by Robert Preidt
. Health reporter
Prescription Drugs For Weight Loss - Fast Weight Loss May Mean Muscle Loss
Thursday, (health news) - If you lose weight very fast, you lose more muscles than when you pour pounds more slowly, a small study says.
The researchers placed 25 participants in a very low-calorie diet of only 500 calories per day. Other 22 volunteers were in a low 12-week calorie diet of 1,250 calories per day.
The researchers found that shortly after the end of his diets, both groups had similar levels of weight loss. The average weight loss was a little over 19 pounds among those in the very low-calorie diet and just under 19 pounds among those in the low calorie diet.The researchers then analyzed the loss of fat free mass, which includes all fabric in the human body, except fat. The main tissues are blood, bones, organs and muscles. However, the mass of the organs, blood and bones do not change during the diet. Therefore, changes in fat free mass during diet are mainly due to changes in muscle mass.
Participants in the very low calorie diet had lost about 3.5 pounds of fat free mass, compared to 1.3 pounds between those of the low calorie diet. Fat free mass represented 18 percent weight loss in the very low calorie diet group and 7.7 percent of weight loss in the dietary group of low calorie, the study found.
Four weeks after the end of its diets, reductions in fat free mass had an average of 1.8 pounds among those in the very low calorie diet group and 0.7 pounds among those in the low calorie dietary group. Fat free mass represented 9.4% of weight loss in the very low calorie diet group and 2.9 percent of weight loss in the low calorie dietary group, according to the report. The discoveries were presented on Wednesday at the European Congress on Obesity in Bulgaria."Fat free mass loss was higher after high diet-induced weight loss than slow, with total total weight loss," said authors of the study, Roel Vink and Marleen van Baak, from school For nutrition, toxicology and metabolism at the University of Maastricht in Holland and colleagues.
However, authors also point to a meeting news version that muscle loss between people in the very low calorie diet was probably overestimated immediately after they completed the diet compared to four weeks later.
It is likely to have a greater loss of water and glycogen (a natural form of sugar in the body) when they had just completed the diet than four weeks later, the researchers explained.
The research presented in meetings should be seen as preliminary until it is published in a pair reviewed medical journal.
