Adaptive Thermogenesis during Maintenance
apple4164
Posts: 16 Member
I have not reached my goal weight yet, but I am curious about adaptive thermogenesis during maintenance.
for people who have reached maintenance and have kept the weight stable for 1 yr or more, do you find yourself still eating less calories to maintain weight than someone with the same height, age, weight, body fat %, activity, etc?
I've heard that the body becomes more efficient at conserving calories once you lose weight, and the adaptive thermogenesis effect doesn't go away even years after maintenance. Anyone find themselves be able to eat more calories (than when just switching to maintenance plan) and maintain the same weight after years of successful maintenance? Or you have to permanently eat less than a weight-stable counterpart?
for people who have reached maintenance and have kept the weight stable for 1 yr or more, do you find yourself still eating less calories to maintain weight than someone with the same height, age, weight, body fat %, activity, etc?
I've heard that the body becomes more efficient at conserving calories once you lose weight, and the adaptive thermogenesis effect doesn't go away even years after maintenance. Anyone find themselves be able to eat more calories (than when just switching to maintenance plan) and maintain the same weight after years of successful maintenance? Or you have to permanently eat less than a weight-stable counterpart?
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Don't know about others and don't know if it's due to AT but I've been in maintenance for over a year and had to decrease my daily net cals from 1800 to 1650 to avoid gaining weight and maintain it at 158 +/-3.
I recently lost weight while eating 2200-2300 cals/day and burning 550-650 cals/day but this has been due to eating at about 1500-1550 net instead of 1650.
Just need to eat a little more to get my weight back up to 158 but am going to hold off until I get a hydro test measurement of my BF in a couple of days to compare w/a DXA measurement that I got last week.
Then I'll decide whether to "bulk up" again or not or just maintain at 156 instead.2 -
I'm approaching year 5 of maintenance and I can eat more than what MFP or any TDEE calculators give me for my height/age/weight.
MFP would tell me I should eat 1650 calories to maintain - in reality I can eat close to 2000 cals. (I'm 5ft 2/ 125lbs/ 48yrs/lightly active)8 -
We know at does happen with a weigjt loss. Loom at Liebel's metabolic ward studies. Does it cont into maintenance? Yes, does it get worse? Who knows. We are still in the infancy in some ways on metabolic studies. The biggest slow downs we do know is in the muscles and cns. Our muscles change and get better at using energy under a certain exertion area. Also declines in NEAT. there are others who might have better answers. I am still fairly new to this myself.3
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Without running each individual's numbers (before weight loss, during weight loss, after weight loss) it is very very hard to tell the degree of AT and whether it is fully or partially reversed at the end of the process.
However, I do think that the sequence of considerations is fairly straightforward.
--do I need to lose weight for my health?
If the answer is yes, whether there will exist a degree of AT in the end or not isn't relevant. What is relevant is that you would take as many pre-cautions as you can to minimize it!
So...
--how can I lose weight in a manner than minimizes AT?
The best answer *I* have come up with is limit deficits to no more than 20% of TDEE (no more than 25% of TDEE while obese) and in fact lower them to 10% to 15% of TDEE within the normal weight range. Engage in strength training, by preference progressive weight training. Eat sufficient protein (0.8g to 1g per lb of target weight in the normal weight range), eat sufficient healthy fats 0.35g per lb of target weight in the normal weight range for women (men might get by with a little bit less). Engage in periodic re-feeds and also engage in the occasional diet break. This is less necessary while obese. More necessary the leaner you get.
--be prepared that losing the weight is just the beginning. You WILL have to continue to actively manage your weight, probably forever. However, before you go in a panic over that thought, this doesn't mean that your abilities to do so do not increase over time. Humans tend to improve when it comes to things they do for a long time!
Unfortunately I don't have data for myself from before I started losing weight. In fact, my data start 40lbs into my weight loss after I joined MFP and started recording things. My personal belief is that I have 3% to 5% AT which has, at most, amounted to no more than 150 Cal a day. Starting from 40lbs down.
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Honestly, daily calorie burns change so much for so many different factors on an ongoing basis, that it would probably be pretty hard to see any impact of adaptive thermogenesis unless you had perfect data for an individual both pre-weight gain and post weight loss.
I can say that my maintenance calorie level seems fairly linear to my loss phase. I will admit though that I'm not too concerned with exact measurements/counting in maintenance so any variation due to AT would be probably get lost in the shuffle anyway.5 -
Another reason to stay active and maybe even treat maintenance more like recomp?9
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Another reason to stay active and maybe even treat maintenance more like recomp?
This is exactly my thought process. Everyone has different definitions, but to me, maintenance is remaining the same. To stay interested and focused on fitness I like to have goals, which means constantly improving (or trying to!) so "recomp" is my long-term plan.8 -
I don't have personal calorie data from pre-weight-loss. When I started losing and tracking meticulously, I lost faster or at a higher calorie level than MFP or any other calculator predicted. Over a little less than a year, I lost 50+ pounds.
