Fat/Muscle Ratio In Weight Gain/Loss

Raul_SJ

G.O.A.T.
Suppose you go off of your diet plan and gain 10 pounds over a month, mostly from eating junk food, while still performing your usual exercise level

1. Is there any way to roughly know the ratio of fat and muscle in that 10 pound gain?

2. When you lose the weight back by cutting back the junk food, will it tend to be lost with the same fat/muscle ratio in which it was gained?
 

r2473

G.O.A.T.
Suppose you go off of your diet plan and gain 10 pounds over a month, mostly from eating junk food, while still performing your usual exercise level

1. Is there any way to roughly know the ratio of fat and muscle in that 10 pound gain??
You gained 10 pounds of fat, 0 pounds of muscle.

2. When you lose the weight back by cutting back the junk food, will it tend to be lost with the same fat/muscle ratio in which it was gained?
You will lose 10 pounds of fat, 0 pounds of muscle.
 

richardc-s

Semi-Pro
The only way to properly find out is to take a body fat reading, you can do that with body fat callipers at home. If you weigh yourself and do a bodyfat reading once a month it will be easy for you to keep track of what's happening.

For instance, I have maintained the same weight for the best part of a year, but my body fat percentage has gone from 17% down to around 12%. This means that although my weight hasn't changed, I've managed to lose fat and put on muscle. If I hadn't been taking bodyfat measurements along the way then the scales would be telling me nothing has changed!

Also generally speaking, when you are on a 'diet' and losing weight, most of it will be fat but some of it will be muscle. The exact ration of fat and muscle loss will change from person to person depending on the calories they're consuming, the type of exerice they are doing etc. If you are severely restricting calories and basically starving yourself then you will be losing a lot more muscle than if you are only slightly reducing calories below your maintenance level.
 

shindemac

Hall of Fame
Say what?

You lose muscle, just sayin. That's why yo-yo dieting is terrible. 1 lb of muscle burns more calories than 1 lb of fat. You can look it up to see how much more. So your body will jettison the muscle first, the more expensive calorie consumer to maintain fuel reserves.

Goto body works exhibit. You see cross section of fat guys arm with all fat and no muscle.
 

r2473

G.O.A.T.
You lose muscle, just sayin. That's why yo-yo dieting is terrible. 1 lb of muscle burns more calories than 1 lb of fat. You can look it up to see how much more. So your body will jettison the muscle first, the more expensive calorie consumer to maintain fuel reserves.

Goto body works exhibit. You see cross section of fat guys arm with all fat and no muscle.
OK, sounds good
 
you should not lose more than about 1 Pound per week if you don't want to lose muscle.

for gaining muscle probably the highest realistic Goal is probably 2 Pounds per month or so. if you gain anything more than 4 Pounds per month the excess is probably fat. Teenagers can of course gain more but they also still have bone growth on top of muscle and fait gain.
 

tipsa...don'tlikehim!

Talk Tennis Guru
You gained 10 pounds of fat, 0 pounds of muscle.


You will lose 10 pounds of fat, 0 pounds of muscle.
agree with shindemac, losing 10 pounds of fat for zero pounds of muscle is unfortunately impossible (or possible via doping?), everytime I lost 10 pounds or so I lost strenght (and I was eating very healthy and exercising almost everyday).
 

tipsa...don'tlikehim!

Talk Tennis Guru
you should not lose more than about 1 Pound per week if you don't want to lose muscle.

for gaining muscle probably the highest realistic Goal is probably 2 Pounds per month or so. if you gain anything more than 4 Pounds per month the excess is probably fat. Teenagers can of course gain more but they also still have bone growth on top of muscle and fait gain.
Agree. Not easy to do.
 

r2473

G.O.A.T.
The only way to properly find out is to take a body fat reading,.
Agree
you can do that with body fat callipers at home If you weigh yourself and do a bodyfat reading once a month it will be easy for you to keep track of what's happening...
Calipers are only as good as the person using them. Most people will have a tendency to give lower bf% readings than actual.

Some years ago, I had a clinician do a caliper test just before I did a bodpod. The caliper differed by 5%, which to me, means it's basically useless.

agree with shindemac, losing 10 pounds of fat for zero pounds of muscle is unfortunately impossible (or possible via doping?), everytime I lost 10 pounds or so I lost strenght (and I was eating very healthy and exercising almost everyday).
OK, Just tell me what you think the body composition change will be in the OP's scenario? I say no body composition change.

You can argue if he gains muscle just by gaining weight and then loses that muscle when he loses weight. I won't get into that, except to say that I took bodpod tests when I dieted down from 198 to 180 and my LBM stayed almost exactly the same (1.5 lb. LBM increase actually, but this is simply accepted testing error range). Then I started on (what I thought was) and intense weight training program. I went from 180 to 210 and gained only fat (2 lb LBM increase). I still have the test results. They helped me realize I was all wrong in my training (I got a lot stronger by the way, but I didn't gain any muscle) . I made changes, kept taking tests, and 4 years later, had the results I wanted.

To the OP, if you really want to know the answer, the only way is before/after body composition tests that are accurate (bodpod, hydrostat, Dexa).
 
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richardc-s

Semi-Pro
^^^^^ good point about the accuracy of body fat callipers. If the same person does it each time then the results should be fairly consistent within themselves, so you can always use that as a form of measurement. For example, my wife does my readings once a month and although I can tell the readings are too low, they are consistent month on month. The readings currently say I'm 11% but by eye I would say I'm more 13-14%. In my mind the number itself doesn't matter, I know that month on month it is going down so that's good enough for me.

But a bodpod scan is the best way of doing it!
 

r2473

G.O.A.T.
But a bodpod scan is the best way of doing it!
Get a bodpod scan (or similar) and then do caliper readings right after and often, attempting to get your calipers to read the same as the bodpod. After several iterations, you'll learn how to get "accurate" caliper readings.

I skip the caliper altogether. Any weight I've gained since my last bodpod reading (over 4 years ago by now) is almost assuredly all fat. This isn't 100% accurate, but any LBM gain (which won't be much anyway) isn't muscle, and will disappear when I lose the weight, so it's good enough.

But I agree with your first statement. Getting relative decreases/increases is more important than absolute accuracy.
 
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