r/dataisbeautiful • u/andtitov • 19h ago
OC [OC] 14 days of unbelievable mental and physical rollercoaster captured in one graph
I tracked my body composition before a 7-day water fast, right after, and then after 7 days of refeeding.
- Total weight dropped from 162.1 → 150.4 lbs, then came back up to 157.2 lbs.
- Fat mass went down 21.4 → 16.8 lbs, then only partially returned (17.3 lbs).
- Lean tissue dipped during the fast but mostly came back after refeed.
- Bone mass stayed stable.
One picture shows just how extreme - and fascinating - the changes were 😊
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u/sirprimal11 18h ago
What do you suspect led to gaining 6.3 pounds of lean tissue in 7 days?
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u/SatanIsMyUsername 18h ago
My guess is just reabsorption of glycogen and carbs back into the muscle tissue.
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u/andtitov 18h ago
It's typical bounce back - the body gets back water, glycogen and gut microbiome.
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u/sirprimal11 18h ago
Oh, I didn’t figure that water would be considered lean tissue. I think more high end measurements consider water mass separately from lean tissue mass.
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u/Stavinator 18h ago
It's easier to understand if you consider he recovered 6.3 pounds of lean tissue instead of gaining. The body has memory and can quickly come back to a previous state.
Also, as others pointed out, the way he used to measure lean mass is not 100% accurate and may be affected by his other macro indicators.
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u/aroc91 18h ago
Even calling it "recovering" lean body mass is a bit strange. The tissue wasn't catabolized. It's mainly glycogen and 3x the glycogen mass in associated water.
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u/Stavinator 17h ago
I am not an expert here, but from what I understand the number of muscle cells does not increase or decrease, but their size and strength change with exercise and food.
So from my understanding, the muscle cells atrophied a bit during the fast but recovered quickly.
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u/andtitov 15h ago
Yes, you’re almost right - one of the benefits of extended fasting is apoptosis, where senescent or ‘zombie’ cells are eliminated. That can include a small reduction in muscle cells as well.
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u/andtitov 15h ago
Yeah, and on the top of that - gut microbiome. It shrinks during fasts and regains its weight (to the original 2-3 kgs) and diversity during the refeeding time.
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u/margmi 18h ago edited 18h ago
0% chance that was actually a change in lean tissue and not just glycogen. Whatever you used to measure it wasn’t accurate.
I’d believe the loss, but not the gain, which means the loss was not lean mass either.
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u/tokillaworm 18h ago
The average adult stores less than a kilo of glycogen.
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u/andtitov 15h ago
Yep, that’s right - total glycogen is usually under 1 kg (about 400–500 g in muscle and 80–100 g in the liver). What’s interesting is each gram of glycogen is stored with about 3-4 g of water, so when those stores deplete you also drop several pounds of water weight. That’s why in the first couple days of fasting or keto, the quick weight loss is mostly glycogen + water.
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u/bathmaster69 18h ago
Out of curiosity - why are you so confidently asserting that?
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u/margmi 18h ago
It’s not possible to gain 6lbs of lean mass in a week. Our bodies just don’t work that way.
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u/bathmaster69 17h ago
I see thanks
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u/andtitov 15h ago
Not exactly. Lean tissue isn’t just muscle - it also includes water, glycogen, and even the gut microbiome. During refeeding, you don’t see true muscle growth right away, but water, glycogen, and microbiome mass come back quickly. That’s why lean tissue rebounds so fast.
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u/andtitov 15h ago
Not exactly. Lean tissue isn’t just muscle - it also includes water, glycogen, and even the gut microbiome. During refeeding, you don’t see true muscle growth right away, but water, glycogen, and microbiome mass come back quickly. That’s why lean tissue rebounds so fast.
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u/andtitov 18h ago
I used Dexa scan, which is considered the gold standard in measuring body composition. Lean tissue includes, besides muscles and glycogen, water and gut microbiome. So, during the fast, water, glycogen and gut microbiome goes down, and bounce back during the refeeding period. It's a typical graph for a 7-day water fast.
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u/Both-Reason6023 18h ago
Dexa has precision (coefficient of variation) for bone mineral density measurements at 3% and fat and lean tissue at 2%. For those reasons it’s highly recommended to not take it more frequently than once every 3-6 months. It’s just not precise enough.
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u/andtitov 15h ago
True - DEXA’s CV is about 2% for fat/lean and about 3% for bone, so small changes can just be noise. But the error is random, not systematic, so bigger shifts (like several lbs) are real. For clinical tracking, 3-6 months makes sense, but for self-experiments you can still get useful directional insights if you keep the error margin in mind.
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u/Both-Reason6023 15h ago
I’m just saying that it’s probable that your post refeed results for lean mass are off significantly and you lost major amount of muscle, which you could have prevented by at least consuming ~240 g of protein isolate with water (2.4-3.2g of protein per kg of desired body weight during rapid weight loss).
It’d take 10 days instead of 7 to lose the same amount of weight but protect you from losing months worth of muscle training.
For me that’s an obvious choice.
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u/GfxJG 18h ago
That... Doesn't sound healthy in the slightest. But you do you bud.