I believe that nutrition is key to sustaining muscle. If you don't eat enough, you will lose weight but the weight will be both water and muscle (and fat)

The basic fat loss principle is to eat enough to support your LBM, and exercise to burn the fat. If you "starve" the fat, you will starve your body and lose LBM. That is why ultimately, your metabolism balance, and caloric balance is critical.

Being lighter or larger does not make a difference. It is about your LBM. And this is why conservering (or building) LBM is critical to effective fat loss. The more muscle you have, the more ongoing metabolism burning you will have. This is also one of the dangers of not following a LC diet properly. If you do not preserve your LBM, yes you will lose weight but if you lose LBM also, your metabolism is so comprimised that if you fall off the diet, you will gain pounds like you've never dreamed possible. Fat pounds I might add.

You must eat the proper nutrition to perserve your LBM as you lose fat. It is critical to keep your metabolism as high as possible during your fat loss or "cutting" phase so that when you reach your goal weight, you have not compromised your metabolism, and you have not lost LBM.

This is why many professionals, and experienced people in losing fat (body builders for example, who bulk-gain fat and muscle on a large scale, then lose all the fat while retaining muscle on a yearly basis) stress the importance of establishing good basic eating habits. These habits can fit into any LC program you are in.

They include small meal sizes with high frequency, food combinations, caloric monitoring, to name a few. Advanced techniques involve carb cycling, including some keto style approaches.

Resistance training is critical to LBM preservation as well, but is ineffective alone. You must support it with the proper diet. If you do not feed your muscles properly, you will not reap the benefits of resistance training. For example, if you do not take your carbs at the right time for resistance training, you will have extremely compromised muscle development. Don't misquote me here, I am not saying you can't do resistance training with a LC diet. On the contrary, the most effective cutting method to date, is a zigzag cycling approach which has many variations, some using ketosis, some that don't. But again, it is based on having the basic nutritional eating habits in place.

The information is plentiful both on these forums and on many building body sites. They all say the same thing. If you want FAT loss, and preserve LBM, you must eat properly, and you must exercise properly. Sounds basic, but that's what it is. As for the details of what is "eating properly" and "exercising properly" you can find it on the specific exercise links here on this forums, or in many of the great exercise program books such as (basic) Body For Life, or (advanced) Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle. They are all pretty much common sense however.

Unfortunately, most people (including myself) often get blinded by the quick weight losses and quick found success in some LC diet programs, and neglect the basics. The long term results can be detrimental.

Don't fall into the trap of measuring success by weight, and dont fall into the trap of thinking the LC diets are a shortcut to success for the long term. If you plan on losing fat *for good, and keeping it off for good*, there is no shortcut. You must establish good HABITS in your eating and lifestyle (exercise). Then from there, use the various eating programs and aim for losing fat, and preserving LBM, and contrary to popular belief, it takes discipline and a carefully regulated eating program LC or otherwise.

In a nutshell, get familiar with the basics before you go on any LC program or you will lose LBM with your weight, and in the end, you will be much worse off than when you started.

Cheers

Moses