So I started keto in September and have seen pretty good weight loss results: down 32 pounds from a high of 255. In October, I started making use of a health tracking station (checks BP, pulse, weight, and body fat using electrical impendence (grab bars for hands) at the local pharmacy that stores the history of observations over time. My first obervation was after already losing 10 pounds, I assume mostly water weight that came in the first week or two. I will also note that this scale seems to weigh me about 6 pounds heavier than my home scale (I assume in good part due to being fully clothed).
Anyway, my first observation was 250 pounds, 28.5% body fat, ergo 178.75 lbs lean mass. Fast forward to my most recent observation of 25.5% body fat and 228 lbs, or 170 lbs of lean mass. Did I really lose almost 9 lbs of lean mass (and another 13 of fat) since October? That is kind of scary! Should I be worried or should this be thought of as normal?
I have been logging weekly and the decline has been a pretty steady trend, so I don’t think it can be chalked up to measurement variability/error, though it may be biased (don’t have a DEXA scan to compare), and given that I have used the same measurement device, I think the change of 3 pts of body fat % is probably pretty accurate.
I didn’t exercise much before and didn’t start after keto. In good part because I didn’t want to confound the explanatory variables and prove to myself that the weight loss was due to diet alone.