[Question] DEXA — what am I missing here
Trying to get a straight answer on this: DEXA — what am I missing here.
How to make a DEXA comparison mean anything.
Same machine, same clinic, same protocol. Same hydration and fasting state, as far as you can manage. At least three to four months apart, because the measurement error is large relative to short-term change. Three scans rather than two, because the first pair cannot distinguish a trend from noise.
Do less than that and you have two numbers with an offset of unknown size, which people then react to by rebuilding a training programme. The free alternative — a few tracked lifts and a monthly waist measurement — is directionally informative, costs nothing, and is far harder to over-interpret.
What the evidence actually supports, stripped of the arguing.
Some lean mass is lost in any weight-loss deficit. Resistance training and adequate protein intake are the two interventions with real support for limiting the proportion. Nearly everything else discussed on this board is a rounding error on those two.
The complication specific to this site is that appetite reduction makes protein intake a logistics problem: you are being asked to eat a fixed amount of something at exactly the point when eating anything is less appealing. That is why the practical threads here are about timing and food choice rather than motivation, and why measuring intake rather than estimating it is the single most common useful correction.
Three scans over eighteen months, same machine, same conditions. Only the third one made the first two interpretable.
Corrections welcome, especially the pedantic ones. Pedantry is how this board earns its reputation.
best — the order this archive was captured in
Hydration status and fasting state affect the lean mass estimate. Standardising both is the difference between a comparison and a coin toss.
Fat-free mass index is a ratio of fat-free mass to height squared. It moves when either term does, which makes it awkward to interpret during active weight change.
Nothing here is a training or nutrition prescription. Targets and programmes are matters for somebody who knows your history and your training background.
Lost slower for six months deliberately and my composition change was not obviously different. Training was what mattered.
Lost slower for six months deliberately and my composition change was not obviously different.
Disagreeing with this line: rate alone does not preserve lean mass. The training does.
This. Same machine, same protocol, or the DEXA comparison is measuring the scanner.
What is protein intake actually looking like, measured rather than estimated?
protein and resistance training, that is the entire intervention
That protein figure is grams per day, not grams per kilogram. Different claim entirely.
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Agreed — protein and resistance training. Everything else in these threads is a rounding error on those two.
Same. Volume over novelty. Changing programme every six weeks cost me a year.
Not convinced by that DEXA comparison. Different machine, different protocol, and the difference is inside the error.
Are you comparing against your own baseline or against a published average?
Yes. Nobody here is prescribing training or nutrition and the good posts say so.
Not convinced by that DEXA comparison.
Adding the free proxy — track a few lifts monthly. It costs nothing and it is longitudinal.
On comparing yourself to composition figures from trials.
Published composition data comes from supervised populations with structured protocols, standardised scanning, and analysis populations that have been defined in advance. Your two scans at a local clinic, taken in different states of hydration, are not the same measurement.
Use your own baseline. The question worth asking is whether your own trajectory is going the way you want given what you are actually doing, and the honest answer usually requires measuring protein rather than estimating it and being truthful about training frequency. Neither of those is advice — a programme and a target are things to work out with somebody who knows your history.
What was the rate of weight change over that window?
What was the rate of weight change over that window?
Agreed — and same machine, same conditions, or the two scans are not comparable.
Fasted and hydrated the same way for both scans?
Kept the same programme for a year instead of changing it every six weeks. That was the change that worked.
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