metaboliq
Your cousin who lost twelve kilos on soup and green tea before her wedding probably lost a fair bit of muscle with it. That's why, a year on, the weight is back and the stairs to her in-laws' flat leave her puffing. Diets take muscle along with fat unless you give your body a reason to keep it.
The reasons that work in trials are fairly plain. Eat a bit more protein than the bare minimum, around 1.2 g per kilo of body weight a day or a little more. Do strength work two or three times a week, at home if you like. And lose weight slowly enough that you could keep going for months.
Do you always lose muscle when you lose weight?
Usually a little. Your body doesn't take weight off as pure fat. Some lean tissue goes too, and that includes muscle. The figure you'll see quoted everywhere is that a quarter of diet weight loss is lean mass. When Steven Heymsfield and colleagues looked closely, the share turned out to vary a lot with age, how active people were and whether they exercised.
Take your uncle, twenty kilos overweight and climbing three floors to his flat twice a day. He's carrying more muscle than his kurta suggests. A review on preserving muscle during weight loss says people like him often have plenty of muscle, though of poorer quality. They tend to move better once the weight comes down, even if a bit of muscle goes with it. He doesn't need to agonise over every gram, just hold on to as much as he reasonably can.
Why does keeping muscle matter so much?
Muscle is what lifts the gas cylinder onto the stove and carries the Diwali shopping up three floors when the society lift is broken. It's also what gets you up off the floor after a game with your grandchild. Lose a lot of it in your forties and you start your fifties weaker, with less in reserve for the slow loss that comes with age anyway.
The review on preserving muscle during weight loss says the same thing in more careful language. Losing weight is thought to do less good when a lot of lean mass goes with it, because low muscle raises the risk of frailty later. Your cousin with the wedding diet got lighter and weaker in the same three months.
We should say where we stand, since you're reading this on our site. Metaboliq runs a doctor-led programme, and its aim is "Lose up to 20% of your body weight — and keep your muscle". Results vary; your doctor decides what is right for you. The muscle half of that line is what this page is about, and it's why the programme opens with a ₹1,699 blood test at home that a doctor reads before setting any protein target.
Sources: [2]
How much protein do you need to keep muscle while losing fat?
More than the bare minimum, and probably less than the boys at the gym will tell you. The PROT-AGE group, writing about older adults, recommended at least 1.0 g of protein per kilo of body weight a day, and ideally 1.2 g. For people who exercise they advised 1.2 g or more. If you weigh 70 kg, 1.2 g per kilo comes to about 84 g a day, which is a lot more than two rotis and a katori of dal.
The bigger numbers you see online come from trials like a Canadian one in young men on a brutal diet, about 40% below their energy needs, training hard six days a week. Those eating 2.4 g per kilo gained a little lean mass and lost more fat than those on 1.2 g. Unless your brother-in-law is doing that, he can relax. A large meta-analysis of weight training found lean mass stopped improving once total protein passed about 1.6 g per kilo a day.
So aim for between 1.2 and 1.6 g per kilo, spread over breakfast, lunch and dinner. If a blood report has ever flagged your creatinine, check with a doctor first. The PROT-AGE paper itself says people with kidney disease may need to keep protein down.
The higher-protein trials were mostly in young men and athletes, and the protein-only trials in older adults have mixed results. The ranges here are reasonable starting points, not precise targets.
What does a high-protein day look like on Indian food?
Most Indian vegetarian thalis are built around roti or rice, with dal as a side, so protein has to be added on purpose. A few rough figures make that easier. A 100 g block of paneer has about 18 g of protein. One egg has about 6 g. A katori of cooked dal gives perhaps 7 g. Soya chunks are dense, roughly 25 g in a 50 g dry handful, and hung curd has far more than ordinary dahi.
Say your mother weighs 70 kg and doesn't touch eggs. She might start the day with two besan chillas and a bowl of curd instead of her usual poha. Lunch is dal, a paneer or soya sabzi and two rotis. With her evening chai she has a handful of roasted chana in place of the biscuits, and dinner is dal with paneer bhurji. That gets her close to her number. In a house that eats eggs, chicken or fish it's easier still.
A protein powder is optional. A scoop helps on days when meals fall short, and many of the trials in the meta-analysis above used supplements, but your muscles can't tell a shake from a katori of dal.
Sources: [7]
Does strength training protect muscle during a diet?
Lifting is the best protection anyone has found. The clearest trial came out of America in 2017. Researchers took 160 adults over sixty-five with obesity, put all of them on a weight-loss programme, and then split them up at random. Some walked and cycled, some lifted, some did both and some did nothing extra. All three exercise groups lost about 9% of their weight. The walkers lost about 5% of their lean mass along with it. The lifters lost about 2%, and the mixed group about 3%, and that mixed group ended up moving best of all.
A Dutch trial in overweight people over fifty-five found protein and lifting help each other. The only group that actually gained fat-free mass while losing weight was the one eating more protein and lifting three times a week. Doing just one of the two didn't make a significant difference.
You don't need a gym for this. Chair squats, lunges holding the back of a chair, push-ups against the kitchen counter, glute bridges and rows with a resistance band will do, two or three times a week. When they get easy, put on your kid's school bag with the books still in it. A pair of adjustable dumbbells from the sports shop in the market lasts for years and costs less than a month at most gyms.
Does losing weight slowly help you keep muscle?
In athletes it did, and the result is worth knowing even if you've never been near a stadium. A Norwegian trial put elite athletes on diets meant to take off either about 0.7% or about 1.4% of body weight a week, while all of them kept up four strength sessions a week. Both groups lost about the same weight in the end. The slow group gained about 2% lean mass and got stronger. The fast group's lean mass didn't move.
Athletes aren't ordinary people, so treat that as a nudge in a direction. For someone who weighs 70 kg, 0.7% a week is about half a kilo. Say your sister wants eight kilos off before her son's wedding in March. Starting in October at half a kilo a week, eating enough to keep lifting, she'll walk into the sangeet stronger than if she starves herself through February.
Sources: [8]
How can you tell if you're losing fat or muscle?
The bathroom scale has no idea. Your body gives better clues. Say your husband has lost four kilos in a month. If his trousers are loose at the waist and he can still do his twenty squats, most of that is fat. If his shirts hang off the shoulders, his arms look thinner and carrying the water cans up the stairs has got harder, some of it is muscle.
A DEXA scan measures fat and lean mass directly, and the big diagnostic chains offer it in most larger Indian cities, though few people need one. The body-fat number on a smart scale or the gym's handheld gadget is far less reliable and shifts with how much water he's drunk. A monthly waist measurement on the calendar, a note of how many squats he can do and a doctor looking at his blood work will tell him more for much less.
Sources: [2]
Who should be careful with high protein and heavy training?
Your father, if his kidneys have ever come up on a report. He's had diabetes for fifteen years, and last year the lab printed his creatinine in bold. Before he starts on extra paneer and soya chunks, he needs his doctor's go-ahead. The PROT-AGE authors say plainly that people with kidney disease may need to limit protein. Heart disease, blood pressure that isn't controlled, a recent injury or diabetes on treatment are also reasons to get a check before heavy lifting or intervals.
He can still keep moving in the meantime. The morning walk to the temple and a few chair squats while the news is on are safe for most people. A physiotherapist can usually work around his bad knee rather than tell him to stop.
Sources: [7]