Successful Dieting [5/5]: What Is The Best Weight Loss Rate?

The composition of weight loss is important. While greater deficits yield faster weight loss, this strategy makes you lose more lean body mass than slower weight loss programs due to the size of the caloric deficit, and dietary factors. For example, resistance exercise or high protein diets may modify the proportion of weight loss resulting from body fat versus lean tissue (1,2,3).

Lean body mass is lost in concert with body fat during weight loss (4,5). As the size of the caloric deficit increases weight loss coming from lean body mass also tends to increase (6,7,8). 

As I have argued before, not all diets can be considered successful, the importance of keeping lean body mass loses to a minimum during a diet is paramount. That is, the ratio of body fat to lean mass should be high, for example 80% of fat mass to 20% of lean mass.

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