On Oct. 9, 03 my dietician and I did an ELG, electrolipograh, and I went on induction. I started with a fat fast of two days then went on to eat 60/40 protien/fat and less than ten grams carbs daily. I did this for four weeks. I then went to thrity grams carbs and maitained the 60/40 protien/fat. For excercise I walked two miles twice daily and during my work day I usually put in two miles easy. We did another ELG on Jan. 9, 04 The good news is I lost thrity pounds during the time, that bad news is 25 pounds was muscle and only 5 was fat. Howesver, my body composition stayed the same, 76% lean body mass, 24? body fat.

Has anyone else have similar results? Has anyone done an ELG before and after induction to see just how much of thier loss was actually fat?

SO you lost 50 pounds, but your body fat percentage is the same as before? Hmm that sounds very strange...

I lost 120 pounds, and though I am certain I lost a good deal of muscle, I am definitely sure I lost a lot more fat. I never measured my bodyfat percentage before and after, all I know is I wear a much smaller size today .

just curious but it says your body fat percentage before was 33, and today it is 24... that is a decrease of 9%, no?

33% of 293 is 96 pounds. You had 96 pounds of fat before atkins.
24% of 242 is 58 pounds. You have 58 pounds of fat after atkins.

Your non-fatty mass (NOTE: this is not all muscle it also includes water clothes and skeletal tissues) was 196 before atkins, your non-fatty mass is 184 after atkins.

So, according to your stats, you lost 38 pounds of fat and 12 pounds of non-fatty mass. Considering that 12 pounds includes glycogen, water, and probably only a smittering of muscle that sounds pretty darn good!

I am sorry if I am reading your stats wrong, but it sounds to me that assuming your stats on the left ARE correct, your dietician is perhaps manipulating the machine incorrectly or doesn't really know how to read it...

How many grams of protein on average do you eat a day? And how is it spread through you meal?

And I have to agree w/ the previous poster. The numbers just don't add up. How could you have LOST muscle mass, when you still have the same LBM%?

If you started with a fat fast, ate more protein than fat (percentage wise) and consumed 10 grams of carbs a day during Induction, then you were not doing Atkins. At least not properly. This may be part of the problem — there are reasons for the principles Dr. A set.

During Induction at least, you ought to be consuming more fat than protein. Around 60-70% is ideal. And at only 10 carbs, you may not have been getting all the vegetables you needed. And while I don't know the whole story with you and your past weight loss attempts, I do know that fat fast is not recommended except in extreme cases of metabolic resistance. If you have been able to drop 50 pounds, you're probably not metabolically resistant.

I apologize if this comes off as harsh. It might be time to read or reread Dr. Atkins' book to brush up on this plan. Doing it improperly can create health risks. I don't know if this was the reason for you losing muscle mass or not, but it can't have helped.

Hilary M - While he did deviate slightly from he Dr's orders, what alterations he describes (so far) is not so far off plan as to cause the incredible loss of muscle mass he believes he has lost.

My fear is that his dietician is misinterpreting the results (his stats on the left look fantastic to me... and at most could only have lost 12 pounds of non-fat mass, most of which was probably water). My other fear is that the results were correct, but he was exercising too intensely and not eating enough. Intense exercise on 10 grams of carbs is a recipe for muscle loss. Atkins works great because fat is broken down slowly. If you are puting energy demands on your body that it doesn't have the capacity to meet, you will either a) pass out during exercise (unlikely) or b) your body will eat it's own muscle to create the sugar it needs.

Although all that is just conjecture at this point, until he affirms or denies these points.

I agree that when you increase your level of activity, you need to increase your carbs. Took me a while to learn that! So ItsTheWoo, how do you know how many carbs you need in correlation to your level of exercise, to avoid the "your body eating its own muscle" thing?

The test is one where they send an electrical pulse through your body to test for resistance, correct?

If that is the case then it works like the scales and is extreamly innacurate. My scale that does the electrical thing can range 7% at any time even checking at the same time each night. I also checked once, watche da movie drinking water and not eating, then went back to see it said I gained 2% body fat.

They are effected by how you are dressed, how hydrated you are, when your last meal was, and a variety of other factors. If you had 2 tests and they were far apart, then no, the results wouldn't be the same. Testing daily and taking an average would show much better results.

The first ELG was when I was 274 not 293, should have mentioned that. I had some success losing wieght but never got into ketosis, hence the fat fast. After getting into ketosis I would pop in and pop out if I consumed more than the ten grams of carb. I'm certainly glad that isn't the case these days.

How was your %bf that you have listed for your weight at 293 determined, what method? Was the bf% at 242 lbs the same method? The same time of day?

Devices that measure body fat percentage with electrical impedence are notoriously inaccurate because too many uncontrollable variables affect it. If you did different measurements at different times on the same day, your results would not be the same twice. The most accurate method of determining body fat percentage is water displacement (expensive and not many places offer this), next would be calipers in the hands of a well-trained, experienced individual along with measurements (wrist size, waist to hip ratio, etc..).
A full-length mirror would probably be a better guage than that device! Do you really look that much flabbier than you did 30 pounds ago? No? Then I doubt that it's correct.
You should also expect to lose some lean body mass. According to the device, you started out with more lean body mass than your current goal weight. Since it's not realistic to expect 0% body fat, at your goal weight and say 14% body fat, you would have 163.4 pounds of lean body mass and 26.6 pounds of body fat.

first calculation was a "guesstimation" chart in the doctor's office-height, weight, build.....
no, not flabbier at all--quite the contrary

Those guestimations can be way way off. According to those every body builder out there would be m obidly obese.

Many over weight people have a higher lean weight form packing all that extra weight around :P If you had any muscle mass before or dense bones those can be way off.

According to those height weight charts, I can safely get down to around 104 pounds. Considering at one time while working out I had 111 pounds of lean weight and currently still have 106, I would be dead before reaching 104.

Be glad your losing weight and don't freak out about what book or chart says is normal for people your height.

Something sounds way off here. If you had this done at 274 lbs and you are trying to get to 190, this sure doesn't sound right.

When you had the bf test you were 84 lbs over your ideal weight. This was 50% above your ideal weight at that time. I can guarantee you that someone who is 50% above their ideal weight does not have 24% body fat. It would be much higher.

I suspect that first reading was wrong and quite possibly the second one too.