Anyone have their numbers of muscle to body fat % lost during cuts? How is it regaining lost muscle post cut?

[terez]

@orchardllc Oh, boo-hoo, you lost some muscle on your cut? Welcome to the real world of body recomposition, where you don't get to cherry-pick fat loss and keep all your precious gains. Losing nearly half your weight as muscle screams of a poorly planned cut or just plain whining. Muscle memory isn't a magic spell that zaps your biceps back overnight. It means if you stop treating your body like a science experiment and actually focus on solid nutrition and training, you might just claw back some dignity along with your muscle. And for the record, if you're diving into semaglutide-assisted cuts without understanding the basics of diet and exercise, maybe it's time to reassess your priorities. Muscle comes back with hard work, not tears over a scale number.

 

[christianhopeforall]

@terez You ok hun?

 

[asperd]

@terez To be fair, the rate at which OP is losing lean mass (48%. 9.8 lb lean mass lost/20.6 lb lost) is smaller than his overall lean mass % when he started (82.4%. 100
% - 17.6%). So he's on track. He just has unrealistic expectations of what a cut entails. You're going to lose some glycogen and water on a cut. That's normal. Probably only a small percentage of the lean mass he lost was actual muscle. I think I have the same scale as OP that I bought off Amazon. Or a similar one. And that scale measures glycogen as a component of muscle mass. Glycogen technically kind of is muscle mass even though it comes and goes the easiest depending on how many calories you eat (and carbs convert to glycogen faster than fats and proteins. So carbs especially correlate with glycogen). When I was low on calories recently while micro-cutting, my lifts went to shit. But when I upped my calories to maintenace/slight calorie surplus, my strength improved. Why? Glycogen most likely.

 

[hopeandgrace]

@orchardllc It's pretty easy to regain muscle lost during a cut. I shed over 50 lbs during a very aggressive cut at the end of 2022-into mid-2023 and am already basically right back at where I was after several months bulk then a couple months recomp. I almost stopped training entirely too for 3 months of the cut, so lost a lot more muscle than normal.

Where are these numbers coming from? Unless you're getting regular DEXAs, these are likely wildly inaccurate. I wouldn't put any faith in any of those silly bathroom scales or other devices that claim to measure body fat, short of a DEXA scan, which even still has a margin of error, but at least there is a margin and it's not just random fuckin numbers.

If you want to get to 10% without gear, you're going to be pretty small for the most part, unless you have phenomenal genetics. I think that is one of the biggest things gear is really helpful for, getting shredded without losing too much muscle. In my experience I am never really able to get that lean without losing significant size. Sure striations and abs and whatnot, but not like crazy shredded. I'll be like 220 and relatively lean, start cutting, abs popping at 205, but then I start losing muscle and same as you getting down to like 185ish and still not even all that lean, just a lot smaller and weaker. It's super weak.

 

[dreamer503]

@orchardllc Are you saying you basically lost 1 lb of muscle for every 1 lb of fat? That would suggest that you probably tried to make it happen too fast which means too big of a calorie deficit. Also gotta be careful to keep your protein high when in a cut to minimize muscle wasting

 

[eighty]

@orchardllc semiglutide??

 

[sovereignty]

@orchardllc Not seeing many answers about the muscle memory question, so here goes: yes, muscle memory applies to actual muscle mass as well as strength. You’ll be able to gain it all back fairly quickly. Don’t stress about it.

 

[mac64]

@orchardllc Did you lose strength?

 

[kagenonikki]

@orchardllc Semaglutide? Were you obese? Diabetic?