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

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orchardllc

New member
I'm ending a semiglutide assisted cut and I have to say I'm pretty disappointed with my ratio.

Here are my numbers:

201 lbs down to 180.4 lbs, 20.6 total pounds lost

Muscle mass changes: 157.4 pounds of muscle down to 147.6 lbs, 9.8 lbs of muscle lost

Body fat changes: 10.8 pounds of body fat lost, 17.6% body fat down to 13.8%.

So my ratio is 52.43% of the weight I lost being fat, and 47.57% being muscle which I'm very disappointed with.

I'm ending this cut earlier than I thought I would. I wanted to get to around 10% body fat but that doesn't seem to be in the cards right now. I do not want to go below 180 pounds, I didn't even necessarily want to get down this low. This was way too aggressive, it was extremely difficult to eat due to feeling nauseous.

How easy is it to regain lost muscle post cut? When people talk about 'muscle memory' are they talking about regaining lost strength, i.e. you can get back to benching 225 much quicker than it took to get there the first time or are they talking about actual muscle tissue coming back sooner?

How bad was this cut? Did I just fuck myself pretty good or what?
 
@orchardllc
Muscle mass changes: 157.4 pounds of muscle down to 147.6 lbs, 9.8 lbs of muscle lost
Click to expand...

I believe you're referring to fat free mass, not muscle mass. This is inclusive of water, bones, and organ weight in addition to muscle. You did not lose 9.8 lbs of muscle.
 
@gospel4asia This.

You lose a lot of fat free mass in a caloric deficit. You have less glycogen in your muscles at the end of a cut. Because glycogen is hydrophilic and how osmosis works, you will carry around significantly less water weight intramuscularly.

This is why you usually shoot up 5lbs or more the week after a cut ends. This is even when eating at maintenance calories. You didn't gain bodyfat back in a week. Your body can finally top up glycogen and water shoots right back into the muscle, where it stays. Same basic principal of carbo-loading before a bodybuilding show on a slightly lower scale.
 
@gospel4asia Oh, am I looking at the wrong thing?

I have these options that show up:

Weight

BMI
Body Fat

Fat free body weight

Subcutaenous Fat

Visceral Fat

Body Water

Skeletal Muscle
Muscle Mass
Bone Mass

Protein
BMR
Metabolic Age

The numbers I provided are from "Muscle Mass". Is that not the one I should be looking at?

My "Fat Free Body Weight" went from: 165.6 to 155.4
My "Skeletal Muscle" went from: 53.2 to 55.7
My "Muscle Mass" went from: 157.4 to 147.6

Please give me some good news here...
 
@orchardllc We don't know what scale you have & we don't know how it determines what it determines. Could you tell us what your lifts were at 200lb vs 180? Tell us how much they've changed if they have.
 
@leena2016 or even a pic of what this machine says 13.8% body fat looks like - 13%, contrary to what a lot of people here seem to think, is rather ripped. You won't be contest lean, but compared to the average gym rat, you should be highly vascular, clean muscle separation and have well defined abs even in poor lighting.
 
@orchardllc It sounds like we have the same scale make (if not the same model) and the same app from that company. Are you using a Homebuds scale (my model is black) with the Vitafit app?

The Vitafit app shows me at 78.7% muscle mass, 17% body fat (I think the left over is bone mass). Pretty sure some of that "muscle mass" is glycogen and water. It says in the description that this includes total muscle weight including skeletal muscle, cardiac muscle and smooth muscle.
 
@orchardllc How are you getting these numbers? They seem rather specific - like the numbers spit out by a bathroom bioimpedance scale or the ones they have in some gyms... if so, those numbers are absolutely worthless.

Personally, I use the mirror and gauge muscle loss in relation to my lifts - I typically don't lose much if any muscle mass and I've had some rather aggressive cuts. I also don't get down anywhere near 10% or into single digit territory where muscle loss become more of a potential issue for naturals.
 
@orchardllc Where are you getting muscle mass changes data from? Most of the ways to measure are inaccurate. To be honest even something like a DEXA scan the muscle mass numbers can easily be influenced by how hydrated you are. I wouldn’t read too much into this.
 
@orchardllc I'm pretty sure semaglutide and other GLP-1 agonists have been shown to increase the loss of skeletal muscle tissue vs fat.

Meta-analysis: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32628589/

"Although semaglutide, dapaglifrozin, and canagliflozin have a large weight loss effect, it is important to pay attention to muscle loss because a decrease in FFM was observed."

Your nausea was also probably caused by semaglutide. Semaglutide and GLP-1 agonists work by reducing the rate of gastric emptying. This causes nausea, vomiting, pancreatitis, and gastroparesis.
 
@mountainmanbob I assumed it was because those people weren't training and the body catabolizes muscle for proteins easily when you aren't using them in a calorie deficit.

In my personal experience I've only lost muscle on a diet when I wasn't working out.
 
@steve12 I don't have access to the full study, but I assume/hope that was an obvious factor they considered. They did say GLP-1 agonists showed a significant decrease compared to metformin.

And metformin literally reduces mTOR. Hope I don't have to explain how important that is for building and maintaining muscle mass.
 
@orchardllc Think you're probably misinterpreting the quantitative data, or the reporting is off. It's just very unlikely that you lost 10lbs of muscle during your 20lb bw loss cut.

Instead of focusing on the numbers for a bit, tell us what you're trying to do in the end. I mean 17 to 13% bf is great, and now you're in a great spot to bulk.

I get your goals might be different than others, but if you're just trying to understand "is losing 10lbs of muscle bad if I lost 20lbs of total weight", everyone will say, "Yes, that's God awful", but you're going to see a lot of responses from people telling you that's inaccurate.

Take a step back. Think you're missing the forest for the trees.
 
@orchardllc I'm going through a similar thing now with a cut. Anxiety is a bitch. My bench has gone down somewhat. My legs are still progressing. My back has stalled but I'm mostly holding steady with strength there.

But zooming out, I now almost weight the same as I did like 1.5 years ago, but I have significantly more muscle and strength now. My bench press is down from my all time PR, but I expect it to come back quickly once I finish this cut, level off, and start a long, slow bulk.

I think body fat and eating made me look a lot bigger. I'm interested in seeing what I look like with all that fluff pealed away. I don't think I'm losing that much muscle. I think fat, even a thin layer, just really adds a lot of visual size.
 
@orchardllc how are you getting these numbers? we don’t have any reliable methods of calculating body fat. especially down to the tenth of a percentage
 
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