This gets cited here weekly, usually second-hand, so it is worth setting out what it does and does not establish.
Training does two things here and only one of them is on the scale. It protects lean mass — which is the reason to do it — and it contributes modestly to the deficit, which is the reason people start and then quit when the arithmetic disappoints them. In a deep deficit, resistance work is the priority and high-volume cardio competes with recovery.
Where I think it is weakest: the population was selected and supported in ways a real cohort is not, so I would read the effect size as a ceiling rather than an expectation.
What I am trying to establish is what training is actually for during a large deficit, because framing it as calorie burn sets people up to quit when the arithmetic disappoints them. I have searched first, so if this is covered somewhere point me at it and I will read it.
mike.trainer_LA said:Training does two things here and only one of them is on the scale.
Agreed on the ranges, with the condition that a single DEXA is not a measurement, it is one draw from a distribution. Hydration status moves the lean compartment by a kilogram or more between scans, so any comparison of scans done at different times of day or different hydration states is noise.
mike.trainer_LA said:Training does two things here and only one of them is on the scale.
I read this differently from mike.trainer_LA, on substance rather than tone. I think this board over-worries about lean mass. Some lean loss is obligatory — you need less muscle to move a smaller body, and preserving mass you no longer need is not a health outcome. The question is whether strength and function held, and mine did.
That is the short version; the long version is somebody else's post.
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Shop Reference StandardsThis one has a reasonably settled answer, so here it is. There is also a quality change that the scan cannot see. Weight loss shifts fiber-type distribution toward Type I and improves mitochondrial density and insulin-stimulated glucose uptake per fiber — so the muscle you keep is metabolically better even though there is less of it. That does not make the loss irrelevant, but it explains why function often holds up better than the number suggests.
PharmD_Rodriguez said:Agreed on the ranges, with the condition that a single DEXA is not a measurement, it is one draw from a distribution.
This is my experience too, for whatever a second data point is worth. Posting only so the count is not one.