How to Deal With Metabolic Slowdown
Our resting metabolic rate is a combination of many things. It consists of resting metabolic rate, the thermic effect of feeding, exercise activity thermogenesis, and the non-exercise activity thermogenesis.
During the course of a diet during which you lose weight, your total energy expenditure is likely to go down. We can attribute this to a couple of factors.
First, body mass is a metabolically active substance. So if you have lesser amounts of body mass (in particular lean mass), a lower metabolism is pretty expected.
However, the total caloric expenditure drops far more than what we would think from just the resting metabolic rate. Hormonal changes all over the body will occur which many people may have experienced while on a diet.
These hormones range from those that control our energy expenditure to hunger, muscle building ability, and even reproductive side effects.
Many of these changes led to a significant drop in metabolic rate.
Besides these, it also affects the other aspects of your metabolism. For example, because you are eating less food, your thermic effect of feeding will also go down.
Tiredness can occur which could affect your exercise activity thermogenesis.
Non-exercise activity thermogenesis is typically the primary aspect of your caloric expenditure that will go down.
We can attribute this to a body’s response to a lack of food and this is essentially “starvation mode” wherein your body does all it can do to prevent starvation.
How long does it take for these changes to come into play?
Some acute hormone changes can come into play within hours of the commencement of the diet.
Hormones like leptin, one of the most influential hormones in weight loss, are quickly affected within the first few days, but then sort of flattens off.
Within a week, you can expect to see a reduction in total metabolism, while reproductive side effects, like a reduction in testosterone, can take months to be affected.
How to minimize metabolic slowdown?
When you are dieting at a high deficit, your body will react quite negatively to the deficit. Data has shown that weight loss with a slower deficit is better for hormones than a higher rate of weight loss which is beneficial in the long run.
Lean tissue loss is also significantly alleviated by a deficit that is smaller. To further protect lean tissue, implementing refeeds or diet breaks could be of help.
The fundamental idea behind this is to let your body be at its maintenance for some amount of time before you reintroduce a deficit. A refeed will usually be one or two days a week, whereas a diet break will be about a week or even two weeks.
With refeeds, it’s good to take 2 refeeds in a row because just like it takes time for negative changes to occur, it is important to stay at maintenance for a period of time in order to grab the positive hormonal benefits.
In a popularly referenced study known as the “MATADOR” study, they found that those who take frequent diet breaks have a less adapted metabolism and this resulted in more of an ease in the weight loss process.
While diet breaks and refeeds can be of help, diets that involve this often take much longer to achieve the desired weight loss.
A viable solution to this is to follow a regular diet until the point that the diet becomes difficult to maintain. At that point, you can implement diet breaks to get maximum results with minimum effort.
Typically, a deficit targeting about 1% of your body weight per week in body weight loss would be ideal to prevent many of the negative hormonal changes you may experience.
How much time will it take to recover from a metabolic slowdown?
Recovery is something that is multifaceted. It involves various processes including bringing hormones back to normal levels, restoring components of lean and fat tissue, getting metabolic rate back to normal, and bringing your total energy expenditure back to normal.
For most people, it will take from four to six months to recover post a significant diet (such as contest prep) to make a near complete recovery. However, there are aspects that will take longer to recover than others.
What should you do post a slowdown?
Some interesting studies have noticed that post a significant diet, your excessive hunger may persist until you have regained all of your tissue.
In many cases, post a significant diet, they gain back more fat than they lose and hence they are left with less lean tissue and more fat. These people may believe their metabolism to be higher, which can cause them to follow an improper diet and regain their weight quickly.
The more extreme the adaptations are, the more thoughtful and patient you have to be with facilitating recovery before you begin the next weight loss phase.
The best thing you can do is to implement refeeds at maintenance and reduce your deficit. While this may slow down your progress, this will cause a more sustainable rate of weight loss.
Conclusion
A metabolic slowdown is something that many people may experience during their weight loss journey. It’s important to adapt your diet to any slowdown in metabolism and there are some tactics you can use to reduce the impact of your adapting metabolism.
Forcing past the pain may be an option for some, but for most, it would be easier to implement refeeds and diet breaks in your diet to reduce the effects of the adaptation.
Remember, don’t use refeeds and diet breaks as excuses to not follow your diet. You’re only cheating yourself this way.
Citations:
Byrne, N M et al. “Intermittent energy restriction improves weight loss efficiency in obese men: the MATADOR study.” International journal of obesity (2005) vol. 42,2 (2018): 129–138. doi:10.1038/ijo.2017.206
Trexler, Eric. “The Metabolic Adaptation Manual: Problems, Solutions, & Life After Dieting.” Stronger by Science, 26 Mar. 2019, www.strongerbyscience.com/metabolic-adaptation/. Accessed 27 May 2020.
Trexler, Eric T et al. “Metabolic adaptation to weight loss: implications for the athlete.” Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition vol. 11,1 7. 27 Feb. 2014, doi:10.1186/1550–2783–11–7
MacLean, Paul S et al. “The role for adipose tissue in weight regain after weight loss.” Obesity reviews : an official journal of the International Association for the Study of Obesity vol. 16 Suppl 1,Suppl 1 (2015): 45–54. doi:10.1111/obr.12255
Maclean, Paul S et al. “Biology’s response to dieting: the impetus for weight regain.” American journal of physiology. Regulatory, integrative and comparative physiology vol. 301,3 (2011): R581–600. doi:10.1152/ajpregu.00755.2010
