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Here’s How Metabolism Impacts Weight Loss, According To New Study

In partnership with The Fresh Toast Once a diet starts and the initial wave of pounds are lost, it’s common for progress to stall. This frustrating development causes a lot of dieters to lose momentum and give up on their goals. But a new study tried to get a better understanding as to why this happens, taking a deeper look into people’s metabolisms. It found that when on a diet, metabolism slows down as a way to balance out the calories that are being lost, thus keeping the body functioning. Published in the journal Obesity and reported by NBC News, the study analyzed data from 65 white and black female participants between the ages of 21 to 41. These participants were all dieting, with researchers providing them with a weight loss plan and an 800 calorie diet per day until participants reached their goals. Photo by Huh Are Inc. via RELATED: Watching This Much TV A Week Could Increase The Risk Of Dementia The study discovered that participants could adapt to burning 50 calories less a day in order to keep their bodies functioning, a process called “metabolic adaptation.” “Metabolic adaptation during weight loss can make it harder for people to achieve their goals,” said Catia Martins, one of the study’s authors. “In this study we found people with more metabolic adaptation took longer to achieve their goals.” Metabolic adaptation decreases people’s resting metabolic rate, which is the number of calories they need to keep functioning. It varies from person to person. When comparing the data to previous studies, researchers were able to pinpoint how much metabolic adaption can slow down weight loss and hinder diets. The greater the change in resting metabolic rate, the longer it took for women to lose their weight. Photo by kate_sept2004/Getty Images “We had some women whose resting metabolic rate dropped by close to 700 calories, which means it would take them 70 more days, or about two months longer, to achieve their weight loss goals compared to someone with no metabolic adaptation at all,” explained Martins. RELATED: Study: Thousands Of Lives Could Be Saved If We Did This Every Day In order to address these diet plateaus, finding any way to kickstart the diet might be the best way to lose those remaining pounds. Supplementing the diet with exercise, weight lifting, or simply taking a short break might provide the results you need. Read more on The Fresh Toast



How Your Body Tries to Prevent You from Losing Too Much Weight

Many people have experienced the frustration of not being able to lose additional weight once some initial pounds have been shed. Experts say this might be due to something called metabolic adaptation. This is the prehistoric process that signals our bodies to slow metabolism to avoid excessive weight loss due to food scarcity. Experts say the best way to avoid this adaptation is to lose 1 to 2 pounds a week over an extended period of time. If you’re not reaching your weight loss goals, the reason may be something called metabolic adaptation. Metabolic adaptation is one of your body’s survival mechanisms that occurs when you’re losing a significant amount of weight. A new study conducted by the Department of Nutrition Sciences at the University of Alabama at Birmingham concludes that metabolic adaptation was associated with more time to reach weight loss goals. This might explain why it can become more difficult to lose weight after you’ve lost some initial pounds. In their study, researchers looked at women who were premenopausal and above the healthy weight range listed for body mass index (BMI). Participants lost an average of 16 percent of their weight over an average of 5 months. Researchers said metabolic adaptation after the 16 percent weight reduction increased the time it took to lose more weight. The study participants included 65 premenopausal women with overweight; 36 white women and 29 Black women. Both groups followed an 800-calorie diet until they hit a specific BMI. One group was considered sedentary (only exercising once per week) while the other group engaged in routine exercise. All participants did not smoke and reported regular menstrual cycles. All participants also: had normal glucose levels had a family history of overweight and obesity in at least one first- relative were not taking medications that could affect body composition or metabolism On average, adherence to the diet was about 64 percent. These results were consistent after adjusting for other causes that could be interfering with weight loss. Metabolic adaptation happens when our body adjusts to reduce our resting metabolic rate (Rimrock). The is how many calories our body needs to function properly and maintain weight, explained Caroline West , MS, a spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, as well as community coordinator and instructor at the University of Pittsburgh and owner at Caroline West LLC. This rate is different for everyone and changes throughout our lives since it’s based on factors such as age, height, weight, activity level, and body composition, told Health Lines. “We know from research that does change with weight loss,” she said. “However, there are many variables that determine if the change in is clinically significant and if the change to will persist once a person’s weight has stabilized.” Andy De , a registered dietitian and weight loss expert based in Toronto, Canada, said metabolic adaptation really amounts to the idea of your metabolism “slowing down” in response to calorie restriction and weight loss. A smaller body tends to spend less energy at rest. Food requires energy to digest, so when both food intake and weight drop, so does the amount of energy your body spends on a daily basis, he explained to . So it’s hard to say these study findings change our knowledge that much, he noted. “The idea that some people are affected by metabolic adaptation more than others and that subsequently could extend the amount of time it takes for different people to lose weight is interesting and could be one of many variables that explain differing success rates/durations of weight loss endeavors,” De said. And it could be a valuable insight to someone who feels their efforts trying to lose weight are substantial, but their results aren’t matching, given that metabolic adaptation plays a role in weight loss success even when dietary adherence is high, he added. “Human physiology has many safeguards in place to keep our body processes functioning,” said. “Many of these safeguards also make it difficult for an individual to maintain lost weight.” If you are interested in losing weight, said the general recommendation is to adjust your energy balance. This means reducing the number of calories consumed or increasing the number of calories expended to result in a weight loss of about 1 to 2 pounds per week. Many experts agree that losing 1 or 2 pounds per week is a healthy and safe rate. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that people who lose weight gradually and steadily are more successful at keeping weight off. Losing more than 2 pounds per week is more likely to result in greater reductions to our , said . In other words, losing more than that per week can be a signal to your body that a food supply has become scarce. “I hope this is a reminder to folks that there are factors we can control, but weight loss isn’t solely about willpower and personal choices,” said . Participants were put on a diet that consisted of just 800 calories a day over the course of the study. This 800-calorie diet isn’t designed for every body. One diet company, The Fast 800, says eating 800 calories a day is an intensive way to start your weight loss journey and “reset your metabolism,” helping people to lose weight “very fast,” lower blood pressure, and potentially reverse type 2 diabetes. De said that 800 calories a day is 33–50 percent less than the average caloric needs we might expect in premenopausal women. “The adherence to the diet, as per the paper, was only around 64 percent, which means only a bit more than half the participants could pull it off,” he said. De added that this result speaks to the practicality of the diet. Then again, the goal of the study was to measure metabolic adaptation to weight loss, so the context is a bit different from a standard diet you might see being marketed. “It’s safe to say I don’t advocate for 800-calorie diets,” he said. He urges people to talk with their doctor before starting a weight loss program.

