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Lean body mass loss and setting end goals - female endomorph

NerdyScienceGrl
NerdyScienceGrl Posts: 669 Member
edited June 2021 in Health and Weight Loss
I've lurked on the forums for awhile and find a lot of inspiration here! I thought I'd share a little about me in hopes someone would have some thoughts on setting weight goals based on lean body mass.

I have made a conscious effort not to follow a "diet" or to develop a habitual workout routine (sound weird?), but instead create habits that are sustainable.

I'm mid40s, large frame, female, "apple shaped" endomorph.
Height 5'7; CW: fluctuating around 205.
Diet: lean toward high fat (e.g., avocado, olives, feta, nuts, good oils), varying amounts of unrefined carbs (e.g., non-starchy veggies, fruits, legumes, and minimal whole grains) and lean meats - primarily salmon, tuna and pork.
Calories: I tend to eat fairly intuitively, so some days it may be nothing because I'm not hungry and opt to fast or it could be 2,500. I do however try and keep my weekly calories between 9,100 and 10,500.
Macros: I don't do it -- I tried, but can't seem to eat enough protein even supplementing with protein powder and collagen.
Exercise: Most weeks, I get a minimum 45 minutes of hiking 3 days a week (normally more) and try to just keep moving when not at the office (shoot for around 400 calories burned a day). Other things include 20-30 min whole body resistance band workouts a few days a week and most nights I do 20 minutes of yoga for relaxation before bed.

So far this has worked well (~40 lbs lost since January), and I want start thinking about more long term. How did you determine your end goal? Did you do it by weight, certain measurement, clothing size?

For a number of reasons looking at BMI for a weight goal doesn't appear to be the best approach for me (frame and muscle), so I started looking at lean body mass realizing that you lose LBM as your weight goes down.

Since LBM includes water weight, I'm assuming that it could change fairly significantly as your body gets smaller. My current LBM has been holding steady between 122-123 lbs for the last 10ish lbs. I'd like to keep the muscle I have and tone, but not necessarily increase the size of what I already have.

While all bodies are different, does anyone have a rough idea how much LBM drops with weight loss?

I'm leaning toward my end goal being a clothing size, but it's been so long since I wasn't fat, I don't even know what's realistic, so a realistic number might be a better choice.





Replies

  • NerdyScienceGrl
    NerdyScienceGrl Posts: 669 Member
    edited June 2021
    Thank you for the response!

    How much would you be shooting for, ideally, in your opinion?
    I had originally found some ridiculous number based on weight and after some further research found a suggestion of 0.8 - 1 g per LBM lbs. Most days I can get around 85, but beyond that is difficult. I've tried adding non-meat items to increase the protein, but I appear to be fairly carb sensitive and experience both water weight and cravings/hunger from insulin spikes (i'm assuming). I try to keep my net carbs between 60 and 100. It's finding the right balance.

    That's a pretty fast loss rate, so far. I hope you're planning to slow it down a bit, soon, in the interests of body composition?
    It may seem like it but I lost a pretty good chunk of water weight once I started back to eating whole food and put the COVID fast food away. I also was carrying around an excessive amount of inflammation from severe arthritis in my back and hips. Once those two things leveled out, the loss slowed with the exception of the last few weeks where my calorie burning has been in excess of 1200, 2-3 days a week, from intensive yard work in prep for fire season. I also dropped all artificial sweetners in April that led to a fairly significant loss.

    From what method are you getting that lean mass estimate, out of curiosity?
    My home scale with the understanding that it is an imperfect measurement, but so long as I continue to use the same imperfect measurement throughout my journey, it will give me the trend in ups/downs I'm most interested in. Even if the scale were significantly off, I should be able to see if I'm losing significant LBM by tracking %body fat and LBM together.

    I've seen numbers like 1 pound in 4, but I think individual details could make a lot of difference (how much excess fat to start, what fitness condition to start, what exercise and eating routine while losing, etc.).
    I found a number that I discounted online that had average LBM for female athletes. It felt like a stretch to me. There are a lot of complicated factors in determining it, but I admittedly am curious if there was any predictor.

