quick weight loss = lost muscle?

[ellenalesa]

Good morning everyone,

Hope you all are having a happy holiday. I've been reading a lot about weight loss on a raw diet and since I have about 80 pounds of excess weight, I am very interested in this. I was taught that anything more than 2# a week is muscle loss. I see some folks are dropping 20# their first month or so; is this muscle loss? From all the pictures I've seen, everyone looks very healthy.

I'm just wondering if the fact that we're eating fruits and vegetables makes a difference, if alot of the loss is water, or what.

And I'm hoping that I will take off 20 during my first month!!!

Ellen

[DavidZaneMason]

-If your weight loss is to be lifetime permanent....go at your own pace and make it stick. I think 1-2 lbs per week is a reasonable permanent figure.....with some weight training thrown in for good measure.

-David Mason

[daisyduke]

I don't think that we can lose muscle or fat that quickly. People fast for several weeks and don't lose muscle. My guess is that most of that weight is water weight.

[Apasaraw]

DaisyDuke...when I lost that first 20 pounds in 3 weeks, I don't think it was all fat or water per se though "some" probably was. I DEFLATED. Anyone else have this experience?

My belly bloated for 2 weeks. I looked 5 months pregnant and it was very firm! Then I deeeeflaaaated. It was like I was Violet in Willie Wonka having to go get juiced after becoming a blueberry! I went from a roundish, pudgy faced ,grey skinned person to a tall, lanky, square jawed, glow cheeked person. My friends really noticed the face change more than anything else...I recieved my "original face" back with raw.

[dreamrawalwz]

A lot of the excess weight people have while on SAD is from toxins, edema (food reactions) ect. When on raw the remove all those harmful foods and it just melts off very rapidly.

[Eveleaf]

You can't lose that much muscle that quickly. Most is probably water and toxins (ie, stored food in the colon) being expelled. A smaller portion is fat, and some is naturally muscle.

I view this all as being very positive. Even a 5-pound water loss in a week is 5 pounds less you have to stuff into your jeans, and 5 pounds less for your joints to have to carry around.

Also, with less water and fat weight to carry around, some muscle loss is normal and natural. A person who weights 350 pounds of course LOOKS very unhealthy, but they HAVE to have extra muscle for lugging around all that extra weight. Now if that same person slims down to 150, so much of that muscle is no longer necessary.

So some muscle loss is quite normal. As long as the person is active and has no trouble doing the activities they desire, don't sweat where the weight loss is coming from. :)

Cheers,
Eve

[Gwendolene]

DaisyDuke...when I lost that first 20 pounds in 3 weeks, I don't think it was all fat or water per se though "some" probably was. I DEFLATED. Anyone else have this experience?

My belly bloated for 2 weeks. I looked 5 months pregnant and it was very firm! Then I deeeeflaaaated. It was like I was Violet in Willie Wonka having to go get juiced after becoming a blueberry! I went from a roundish, pudgy faced ,grey skinned person to a tall, lanky, square jawed, glow cheeked person. My friends really noticed the face change more than anything else...I recieved my "original face" back with raw.

I think there's a good chance you have undiagnosed Celiac Desease (http://www.celiac.com)! It is a relatively common genetic disorder but terribly underdiagonosed in the US. When I stopped eating gluten (wheat, barley, rye and oats) the exact same thing happened to me! I lost about 15 pounds in the first 2 weeks of being Gluten Free. Funnily enough I descibed it the exact same way :D

There is no cure for CD only a strict GF (gluten free) diet. (I gain back those 15 pounds immediately after eating gluten and am physically incappable of going below that weight until the symptoms pass in about 4 days). See the link above for symptoms.

I personally find it easier to maintain a GF diet when raw since I stop craving all the cooked foods I can't eat (although there are a growing number of packaged foods using special flours).

[eabbel]

I've lost 10 lbs in 2 weeks of 80% raw and it is very different from the unhealthy (and always temporary) weight loss on "diets" I've tried in the past (atkins, starving, etc). I too see it on me as a sort of "deflation" and my experience really feels like what others have described above -- that toxins, edema (intracellular fluid) and other stuff is flushing out. My skin is very pale and luminous compared with pre-raw and my face is lean -- no puffiness whatsoever around my eyes, which I had thought was just a fact of life and aging, but now I see was fat or water or toxin or whatever. I feel like my fat is breaking down, not just shrinking, as I suspect is the case with crash diets. while 5 lbs a week might be bad on a diet that provided inadequate nutrition, I feel that there's no reason that the body wouldn't respond to the enhanced nutrition of a high raw (fresh, green) diet by normalizing itself as quickly as possible. the notion of our bodies consuming muscle prior to fat on calorie-reduced diets has always struck me as grossly counterintuitive -- the reason we store fat is for lean times and that's when we'll lose it. so I don't think you need fear muscle loss in any case (providing you sustain your normal activity level).

e

[rawpriestess]

I've lost 50 pounds in 100 days, I highly doubt it was all water weight.


but if it was, I'm glad to be rid of it.

[TinyTeddy]

75% of weightloss in the first week is fluid loss.After that it becomes mostly fat and some muscle( unfortunatley its just the way the body works)..but not much muscle loss..as long as you dont starve yourself!If you startve yourself your body will use protien from your muscles to feed itself! :eek:

That doesnt mean al skin will not be alittle saggy if you lose alot of weight.YOur body can only adjust so much...its not a elastic band.Thats why slow weightloss is good weight loss as it gives your body time to adapt and change.Just think of a balloon if you blow it up huge and then pop it it goes all saggy and stretched..same with our bodies :(

Make sure you are eating adequate amounts and doing moderate resistance exercise. :D

[ellenalesa]

I love this board.

I was thinking about Elson Haas' book about False Fat. He talks about food sensitivities or allergies causing inflammation and bloating. My thinking is that I am eliminating so many of the common allergens that I'll probably shrink nicely.

As for hanging skin, I hope that doesn't happen to me but if it does, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. First, to improve my health and dump the excess weight.

I'm going to go make myself a nice shake this morning. Happy 4th everyone! I hope you all have a happy and safe holiday.

Ellen

[Conscious Midwife]

If you've ever sat in church with a too tight girdle and panty hose that constrict your cirulation, then my guess is you won't care where the weight loss comes from. Water, muscle or FAT, when uncomfortable it all has to go.

[fiddler]

From -- Doug Graham's FAQ on www.foodnsport.com (http://www.foodnsport.com)

Will I lose weight on the raw diet?
Written by Administrator
Most people report losing weight on the raw diet, if they started with excess. However, there is no set standard on how this works; results are strictly individualized. Some people start losing right away; others take several months before significant weight losses begin. It may prove useful to know that there are three types of weight that can be lost: water, which can represent significant weight loss in a relatively short time; muscle, which occurs through atrophy due to lack of use, generally not attributable to diet; and fat, which is rarely lost at a rate higher than one pound per week. If one were to lose five pounds in a week, it is likely that a maximum of one of the pounds would be fat and the other four or more would be water loss.

[denisedeland]

I lost 130 pounds so I know I lost muscle along the way, but I have been exercising and working on my muscle loss. I have nerve damage but it doesn't stop me...

Denise