with high sugar processed foods that're causing a lotta the metabolic dysregulation in our society today. And what's cool about oxytocin is it actually works to reduce the craving for higher fat foods, which I Again, if we're being honest, that we could use one variable to help people lose weight, it would be to reduce the amount of dietary fat that they are taking in. I'm not saying that's everything, just my opinion based on what I've seen in working with people. We also have lipolysis activation. So oxytocin directly stimulates fat cell breakdown, increasing the release of fatty acids and glycerol from stored triglycerides.

8:52 And I think, again, we look at people that are really struggling with losing weight. That's one thing that they really need help with. You'll see a lot of times when someone's obese, the way I tell is looking at their blood work and seeing the amount of triglicerides is telling me how much inflammatory fat they have on their body. It's kind of an upstream marker for that. It also enhances fat burning. So it ensures freed fatty acids get oxidized for energy rather than restored, lowering respiratory quotient toward pure fat-burning. We also see reduced fat storage. Oxytocin decreases fatty acid synthase expression, reducing the body's fat making machinery and preventing excess calorie storage,

9:27 so again, we know that it's curbing the appetite. the desire for high fat foods, but also what it's doing is preventing the fat that is coming through our food from being stored as fat on the body. And then also to another aspect we're going to talk a little bit about is the muscle preservation. Weight loss comes preferentially from fat stores while preserving or even increasing in a lot of cases. A lot times, I'm just going be honest, this comes with people doing the right things, training, eating protein, resistance training things of that nature.

9:58 However, we do see an increase in lean muscle mass in some cases. And so when we look at recomping, if you're someone that's maybe in the 15 body percent fat range or body fat percent range as a man, this could be a really cool tool because we see maybe even an increasing lean, muscle, mass, but also some of these other pathways that are working to help with fat loss. I'm not going to sit here and tell you guys to your face that this is going be as good as read a true tide. It's not 100% point blank. However, again, we talk about cycling, when we talked about other adjunct things we can add on, and we've talked controlling appetite,

10:32 maybe a little bit more, if the appetite's out of control, this is something that works really well. Let's look at some direct action on fat cells. Oxytocin can directly act on fatty cells through oxytosin receptors present in the adipose tissue. And again all the GLP1s, all of the SLUPE, All the ATX304 is not going to work specifically on this. I'm not saying those things are bad, But this is what's pretty cool when I started to dig into this. So studies show that oxytocin stimulates lipolysis, which is the breakdown of triglycerides and fat cells into free fatty acids and glycerol.

11:04 Whenever you hear someone say lipolysis sounds like a fancy word. Really what they're saying is, the break down of the trig glycyrides in the fat, cells, into, free, fatty, acids, and cholesterol freeing them up. When oxytocin is added to fat cells in vitro or in culture petri dishes, it is shown to increase the release of glycerol and fatty acids indicating stored fat is being broken down. In animal studies, oxytoxin treatments activated enzymes like hormone-sensitive lipase in white fat tissue, accelerating fat catabolism and making more

11:36 fat available to be burned as fuel. Which is pretty cool because when we look at this white-fat, it's activating enzymes within the white fat tissue which is going to accelerate this basically metabolization of fat and making it more available to be burned as fuel which then gets it off our body which that makes us leaner and everyone's happy and we get to live a better life and more healthier which I thought was pretty cool. Looking at animal study results, so the average weight loss, and this was, I believe, from a meta-analysis that I pulled, the Average Weight Loss in diet-induced obese rats with continuous oxytocin infusions over several weeks was 25% of their total body mass.

12:14 around 40% of that was actual visceral fat loss. So the reduction in dangerous belly fat, even compared to control animals with the same amount of food intake. They were eating the amount food and they lost 40 percent of the visceral fat. There was 100% muscle preservation, so lean muscle mass maintained or increased while losing fat again on the And animal studies consistently show that oxytocin-treated subjects lost more weight than expected from calorie reduction alone, implying a significant metabolic boost just beyond appetite suppression.

