Metabolic Adaptation is F*cking with my Fat Loss - Now What?
In my last article, I spoke about the myth of “survival mode” and what is actually going on when you’re eating very little, but still not losing weight. To briefly recap, evolution has lead to the human body acquiring mechanisms that support the storage of body fat during periods of caloric restriction. Ultimately, specific hormones prompt us to eat more and move less, and our body becomes more efficient to reduce the risk of wasting any energy. This is why you often feel super hungry and lethargic when trying to lose weight.
But, the battle is not lost and there are certainly strategies we can employ to mitigate these effects and keep us moving towards our body composition goals. This is what we’ll explore today.
First though, I just want to make a side note that may inspire you to continue reading when you feel a little like “I don’t need to know all this stuff.” Education often seems like the responsibility of the coach or PT — you pay them to know stuff. Which is certainly true to an extent. However, in my experience, it is the people that seek to understand that reap the greatest results. Those who understand buy in and engage with behaviour modification, they are willing and able to delay gratification, they are happy to eat up for a week and have that delay their weight loss goals for seven days because they know it is in their best long term interest and they appreciate the value of getting their steps in or getting enough sleep. They also develop stronger BS detectors and are less likely to get roped in to fad diets and fancy marketing ploys. So while understanding science may not be “your job”, I strongly believe that the more you seek to understand, the better return you will gain from any health and fitness related efforts.
Anyway, let’s dive in. You want to lose weight, and you want to side step metabolic adaptation and it’s efforts to derail your efforts. What should you be doing? I’m going to split this in to two sections:
Factors to be considered in mid- to long-term diet planning and,
Day to day actions to implement.
1. Dietary Planning.
Planning for weight loss is important for many reasons. At the least, it would be advantageous to have an idea of how much body fat you want to lose, over what period of time and at what rate. We all know someone that has been seemingly dieting forever, eating salad at every event since the 90’s but their physique has never really changed. Relevant to the topic of this article, there are a few factors worth considering and factoring in to your planning. They don’t necessarily indicate right or wrong / better or worse ways of doing things, but they should be taken in to account.
Your starting body weight. Where you start matters. If you are already reasonably lean, you can expect to experience some unwanted adaptations sooner rather than later, and you’ll need to get a bit more strategic from the get go. Conversely, if you’re carrying quite a lot of body fat, you can get away with a more aggressive deficit, for a longer period of time before you need to start getting fancy.
Diet length. The longer you spend in a deficit, the more weight you’ll lose [👍]. And the more adaptation you can expect [👎].
Rate of weight loss. Weight loss of around 0.5-1% of your total bodyweight per week is generally recommended as a healthy and sustainable rate of weight loss. Losing weight quickly is obviously very motivating and that motivation can help us stick to our diets. However, losing weight more quickly is likely to cause adaptations to come to the surface faster and harder, making things more difficult for us later on. A slower rate of weight loss may not give us the motivation that gets us to stick to our diets, however physiologically may really work in our favour. It’s a bit of a psychological and physiological juggling act, with the best solution largely determined the personality and preferences of the individual.
Diet breaks / periods at maintenance. Taking yourself out of a calorie deficit from time to time can be extremely valuable in mitigating hormonal adaptations. Bringing you calorie intake up to maintenance for one or two weeks can help to reduce feelings of immense hunger and feeling so lazy you don’t want to move. Note that a single “cheat meal” or “cheat day” don’t seem to have this effect and a longer time period is required. In my experience, people generally respond in one of two ways when coach suggest a maintenance phase. 1. “Thank God, I’m so hungry, come at me food,” or 2. “Oh, but my diet is going so well, can’t we just keep pushing? This seems to be slowing me down.” Keep this in mind. Diet breaks are phenomenally beneficial.
Honour your personal preferences. We can’t deny our preferences forever, so giving them some air time when choosing an approach is probably worth while. Would you rather be super hungry for a few weeks? Or a little hungry for a few months? Do you rely on the kick of motivation that weight loss gives you? Or are you better able to delay gratification? Do you have a holiday or social event looming that you’d like to get loose at? These are all things worth considering when planning periods of dieting and maintenance. You are human and denying that will not likely work in your favour.
