You Are Not Different

You can’t gain bodymass unless your energy intake exceeds your energy output because you can’t make something out of nothing (muscle or fat).

Why are you arguing Lyle's statement? He never said you couldn't gain LBM on a caloric deficit. He said you couldn't gain BODYMASS on a caloric deficit. Whole different animal. Look again at what you quoted. The information was there the whole time.

I have "looked again" again. You're focusing on the word BODYMASS, yet he clarifies at the end of the sentence that in his opinion you can't gain either muscle of fat eating at a deficit. Seems pretty plain to me. Or are you saying we should just ignore that last part?

At this point you are just arguing for the sake of arguing, or perhaps to demonstrate your pomposity. Luckily, I think most can see that plainly. For those that can't, I just pointed it out. Carry on.

I am still trying to find what you are referring to because I am honestly confused where you are seeing this. You seem to like extracting quotes - doing so in this case would probably clear up a lot of the confusion that appears to be happening.

ETA: I in no way disagree with you on your comments about gaining LBM while on a deficit when someone is obese, and in fact have made the same point in this and other threads, so I am definately not trying to debate that point:

So it sounds like we may be closer together on this issue that you realize. I'm not saying EVERYTHING he wrote is incorrect, but I do have 2 serious issues with his article:
1. The aforementioned statement that you can't gain LBM eating at a deficit. (I'll get to this in a minute), and
2. The remainder of the article where he talks about how some people are different, yet then goes on to say no one is different.

I think the reason I find this so offensive is because there is quite a bit of information that comes out of the bodybuilding world (such as most of this author's stuff), that simply DOES NOT APPLY to those of us that are more than 30 lbs overweight. Tons of people on MFP post stuff that may be great advice for someone trying to go from 12% to 8% BF, but is terrible advice for an obese person. The reverse is also true. Physiologically, there are some serious hormonal differences between an obese body and one just carrying a few extra pounds. As a result, we just can't make these type of generalizations. An example would be statements like "it's all about thermodynamics, just eat less than you burn and you'll lose weight." It sounds good, but it discounts the fact that our bodies are not just simple machines that respond exactly the same every time. Even the author know that or he wouldn't have made his money hyping various modified eating plans, macro requirements, etc,, and wouldn't have talked at length in this article about how some people have to really struggle to lose fat.

As to the quote that started my rant (yes I recognize it as such),

You can’t gain bodymass unless your energy intake exceeds your energy output because you can’t make something out of nothing (muscle or fat).

That is quoted from the article and is the place where I got so turned off by this guys stuff. I could easily re-write this sentence without changing the meaning by simply eliminating the parenthetical statement and instead putting it where the antecedent "something" is at: "You can’t gain bodymass unless your energy intake exceeds your energy output because you can't make muscle or fat out of nothing." Further, just to clarify, if you remove the words "or fat" from the statement it becomes "You can’t gain bodymass unless your energy intake exceeds your energy output because you can't make muscle out of nothing."

This is still the same statement. I'm not sure why you can't see that, but I suppose it's because you're a fan of this author.

I am still trying to find what you are referring to because I am honestly confused where you are seeing this. You seem to like extracting quotes - doing so in this case would probably clear up a lot of the confusion that appears to be happening.

ETA: I in no way disagree with you on your comments about gaining LBM while on a deficit when someone is obese, and in fact have made the same point in this and other threads, so I am definately not trying to debate that point:

So it sounds like we may be closer together on this issue that you realize. I'm not saying EVERYTHING he wrote is incorrect, but I do have 2 serious issues with his article:
1. The aforementioned statement that you can't gain LBM eating at a deficit. (I'll get to this in a minute), and
2. The remainder of the article where he talks about how some people are different, yet then goes on to say no one is different.

