I wonder if using something like Retinol, which is proven to improve skin and make it look tighter, younger, and get rid of blemishes, marks, and sun damage, could be paired with Ozempic to keep skin more healthy along with a good skin routine?
I assume you mean as a therapeutic/last resort treatment?
Exercise is often not good at helping people lose weight, but it is good at helping them lower their body fat and increase lean body mass.
You'd much rather someone be a muscular, overweight person than skinny-fat person. In particular, if you got someone lifting weights three times a week, it would have a noticeable impact on their body composition and overall health, regardless of weight.
The data also shows that exercise can lower appetite, but it has to be at least 300 minutes of vigorous exercise a week: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/09/well/move/to-lose-weight-...
> [aligned] with literature from the previous decade and recent systematic reviews concluding that participation in an exercise training program does favor weight loss, although of only modest magnitude. [1]
> Resistance training was the only exercise modality that failed to significantly decrease visceral adipose tissue. [1]
You suggest that "you'd much rather someone be a muscular, overweight person than skinny-fat person" -- but that's not really the case. Sheer fat mass, especially visceral adipose tissue, is what is associated with negative health consequences.
[edit] Even the article you linked to via the Times says the following.
> However, the amount of weight loss from exercise training is often disappointingly less than expected. [2]
Which aligns with their own findings that after 12 weeks of 3000kcal/week energy deficit they only lost about 5 pounds, see Table 2. So to lose 50 pounds you'd have to spend 2 years with a 3000kcal/week deficit, and keep adjusting periodically. The chances of compliance here are literally zero, and compliance is a major issue. In some senses, it's the major issue.
Also this study committed a major sin: they didn't follow up. Any study that shows anything meaningful in re: weight loss reverses after 6 months.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8365736/
[2] https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/ajpregu.000...
Also 43 minutes of HIIT sounds like a nightmare. I do 30 minutes HIIT and I'm completely spent afterwards, there is no way to reach 43 minutes.
Also with 7 days/week of 43 minutes a day + weight lifting your body will be overtrained so injuries will kick in.
Obviously it's a bit different if you do ONLY vigorous training, but then you lose all the benefits of weight lifting and stretching.
The tricky part is there's all sorts of people that sell Retinol products but the amount of retinol is OTC. This isn't typically good enough, but you can go to your dermatologist to get a prescription strength that really works, and it's cheap.