Protein breakdown
The second form of fake fat loss is protein breakdown.
Your body naturally breaks down and recycles 2% of its protein mass each day. Most of that mass comes from muscles, which represent roughly 40% of an average person’s body weight.
That means that about 0.8% of your body weight is broken down each day.
75% of the amino acids that result of this breakdown are used again to build new protein. This happens in cell renewal processes, as well as breaking down of dead cells (mucle cells have a short life span).
The 25% that remain are filtered by the kidneys. This is the weight that is actually lost: 0.2% of your body weight each day. For a 150 lb individual, that represents about 1/3 of a pound.
That protein has to be replaced by the food you eat, or it becomes lost muscle weight. 3 lbs in ten days.
But if you are dieting strictly, and have both low sugar and low protein intake, then your liver will start turning the amino acids from the broken down protein into sugar (one of the many things the liver can do called neoglucogenesis). If that happens then you aren’t using the 75% of the broken down protein to rebuild new protein molecules, and muscle loss rises to up to 100% of what is broken down:
Up to 12 lbs in ten days.
That’s what you get for dieting too strictly. When the muscles are gone, you have that many less live cells in your body burning calories. You have a lower metabolism. That means that when you start eating again, you eat that many more calories than you spend, and put on that much more fat.
You’ve lost some fat in those ten days, because the fat loss mechanism and the protein breakdown are two different things that run separately. But most of the lost weight is fake fat loss, while the weight that comes back on is primarily fat!
Read this website thoroughly and you’ll be able to avoid fat loss traps and get in shape instead of ruining your health!