Zero carb weight loss: muscle, fat or water?

A common concern amongst beginner ZCers – and also a sneer at them from the plantatarians – is that the weight lost on a zero-carb/LCHF way of eating is mainly water and muscle.

The continued existence of this myth – which I could easily have devoted a ‘Vegan Pork Pie’ to – is down to the ‘victory of dogma over data‘ as Messrs Volek and Phinney put it. For example, a scientist may design a study to run for two weeks, knowing full well that if it ran for, say, six weeks the results would not look the way they wanted them to look. Or a scientist may choose not to publish ’embarrassing data’, fairly safe in the knowledge that for the most part peer-reviewers won’t go the extra mile and join the dots.

So bad science can turn into misinformation that in turn becomes woven into…