    I suggest that people set provisional goals, and adjust if needed as those get close.
    I originally started this journey in spring 2019, but lost motivation and was emotionally hammered by COVID and personal losses. I ended up regaining a significant chunk of what I'd originally lost. In January, my first goal was to lose COVID weight - done. Now, it's to see 199. After there are smaller goals too -- like college weight, weight when I got married, etc. As I wandered the forum though, I see a lot of goal weights in comments, and wondered where they came from since some (no offense to anyone of course) seemed quite lofty if not unattainable.

    Unless you have a seriously distorted body image - as some people do, which is not a criticism of them, just an additional consideration - it should be possible to self assess roughly as you go along. It's so much easier to make decisions, IME, as one gets close!
    I think it's too soon for me to know this for certain, but I can tell you, in total I've lost 60+ lbs and still see the person in the mirror at that starting weight. Mentally, I try and move past it, because that's not where I want to be, but I don't take progress photos and only recently started with measurements. I also don't keep clothes around that don't fit anymore so I'd have to buy new if I gained weight -- I don't want to buy new clothes in a bigger size. It's my own kick in the butt to keep going. But, it also doesn't help me to realize the changes I've made.

    Everything you said makes perfect sense. As someone who has battled with the number on the scale my entire life, for the first time, I no longer say "I want to be.... <fill in the blank>" and just visualize myself in a smaller body. I already have a million times more energy and feel like I could do all the things I did in my late 20s -- now to do them even better! :)
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 35,369 Member
    I kind of believe in focusing mainly on the process, not so much on the goal: Setting a reasonable calorie goal that leads to *sustainable* loss, finding satiation (if possible) at that goal, getting good nutrition, figuring out preferred eating timing & practical shopping/cooking/eating; trying out different exercise modes to find things that are ideally fun but at minimum tolerable; and that sort of thing. If the process is right, the goal will arrive. Further, the process needs to be more or less permanent, because we want to stay at a healthy weight long term, right?

    I feel like I (accidentally?) did myself a favor by deciding I wasn't going to do anything to lose weight that I wasn't willing to continue permanently to stay at a healthy weight, except for that reasonable calorie deficit. In that way, weight loss was mainly maintenance practice. I don't think that's the *only* way to do it, but it worked well for me.

    I do think essentially everyone would be well served by spending at least some time toward the end of loss, figuring out and grooving in habits that will work for the long haul. Statistics suggest that losing to goal is hard, but staying there is the real challenge. Practice helps. In contrast, treating weight loss as a project with and end date, after which things "go back to normal", didn't/wouldn't work for me. For me, weight management is forever. Part of defining a goal weight is figuring out what weight is not just realistically achievable, but reasonably happily sustainable, via reasonably happy habits.

    (FWIW, if you'd told me at the start, in 2015, that I'd get to my college weight, stay at a healthy weight for 5+ years, fit into my wedding kilt (a couple of weeks ago, still!) . . . I would've laughed.)

    P.S. Re: Protein. In case you haven't seen it before, this was mega-helpful to me:

    http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10247171/carbs-and-fats-are-cheap-heres-a-guide-to-getting-your-proteins-worth-fiber-also

    Also, even as an omnivore, you might consider a strategy I recommend to other vegetarians/vegans, especially newer ones. Omnivores often think of protein as "one big protein per meal". I.e., "What's for dinner?" "Pork chops" "Burgers" "Chicken'. 😉 That's a starting point. In addition, review your food diary, and look for things that have relatively many calories, but maybe don't deliver nutrition, satiation, or tastiness proportionate to that calorie "cost". Reduce or eliminate those, replace with something you enjoy eating that better meets your goals. In this case, if protein is the goal, use the thread linked above to figure out grains with more protein, veggies with more protein, snacks with more protein, etc. Small amounts of protein in many things you eat add up, over the course of a day, to a meaningful amount of protein.
  • Lietchi
    Lietchi Posts: 6,993 Member
    needsanidentity wrote: »