'It’s not about willpower.' How metabolism slows down when you try to lose weight 

Many people trying to shed pounds have seen their diets stall after a certain amount of weight loss. A new study shows how the body’s metabolism slows as a way to balance the lower amount of calories that are consumed. An analysis of data from 65 dieting white and Black women, ages 21 to 41, revealed that their bodies could adapt to burn, on average, 50 fewer calories a day. Some of the women, who were initially overweight or obese, adapted to the weight loss to use hundreds of fewer calories per day, according to the report published Thursday in Obesity. This “metabolic adaptation” is a response to weight loss by decreasing the resting metabolic rate — that is, the number of calories a person needs to keep critical systems functioning, such as the heart and the lungs. “Metabolic adaptation during weight loss can make it harder for people to achieve their goals,” said the study’s first author, Catia Martins, an associate professor of nutrition science at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. “In this study we found people with more metabolic adaptation took longer to achieve their weit- goals.” In this case, the women were all trying to get to a body mass index, or BMI, of 25, just a little past what is considered a normal or healthy BMI range of 18.5 to 24.9. Martins and her colleagues found that dieting took one day longer for every 10-calorie drop in resting metabolic rate. “We had some women whose resting metabolic rate dropped by close to 700 calories, which means it would take them 70 more days, or about two months longer, to achieve their weight loss goals compared to someone with no metabolic adaptation at all,” Martins said. To take a closer look at how women’s resting metabolic rates might change during dieting, Martins and her colleagues data from two earlier University of Alabama at Birmingham studies, dubbed Romero and Juliette. The researchers focused on patients who were losing weight by diet alone, with a maximum of one day per week of exercise. Story continues During the study, all volunteers were provided with an 800-calorie-a-day diet until they reached their weight loss goals. At that point, a number of measurements were taken, including resting metabolic rate. Martins and her colleagues determined that 64 percent of the women had completely stuck with their diets. Overall, the women lost an average of 12.5 kg (27.6 pounds) over an average of 22 weeks. When the researchers accounted for factors such as dietary adherence, they found that the greater the change in resting metabolic rate, the longer it took women to reach their weight loss goals. A person experiencing a lot of metabolic adaptation will experience weight loss plateaus and will struggle to lose those last pounds,” Martins said. The study did not look at whether the changes in resting metabolic rate could be avoided. Martins said she suspects that adding exercise, as well as weightlifting, might help. Another strategy, she said, would be to take a short break from the diet. “Once the person really stabilizes for a while — two weeks would probably be enough — then the effect will go away and they can then restart the diet,” she said. There are other metabolic challenges to losing weight, said Dr. Rekha Kumar, an associate professor of clinical medicine in the division of endocrinology, diabetes and metabolism at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York. “The researchers have isolated one aspect of metabolic adaptation,” said Kumar, who was not involved with the new research. “But the important thing is that resting metabolic rate is not the only thing presenting a challenge to people trying to lose weight. There are so many hormones, such as and leptin, that go in the wrong direction with weight loss.” The study does “support what people see in their own experience and what clinicians see in their patients — it’s not about willpower,” Kumar said. “As you lose weight, it becomes harder and harder to achieve your weight loss goal.” The brain interprets a reduction in calories as a danger to the body, a possible sign that a famine has begun, Kumar said. “And that’s true no matter how it’s achieved, whether it’s through dieting or surgery." This story first appeared on NBCNews.com.