When does muscle mass loss start?

#10

Why would I keep non-essential fat if it isn’t protective ?! :thinking:
I figure I’ll stay within one kilogram of the lower margin of the healthy BMI range (18.5-24.9) which computes to 57.625 kg according to the above measurements and 57.96 kg according to online calculators ( guess the string I used is elastic ).
Might as well lose all non-essential fat while still young and have all my limbs : gold medal Olympic athletes (!) almost invariably become overweight coaches in their 50s and 60s…

(TJ Borden) #11

You can do whatever you want. I’m just letting you know it might be challenging to get to YOUR goal, because it may not be the same as your body’s goal.

Your body knows what IT wants. It doesn’t do things based on arbitrary numbers that society has assigned.

In the same way, you can exactly choose to grow 2” taller. You might have a certain height you want to get to, but that doesn’t mean it’s your decision.

KCKO

#12

You are absolutely right bayto…
I can’t go beyond where my physiology will take me.
I will keep the community posted of this challenge’s progress.

#13

To answer the topic of this thread, I found this sufficient answer on livestrong:

(Doug) #14

“Most people start to lose muscle mass after 24 to 48 hours.” – I think this is far too early to be stating that and/or the actual “muscle” loss is negligible. Dr. Fung has talked about this, and it really does not add up, i.e. people who fast dozens, hundreds of times, show no such thing.

The article also appears to neglect gluconeogenesis - in reality there’s not going to be such a critical undersupply of glucose occurring nearly so early.

“the brain… can only function using glucose.” – I think this is much more false than true, if not entirely false. Ketones make a fine fuel for all or most of the brain, with a good case for them being a better fuel than glucose.

(Bunny) #15

This may interest you also:

(Rob) #16

Of course you can… it just takes effort both with diet and exercise. You think those cut bods trying to sell you crap on youtube would have those bodies eating a ‘normal’ diet?

Because your brain doesn’t decide what is protective. Bodies typically want enough fat to see them through lean times even if the reality is that those won’t come to pass. There are always genetic outliers such as skinny lean people and healthy overweight people (why BMI is a pile of crap) but most people will remain a bit squishy without specific intervention. Your body is the only one that matters so experiment (n=1) and see what it will do under different regimes.

The stuff on Livestrong is rarely sufficient ever, let alone for keto. The article (as much as it is actually true at all) only really applies to NOT starting in ketosis. Loads of people here fast for a long time with negligible muscle loss though usually with more fat stores. The leaner you are, the less you can fast but then you fat fast where you supplement BF usage with exogenous fat to keep energy sufficient and insulin low. Combine with the types of exercise routines pushed by hard body types and you can get what you want.

#17

I think BMI is aware of its own “crapiness” (outliers) and that’s why it’s a range and not an absolute value.

(Robert C) #18

It might not be the muscle mass lost that is important. It might be how much better the new muscle mass is that you will gain by a good refeed. I would look at fasting as a whole loop - start of fast to end of refeed (which maybe for an extended fast, the refeed should be at least as long as the fast?). The point is, don’t think about going down in pounds to touch some “good feeling” number on the scale for just a day or two - instead think about your total body composition at the end. Maybe, if you are really trying to lose a lot of body fat - you should aggressively do an extended fast of 15 or more days and be careful with the refeed (not too much BPC and too many fat bombs where it is easy to eat past satiety or eat past what your metabolism needs to keep burning well). If you’re looking to increase muscle, maybe a heavier refeed after just 4 or 5 days and working hard when the HGH levels are high would be a better way to go.

(Rob) #19

That isn’t what the ‘range’ is there to cover. Why it is crap is that the outliers are way outside the ‘range’ of ‘healthy’ people. Feel free to use BMI however you want but I wouldn’t be basing important quantitative decisions on it.

#20

You read my mind Rob…
EXACTLY my intention at the end of the fast !
I completely realize that the free falling weight loss might not be the healthiest way to go about this but I figure I will reconstruct whatever destruction will have happened in the “refeed” you mention.

(TJ Borden) #21

Or, without sufficient fat stores to fuel an extended fast, your BMR could slow, and when you refeed, you might actually put more fat back on then you started with going into the fast.

#22

To your point capnbob, I am one of those outliers you mention, being a gynoid male myself !
Indeed, by all means, I should have exibited all of the symptoms of metabolic syndrome having been overweight if not obese all of my life ( I was at 120 kg for two to three years at my worst !!! ). And yet I am at 120/80 mmHg ( current “normal” guideline is 140/90 ) and fasting glycemia of 0.9 g/L ! Must be that gynoid fat distribution they’re talking about !
I should have been dead by now if it werent for that !
And yet I can’t decide whether to keep some of it or lose all of it !

(Robert C) #23

I am not a doctor - this is just what I have read, that the worry body builders have about muscle loss is not a well founded fear. But, based on your low weight and body fat percentage, I would not assume it applies as directly to you. Adding muscle is difficult and trying to bounce off of some minimum amount (i.e. a weakened state as well) might not be a good idea vs. instead trying to conserve what you have with a more conservative weight loss goal.

#24

Right…then I guess I’ll slow down when I’m one to two kilos away from my target weight.

#25

On an adjacent subject, rapid weight loss will leave some loose skin.
Do you think my body will autophage some of the loose skin to maintain protein elsewhere ?

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #26

That is, in fact, categorically false. The brain does extremely well on beta-hydroxybutyrate—that is where the well-known keto sense of mental alertness and well-being comes from.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #27

According to Dr. Robert Lustig, the force behind the campaign against fructose, about 20% of obese people are perfectly metabolically healthy, and about 40% (IIRC) of those who are thin are actually metabolically deranged. The predictor of incipient diabetes and heart disease is not one’s total body fat, but the amount of visceral fat; i.e., the fat around one’s organs that may never be apparent because one appears thin. Dr. Lustig says that the technical term in medical parlance for such people is TOFI—“thin on the outside, fat on the inside.”

(Doug) #28

Cool, Paul - I couldn’t remember if there was a part of the brain that did need glucose or not. This forum alone is like taking a few college courses at once, at least diet/nutrition, biochemistry, and the nature of studies and statistics. Going over and over stuff helps me, though there’s always some “slippage,” keto mental alertness or not. You’d think there would be plenty of room for new information, were one just to clean out a fair bit of the demonstrably generally or specifically false stuff pounded into us over the past 50 years…

#29

I’m so gitty I just had to share my progress :slight_smile:
I haven’t eaten anything but salt and multivitamins since the first of May ! And I’m feeling actually better than if I were eating…it’s crazy !

My new data is
Weight: 65.4 kg
Body fat %: 12.34%