    I suggest that people set provisional goals, and adjust if needed as those get close.
    I originally started this journey in spring 2019, but lost motivation and was emotionally hammered by COVID and personal losses. I ended up regaining a significant chunk of what I'd originally lost. In January, my first goal was to lose COVID weight - done. Now, it's to see 199. After there are smaller goals too -- like college weight, weight when I got married, etc. As I wandered the forum though, I see a lot of goal weights in comments, and wondered where they came from since some (no offense to anyone of course) seemed quite lofty if not unattainable.

    I think a lot of people choose a goal based on how much they used to weigh when they were younger, but it's not always clear how they chose their goal.

    I'm also in the 're-evaluate along the way' team.
    I know what I weighed when I was still at university, but having body image issues then, I didn't know if that was appropriate for me or not:
    - I felt fat, but I doubt I was, considering my BMI then, so no accurate memory of what my body looked like
    - I barely exercised then, so body composition might differ from my body composition at the same weight now.

    So I chose the top end of the BMI range, 152lbs, because I had no reason to think that would be too low (weight at university was a BMI well below that).
    I eventually reached that, but could tell I still had a high bodyfat percentage. So I set a new goal of 143lbs.
    I'm nearly at 143lbs now. I think I'll need to factor in loose skin as well for some areas that don't look as nice as I want, but at this point I'm still not where I want to be bodyfat-wise. So, next goal is 137lbs, which is actually nearly what I used to weigh at uni. Will that be low enough? Not a clue 🤷🏻

    It's very personal of course. Starting from a BMI of 34, I could have just stopped at the top of the normal BMI range for my health. Or at my current weight. But I chose to aim for looking a certain way (fat percentage).

    As for using clothing sizes, it's an indication but vanity sizing makes it quite tricky. I noticed quite a difference between the sizing of my old clothes (from 10 years ago) and now, as well as large size variances between brands. For me personally, I also need to take into consideration that I'm a smaller size for tops than for pants.
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 28,055 Member
    needsanidentity wrote: »
    [snip]

    So far this has worked well (~40 lbs lost since January), and I want start thinking about more long term. How did you determine your end goal? Did you do it by weight, certain measurement, clothing size?

    For a number of reasons looking at BMI for a weight goal doesn't appear to be the best approach for me (frame and muscle), so I started looking at lean body mass realizing that you lose LBM as your weight goes down.

    Since LBM includes water weight, I'm assuming that it could change fairly significantly as your body gets smaller. My current LBM has been holding steady between 122-123 lbs for the last 10ish lbs. I'd like to keep the muscle I have and tone, but not necessarily increase the size of what I already have.

    While all bodies are different, does anyone have a rough idea how much LBM drops with weight loss?

    I'm leaning toward my end goal being a clothing size, but it's been so long since I wasn't fat, I don't even know what's realistic, so a realistic number might be a better choice.

    My goal is to fit into my skinny jeans from when I was a full time yoga teacher in my 30s. I don't go by generic sizes, as women's clothing sizing is cuckoo ;)

    That will put me in an Overweight BMI. I will reevaluate when I get there, and ask my doctor for a DEXA scan.

    I have a large frame http://www.myfooddiary.com/Resources/frame_size_calculator.asp * and the only time I've had a BMI as low as 24 was after 6 weeks of undereating and overexercising during boot camp. (When I first arrived there, I had to get boots and hats from the men's side of the uniforms room because there weren't any big enough in women's. At 5'6", I'm not especially tall. I've always had a hard time buying bracelets. I wear men's shoes as often as I can get away with it.)