2. Day to Day.
Stay active. Seemingly obvious, but your body is gonna fight tooth and nail to stop you. As I’ve mentioned, the biggest contributor to your decreased energy output during periods of dieting is a decrease in your NEAT, or your non-exercise activity. When you’re hungry and tired, you’re more likely to take the lift, spend more time kicked back on the couch, and generally take the less labour-intensive options. Fortunately though, NEAT is in our control. We can choose to walk rather than drive, take the stairs and park further away. Step trackers can also be extremely useful in drawing our attention to our activity levels. Oftentimes, we think we are much more active than we really are [particularly if we are exhausted from a big day of doing sweet F all]. Step trackers can bring the truth of our activity levels to light and can motivate us to keep active. However you go about it, consciously moving everyday is going to serve you well.
Get enough sleep. Insufficient sleep further amplifies the adverse hormonal effects we see in metabolic adaption. When we don’t get enough sleep, cortisol and ghrelin increase and leptin decreases, leaving us hungry, tired, and less capable of getting active or adhering to a calorie target. Sleeping more helps to keep our hormones in check and better position us to do what we need to do to keep things moving.
Maintain an adequate protein intake. Maintaining an adequate protein intake can aid our weight loss efforts in a number of ways — it is more satiating than carbohydrates or fat, helping to keep us full. It helps to maintain our lean body mass which makes us strong, resilient, and is overall good for us, but is also metabolically active and contributes to our energy expenditure. Additionally and admittedly minimally, protein also has a slightly higher calorie burn via the thermic effect of food, also contributing to our energy output. A protein intake of 1.6-2.2g / kg body weight is recommended. EG, a 60kg female should consume somewhere between 96 - 132g of protein per day.
Now, none of these things are overly complex, however oftentimes, we are resistant to employing strategies that seem to slow us down, or strategies that go against the grain of what we have always thought to be true — which is problematic, since most of us have been fed poor quality diet advice since we picked up our first gossip magazine at age 12.
Here are some not uncommon scenarios I’ve seen, where misinformation or a lack of knowledge surrounding metabolic adaptation impedes decision making and ultimately success in long term weight management.
Scenario 1. You want to drop 10kg in a few weeks to look hot for your Hawaii trip. Your coach explains that while possible, such an aggressive diet followed by two weeks of mojitos and tapas may have less than ideal implications for your body weight long term once you get back. Seeking immediate gratification, you ignore what future you might want [ie a healthy physique that you feel confident in] and tell your coach that you want to drop 10kg or bust. Everything else is a future, post-Hawaii problem.
Scenario 2. “I will do anything to lose weight, I’m desperate.” ….. Two weeks in, work is busy and there is no way you can’t stay up to 1am every night to finish this report. You also can’t afford to take your lunch time walk and food break like you usually would because you are so swamped. Suddenly, you’re not so willing “to do anything.” But you plead, “I’ve gone to the gym every day, I don’t understand why I am not losing weight.”
Scenario 3. You’ve done 97x 10-week weight loss challenges that have had you in a calorically restricted state for the best part of the last three years and you’re left wondering why the weight won’t budge anymore. Coach suggests increasing your calories, which just seems nuts because you’ve only ever lost weight on sub 1200 calorie diets.
As I spoke about at the start of this article, while long term nutrition planning is the role of your coach and “you don’t need to know this stuff”, I digress. Having some understanding of physiology and how your body works can drastically improve coaching outcomes. Perhaps next time your coach presents a plan that varies a little from your expectations of what it might look like or pushes back against one of the above scenarios, with a greater appreciation of their utilisation, your buy in and ultimately, adherence may be much greater, producing better results in the long run.
This was a big one, so thanks for getting this far. If this was a lot, below are the key nuggets to take away. If you have questions, please don’t be afraid to reach out. I am always happy to talk and answer questions.
Key points to take away.
Metabolic adaptation is inevitable when the scale goes down.
We can mitigate some of the adverse effects by planning periods of caloric restriction ahead of time and incorporating diet breaks.
When planning any sort of nutrition strategy, make sure it suits your personal preferences as best as possible. Dieting is hard. Make it less awful by catering to your personal strengths, weaknesses and preferences.
Staying active is important. When calorically restricted, you’re likely to feel lazy. Fight it and get moving.
Sleep 7-9 hours per night.
Eat enough protein. It won’t make you bulky. 1.6-2.2g per kg bodyweight is good.
If health, fitness and weight management is important to you, learn, ask questions and seek to understand. The more and the better you understand, the better you are positioned to make smart decisions that support your goals in both the short and long term.
Stay safe friends,
Billie x