sarah.morrison said:Distribution matters less than total but it is not nothing.
DEXA scan update relevant to protein intake:
Scanned at months 0, 6, and 12. Here are the body comp numbers:
| Baseline | Month 6 | Month 12 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total mass | 273 lbs | 223 lbs | 210 lbs |
| Fat mass | 113 lbs | 73 lbs | 45 lbs |
| Lean mass | 151 lbs | 144 lbs | 157 lbs |
| Body fat % | 42% | 30% | 24% |
Lean mass preserved — actually GAINED 1-2 lbs thanks to progressive overload + 1.4g/kg protein. The protein intake discussion needs to include body comp data, not just scale weight.
Following on from PharmD_Rodriguez — and this may be the naive question:
Whether the RDA is the wrong reference entirely during rapid weight loss, and what the actual target should be?
wendy_avl said:DEXA scan update relevant to protein intake: Scanned at months 0, 6, and 12.
Adding the part of the answer the thread has not reached. The useful move here is to separate what is established from what is widely repeated. Those two sets overlap less than the confident tone of most write-ups suggests, and the second set is where nearly all the disagreement on this board comes from.
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Shop Reference StandardsOP back with an update, since a thread like this is useless without one.
Reporting back — setting the target on reference weight rather than current weight turned an impossible number into a boring one.
PharmHunterJen said:The useful move here is to separate what is established from what is widely repeated.
Agreed on the target, with the caveat that reference weight and current weight are different numbers. Using current weight at the start of a large loss produces a target that is both unachievable and unnecessary.
Happy to go further on any of that.