Lean mass preservation: what the evidence supports

Lean mass preservation: what the evidence supports Writing it up because I had to work it out twice and would rather nobody else did.

Maintenance rather than loss, which is the part of this that almost nobody writes about.

I have been at roughly the same weight for 12 months. The interesting questions are all different from the ones I had at the start, and the documentation here is much thinner on this phase.

I would like to compare notes with people who are further along, and I would like to know what the published evidence says about this phase specifically rather than by extrapolation.

Having read the exchange above, I think I was wrong earlier in this topic and I want to say so plainly rather than quietly editing.

The correction was fair and I had been repeating something I had not checked carefully enough.

DXA (dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry): the standard for body composition in research. Precision is roughly ±1 kg for lean mass. Two scans six months apart on the same machine with the same technician give you useful information. Two scans six weeks apart on different machines tell you about the machines.

Ultrasound: thickness of subcutaneous fat at specific sites. Less standardised than DXA and operator-dependent. Useful as a supplementary measure but not as a primary method.

Changes during titration: measuring body composition during active titration is less useful than measuring after dose is stable. Titration causes fluid shifts that confound body composition.