12:47 Let's look at some human trials because those were mice. Early pilot studies in humans showed remarkable promise. One trial in adults with obesity found that eight weeks of intra-nasal oxytoxin at 24 IUs four times daily led to an average of 9% reduction in body weight comparable to established weight loss medications like GLP-1. Now, let me convert that for you. If you ever see IUs of oxytocin, basically one IU equals two micrograms of Oxytosin. So in this case, this would be basically 48 Ius or excuse me, 48 micro grams or for all intents and purposes of us doing reconstitution math,

13:22 50 micro-gram of oxygen four times per day intranasally. And so I would imagine that that was once in the morning, once before breakfast or at breakfast. the meals through day. So first thing in the morning and then one at every meal through the rest of the day Now when we look at GLPs based on a lot of data, there's different data from different studies, but 9% in body weight reduction in eight weeks is not nothing. Is it as much as red at true tide? Eh, I mean it's right up there, But it is nothing, so what's cool about this, and again, this is NOT happening with GLP's,

13:57 it happening less with red true time, let's look this. Participants not only lost weight, but also had reductions in waist circumference and fat mass. Another trial in older adults with obesity found that 12 weeks of oxytocin treatment significantly increased lean muscle mass by around two kilograms while reducing fat, mass and lowering their LDL cholesterol. Now two kilogram is going to be about four to five pounds of muscle. So again, older adults with obesity, these people were not doing anything that me and you are probably doing, and found that 12 weeks of oxytocin treatment

14:30 significantly increased lean muscle around two kilos while reducing fat mass and lowering LDL cholesterol. So I thought that was pretty cool. And again, this is one of those things no one really thinks about and no-one really does or has brought to the forefront this far because everything is so crazed on GLPs. Now, when we look at larger studies, it's not all unicorns and rainbows, so a recent placebo-controlled randomized trial in 61 adults tested intranasal oxytocin for eight weeks and found no significant difference in weight loss between oxytoxin and placebo groups, and both groups maintained roughly the

15:02 same weight by then. Interestingly, even in this trial, oxyrotoxin did reduce calorie intake during controlled test meals by about 150 calories compared to placebo. which confirms oxytocin's appetite reducing effect is real, but the reduction may have not been large enough or sustained enough to translate into measurable fat loss over eight weeks. And again, so is oxytoxin the holy grail of fatloss? Obviously not. However, it could be really nicely paired with a GLP or just living optimized in general. Or if you don't want to do a GOP, or you want a cycle off of it, It could really cool.

15:35 Now let's look at the individual response variability. So some individuals show dramatic weight loss with oxytocin therapy, particularly those with certain eating behaviors. Those are the high responders. Patients with brain injury related obesity should market improvement with low dose oxytoxin plus diet changes. We do know probably due to traumatic brain injuries or things that have structurally affected the brain that oxymotoxin can actually help improve the eating habits of those people. The optimal candidates were those with oxytocin deficiency or specific cravings may benefit most from supplementation.

16:06 Now for me, this wasn't in any literature, but knowing what it does for high fat food, I think for people, you know, it's interesting just between my wife and I, and she will admit this too, Taylor, craves higher fat junk food. Her cravings tend to lean into like the dairy, the cream type realm to higher fat, whereas like carbohydrates or sugar type stuff, she doesn't really have a craving for.

16:37 When I look at mine, typically even junk food that I crave, I like lower fat higher carb stuff. I really love bread. sweet stuff that is not high in fat. For some reason, just throughout my whole life, I've never been someone that craved high fat food. Now, of course I like ice cream. I liked things of that nature that are higher in fact. But if you were to put a piece of bread in front of me with no fat versus some cheese, i'm going to eat the bread all day. i don't even really like high-fat food that much. And that's just the genetic, or the brain predispositions of some people.

17:11 And then last, we have non-responders, so others may not respond significantly, suggesting genetic or metabolic factors influence effectiveness. And I think that's true. Again, it's even when we're looking in this data, is so hard to just take data without the variability that so many people have in their lives. How fat are they? What are doing? Are they exercising? are eating clean? And to sum up the key benefits, one, it's gonna preserve muscle mass, so weight loss specifically targets fat stores while maintaining or increasingly muscle, improving body composition with higher muscle to fat ratio.

17:44 It acts as natural appetite control, So it reliably lowers food intake as a natural suppressant, making you feel full sooner and reducing cravings for high reward foods. And it promotes fat breakdown and oxidation independent of calorie intake, tilting metabolism toward using stored fat as fuel. Additional helpings we have, we got blood sugar control, like I talked about. It improves insulin sensitivity and lowers insulin levels, helping the body store less fat and use more energy efficiently. And also lowers LDL cholesterol levels and reduces fat buildup in the liver, benefiting heart and liver health alongside fat loss for all the people that

18:18 always ask me about liver. Health. Again, there's injectable glutathione, but I think oxytocin pairs really nicely with that to help with the health of liver and safety profile. This is where I. Think it also is going to be something that people can use and feel relatively perfectly safe over and I'll talk a little bit about tolerance buildup and endogenous production, all those things towards the end. Oxytocin nasal spray has shown an excellent safety and tolerability profile and short-term studies. Unlike stimulant-based weight loss aids, it doesn't raise blood pressure or heart rate.

