alt Hacker News> In total, there were 3.1 pounds of beef—a graphic visualization of the muscle lost in just one week by subjects of a bed-rest study the student had just completed.
This is significantly out of line with other research I've seen. Marusic et al. (2021) meta-analysis[1] found an average muscle loss of ~2% after 5 days. It did not report average absolute muscle loss, but the average person has about 1/3 of bodyweight as muscle, so at an average weight of ~180 pounds, that would represent 1.2 pounds of muscle loss in a ~week, not 3.1 pounds.
The meta-analysis study you cite suggests 2% loss @ 5 days and 5% loss at 10 days at the knee extensor muscles.
Notice that percentage loss is more than double for a doubling of bedrest time. It's not linear.
You're suggesting that muscle loss at the knee extensor is the same percentage for the rest of the body.
from the full text of the bedrest study mentioned in the outsideonline.com article - muscle loss was measured via DXA scan. see https://diabetesjournals.org/diabetes/article/65/10/2862/350...