    *This calculator may be inaccurate for people considerably overweight. I still had a large frame when I had a BMI of 24 when I was in the military.
  • rosebarnalice
    rosebarnalice Posts: 3,488 Member
    I didn't so much determine my goal weight as it sort of found me. I initially set my goal at the weight that I had last felt comfortable in my body (~175). But when got there, I felt very satisfied with my calorie allotment and food plan, so I just sorta kept at it to see where I landed. My rate of loss slowed, but I continued to lose for another 3 months without feeling deprived or wanting to eat more than I was.

    I eventually stabilized at 152-153 and have been there ever since. I log daily, and like you I sometimes have "over" days and sometimes have "under" days, and I exercise regularly and sometimes eat back my exercise calories and sometimes don't, but my weekly average has stayed stable.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 35,369 Member
    edited June 2021
    kshama2001 wrote: »
    needsanidentity wrote: »
    [snip]

    So far this has worked well (~40 lbs lost since January), and I want start thinking about more long term. How did you determine your end goal? Did you do it by weight, certain measurement, clothing size?

    For a number of reasons looking at BMI for a weight goal doesn't appear to be the best approach for me (frame and muscle), so I started looking at lean body mass realizing that you lose LBM as your weight goes down.

    Since LBM includes water weight, I'm assuming that it could change fairly significantly as your body gets smaller. My current LBM has been holding steady between 122-123 lbs for the last 10ish lbs. I'd like to keep the muscle I have and tone, but not necessarily increase the size of what I already have.

    While all bodies are different, does anyone have a rough idea how much LBM drops with weight loss?

    I'm leaning toward my end goal being a clothing size, but it's been so long since I wasn't fat, I don't even know what's realistic, so a realistic number might be a better choice.

    My goal is to fit into my skinny jeans from when I was a full time yoga teacher in my 30s. I don't go by generic sizes, as women's clothing sizing is cuckoo ;)

    That will put me in an Overweight BMI. I will reevaluate when I get there, and ask my doctor for a DEXA scan.

    I have a large frame http://www.myfooddiary.com/Resources/frame_size_calculator.asp * and the only time I've had a BMI as low as 24 was after 6 weeks of undereating and overexercising during boot camp. (When I first arrived there, I had to get boots and hats from the men's side of the uniforms room because there weren't any big enough in women's. At 5'6", I'm not especially tall. I've always had a hard time buying bracelets. I wear men's shoes as often as I can get away with it.)

    *This calculator may be inaccurate for people considerably overweight. I still had a large frame when I had a BMI of 24 when I was in the military.

    That calculator is inaccurate for me, and I'm not even remotely overweight (BMI 20.8 this morning).

    Wrist and elbow size can be a rough indicator of the rest of skeletal geometry, but that's not universal. We're not all "matchy".

    I have very large hands (ring size 10, men’s gloves), wrists (need big bracelets, usually make my own), elbows. The linked calculator says “The wrist and elbow methods agree that you have a broad body frame.”

    Trouble is, I have quite narrowly spaced pelvic bones, and when I had breasts (before mastectomies), they were always small, even when I was obese.

    For women, things like the spacing of pelvic bones, breadth of shoulder skeleton, and breast size (this last after weight loss) are more meaningful in determining a reasonable body weight than is the wrist/elbow. It takes geometrically more meat to wrap around wide shoulders/pelvic spacing vs. narrow ones, and that literally outweighs the importance of differences in wrists/elbows, if the two regions don’t correlate (as mine don’t).

    The trouble is, there’s not a great home method for measuring hip/shoulder skeleton, or knowing post-weight-loss breast size, for someone who’s still overweight, and who has never been slim as an adult. For me, having been slender for about 15 seconds in college, I knew I had hips more like a boy than a woman, and that the lower region of the BMI range would be fine, for me.

    Admittedly, I now prefer to be slimmer than some women would prefer with my basic body configuration, but my structure does *not* need to be above roughly the midpoint of the normal BMI range, let alone at/over the top, as one might assume from my wrist/elbow size. I’m objectively still overfat at the upper end of normal BMI (though possibly not unhealthfully so).

