You Are Not Different

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.
SNIP BY ME

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?

Thank you I hate when people use pseudo science to prove their opinions and then the masses gobble it up like it's a golden rule. Also no one pointed out that he said essentially "Everyone is not different unless they are" which is essentially this entire article...and he's ignoring set point theory which is the actual reason people plateau >.> *sigh* here is some info on that one... Oh look it's something not from someone's blog or fitness journal, it's from a medical publication!

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21117971

(I just realized most of you guys couldn't read it so I dug up others)

http://weightloss.about.com/od/glossary/g/setpoint.htm

http://www.chw.org/display/PPF/DocID/21747/router.asp

The last one has a great definition of it under what causes obesity.

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.

You know, if people took half the effort they spend trying to prove they are a special snowflake/magical unicorn and that their motabolism is the reason they are fat, NOT the fact that they overeat and underexercise, and used that effort to eat less and move more, they would already be fit. I guess whining about how unfair life is is easier?