Muscle Mass and the VLC Diet

Post date: Sep 4, 2012 11:55:29 PM

I recently came across an interesting article in the journal Nutrition & Metabolism discussing preservation of muscle mass in very low carbohydrate diets (full text link). I've been interested in this as I've had three DEXA scans in the last nine months. Over the course of the nine months I lost quite a bit of weight, and some of it was muscle. Although, it's not clear if all the muscle loss was due to decreased amounts of glycogen in the muscles (this is a bit of confounder with the DEXA scan). Also, between the second and third scan my appendix ruptured and I spent some time in the hospital. My diet for a few weeks post surgery was not low carb.