Muscle loss?

I am one week and one day post op. Last Thursday I went into the hospital at 368 and this morning weighed in at 344.  Prior to the surgery I was doing a lot of strength training and was carrying a lot of muscle. I definitely feel like I've dropped a lot of muscle mass, I am nervous that I haven't lost any fat! I've been averaging 4 miles a day of walking.  Does anyone have any insight into this?

Sorry, forgot to mention that I've been able to get 80-90 g of protein in daily since Monday.

I don't know of anyone who has lost massive amounts of weight and not lost some muscle - it's gonna happen.  I had my body fat/muscle tested underwater back in September and then again in February.  I lost a total of 20-25 lbs. in that time and 4- lbs. of it was muscle.  Who knows how much muscle I lost between May and September when I lost the bulk of my weight?  

Don't be nervous about not having lost any fat - that would be impossible!  Of course you have lost fat but what you've mostly dropped at this point is water weight.  From this point forward you want to keep your protein high and focus on resistance/strength training at least 3 times a week to keep the muscle mass you have.  You probably wont' be able to build a lot of muscle right now because your calories will be too low, but you can certainly strive to keep what you have.  

The KEY to not losing muscle is to make sure you are getting in that protein ESPECIALLY after working out (walking etc) because your body needs that protein after expending that energy and breaking down etc etc.  All you can really do is stay hydrated and proteined up.  You can lose some muscle after surgery and at this point this is really all you can do to stop it/reduce it.

Ms Shell

Everyone on an extended caloric deficit will lose lean body mass. It's a simple fact. You can minimize the percentage of LBM lost through strength training, but you will lose some.

Follow your doctor's orders and don't do any lifting until he says it's ok. You just had major surgery.

It's only been a week, and you are just worn out and recovering from the operation. You haven't lost a lot of muscle in just a week.

At this point, you probably haven't lost much fat as our initial loss is mostly glycogen - our short term stores of carbs. Once that is depleted after 2-3 weeks (usually accompanied by the dreaded third week stall) and our bodies get the message that we are serious about this caloric deficit thing, then we start burning fat in earnest.

http://www.dsfacts.com/weight-loss-stall-or-plateau.html#.U1E-ZKLJHOc   gives a good explanation of this mechanism.

As others have noted, it's difficult (if not impossible,) to maintain all of our lean body mass while losing weight rapidly with our large caloric deficits - for one thing, your body will not need as much muscle mass to haul around the excess weight that you have lost, so some musculature will get lost from that; you can do squats and leg presses and, and, and three times a week and that's still not the same as carting around a 150 lb pack all day long, every day. The best thing we can do is to minimize the LBM loss and aim for a good healthy body composition at the end of this exercise. I set my goal weight initially based upon my body comp and the (very) gross assumption that all my lost weight would be all fat, and then adjusted the goal weight as I got down the scale as the body comp shifted. I ended up losing about ten pounds of LBM out of the 100+ total that I lost (I have seen some rules of thumb that indicate about one pound in nine lost will be LBM - YMMV)

Good luck on the start of your lifelong journey in this game!

Thank you everyone!

I think muscle loss is just inevitable...my last appointment showed I lost 130lbs but 25lbs of it was muscle. I was very good at getting my protein in everyday too.