18:48 In fact, oxytose can have homing anti-stress effects for many people. What do we see with GLPs? What did we with sloop? what do see some of these other weight-loss things that aren't even stimulants-base weight lost products. We see an increase in resting heart-rate, which again, I think in a lot of cases, is transient and tends to come back down once the body normalizes and adapts. However, It is an increased nonetheless. The main reported side effects have been minor, such as transient nasal irritation. Obviously, if you inject, there's going to be less of that. Or mild headache in some individuals.

19:19 Importantly, no serious adverse events have attributed to oxytocin in clinical trials, suggesting it could be safe as an adjunct for weight management. Here is my protocol. If you're going do intranasal, that's what most people would say. or weight loss works well, I think because if you're doing it, it's going to take multiple times throughout the day. I prefer injections, but if really want to maximize it for fat loss, you gonna need to do it three or four times per day, and let's be honest, even someone like me who lives in this world, who exists in the world of the research chemical side of things,

19:54 It's gonna be a kind of a pain in a butt to inject at every meal. You could do, its just kind a of pain the butt. So I thing for the intents and purposes of using this the way we need too, it's going to be three to four times per day. You can use the injectable. I like to use injectible, especially for more of a rapid onset, more than intense feeling. However, I get it. And when we're doing this three or four time today, intranasal is going be probably preferred for most people. So the standard dosage is 24 I use per dose. Now, again, that's just to whatever you have and I used when you see oxytocin multiply it by two to get the amount of micrograms.

20:27 So 24 IUs is roughly 40 micrograms, and that's kind of the research standard, typically delivered as three sprays of eight Ius each. And the dosing is going to be three to four times daily to maintain the impact due to oxytocin short-live effect. So the common schedule, like I said, is before breakfast and then at breakfast, lunch and dinner, or you could do like at-breakfast, at lunch, dinner and at bedtime. And again, in my experience, oxytocin is not one of those things that keeps you up at night. If anything, it probably helps with wakefulness in the morning, but it also too doesn't wake you that much, if that makes sense.

21:01 But I would do it kind of in line with that type of timing if you really wanted to maximize it for fat loss. So what you can do is use the spray 15 to 30 minutes before eating your meal for optimal appetite suppression. That's typically going to line up with how it works best for appetite, suppression, and then significant body composition changes observed after two to three months of consistent daily use and research studies. So the one caveat to all of this is that you've got to use it three to four times per day, every single day consistently, which I know kind of gets annoying, especially to like snort something up your nose.

21:32 If that's not something that necessarily enjoy doing. Some individuals have used oxytocin for six plus months under medical supervision with continued benefits and good tolerance, or shall I say, not so much tolerance buildup and a prolonged effect to where some peptides after six months are really not going to feel at the same dose. Obviously, oxytocin works best as part of a comprehensive regimen, so you should pair it with a balanced calorie-appropriate diet and regular exercise for optimal body composition. So think of oxytocin as making it easier to stick to your diet by reducing hunger and cravings while giving your metabolism a nudge towards fat burning.

22:07 And obviously, resistance training is especially helpful to capitalize on oxytocin's lean mass preserving effect, ensuring that weight loss comes from fat rather than muscle. And again, to go into a little bit around resistance, training, I really like doing oxy tosum before resistance. Training workout. I actually heard about this from vigorous Steve, because what it does also is after you take oxitocine and do a certain activity, because oxytocin is elevated in your brain, you now associate that activity with something that's good for you and something you like.

22:38 And so if you maybe don't like training or want to enjoy your training more, maybe you already enjoy it, but you want enjoy more. You will create this positive reward pathway in the brain because you're releasing oxytoxin then doing an activity to which your brains creates a feedback loop and then wants to do it more I thought that was pretty cool and definitely something I noticed. Also too maybe there's something hard you wanna do like writing or being creative or sitting down and focusing. If you take oxytocin and then sit and do that, I have noticed just in my own life that it did help create a positive reward association pathway in the brain.

23:11 Again, just to give you the example, 24 I use per dose 73, or excuse me, three times daily. And that comes out to around 75 IU or 150 micrograms. Again one IU equals two micro grams. 15 to 20 minutes before eight to 12 weeks and use proper training and diet alongside of that. We don't need to go into that When we look at oxytocin for fat loss, it's still in progress. While some trials showed impressive results, again, that are comparable with GLPs, larger controlled studies have mixed outcomes, and it tells us oxytoxin effects are real, but may require optimization of dosing duration and combination therapies.