I think the reason I find this so offensive is because there is quite a bit of information that comes out of the bodybuilding world (such as most of this author's stuff), that simply DOES NOT APPLY to those of us that are more than 30 lbs overweight. Tons of people on MFP post stuff that may be great advice for someone trying to go from 12% to 8% BF, but is terrible advice for an obese person. The reverse is also true. Physiologically, there are some serious hormonal differences between an obese body and one just carrying a few extra pounds. As a result, we just can't make these type of generalizations. An example would be statements like "it's all about thermodynamics, just eat less than you burn and you'll lose weight." It sounds good, but it discounts the fact that our bodies are not just simple machines that respond exactly the same every time. Even the author know that or he wouldn't have made his money hyping various modified eating plans, macro requirements, etc,, and wouldn't have talked at length in this article about how some people have to really struggle to lose fat.

As to the quote that started my rant (yes I recognize it as such),

You can’t gain bodymass unless your energy intake exceeds your energy output because you can’t make something out of nothing (muscle or fat).

That is quoted from the article and is the place where I got so turned off by this guys stuff. I could easily re-write this sentence without changing the meaning by simply eliminating the parenthetical statement and instead putting it where the antecedent "something" is at: "You can’t gain bodymass unless your energy intake exceeds your energy output because you can't make muscle or fat out of nothing." Further, just to clarify, if you remove the words "or fat" from the statement it becomes "You can’t gain bodymass unless your energy intake exceeds your energy output because you can't make muscle out of nothing."

This is still the same statement. I'm not sure why you can't see that, but I suppose it's because you're a fan of this author.

OK so I want to see if I'm understanding you correctly.

A 400 lb man (total body mass) eats 1800 cals a day (deficit) doing resistance training will end up being 430 lbs (total body mass)

or are you saying

A 400 lb man (total body mass) has 200 lb LBM eats 1800 cals a day (deficit) doing resistance training will end up being 350 lbs (total body mass) with (220 LBM) which is an increase in LBM but a decrease in total body mass.

I hear this all the time. It's "my metabolism" "my genetics" "my meds" Okay so there are some meds that will mess you up but mostly it is an excuse. I was really good with them before I came to terms with biting the bullet and doing what it took. I am a heart patient...I'm different. LOL Actually, it is IMPERATIVE that I eat right, lose my weight and keep it down and exercise Exercise makes my heart stronger. The only concession I really have to make is I have to set a careful pace with my exercise. I have to start slow- I did and work up. I am now working out an hour or more a day but I couldn't start there. There will likely not be any 90 day shreds for me and I am really okay with that. My walking and yoga are helping me lose at a nice steady pace and toning up my body nicely. So if I can do it- I know you can do it.

I haven't read all the replies because there are way too many to get through so I hope this hadn't been covered already but I have two questions about the OP that maybe somebody can answer for me.

I have anorexia nervosa. I have been hospitalised on several occasions as a result of my ED. During each admission, I was initially on bed rest for many weeks or months and I was given a set diet of 3,500 kcal/day. On every admission, without fail, I would LOSE weight on 3,500 kcals (coming from eating an extremely low calorie diet - I won't quote numbers in case it's triggering). I was always dehydrated on admission so I know my fluid balance was probably out of whack but it still doesn't explain other week's loses.
On the flip side, I went through a period of rapid weight GAIN some years later, eating very little. Now I know it was mentioned in the OP about people under-reporting what they ate and how much. The only people who definitely don't do that are anorexics, instead we will hugely overestimate how much we've eaten "just in case" (case in point: today I ate 4 peanut halves out of a 100g/3.5 ounce bag but logged it as half the bag, which means that I've logged 4 peanut halves as 300 kcals and have been tracking my kcals this way for more than 20 years!). I was told I needed to eat more by a RD and, sure enough, many, many months later my weight evened out and dropped again.

Any ideas on what was happening there?

I think what your question does is boil it down to the basics. The fundamental principle here is energy balance – energy-out energy-in. This is pretty immutable from the research, as far as I am aware. What does vary, is the individual factors that impact those two variables, primarily the energy-out side of the equation (the energy in from the context of LBM gains in obese individuals has already been discuss ad nauseam here).

