Research dating back to the 1980’s and 1990’s found that diet-induced decreases in metabolism can extend to the period AFTER the diet is over. Diane Elliot, an MD and professor of medicine at Oregon University published her research in 1989 about the lasting effects of very low calorie diets. “Resting metabolic rate of our obese subjects remained depressed after massive weight loss despite increased caloric consumption to a level that allowed body weight stabilization.”
In 1999, Arne Astrup published a meta analysis with data from all the studies which had investigated changes in metabolism after weight loss. They found that formerly obese subjects had a 3-5% lower resting metabolic rate than control subjects who had never been obese.
These and other studies suggest that metabolic consequences of crash dieting and rapid weight loss persist after the diet is over. Pursuing weight loss the wrong way (“dumb dieting”) makes the bad stuff worse and aftereffects linger longer. Pursuing fat loss and body composition improvement the smart way minimizes the bad stuff and prevents outright metabolic damage. The Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle (BFFM) program is based – from A to Z – on doing fat loss the smart way.
7 Smart strategies for fat burning and metabolic health
Below, you’ll see 7 of the best fat burning strategies which keep your hormones happy and your metabolism burning hot.
1.Eat more! You can eat less. The smart way is to avoid crash diets and pursue slower but steady fat loss with an eye on body composition. Start with a conservative deficit of only 20% below your maintenance level. Use a larger deficit only if you’re seriously overweight. When you add in resistance training, cardio training and an active lifestyle, your calorie expenditure (metabolism) goes way up, and that’s how you can legitimately eat more and keep getting leaner.
2.Eat natural. When hormonal health declines, body composition outcomes are worse during weight loss and risk of metabolic damage may increase. Furthermore, most natural, unprocessed foods, especially vegetables and lean proteins, are lower in caloric density and can lead to spontaneous decreases in caloric intake compared to the standard American diet (S.A.D.) For optimal body composition results and metabolic and hormonal health, it’s not just about calorie quantity, but also calorie quality.
3. Eat often and regularly: I recommend eating like a physique athlete. Spread your total daily calories into 4-6 small meals per day, if feasible, and be sure to include a source of lean protein with every meal.
4.Use carb cycling. The Burn The Fat, Feed the Muscle Method puts you in the optimal healthy calorie deficit, but periodically, you increase your calories to keep your metabolism and appetite regulating hormones up at the normal level. Instead of the carb-phobic diets that millions of people still follow (which can actually suppress hormones like thyroid and leptin), carb cycling with a high carb refeed every 4th day or so, allows you to eat more carbs and you still keep losing fat.
5.Take Diet breaks: Avoid prolonged periods in aggressive caloric deficits. If you have a lot of fat to lose and it’s going to take more than 3 months to hit your long term fat loss goal, don’t do it all in one stretch. Take a week at maintenance calories after 12 weeks of restricted dieting.
6.Do Cardio. If you’re overweight, you can sometimes get away with very low calorie diets without adverse consequences if you’re not doing tons of cardio on top of it. Exercise research says that extreme amounts of cardio during a diet can actually cause the same type of adaptive metabolic downshift as eating too little food. This kind of overtraining can be counter-productive when you look at the metabolic damage and “cardio dependency” potential. And remember, if you’re not diligent, you can out-eat almost any amount of exercise.
7.Weight training: In the physique world, weight training is a foregone conclusion. But in the everyday world of non-athletes, weight loss = “diet,” not weight loss = “lift weights.” For Suzy soccer mom, “lift weights to lose weight” probably doesn’t even compute. But weight training is so important for metabolic health and better body composition, that if you were forced to choose one or the other – cardio or weights – the weightlifting would be a NO BRAINER decision. If you have a concern about metabolic damage and you’re not weight training yet, there’s nothing else to discuss.
What if you have long history of starvation dieting and yo yo weight cycling?
Ok, so these 7 strategies are great for avoiding metabolic damage and minimizing the metabolic adaptations that happen while dieting. But what if you’re a chronic dieter and you fear that you’ve already messed up your metabolism?
Take another sigh of relief. In severe cases, it may take a little longer to get back to normal and continue on to achieve your long term goals, but it’s never hopeless.
I figured with at most 20 lbs to cut, this would be a simple and predictable process, but she had a challenging time dropping fat even on a surprisingly low caloric intake.
Easing into more calories and more carbs with a transitional period
If you’re worried about suddenly increasing your calories, you’re not paranoid – you’re prudent.
After becoming accustomed and somewhat adapted to a lower caloric intake, avoid abruptly jumping up to your predicted maintenance level. Instead, increase calories slowly 100-200 at a time and hold them there for one week. Here’s another safe way to ease into a higher food intake. This is ideal if you’ve been on a low calorie, low carb diet and you want to ease out of it. During the post-training window of opportunity, not only will the carbs NOT get stored as fat, (they’ll get sucked right up into muscle glycogen), this strategy can dramatically improve your body composition and workout recovery.
It just takes a little longer.
My dancer client? By the way, her program included serious heavy training with free weights and she ate a lot more (clean) food than she had ever eaten before…
Eat more, burn more. That’s our motto around here at Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle headquarters… And it works!
