For someone with overweight or obesity, losing weight can significantly improve health and longevity, but what matters even more is your body composition—the balance between fat and lean muscle mass. Body composition plays a critical role in metabolic health, directly influencing the risk for chronic diseases.
Transcript:
Stop Losing Muscle: A Smarter Approach to Weight Loss
I recently heard a podcast where they interviewed a nutrition expert who said it’s perfectly normal to lose between 20 and 40% of your body weight from muscle and lean tissue. Normal? To lose up to 40% muscle. How did we get to this point where we define that as normal? Because I have news for you. It’s not normal, and it shouldn’t be accepted. The problem is people don’t realize there are alternatives to extreme calorie restriction or injectable medications, where yes, those are helpful at losing weight, but you’re very likely to lose muscle mass as well. Well, a new study just came out showing once again that opening our eyes to other alternatives, such as ketogenic therapy, can help people lose weight from fat mass while maintaining lean muscle mass. And this is critical for future metabolic health, future quality of life, and avoiding frailty and all the complications that come with it. So let’s talk about it. Welcome to Metabolic Mind, a non-profit initiative of Baszucki Group, transforming the study and treatment of mental disorders by exploring the connection between metabolism and brain health. Thank you for joining us on this journey. Before we get into the details though, please remember our channel is for informational purposes only. We’re not providing individual or group medical or healthcare advice, and we’re not establishing a provider-patient relationship. Many of the interventions we discuss can be dangerous if not done without proper clinical supervision. So always consult your healthcare provider before changing your lifestyle or medications.
Breakdown of New Keto Study
Alright, so this study that I’m talking about was published in iScience, and it was an interesting sort of two-part study. First, they did a three week ketogenic diet intervention on healthy individuals with a control group following a Western diet. And to be honest, I’m a little less interested in that phase because it was healthy individuals in only three weeks. And they said that that was sort of the feasibility part of their study. But the next part was a three month intervention in patients who were overweight. Now this part got my attention . Now you can see the data here, the subjects and average age of about 51 years old, with a body max index of 30. And they started a ketogenic diet with really the only guidance being eat less than 10% of your calories from carbohydrates, and more than 60% from fat. There were no other really specifics required from their diet. And what’s interesting is they ate 2800 calories per day, 2800. Right. And that was based on calculations for what would be euchaloric or presumably weight stable. So there was no calorie restriction and their total grams of carbohydrates that the average was 35 per day. And they were checking ketones with the average beta hydroxybutyrate above one.
Keto Study Weight Loss Results
Now it’s hard to imagine someone’s going to lose much weight eating 2800 calories per day, right? Well, in three months, the subjects lost an average of six kilograms, which is around 13 pounds. But here’s the most interesting part. Using a bioimpedance scale, they were able to determine that all of the weight loss was fat loss. There was no lean muscle or bone loss. The visceral fat decreased by 14%. The fat mass decreased by 14% with no change in lean mass.
Study Implications
Now that’s got to be a pretty revolutionary finding for a profession that feels like it’s normal to lose 40% of your weight from muscle, right? And oh, by the way, did you see the recent report about a study linking visceral fat to the risk of Alzheimer’s disease? So, it’s kind of nice to see an intervention that impressively reduces visceral fat like the ketogenic diet did in this trial.
Metabolic & Quality of Life Improvements
But that’s in the side. There were other beneficial changes too. The HDL increased with no change in LDL or ApoB and there were significant improvements in quality of life, including fatigue and markers of mental health. Now without a control group, it’s hard to say that these findings, you know, of a quality of life were any better than any other dietary interventions. But given the recent podcast I heard, this was the perfect study to show that no, we do not have to accept muscle loss as part of weight loss.
Body Composition & Maintaining Muscle
And we recently did a video that we’ll link to talking about the importance of body composition and how we don’t just want to lose weight regardless of where it comes from. Because losing muscle and bone is detrimental in the long run. And yes, eating more protein, doing resistance training can absolutely help maintain muscle mass. But when someone’s severely restricting their calories or taking an injectable GLP1 medication, you know, that dramatically reduces their hunger and makes them a little nauseous, it’s challenging to eat enough protein. And as we know, it can be hard to get people to start exercising as well. And in this trial, they weren’t big exercisers, right? Their average activity, was in the sedentary or light activity range. And there was no specific exercise intervention, yet they maintain their lean mass.
Muscle Loss & Weight Loss Meds
So let’s revisit that podcast, which is unfortunately a popular podcast where they tried to normalize losing up to 40% of your body weight from lean mass. So they were reviewing the data that GLP1s like Gozepik and Wigovi lead to 40% of the weight loss coming from lean mass. They asked if we should be concerned about that. They interviewed a nutrition expert who said, no, we shouldn’t be concerned because that’s what most weight loss studies show. And it’s perfectly normal. When I heard that, I just had to pick my job off the floor. I mean, it shows we’ve unfortunately come a long way in normalizing weight loss through what can be considered sort of extreme measures of extreme calorie restriction or these injectable medications. And yes, those interventions can be very helpful for losing weight. And that can be life changing to individuals with at least in the short term, significant reductions in health complications. But that doesn’t mean it’s the only way. Those interventions have their role and still can be used in a healthy way, but it’s time to get rid of your average scale that just tells you a number.
Normalizing Body Composition & Metabolic Health
And instead it’s crucial to measure body fat, visceral fat, lean mass, and make sure that as we’re losing weight, we’re doing so in the healthiest way possible, which means maintaining lean mass and losing fat mass. And as this study showed, a ketogenic diet is one option of doing that, as is eating higher protein combined with regular resistance exercise. But let’s not normalize muscle loss. Let’s normalize metabolic health. Let’s normalize being strong and fit as we lose weight and improve our health. So what do you think? Leave us a comment about your thoughts on healthy weight loss, body composition, metabolic health, and if this was helpful, please like and subscribe so you won’t miss any of our future content. So thank you so much for watching. I’m Dr. Bret Scher. We will see you here next time at Metabolic Mind, a nonprofit initiative of Baszucki Group.
