Earlier quoted context omitted.
From the article: "...explains this rate of muscle decline is significantly higher than what is typically observed with calorie-reduced diets or normal aging and could lead to a host of long-term health issues..." The warning isn't that you're losing muscle during weight-loss with these drugs. It's that the ratio of muscle vs fat loss is much greater with the drugs compared to traditional weight loss methods. It's be…
Even amongst traditional calorie deficits, rapid weight loss results in greater loss of muscle mass when compared to gradual weight loss, even if you lose the same amount of mass overall. I.e. you keep more muscle losing 0.5 lbs a week over 40 weeks than 2 lbs a week over 10 weeks.
This does not make any sense. Why would the body prefer anything over the most dense and available calorie store? Protein in muscle gives shit calories per gram, it is hard to build back and generally less available than fat: the number one energy store, doing exactly what it does.