Two questions this morning from clients:
1) Help!! I lost 2 lbs of muscle this week!
2) I did a ketogenic diet one time and lost 50% muscle and 50% fat the first week and 100% muscle the second week and then stopped the diet.
Me:
Even though ketogenic dieting will cause muscle loss, you can't attribute quick gains or losses - changes at all to body comp - to anything at all. It's just not accurate. All body comp measuring (calipers, bioelectrical impedance, DEXA, etc) have variables that are not exact....such as your body weight. Knowing you can fluctuate in weight due to glycogen content (depletion or loading; purposely or inadvertently) 5 to 10 lbs, if your actual body fat didn't change day to day or week to week, you would see that 5 to 10 lb gain or loss as muscle. It's not; it's water. On all body comp testing, anything that isn't fat mass is lean body mass, including water. You have to look at the long term and try to test under the same conditions, such as on the same day each week if your food cycle is consistent. That also goes to long-term reasoning. I changed my diet significantly 11 months ago and I want to check my body comp changes compared to when I was dieting previously. Knowing my body comp stats are always when losing (contest dieting) they are therefor taken when depleted - actively dieting. To account for the margin of glycogen and water weight, to be accurate, I have to make sure I retake those measurements after a week (or more) of active dieting.
