HOW YOUR METABOLISM WORKS

I am going to go out on a limb here and guess that this isn't the first time you've attempted to lose weight and get in shape. Maybe you have had great results in the past and just got off track. Maybe you have been redlining the hell out of it with your training, have been consistent with your nutrition and still hit a plateau.

Maybe you gained some body fat or maybe even worse; You just cannot stop eating like a damn maniac since the holidays or a vacation you have recently returned from.

Maybe you have been Yo-Yo Dieting. You know, lose 10 pounds and then gain back 15 pounds. Stop that shit.

Research has concluded that 70% of people who lose weight regain that weight within 1 year of ending their diet. By 2 years 85% regain it. By 3 years the number grows to 95%. And out of all of those individuals, 75% of them gained more weight than they originally started out with. [1,2]

This weight rebound or yo-yo effect is due to something called adipocyte differentiation which is the urge for your body to return to its body fat set point (the size that your fat cells enjoy being).

What I've learned over the years of working with clients is that most of them have no idea how their metabolisms really work or how to correct a damaged or slow metabolism from years of these yo-yo dieting fails that just landed them heavier and in worse overall shape than when they started in the first place.

I have quite a few days worth of dedicated content to this topic that I have prepared, but today we are going to cover some of the basics and bring to light where your metabolism stands at this moment in time and identify why weight loss may have felt like nothing but an uphill battle for you.

Understanding Your Metabolism

Again, your metabolism is composed of these calorie burning processes: BMR, NEAT, EAT and TEF.

A lot of people seem to associate dieting to lose weight with speeding up your metabolism. When really, dieting causes all these processes to slow down as it ADAPTS to lower and lower energy sources forcing your body to run more efficiently on those limited calories.

This is called Metabolic Adaptation.

Chronic dieting places your body in "starvation mode", a term you've probably heard before. Your body’s primary instinct is to SURVIVE. One of the body's favorite ways to protect itself is to store calories as body fat whenever possible. Oftentimes people will feel as though they have hit a wall with their weight loss journey, when in reality their metabolism just slowed to adapt to the lower level of calorie intake, thus halting progress.

What Causes Metabolic Adaptation?

Decreased lean mass – Muscle density is a major determinant of BMR. When you lose muscle mass during weight loss, your BMR also goes down.

Decreased food intake – As calorie intake is reduced, TEF is reduced.

Decreased NEAT – While dieting, it is not uncommon to feel more sluggish resulting in less movement throughout the day. Less movement = less calories burned. Duh.

Decreased hormone secretion – A reduction in a number of hormones that positively affect several aspects of your daily energy expenditure occurs during a calorie deficit.

Increased cellular efficiency – During dieting, the cells in your body that produce energy become more efficient at converting nutrients into energy and the amount of energy lost as heat is reduced. This means a greater percentage of nutrients that you consume are being converted into energy more efficiently.

Increased gut microbe nutrient extraction – During dieting, bacteria in the large intestine become more efficient at extracting nutrients from food consumed resulting in less energy loss through excretion.

Why Most People Regain Even MORE Weight

Metabolic adaptation during dieting, combined with increased hunger can set you up to regain body fat at a rapid pace.

The feeling of being hungry doesn't normalize until you gain back lean body mass, but your initial weight gain when going back to your normal eating habits typically results in the form of body fat.

This is partly responsible for setting you up for weight gain beyond the point at which you started your diet and is also part of the reason why it is common for those who yo-yo diet to end up heavier when it's all said and done.

Your metabolism slows down and speeds up at a much slower rate than your body can store/lose body fat.

Minimize Metabolic Adaptation and Post Diet Weight Regain

This seems to be where diet coaches and other programs leave you hanging. They don't teach you how to properly increase your metabolism by bringing you out of a calorie deficit by adding back calories in a way that allows you to maintain your weight.

Here’s the good news ...there are ways to reduce metabolic adaptation and unnecessary weight gain during and after dieting. Also, there are ways you can speed your metabolism back up, and in many cases have it churning and burning faster than you ever thought possible. One of the most common tweaks I use with my coaching clients is making small caloric adjustments, carbohydrate refeeds and reverse dieting, just to name a few.

In some cases, I will instruct clients to take a break from a diet plan if needed. These alone help tremendously with mindset, decreasing binge episodes that can last days or weeks and maintaining an overall healthy relationship with food, which is some bucket list shit for me.

Fortunately, if you are currently a member of Fibritt, you can get access to all my tools that set up your meal plan for any phase you’re in.

Research

1. Wadden TA, West DS, Neiberg RH et al; Look AHEAD Research Group. One-year weight losses in the Look AHEAD study: factors associated with success. Obes. 2009;17:713-22.

2. Sumithran P, Proietto J. The defence of body weight: a physiological basis for weight regain after weight loss. Clinical Science. 2013;124(4):231–241. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23126426

3. Gary Foster, Ph.D., clinical director of the Weight and Eating Disorders Program at the University of Pennsylvania.