I have a question about muscle loss.

I know in order to help minimize it we're supposed to weight train so we aren't losing as much as we drop in weight... but...

For this example say I didn't exercise... (which I do BTW) I think someone here said that you lose less muscle the more overweight you are... I think the number thrown out there was 25%?

Is it really possible for me to lose 40lbs+ in muscle? I doubt I HAVE 40lbs in muscle on my skeleton on top of whatever bare minimum you need to get by in life... How much muscle does an "average" not obese female of the not-super fit variety carry? (I know there are a lot of variations here but humor me)

I'm just curious really.

I'm not exactly sure about the numbers but I would guess you have pleanty of muscle to lose. Like you said working out is very important to prevent that as much as possible. Also the more muscle you have the more calories you burn just sitting there. I don't know what the average amount of muscle a female has but I have 124 pounds of muscle and 47 pounds of fat which puts me at 27% body fat. I'm quite athletic but not so much so that I wouldn't be considered average. Hope that helps some!

True, but bones and organs and things weigh stuff too... that has to be atleast 50-60lbs right? Or am I way off base?

I think when Melissa says she has 124lb of muscle, what she means is that she has 124lb of lean mass, which includes bones and organs and whatnot. I don't know of a way to measure muscle without measuring the other stuff--they measure fat because it floats and because you can pinch it with calipers

Idealmuse, I bet you have more muscle than you think you do, and you will lose some of it as you lose weight. Weight training and exercise will help to ensure that you lose more fat than muscle

Yeah, I guess there isn't a good way to know the differences between the lean masses. Just trying to figure out if it's really possible for me to have that much muscle in the first place.

Like say if someone my height weighs 130. I'm going to guess the non-muscle part of the lean mass is atleast 50lbs. If that person has 20 percent body fat then That's 26 lbs... which would leave 50 some pounds of muscle.

So I don't know my own body fat at the moment my scale says just under 50 but we know how that's notoriously wrong. that means 133fat+50Bones/organs (183) means I have 83lbs muscle theoretically. Just sounded like a lot to me I guess. If I lost 40lbs of that I'd have 43lbs at 150... which I guess sounds reasonable but less then my example of the person above.

Sorry not trying to be difficult or anything just curious.

So if I DO have that much muscle it most mostly be in the legs because its surely not in my arms hehe

Guess I need to stop worrying about it and just do what i can to preserve as much as I can with weight training.

Also keep in mind that roughly 60% of your body weight is water, which is included in your lean body mass (LBM). Baffled's right that LBM is everything in your body that isn't fat, so it's hair, skin, bone, blood, and water as well as muscle. I don't know of a way to break out actual pounds of muscle short of a lab.

Anyway, as you lose pounds of fat, you'll lose fluids along the way because your smaller sized body won't need the same volume of water and blood to sustain you. That will register as a loss of LBM -- but loss of LBM doesn't necessarily mean it's muscle. I don't think it's possible to lose 100% fat and no LBM. Some LBM will be lost along the way, even if it's just fluids.

But you're right, the goal is to minimize the loss of LBM and prevent the loss of muscle while we're losing fat. And that means weights!

What Meg said!

The body is conservative, and whatever it doesn't need, it doesn't maintain. "If you don't use it, you lose it." That's why resistance training (aka weights) is a good thing, especially when losing weight.

Too bad that the body "thinks" it needs those fat deposits! But, fat deposits in the human species' distant past were a benefit, not a hindrance. Today things are different--people in developed countries have large amounts of calorie-rich foods readily available. But the body still packs away whatever isn't used--for those famine times... that don't come.

Unfortunately, the heavier a person gets, the less they tend to move around--so although we do need muscles just to move, it's so much effort as we gain that we become more and more sedentary. And that becomes a cycle.

Jay

Thanks... The loss of 'Lean body mass' versus all muscle makes more sense to me now. (All that blood etc you no longer need etc.)

So, all that loss of lean body mass isn't ALL mucle, which means yeah I probably don't have 40-60lbs of extra muscle. I do understand that some loss is inevitabe... the key being to try and avoid as much as you can.

thanks for helping me understand it clearer!

In one of my nutrition classes at college, we were talking about bone density loss (osteoporosis) and how to prevent it. We were talking about how weight-bearing exercise and how it strengthened muscle and bone. I asked the professor if being obese would be like perpetual weight-bearing exercise, as your joints/bones/muscles would have to be working harder to carry around the extra weight.

My professor said that yes, those who are/have been obese would probably have stronger bones because of the constant weight-bearing exercise caused by day-to-day living. I would imagine that being obese would require having stronger bones/muscles...so you might have more muscle mass than someone at your height at 130 pounds.

Your post reminds me that I really need to kick up the weights once I get back out to school...lifting is a good way to lose weight AND tone up

That's funny because I have a fairly large frame, and I keep saying I should have broken my ankle like 5 times by now, but I seem to have bones of steel (In the legs atleast I guess from weight bearing my own body! heh) I drink lots of milk too so I guess I'm set atleast in that one department.