[Results] 39 weeks on 12.5mg, full numbers, ask me anything boring
Reporting in. 39 weeks on 12.5mg, full numbers, ask me anything boring.
39 weeks and 12.5mg — those are the numbers, and they are the ones I am willing to defend.
Three scans over eighteen months, same machine, same conditions. Only the third one made the first two interpretable.
What the evidence actually supports, stripped of the arguing.
Some lean mass is lost in any weight-loss deficit. Resistance training and adequate protein intake are the two interventions with real support for limiting the proportion. Nearly everything else discussed on this board is a rounding error on those two.
The complication specific to this site is that appetite reduction makes protein intake a logistics problem: you are being asked to eat a fixed amount of something at exactly the point when eating anything is less appealing. That is why the practical threads here are about timing and food choice rather than motivation, and why measuring intake rather than estimating it is the single most common useful correction.
I will update this if the picture changes rather than quietly leaving it up.
best — the order this archive was captured in
Strength retention is an imperfect but free longitudinal proxy: it is affected by neural factors and by being in a deficit, so it tracks tissue change loosely rather than exactly.
Hydration status and fasting state affect the lean mass estimate. Standardising both is the difference between a comparison and a coin toss.
DEXA has a real error margin and people quote it to one decimal
Tracked grip strength and three lifts monthly. Cheaper than scanning and directionally the same answer.
grip strength and lift numbers are cheap longitudinal markers
What is protein intake actually looking like, measured rather than estimated?
losing weight slower does not automatically preserve more lean mass
Two scans on the same machine 2 months apart. Lean mass held better than I expected and the lifts told the same story for free.
protein and resistance training, that is the entire intervention
Reduced appetite makes hitting a protein target a logistics problem rather than a motivation problem, which is why the practical advice here is about timing and food choice rather than willpower.
Disagree — slower loss does not automatically preserve lean mass. Protein and training do the work, not the rate on its own.
Disagree — slower loss does not automatically preserve lean mass.
Disagreeing with this line: rate alone does not preserve lean mass. The training does.
Kept the same programme for a year instead of changing it every six weeks. That was the change that worked.
Compared two scans from different clinics and panicked over a difference that was inside the error margin.
- 1Strength retention is an imperfect but free longitudinal proxy: it is…9 comments in this branch · started by u/zaid_roos