LCHF diet - Has anyone had any muscle loss with the diet?

@Tony
You don't say how tall you are.

You target weight seems to suggest you are less than 6 foot tall.
Where on the BMI scale are you aiming?

My LCHFMP (that is Medium Protein) has taken weight off and improved my BG but my arms could probably do with a bit more muscle. Sometimes difficult to tell if your body has lost fat or muscle (apart from my legs, which appear to be very low fat).

I like the waist to height ratio measurement for health better than BMI, as it accounts for ethnicity differences, and of course - height differences! Which can sometimes be the same thing, but waist to height also takes into account muscle mass differences (ie it doesn't figure! Which it shouldn't) between ethnic groups and individuals, that BMI does not.

Check out this cool interactional thingie!:

http://www.health-calc.com/body-composition/waist-to-height-ratio

I lost nearly all the muscles in my arms and legs, 15 days until medication and I'm still losing weight although the thirst has gone

That is equally descriptive of the effect of low carb high fat on my bowel as well as the start of the Universe.
D.

phoenix said:

"nucleogenesis"
Sounds rather more explosive than drip feeding
(methinks that there may have been a mischievous gremlin sitting on the keyboard! )

gluconeogenesis
sorry, not being pedantic, it just made me burst out laughing at the image it created in my mind.

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LittleGreyCat said:

@Tony
Sometimes difficult to tell if your body has lost fat or muscle (apart from my legs, which appear to be very low fat).

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But can't you see the muscle? And therefore see if muscle isn't there? Or gotten smaller (ditto bigger). Also feel it by poking your muscles with your fingers?

And, feel if muscle is lost by how difficult (or easy) it is to do things with it - eg lift heavy things, walk long distances, walk or run faster.

One of the things I love about muscle (unlike things I can't see like insulin receptor cells!!!!) is it is all so out there.

AloeSvea said:

But can't you see the muscle? And therefore see if muscle isn't there? Or gotten smaller (ditto bigger). Also feel it by poking your muscles with your fingers?

And, feel if muscle is lost by how difficult (or easy) it is to do things with it - eg lift heavy things, walk long distances, walk or run faster.

One of the things I love about muscle (unlike things I can't see like insulin receptor cells!!!!) is it is all so out there.

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I may be wrong but I think that on arms and legs the fat cells can be all mixed in with the muscles. So your arm gets thinner but it isn't always obvious if it just fat or fat and muscle which has gone. When you lean out you can see the muscle clearly without the padding of fat but you don't really know how much you started with.


On walking or running - you should be better if you are lighter as you have less weight to move. Also I think endurance training makes your muscles more efficient, not necessarily larger.Agree that loss of lifting power indicates loss of muscle mass.

Tony2016 said:

Thanks, AleoSvea. 32 inches from 36 inches previously, 3 months ago.

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Waist should be no more than half your height, so 32 inches is the maximum for 5 foot 4 inches (64 inches). Well done.

LittleGreyCat said:

I may be wrong but I think that on arms and legs the fat cells can be all mixed in with the muscles. So your arm gets thinner but it isn't always obvious if it just fat or fat and muscle which has gone. When you lean out you can see the muscle clearly without the padding of fat but you don't really know how much you started with.

On walking or running - you should be better if you are lighter as you have less weight to move. Also I think endurance training makes your muscles more efficient, not necessarily larger.Agree that loss of lifting power indicates loss of muscle mass.

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I can see muscle gain and loss very readily - even with body fat. I think this is where genetic body type and so on comes in. My leg muscles are pretty consistently there, baseline (and get quite prominent if doing leg work - cycling or walking for instance). My arm muscles on the other hand are very sensitive to whether or not I am lifting weights regularly (as in 'naturally' in my life, as in lifting and carrying heavy things, or actual outdoor gym weights - which I prefer to barbell lifting). Both my parents have muscley legs.

I know the LCHF folk do believe you get better muscle definition on that diet. (And I am a LCHFer.) But I believe I was just born that way! ie muscley/athletic body type. Regardless of what kind of diet I am eating. When I was fat I just said I was an athletic body type gone to seed. Which is a what happens to an athletic body type like me on high carbs low fat diets, which I had been on for years and years.

My understanding of muscle building, which is largely gained from having lived with a body builder for some years,but not for a long while, is it's about the protein levels, not the carb or fat levels? (Those things will affect your body fat percentage , but not your muscle. Protein will affect your muscle.) As a muscley woman (and yeah - I had PCOS - where insulin resistance affects the ovaries) I believe I respond well to maybe quite high levels of protein in my diet. Which is why I think when I was diagnosed with diabetes, walking a lot and the paleo diet worked so very well for me. (Not as well as low-carbing for diabetes will! But I didn't know about that then.) LCHF is a way, for me, to keep the carbs as low as I can and energy levels up as high as I can. The energy means I can be more active, and activity means more muscle. More muscle is very good for using up excess glucose - so it's all good.

LittleGreyCat said:

I may be wrong but I think that on arms and legs the fat cells can be all mixed in with the muscles. So your arm gets thinner but it isn't always obvious if it just fat or fat and muscle which has gone. When you lean out you can see the muscle clearly without the padding of fat but you don't really know how much you started with.


On walking or running - you should be better if you are lighter as you have less weight to move. Also I think endurance training makes your muscles more efficient, not necessarily larger.Agree that loss of lifting power indicates loss of muscle mass.

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Also, glycogen (which is held in water) is also stored in the big muscles of the arms and legs as well as the liver.

If the diet is low carb enough to deplete the glycogen stores, then it, and the accompanying water, disappear from the muscles with a corresponding reduction in bulk.

Volek and Phinney - in The Art and Science of LC Living - quote a study (sorry, don't have the details to hand), showing that people who are most carb sensitive carry more glycogen stores. Often sources quote standard amount of glycogen storage for the typical person, but some individuals hold FAR more. These are the people who lose the most weight at the start of a low carb diet, as their glycogen stores deplete.

I like to bake, I use whey protein isolate in my bakes, I follow the LCHF diet, my weight loss has slowed but my HBS1c has improved massively, and I feel great. I miss my sweet stuff though. I didn't really have any muscle to lose unfortunately, but that might change!

Hey! Can you guys stop saying you lose muscle on LCHF! Lol. Otherwise I'll threaten to post pix of my leg muscles! And my biceps when I get weight lifting again. (And my adult daughter will just die of embarrassment! Even if I do it in cyber-land!)

Seriously, because of the lowered body fat percentage on LCHF, especially compared to the fat me on diagnosis, it's just easier to SEE the muscle that is there naturally, and of course, if doing an exercise regime as I do - the muscle increase on LCHF. (I did an online computation and mine is 27% - upper end of healthy normal for a middleaged woman which is between 20 and 30% I believe if my memory serves me here). (This fits as I'm upper end of normal for basically everything when it comes to weight and waist circumference etc. Nowadays.)

Lots of folks in Sweden eating LCHF, and I never heard a whisper about muscle loss or deficit. And Swedes are looking good on the obesity/diabesity stakes, compared to us lot in English-speaking countries. According to the stats of the LCHF diet doctor - and I trust his stats. (And he sure looks good! Certainly in the healthy male normal-muscle department. .)

Big appreciative sounds coming from me re diabetic friendly LCHF desserts. I have not really lost my sweet tooth - just have it under a lot of control, and hugely appreciative of mother nature providing me with stevia sweetened chocolate. Great that you are doing the desserts @Ejay40 .