23:46 If I got to wave a magic wand, I would love to see oxitoxine paired with a GLP-1. for a multitude of reasons, one, for the lean mass benefit, two, the energy and cognitive bump because a lot of people tend to have this kind of depression while they're on a GLP for whatever reasons going on in their brain, and three, to kind aid in the cravings and the appetite suppression to give people more of a short-term thing, especially because some people, which I wouldn't recommend, are injecting GLPs just once per week.

24:17 And so they are kind going this weekly roller coaster of how their appetite feels. Scientists are now examining longer treatment durations, higher frequencies, and pairing oxytocin with other therapies to amplify results. Again, as of 2025, it's not approved for mainstream weight loss, but we do what we can in the research world to go there. Now, I did want to address oxytocin in terms of natural production, because a lot of people would ask, well, oxitocins, that sounds great, But is it going to suppress my natural protection? And then am I going be depressed or feel weird because I'm not producing naturally?

24:47 The answer is we don't know. However, there was one study that I came across in the research for this, where they used it in autistic children because autistic, children do really, really well on oxytocin therapy. I tend to see improved results from their symptoms of oxy tosum therapy and what they measured was that the supplementation of Oxytosin actually increased endogenous production of oxygen. Answer is it's hard to say. Chronic exposure to exogenous oxytocin might reduce receptor sensitivity or availability over time, but we don't know.

25:20 Evidence from reproductive medicine shows that synthetic oxytoxine can sometimes impair natural milk ejection reflex, hinting at potential interference with natural processes. Again, that's in the context of a nursing mother, which I would say when we're looking at this, all bets are off because of the hormonal fluctuations that a nurturing mother is going through. End of the day, there is a lack of definitive human studies on this topic specifically for metabolic applications. So individual variability and response and the unknown thresholds for potential suppression also are going to be key distinctions.

25:51 And then Just to hedge our bets, when we look at risk mitigation, again, 100 to 150 or 200 micrograms of oxytocin per day is a pretty conservative dose, but it's enough that we see results in weight loss and fat loss. Also too, what I would recommend again is 8 to 12 weeks and then cycling. As with everything, I think it is smart to cycle and I we respond better to it. Again, even in the studies, they only went up to 8-12 weeks that I saw. I could probably use it longer and still get good effect.

26:22 However, I think with an exogenous hormone that's endogenous to the human body, eight to 12 weeks is a good time to see what it does for you. Take some time off, take four to six weeks off and you should be good. Just monitor it. See how you feel. Monitor your thoughts, monitor your feelings. Avoid high continuous exposure so that would not do. like one milligram every single day, which you would probably find pretty hard to tolerate because it's going to make you go to the bathroom a lot. So you probably wouldn't want to do that for more than a day or two. Although if you are constipated, it will work. And then as always, just be smart about what you're doing.

26:55 So that's it. Oxytocin definitely represents a novel future approach to fat loss, to which you probably had not thought of to this point. And I hadn't really thought either, but when you go into the data, it's very cheap, very affordable, and it is something that clearly works and is only, I think of the doses that we're talking about, going to benefit us in the short and the long term. And that is it for the slides. And this is my comprehensive video on oxytocin for fat loss. Hopefully it was helpful and informative to you guys.

27:27 I thought this was one of the more cool ones that I've done and I think whatever the use case is, whether you're 50 pounds overweight, or you're lean and you are just trying to stay lean or get even a little bit leaner, oxytocin is just going to be something that is good to use for your brain. I love using oxytoxin for my brain, I don't use it all the time, but I think it is one of those things that, is something everyone should have in their pantry. And then when we look at the fat loss benefits, if we're going be consistent and use three or four times a day and do it in the proper way and using the

27:57 right dosing and everything, i think that makes it even that much better. So I really love oxytocin one for the brain benefits but now looking at the fat loss benefits too is something that I want to throw into my protocols more and will be doing so after reviewing this data. Let me know your thoughts and feedback on this and obviously if it's on Spotify you can leave comments on there I believe I'm doing my best to respond to all those comments. On Spotify maybe the YouTube channel will at the end of the day, who cares? I'm going to continue to create this content and just know at end the of day that I love you guys so much.

28:31 I do this because of amount of people that know this helps and I have so gratitude in my heart to get to continuing to bring these messages to you and it is my mission and goal to keep making this contact better, keep refining it and keep bringing it to use so that you can improve your life and share and help improve the lives of others and ultimately improve the collective health of the planet. And that is our mission. If you're watching this, know that you are as instrumental to that mission as I am. Thank you guys so much. I love each and every one of you and I will see you the next one. Peace.