    As with so many of these “calculators”, this provides an estimate as one input to a person’s thinking, but it can prove – for people like me – to be an inaccurate guide. I still say most people, those without a seriously distorted body image, can figure out a sensible goal when they get close to it.

    So sure, try the frame size calculator, but don't assume it's gospel.
  • NerdyScienceGrl
    NerdyScienceGrl Posts: 669 Member
    edited June 2021
    Thank you all for sharing your thoughts and journey. I found the information helpful and inspirational!

    I always welcome new tools to add to my weight loss kit. I have a few that I use and find helpful as well but all the information is definitely subjective and may not fit neatly since they aren’t tailor made for our individual bodies. I’m a numbers person and being able to adjust the calls below gives me “food for thought” 😁

    https://www.fatcalc.com/bf
    Allowing for something besides BMI to adjust the body fat % is nice. The range output it also helpful and gives some insight.

    The other that I have use is:
    http://www.weightloss-calculator.net/
    This one also allows for adjustments and gives you multiple thought processes on calories and rate of loss.

    Between the above, the ranges for weight based on my current stats are rather similar (+\-) 10 lbs. If any of you decide to give them a whirl, I’d be interested in hearing if they generate something similar to where you’ve landed.

    I know that at the end of the day it will come down to my personal comfort. Managing my arthritis is the biggy. I already am thrilled that I no longer need to take anything for it year round but in the winter I’m still highly reliant on meds to keep me up and moving. I may never get away from that, but I am very hopeful.

  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 35,369 Member
    FWIW, the Fatcalc one seems to put body fat a little high, for me, which throws off the weight recommendations by a bit, IMO. That's not surprising, since it's estimating body fat from BMI. I'm female, age 65, 5'5", 125 pounds. (I think that's a reasonable weight for my specific body, but I'm admittedly a little thinner than some women would prefer to be.)

    I believe I do have relatively higher muscle mass for someone in my demographic, however. I've not been DEXA-ed, though, so I'm going from appearance, and the (very questionable) BIA scale, plus some indications from things like the Navy calculator **. All of those put me somewhere in the lower 20s percents (i.e., under 25%) bodyfat. (That's my arm/back in my profile photo, but my upper body holds less bodyfat, and looks like lower bodyfat than my hips/belly/thighs do. Upper body, compared to photos on those photo-comparison sites, looks teens-ish, lower body looks upper twenties-ish.)

    ** https://www.calculator.net/body-fat-calculator.html
    Recent thread about it here, including discussion of other methods:
    https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10833599/body-fat-calculator-us-navy-method

    As an aside, when it comes to the Fatcalc one, there's something odd/misleading IMO about estimating body fat percent from BMI and demographic data, then using that to suggest a goal weight or weight range. If someone's bodyfat percent is unusual, the recommended goal weight will be off.

    The other calculator you linked significantly underestimates my TDEE, by around 300-400 calories as compared with nearly 6 years of calorie counting experience. That's not something I'd expect to be true for others, because I do tend to be a mysteriously good li'l ol' calorie burner compared to many estimates, somewhere out toward the edge of the statistics, rather than average. 🤷‍♀️ By definition, most people are close to average. 😉

    A TDEE estimator I like more is this one:

    https://www.sailrabbit.com/bmr/

    . . . because it lets one compare multiple research-based formulas, including some that take body fat percent into account; and it has better descriptions of the activity levels (and more of them) than most TDEE estimators. (However, the user interface is a little cluttered/busy.)

    Better still may be MFP user heybales "Just TDEE Please" spreadsheet, found here:

    https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1G7FgNzPq3v5WMjDtH0n93LXSMRY_hjmzNTMJb3aZSxM/edit?usp=sharing

    As a reminder, MFP's calorie estimate is not a TDEE estimate (all day, all source calorie burn). MFP wants you to set activity level based on *non-exercise* activity, log exercise when you do it, get more calories then. That's a NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis) estimate, and it tends to give a lower estimate than TDEE calculators, because of intentional exercise not being included in base calories.