I will caveat my following response with the fact that this is my anecdotal understanding of what can happen to people recovering from anorexia. For whatever reason, some people who go back to eating at or above what should be maintenance for them have sort of super charged metabolisms. I do not know enough about it to say why, just that I have had discussions about the challenges folks in recovery have. So, what is happening is the energy out is 'abnormally' high. It does not change the energy equation principle though.

On the flip side, under-eating can also cause hormonal imbalances (as well as possible extra water retention) that temporarily causes your metabolism to slow and for people to gain weight on what you would think you should be losing weight on. This type of thing (not anorexia specifically but 'out of norm' metabolic rates generally) is actually mentioned in the article.

OK so I want to see if I'm understanding you correctly.

A 400 lb man (total body mass) eats 1800 cals a day (deficit) doing resistance training will end up being 430 lbs (total body mass)

or are you saying

A 400 lb man (total body mass) has 200 lb LBM eats 1800 cals a day (deficit) doing resistance training will end up being 350 lbs (total body mass) with (220 LBM) which is an increase in LBM but a decrease in total body mass.

The later. Apart from what some people seem to think, I'm not daft enough to think the former. And honestly I'd be pretty surprised if it was 220 LBM. That's 10% and would be hard to do. You'd probably have to do everything just right for that to happen.

So than you do agree with lyle because that is what he says as well. Total mass (total weight) can not increase at a calorie deficit.

My money is on the demontrating the pomposity part!

Ad hominem attacks eh? Always a good way to win any argument! Personally I blame Hitler. We've already gone way past civility into meaningless attacks. We might as well take this to it's logical conclusion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law

You can’t gain bodymass unless your energy intake exceeds your energy output because you can’t make something out of nothing (muscle or fat).

Why are you arguing Lyle's statement? He never said you couldn't gain LBM on a caloric deficit. He said you couldn't gain BODYMASS on a caloric deficit. Whole different animal. Look again at what you quoted. The information was there the whole time.

I have "looked again" again. You're focusing on the word BODYMASS, yet he clarifies at the end of the sentence that in his opinion you can't gain either muscle of fat eating at a deficit. Seems pretty plain to me. Or are you saying we should just ignore that last part?

But I fart glitter.

No, he wasn't. He was clearly saying that one cannot gain bodymass, regardless of composition of that gained bodymass, in a caloric deficit. Nowhere did he say that an increased percentage of one or the other within that smaller bodymass was impossible.

Okay, I went and read some of this guy's other stuff and he does seem to think it's possible to gain LBM eating at a deficit, so I was wrong about him, at least on this issue. Here's an example:

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/adding-muscle-while-losing-fat-qa.html

As to the original post, either his writing style is poor, or this is a hot-button issue for me and I'm reading what's not there. Maybe some of both. Frankly, I still think it's stating what I said, but I certainly get what you're saying here. Since I stated from the beginning my beef was with the supposition that you couldn't gain LBM eating at a deficit, I'm not sure why everyone got in such a tizzy over it and somehow assumed I was stating something else. Instead of slamming me for disagreeing with the post, perhaps someone could have pointed me to the reference above?

A simple: "You know, I don't think he meant that. Here's a link stating his position..." Would have gone a long way.

As I mentioned I do also have a problem with the basic supposition of his post. I get that some people use "metabolism" as an excuse, and I firmly believe that EVERYONE can lose weight, but this entire thesis that none of us are different does not sit well with me. It's because we ARE different that we have the kind of stuff Mr. McDonald preaches: IF, PSMF, Low Carb, High carb, etc. are just ways of saying one size does NOT fit all, something I'd think overweight people would understand.

Lesson learned for me. Dissent is punished and punished swiftly.

Anything written by Lyle McDonald is infallible truth on nutrition. He is the all time guru.