Day 10 VLCD: Losing body fat not muscle mass

Broke 200lbs (91kg) on Tuesday 4/30. Not sure that is significant other than being a round number! Certainly a milestone on the way to 185 lbs (84kg) which will put me in the 'normal' weight range for the first time in ~20 years.

This time around I am tracking (www.myfitnesspal.com) some additional measurements in addition to weight. We bought a new scale that has a cool feature that also measure body fat (%), body water (%) and muscle mass (%). What has been interesting this week has been to track these measurements in addition to my weight loss. You will see from the graphs that as my weight has gone down, so has my body fat percentage. Conversely my muscle mass has increased. 

This shows that protocol working in terms of it shifting body fat and not burning muscle. This counters the concern raised by most professionals when you mention Very Low Calorie Diet (VLCD) or fasting diets -- that they simply leads to muscle loss when you place the body in starvation mode.

This is not to say this is not a valid concern. One of the requirements of the protocol is not to do heavy exercise as your body does not have the energy reserves to take on vigorous muscle use. However, we will save that discussion for another day! This process certainly puts the body under caloric stress and 'gently' encourages it to use all the fat it has been storing for a rainy day!'