Colleen: Good point. And it is worth mentioning that much of the increased LBM (at least in terms of muscle mass) does tend to be in the lower body. Which makes sense, carrying the extra weight around (up and down stairs, etc.) is essentially a stimulus for muscle growth. In my experience, overweight individuals often had extremely strong lower bodies for that reason. Your approach actually makes a good deal of sense.

Generally speaking, at what body fat % will a man’s hormones begin to get messed up (like testosterone, etc)? I’m sure it varies, but I mean in general terms.

I am a formerly obese person who took perhaps a strange approach to this while losing weight. I weight trained my upper body but not lower. The reason was that my legs were already pretty strong from carrying around my obese self, and I had developed large “fat person calves” as a result. I wanted to have more normal looking legs so I did not train those areas, and lost about 1.5″ off my calves. I can wear normal boots now and it sounds silly but it’s nice to be normal. However the weight training added a bit of muscle on my upper body (thanks newbie gains!) and so my total LBM has actually gone up slightly as body fat percentage has gone down (as verified by a Tanita scale with hydration controlled for as best as possible). The added upper body muscle I think helps balance out my proportions and gives some shape to my back and arms. I also like finally having upper body strength instead of being “all legs.” And having more muscle on my frame means I am at a smaller size than when I was last at my current weight and my metabolism is better.

Anyhow that’s been my experience with body recomposition and the rationale behind my approach.

I totally agree, I can’t stand people who promote caloric restriction as a means to lose weight effectively; I mean what are they thinking? 😉

Martin, obese people who diet down to a “normal” BMI standard will lose significant amounts of LBM mostly because, as Lyle stated, this was additional LBM that was procured during their extended high calorie intake as well as the resistance from moving around a couple of hundred pounds of lard.

Realize that even “protein adequate” or the “high protein” diets you apparently favor will fail to prevent some of the LBM lose during dieting when large amount of fat loss are needed (unless you want to do it verrrrryyyyyy slowly). Keep in mind this is muscle mass that is easily lost because it is superfluous. Baseline LBM is more resistant to atrophy than acquired additional LBM, sort of like homeostasis or regression to the mean. And we’re talking about obese individual who need to create significant caloric deficits to achieve very large reductions in body mass, not bodybuilders who need to retail every ounce of muscle for aesthetic purposes. In this population it’s about getting them to create the largest sustainable caloric deficiency while maintaining various health parameters.

Granted, at isocaloric amounts “high protein” diets may help with satiety and compliance and these are conversations worth having (Lyle has written several articles about the benefits of high protein diets) but probably will only marginally impact the loses of LBM in the obese population.

The 25% lost is only partially muscle mass and represents an EXTRA 25% that they gained while getting fat. Just like I said above.

i am not sure that it is a good thing for obese individuals to have up to a quarter of their weight loss as lbm. i see no benefit. muscle mass is important as people age. i think that statement comes from the proponents of low calorie, low fat, high carb inefficient diets.

Martin