What to expect if a geezer loses a Lot of weight

[Fiddler]

I'm 70 years old, 5'7" and currently 182 lb. I have been slowly losing weight (about a pound per week) and gaining strength, with a goal of getting down to 165 lbs, and then adding calories back in to try to get stronger faster. Currently on the geezer post-novice program, 2 days/week. I'd been proceeding on the assumption that I had about 140 lb lean body mass, and that 165 would put me at a comfortable 15% body fat.

I just had a Bod Pod body composition assessment Monday. To my shock, they said I had a lean body mass of 117 lb. The only other assessment I have had was one with a fancy bio impedance machine (handles and all) 3 years ago that gave me the 140 LM figure, and comparison with photographs. I thought there was something wrong with the Bod Pod figure until I finally took the time to learn how to work my home scale that's supposed to measure body composition, and it confirmed the Bod Pod reading within a couple of percentage points. Can a Bod Pod be that far off (23%bf vs 36%)?

So far, I've lost 9 lbs in 10 weeks and been gaining strength on all my lifts (more than double where I started). If my LBM is really that low, I would need to get down to about 138 lbs to be at 15% BF. First question: Is it reasonable to expect to be able to retain LBM and strength if I lose that much fat? Corollary: In your experience, is it even possible for someone my age to gain lean mass while losing weight, starting from my current measured 36% body fat?

Second question: My arms and legs are skinny; most of my weight is in my torso. You can pinch maybe 1/8" of skin fold on my legs. If I lose 40 lbs off my torso and just keep training the way I am, would that weight loss be reflected in my squats, since I don't have to lift that extra body weight, or don't things work that way? Seems plausible, but what the hell do I know.

Currently, my plans are to get down to 165 body weight and then re-assess, but I like to think in terms of longer-range goals, so I'm kinda interested in having an idea what I might expect. I know there are a lot of variables, so I'm just looking for pretty a general idea. Currently squatting 195x5, pulling 225x5.

Thanks for your consideration! BTW: Currently, I'm averaging 1500 calories per day, with 111g carbs, 42g fat, and 170g protein (lots of chicken and veggies, no supplements), lost 9 lb in 10 weeks. Seems to be working OK, but if you have any comments, I'm interested.

[Jordan Feigenbaum]

Thanks for the thoughtful question and major props to you for training and making lifestyle changes. It's cool to hear/see

As for your questions:

Can a Bod Pod be that far off (23%bf vs 36%)

So really it depends what you mean by "off"? Off from what, you know? There are inherent errors in ALL methods of body fat analysis that don't involve dissection, which for some reason is frowned upon. That being said, the error bars on air plethysmography (Bod Pod) are larger than, say, DEXA scanning or hydrostatic weighing (dunk tank)- the two gold standards currently. They are not, however, on the order of 13% different when all info and measurements required to calculate body fat for each method are done to protocol. So all that is to say, your current body fat numbers per BIA and BodPod are probably relatively accurate (+/- 5% or so) unless operator error was significant.

Is it reasonable to expect to be able to retain LBM and strength if I lose that much fat?

Not really, unfortunately. Also, 138lbs would be very small for you and unlikely to improve health outcomes in and of itself.

Corollary: In your experience, is it even possible for someone my age to gain lean mass while losing weight, starting from my current measured 36% body fat?

I don't think it's possible for anyone to gain lean mass and lose weight (really) unless they are completely untrained and very, very obese. I wouldn't put money on being able to do it at any age, really.

Second question: My arms and legs are skinny; most of my weight is in my torso. You can pinch maybe 1/8" of skin fold on my legs. If I lose 40 lbs off my torso and just keep training the way I am, would that weight loss be reflected in my squats, since I don't have to lift that extra body weight, or don't things work that way? Seems plausible, but what the hell do I know.

If you lose 40lbs, your squat is almost certainly either going to get weaker than it is now or not progress as far as it should/could.

So here's the thing, and it's not unique to you either so I'll make my point broad and general here. Body fat, as determined by objective metrics do not matter for anything unless seeing the number change is a significant intrinsic motivating tool that cannot be substituted. If you're a physique athlete, no one cares what your body fat percentage is on a piece of paper...it matters what you look like on stage. If you're a competitive lifter, they don't put your body fat in parentheses next to your total or figure it into your Wilks or Sinclair score...only the weight on the bar matters. If you're lifting for health reasons, your body fat doesn't really matter either unless it's really high or really low, but then again we know if someone falls into either category just by looking at them. Do they have a big, round belly or do they look like they're sickly?

Context also matters, right? A person over the age of 65 (or 60...it's arbitrary at this point) in your situation needs to get stronger now while eating responsibly. This will make the most difference in their day to day lives, abilities, and resiliency. Weight loss just makes this harder and eliminates any significant muscle mass increase (which is important to both health and performance).

111g carbs, 42g fat, and 170g protein

I'd have you start at 190/150/50 on training days and 190/100/70 on non training days w/ 25g of fiber minimum.