Small Personal Success

Todd_A · 2017-02-16 14:37:02 UTC

I am very analytical as I go through this. I weigh in every morning just after waking, and I take measurements and figure up bodyfat% and note fat mass and lean mass. So its easy to track results from additional exercise, and whatever I run into daily… I also log my meals and I plan what I eat before I eat it and I weigh everything with a food scales… If I eat out, I research what they have and find the nutrition information and choose what I will have before I go.

So I have been losing weight at a pretty rapid rate and very predictably and its been about 90-97% fat which is awesome, especially at this rate. In the past I have not been able to lose weight nearly this fast without losing a lot of lean mass along with it.

So yesterday I ended up in a position twice where decisions were made that I had no control over as to where I ended up eating. And for the first time through this I was unable to come up with nutrition information from the restaurants where I was eating. So, for the first time I had to wing it and based on what I have been eating on this diet, I was able to pick and choose what I ate from what I ordered. The only problem was the quantity because I didn’t have a scale to weigh it and didn’t know how much I was eating. One was mexican food where I ordered steak fajitas and had no tortilla, beans or rice, and I ordered extra cheese. I stayed away from the onions and peppers and ate mostly the steak , sour cream, cheese, guacamole and dipped it in this butter sauce that came with it. Then later for dinner it was a local restaurant where I ordered a bacon cheeseburger and I stripped off the bun and had no sides.

So this morning when I weigh in, I ended up gaining weight indicating I probably ate more than I thought… but then I measured my waist and it was smaller… only by 1/8 inch, but I measured several times to make sure and it was correct… a drop in body fat% while gaining weight which came out to a loss in fat as well as a gain in lean mass. Very excited about that!

If I could change my body composition like that daily, I would go that route, because my goal at this point is to actually weigh more than I do now but have less fat and more lean mass. I’ve just been continuing on toward a lower weight goal in order to lose the rest of the fat I don’t want, and was going to worry about adding lean mass after I arrived at the bodyfat I was looking for.

So , does this mean that I can continue on a keto diet and gain lean mass by merely eating over my maintenance calories daily?

richard · 2017-02-16 16:52:27 UTC

A ketogenic diet is specifically muscle sparing. Jeff Volek did a controlled trial where he gave the intervention group a carb restricted ketogenic diet for 6 weeks and told participants to eat adequate energy to maintain their weight, and he took DEXAs to measure how their composition changed.

They lost on average 3.4 kgs of Body Fat, and gained 1.1kg of lean body mass.

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Body composition and hormonal responses to a carbohydrate-restricted diet.

JS Volek, MJ Sharman, DM Love, NG Avery, AL Gómez, TP Scheett and WJ Kraemer, Metabolism: clinical and experimental, Jul 2002

The few studies that have examined body composition after a carbohydrate-restricted diet have reported enhanced fat loss and preservation of lean body mass in obese individuals. The role of hormones in mediating this response is unclear. We examined the effects of a 6-week carbohydrate-restricted diet on total and regional body composition and the relationships with fasting hormone concentrations. Twelve healthy normal-weight men switched from their habitual diet (48% carbohydrate) to a carbohydrate-restricted diet (8% carbohydrate) for 6 weeks and 8 men served as controls, consuming their normal diet. Subjects were encouraged to consume adequate dietary energy to maintain body mass during the intervention. Total and regional body composition and fasting blood samples were assessed at weeks 0, 3, and 6 of the experimental period. Fat mass was significantly (P <or=.05) decreased (-3.4 kg) and lean body mass significantly increased (+1.1 kg) at week 6. There was a significant decrease in serum insulin (-34%), and an increase in total thyroxine (T(4)) (+11%) and the free T(4) index (+13%). Approximately 70% of the variability in fat loss on the carbohydrate-restricted diet was accounted for by the decrease in serum insulin concentrations. There were no significant changes in glucagon, total or free testosterone, sex hormone binding globulin (SHBG), insulin-like growth factor-I (IGF-I), cortisol, or triiodothyronine (T(3)) uptake, nor were there significant changes in body composition or hormones in the control group. Thus, we conclude that a carbohydrate-restricted diet resulted in a significant reduction in fat mass and a concomitant increase in lean body mass in normal-weight men, which may be partially mediated by the reduction in circulating insulin concentrations.

Todd_A · 2017-02-16 18:31:03 UTC

Thats awesome!
So according to that study, I could eat at maintenance instead of below and I can expect to continue to lose fat and lower my BF% while increasing lean mass?
That would definitely make more sense at the point I am now where I want to lose fat then gain lean mass and actually weigh more than I do now and be leaner.