TrialTracker_MD said:

There is also a quality change that the scan cannot see.

Back pain as a lean mass side effect: not from the medication itself, but from rapid body composition changes. Losing 62 lbs shifts your center of gravity and your core muscles need time to adjust.

Physical therapy has been essential. Core strengthening exercises (planks, dead bugs, bird dogs) daily for 10 minutes have eliminated my lower back pain. Your body is literally relearning how to carry itself.

Following on from pete_nash — and this may be the naive question:

What fraction of loss being lean mass is actually normal, because the numbers quoted here range from 10% to 40% and cannot all be right?

PeptideChemSF said:

Back pain as a lean mass side effect: not from the medication itself, but from rapid body composition changes.

Sharing my comprehensive lab data relevant to lean mass:

Protocol: Semaglutide 2.4mg/wk, resistance training 3x/week, protein 1.4g/kg/day.

The improvements in lean mass are clearly reflected in these numbers. The inflammatory marker reduction (hsCRP) is particularly striking.

OP back with an update, since a thread like this is useless without one.

Second scan under matched conditions, six months apart, same time of day: the lean number came back nearly a kilo higher than the panic scan. Strength was up throughout.

andrew_nyc said:

Sharing my comprehensive lab data relevant to lean mass: Biomarker Baseline Month 3 Month 6 Month 9 Weight (lbs) 282 252 222 197 A1C (%) 7.7 6.2 5.5…

Right, and protein targets should be set on a reference weight rather than current weight. Setting 1.6 g/kg on a starting weight of 130kg produces a target nobody hits on a suppressed appetite.