Accepted answer
The relevant detail is that start with the arithmetic, because the answer to the practical question is usually a number and the number is usually achievable.
DEXA precision is better than people assume for fat mass and worse than people assume for lean mass in a single scan — the least significant change for regional lean mass on a well-maintained scanner is on the order of a few per cent. That means two scans three months apart can differ without anything having happened, and it means a scan sequence needs to be at least three points before a trend is interpretable.
Protein target arithmetic
| Body mass | 1.2 g/kg | 1.6 g/kg | 2.0 g/kg | Per meal at 1.6 (÷3) |
|---|
| 62 kg | 74 g | 99 g | 124 g | 33 g |
| 74 kg | 89 g | 118 g | 148 g | 39 g |
| 88 kg | 106 g | 141 g | 176 g | 47 g |
| 103 kg | 124 g | 165 g | 206 g | 55 g |
| 124 kg | 149 g | 198 g | 248 g | 66 g |
At roughly 4 kcal per gram, 141 g of protein is about 564 kcal — a substantial fraction of a 900 kcal budget, which is the real constraint.
Mechanically, absolute strength holds up better than scale weight during a deficit for a straightforward reason: strength is substantially neural and skill-based, and the contractile tissue you retain is being trained harder relative to its size. Grip strength and repetition maxima are therefore lagging indicators of muscle loss rather than leading ones, which is an argument for measuring both.
Adaptive thermogenesis — a fall in energy expenditure beyond that predicted by the change in body composition — is documented across weight-loss interventions and is the mechanistic basis for the plateau being expected rather than anomalous.
I would be careful with the supplement literature here; effect sizes are small, the studies are mostly in trained young men, and generalisation to a large deficit is not obviously valid.
The plateau is arithmetic. Treat it as arithmetic and the response follows.
5Does this hold at lower concentrations, or does adsorption dominate? – tamsin_wray 27 days ago 6Worth flagging that this changed in 2025, so older answers on the site are out of date. – Dr_Fatima_Belkacem 3 months ago add a comment