Fitness & Coaching·May 22, 2026

New Eli Lilly drug may be the strongest GLP-1 yet

Some of the drug's trial results were about on par with weight loss from gastric bypass surgery.

Morning BrewMay 221 min readVerified

New Eli Lilly drug may be the strongest GLP-1 yet — Image · Morning Brew

The gist

2-point summary · 1 min

Some of the drug's trial results were about on par with weight loss from gastric bypass surgery.

The trial’s heaviest patients lost an average of 30% of their body weight (or 85 pounds) after two years on retatrutide.
That’s about on par with weight loss from gastric bypass surgery.But…Lilly said 11% of participants on the highest retatrutide dose quit the study because of gastrointestinal side effects—a bigger dropout rate than for less powerful obesity drugs.

28%15%19%30%11%

Source

Remember the name retatrutide. It’s Eli Lilly’s latest experimental GLP-1, and patients who took it lost the most weight ever recorded in a medication trial, according to results announced yesterday.The study isn’t yet peer-reviewed, but it appears to show retatrutide leaving other GLP-1s in the dust:The highest dose made patients lose an average of 28% of their body mass after 80 weeks, running nearly a full lap around the highest dose of Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy (~15% weight loss after 68 weeks).The lowest dose of retatrutide still delivered 19% weight loss, making it nearly as effective as the highest dose of Lilly’s Zepbound.The first GLP-1 that could rival surgery. The trial’s heaviest patients lost an average of 30% of their body weight (or 85 pounds) after two years on retatrutide. That’s about on par with weight loss from gastric bypass surgery.But…Lilly said 11% of participants on the highest retatrutide dose quit the study because of gastrointestinal side effects—a bigger dropout rate than for less powerful obesity drugs. Some patients in earlier trials also discontinued retatrutide because they felt they were losing too much weight.Looking ahead…hot off a major earnings beat and regulatory approval for its new weight loss pill, Lilly expects to file for the FDA’s greenlight on retatrutide as early as this year.—ML

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