Great I'm losing weight, oh that's not a good trend

Was internally celebrating a pending drop below the 200 pound mark and my coach said make sure it’s the right weight.
Well I DO have a Garmin Smart Scale, so while the exact percentages aren’t medical quality, the trends are still useful.
Overall weight is down
Bone Mass unchanged
Percent water up (yeah hydration!)
Amount of Fat down (woo whooo!)
Amount of muscle down (wait? WTF?)
Ugh I really need to up my post ride protein game A LOT, not to mention stay much more on top of eating on the bike and keeping the fuel up so I don’t cannibalize muscle anymore.

So is this a matter of taking a que from the podcast and in addition to staying fueled on the bike, also on ride days having a protein bar before bed, and a big dollop of cottage cheese with my oatmeal the following morning?

I’m doing 3 meals + 3 snacks, with at least two snacks being protein centric. Spread out the protein intake, you can only absorb so much at a time.

3 Likes

Ah good tip on the protein snacks. I’ll have to crack open Feedzone Portables and find some of the more protein rich ones.

These body weight scales just suck, to proof that stand on the scale with a bit of weight (5 kg or more) and see your muscles shoot up.

Probably the best metrics to track are weight and waist circumference and taking progress pics every 2 weeks

2 Likes

Yep totally get that they aren’t clinical in any way, even more so after an update early this year.

I’m just using it for trends. I weigh myself the same way & same time once a week for the trend. The trend has me questioning my nutrition.

There are even useless for trends, I sometimes get almost 6%-point intraday variation in musculature with my omron vivo scale

1 Like

Congratulations on the milestone dude, that’s a big one!
A couple of other things to consider might be how much weight you’ve lost so far, and how big of a deficit you’re in. Nutritional strategies can go a long way to swing things in your favour, but typically a significant weight loss will involve some degree of muscle- likely more if you’ve lost a large amount of weight or done so at a more aggressive rate.
Along the same lines, I wouldn’t sweat it so much if it’s only a small change- those scales are subject to a degree of error, and if your overall health and fitness is trending in the right direction I wouldn’t get too caught up in the number on the scale. :slightly_smiling_face:

1 Like

Losing non functional muscle is not necessarily a bad thing, weight loss will always come with a bit of muscle loss.
Endurance exercise isnt sending signals of muscle growth, do some strength work if you want some.

2 Likes

It takes a proper portion of protein to kick off muscle protein synthesis. I think it’s about 20-25 grams. Oatmeal and a dollop of cottage cheese will probably not do it (10-15 grams?) so you are starting off your day deficient as far as muscle building goes.

Sports nutritionists recommend something like 1.2 go 2 grams of protein per kg per day. At 90 kg that would be 110 to 180 grams of protein per day. It’s better to get that in 3-5 solid doses rather than dribs and drabs. So think about something like 4 servings x 40grams of protein per day.

3 Likes

I too have a Garmin scale. I put zero confidence in the numbers it gives me outside of the weight number. Personally, if the scale is going down and the power on the bike is staying steady or increasing (as well as the numbers in the gym), I feel that “I’m losing the right sort of weight”. Congrats on breaking 200.

3 Likes

My oatmeal mix starts at 9g of protein, add 11g with a serving of cottage cheese and I’m at 20, but to your point my protein game is lacking and better planning is required.

2 Likes

I think depending on how tall you are and how much weight you are intending to lose you can’t do it without losing some muscle. This is basically the whole reason that body builders take some of the steroids they do. So that they can get huge and then cut all of the fat while losing no muscle.

So, for example, if you are a 6ft tall guy and weight 300lbs but are looking to get down to 185. It would be virtually impossible to lose 120 pounds of only fat. But if that weight loss was 70% fat then that’s probably pretty good even though you’ve lost like 35 lbs of muscle.

I didn’t do any math on that so don’t take that as gospel. But the point is that the ratios matter. So if you lost 10 lbs of fat but only a pound or so of muscle then I wouldn’t worry about it too much.

1 Like

Hmm, I lost 20lbs recently and have another 10-15lbs to go. During the 6 months of slowly whittling off those 20lbs of weight, this is what happened according to my power curve and taking measurements of my body:

  • added 10W to my FTP (and gains in other parts of power curve)
  • reduced size of waist and hips
  • slight increase in size of biceps, chest, and calf
  • thigh stayed the same

So in my humble experience it is possible to lose weight, maintain or gain muscle, and increase fitness on the bike.

1 Like

Yep I’m also in that weird space where some of my too expensive to tell my wife how much they cost bibs are right on the verge of being too big. Bunching & the chaffing that follows are unwanted to say the least.

Good but expensive problems to have?

1 Like

My issue was race cut jerseys and getting the zipper over my belly. Losing those 20lbs solved that problem. Now that I’m going out to weekly group ride hammerfests, and its about to get hot, I’m going to do another push and see if I can drop 5-10lbs. That would get me to 190-195, with an long-term goal to sustainably get down to 185 if it doesn’t impact performance on the bike (it should not).

1 Like

And I pray my XL bibs will still fit!!

There’s your problem…:stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes::stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes::stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

(Just a joke…Omron is one of my largest competitors)

I trust my garmin scale for weight, and that’s about it.

The fat % can vary by like 1% morning to afternoon, when it’s absolutely just water weight. If it’s clearly miscalculating 2lbs of fat, I can’t put a lot of faith in any lean body mass number.

2 Likes

Exactly. I specifically bought the cheaper Withings scale to avoid looking at things like estimated muscle mass, bone mass, fat mass, and water weight. It has BMI but I don’t pay any attention to it.

Yeah, I’m not saying it’s not possible to lose weight and not lose muscle but if you’re real over weight and trying to lose it quickly then that might be a side-effect. I just wouldn’t stress out over a handful of pounds of muscle loss if the fat loss far out-weighs it.

Also, I’m not sure how well these scales measure muscle mass vs intramuscular fat.

2 Likes