how much of what we believe about FFMI actually comes from resistance training threads
how much of what we believe about FFMI actually comes from resistance training threads. Searched first, found three threads that contradict each other, hence the post.
DEXA has a meaningful coefficient of variation, and it differs between machines and protocols. Comparing scans from different clinics adds a systematic offset that is invisible on the report.
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.
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.
Please do not ask me what dose you should be on. I genuinely do not know and neither does anyone else here.
best — the order this archive was captured in
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.
protein and resistance training, that is the entire intervention
That protein figure is grams per day, not grams per kilogram. Different claim entirely.
Resistance training, and at what frequency?
Right — strength retention is a free proxy and it tracks better than most people expect.
Yes. Nobody here is prescribing training or nutrition and the good posts say so.
Three scans over eighteen months, same machine, same conditions. Only the third one made the first two interpretable.
Yes. Lean mass change during weight loss is expected; the useful question is the proportion, not whether it happens.
do not compare your composition to a trial average
do not compare your composition to a trial average
This is the whole intervention. Protein and resistance training.
How many weeks between the two scans?
Correcting myself upthread: 3 months between scans, not the figure I gave.
- 1Yes. Lean mass change during weight loss is expected; the useful question is…6 comments in this branch · started by u/stubborn_batchlist_pls