    Regardless of whether you use a TDEE method or a NEAT method for weight loss - either can work - that estimate is just a starting point. After 4-6 weeks using that starting goal, one compares actual weight loss results to calorie intake, and adjusts if needed. (Premenopausal women should compare bodyweights at the same relative point in two or more menstrual cycles, because hormonal water weight can confuse things otherwise.) Because the calculators underestimate my calorie needs, I needed to adjust intake upward, to keep loss rate sensible. For most people, the starting estimates are likely to be close, because most people are close to average, and the calculators spit out statistical average values, more or less.

    If your desire is for input about your final goal weight, I'd point out that the calculator.net site has a so-called "ideal weight calculator" (a concept that I think is kind of silly, personally) at:

    https://www.calculator.net/ideal-weight-calculator.html
  • NerdyScienceGrl
    NerdyScienceGrl Posts: 669 Member
    I will check out the links you sent! Thank you.

    For the fatcalc, if you choose manual entry, from the pull down, it lets you enter %body fat. That’s what I’ve been doing based on my home scale (again, imperfect measurement but likely closer than BMI).
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 35,369 Member
    NerdyScienceGrl wrote: »
    I will check out the links you sent! Thank you.

    For the fatcalc, if you choose manual entry, from the pull down, it lets you enter %body fat. That’s what I’ve been doing based on my home scale (again, imperfect measurement but likely closer than BMI).

    Ah, thanks: I'd missed that. If I use 23%, which is an iffy but semi-rational guess for me, the recommendations are more in line with reasonable, IMO.
  • NerdyScienceGrl
    NerdyScienceGrl Posts: 669 Member
    I don’t tend to put much weight on TDEE or similar calcs simply because I can’t wrap my brain around how it ultimately applies to my body. Same could be said for all, really, but it’s “easier” to look at the ranges that some calcs use for weight, based on a range output.

    In learning to trust my body and feeding it when I’m actually hungry, while I calorie count, and am losing weight at a healthy rate (overall), I haven’t spent a lot of time trying to determine actual caloric needs. I mostly am concerned, recently, with eating enough. At some point, I’m sure that TDEE or other measurements may become more important but I’ll likely experiment more with my own numbers —For example, if I eat 2500 calories consistently do I gain weight? Was I lazy or did the number of calories burned change? Did my body fat % increase or LBM? Ultimately putting my skills to the test as a statistician and a population dynamics scientist. I love data and information.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 35,369 Member
    NerdyScienceGrl wrote: »
    I don’t tend to put much weight on TDEE or similar calcs simply because I can’t wrap my brain around how it ultimately applies to my body. Same could be said for all, really, but it’s “easier” to look at the ranges that some calcs use for weight, based on a range output.

    In learning to trust my body and feeding it when I’m actually hungry, while I calorie count, and am losing weight at a healthy rate (overall), I haven’t spent a lot of time trying to determine actual caloric needs. I mostly am concerned, recently, with eating enough. At some point, I’m sure that TDEE or other measurements may become more important but I’ll likely experiment more with my own numbers —For example, if I eat 2500 calories consistently do I gain weight? Was I lazy or did the number of calories burned change? Did my body fat % increase or LBM? Ultimately putting my skills to the test as a statistician and a population dynamics scientist. I love data and information.

    It's just a starting point, for people who choose calorie counting as a weight-management method - a statistical basis rather than using guesses or folklore. If not calorie counting, it's irrelevant.

    For myself, 30 years or so of hovering around class 1 obese body weight, including a dozen years while being athletically very active . . . that suggests that my body isn't terribly trustworthy, when it comes to food intake for best health. With calorie counting, I've been at a healthy body weight for going on 6 years now. The ten minutes or so it now takes daily to log food? Seems like a small price to pay, for me, for that benefit.

    I'm pretty much a data geek myself (and worked in a data geekery world pre-retirement), which I think is part of why calorie counting works well for me personally: It's like a fun science fair experiment.

    People differ in what they want & need: That's part of the fun! 😉🙂

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