Energy balance
Dietary weight loss interventions result in a consistent percentage of lean mass loss (approximately 29-30%) regardless of the total magnitude of weight lost, provided the loss exceeds 5% of baseline body weight.
If you lose weight through diet, expect to lose about 30% of that weight as lean mass, regardless of whether you lose 5% or 15% of your body weight. This is a consistent biological response to caloric restriction, not a failure of your diet. To mitigate this, incorporate resistance training, as the paper notes this is a benchmark for 'dietary modifications' without medication.
Our findings establish a benchmark for evaluating %LML after weight-loss interventions and suggest that the proportion of lean mass loss is consistent regardless of the total weight lost when achieved through dietary modifications.
Why this rating
Secondary analysis of a randomized clinical trial (DIETFITS) with a substantial sample size (n=323 with DEXA), though stratified.
Source
SAT-707 Lean Mass Loss after Dietary Weight Loss: A Secondary Analysis of the DIETFITS Randomized Clinical Trial
Sun H. Kim et al. · Journal of the Endocrine Society · 2025
DOI 10.1210/jendso/bvaf149.140
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