6-month body recomposition — DEXA, labs, progress photos

DanielChem_CHI said:

The single most useful discipline is bringing the whole panel to a clinician rather than one flagged value.

This is where I part company with the consensus forming above. I would drop the "get everything" instinct further than this thread does. Every extra test is another chance at a false positive, and incidental findings have their own cost in scans, biopsies and worry.

Adding the numbers, since they settle part of this. If you are tracking this properly: same scanner, same time of day, same hydration, at least six months apart, and read grip strength or a lift number alongside it. Function is the outcome; the scan is the proxy.

mike_nyc said:

I would drop the "get everything" instinct further than this thread does.

Adding the part of the answer the thread has not reached. The honest range is roughly 20 to 40% of total loss as lean mass without deliberate resistance training, and roughly 10 to 20% with it plus adequate protein. Both numbers need a caveat that matters: "lean mass" on a DEXA is not muscle. It includes water, glycogen and the lean fraction of organs, and glycogen alone carries about three grams of water per gram. A large early lean drop is mostly the glycogen and water going, which is why the first scan flatters and the second is the honest one.

Worth separating that from lean-mass preservation, which this thread keeps folding into the same question. They behave differently and the advice does not transfer.

A narrower follow-up, since the general answer is now clear:

What actually belongs on a baseline panel, as opposed to the enormous list that gets pasted around here?

Closing the loop on my own question.

Took the whole panel in rather than the one flagged line, and the conversation lasted two minutes instead of generating three more tests.