Now, having been in maintenance for 2 years, heading into year 3, I can say that I maintain at approximately the calorie level I estimated based on my rate of weight loss. That maintenance calorie level (low 2000s net) is still much higher than most calculators would estimate (in the 1500s net).
Just n=1, though. Oh, and if it matters: 5'5", weight around 130, 62 y/o.6 -
Also, we naturally need fewer calories as we lose weight, even without taking AT into account, so between that, AT, and metabolism decreasing as we age, we all need to watch our calories and decrease them accordingly if we don't want to gain weight over time.6
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Another reason to stay active and maybe even treat maintenance more like recomp?
This is exactly my thought process. Everyone has different definitions, but to me, maintenance is remaining the same. To stay interested and focused on fitness I like to have goals, which means constantly improving (or trying to!) so "recomp" is my long-term plan.
Same here. The more iterations of gain/lose/workout/diet/hate myself/love myself I go through, the more I think that, once I get somewhere I'm at least reasonably happy with, long term recomp is the way to go.5 -
Yeah. I THINK I need to eat less than women with my stats who have been at a healthy weight all their lives. But I'm not 100% certain. I'm trying to counteract it with more activity. But I'm tired.8
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Yeah. I THINK I need to eat less than women with my stats who have been at a healthy weight all their lives. But I'm not 100% certain. I'm trying to counteract it with more activity. But I'm tired.
To feed off the "I THINK" part...
The problem with this type of conversation is that it assumes 2 people are logging/estimating with the same degree of accuracy, which is a HUUUUGE assumption. 2 people could very likely be maintaining at the same calorie count, but actually eating (and netting) vastly different numbers.4 -
I lost 22lbs from Jan - May 2017. Since then, I've been logging fairly accurately (but not perfectly). I think my logging is good enough to state that, if I eat at the maintenance level recommended by MFP (~2000kcal/day), adding reasonable estimates for sustained workouts, I reliably maintain my weight. My activity level hasn't changed much since the year before.
Over the period from Thanksgiving to New Years, I ate a bit more and exercised a bit less. My logging showed many days where I was over my maintenance level, and I gained a few pounds. I then lost them in January.
Thus, I think I can say pretty definitively that it doesn't appear that my body has adapted to a lower calorie intake than what an average person my height, weight, age, and sex would need. In fact, I'm pretty much spot on.1 -
I've been maintaining 11 months and haven't noticed a difference yet BUT I was only 40lbs overweight and I work out a lot now so things are all over the place depending on what I get up to.0
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"Physiological adaptations to weight loss and factors favouring weight regain" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4766925/
"Long-term weight loss maintenance for obesity: a multidisciplinary approach" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4777230/#b49-dmso-9-037
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I found I could eat significantly more calories than expected during maintenance/diet break.
I was losing a pound a week on about 2000 calories, but pushed my maintenance up to around 2800 during the diet break.
I've previously lost 60+ pounds super aggressively, regained, lost some and regained again multiple times. I don't think it has had any lasting effects on my metabolism. (I just eat too much) and I seem to lose/maintain on more than calculators estimate every time.
I think I am definitely a person who 'slows down' while in a deficit. But once my calories and nutrition are optimal for maintenance I have more energy and thus a higher TDEE.0 -
Thanks for all the responses! It shed some light into what my caloric intake may be when I reach maintenance:)
According to this website (https://www.supertracker.usda.gov/bwp/) from USDA, it predicts what the maintenance calorie when you reach the weight will be. I did an experiment: I plugged in my past weight (175lb) as my starting weight in the "weight" column and my current weight after (126lb) in "I want to be ___ lb" section. I got around 1980 calories if I want to maintain at 126lb. However, if I plug in 126lb in the "weight" column and state that I want to be 126 lb, I can eat 2,220 calories to maintain at 126 lb.
On the days that I had a week of diet break, I ate at around 2,050 calories and I gained 2lbs (I lost 1lb when I went back into a caloric deficit). So I would say there is some AT in my case.
For people who are interested to try out the caloric estimation in the link, I am very interested to hear your supposed caloric allowance, and the actual caloric intake you can have in maintenance
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Thanks for all the responses! It shed some light into what my caloric intake may be when I reach maintenance:)
According to this website (https://www.supertracker.usda.gov/bwp/) from USDA, it predicts what the maintenance calorie when you reach the weight will be. I did an experiment: I plugged in my past weight (175lb) as my starting weight in the "weight" column and my current weight after (126lb) in "I want to be ___ lb" section. I got around 1980 calories if I want to maintain at 126lb. However, if I plug in 126lb in the "weight" column and state that I want to be 126 lb, I can eat 2,220 calories to maintain at 126 lb.
On the days that I had a week of diet break, I ate at around 2,050 calories and I gained 2lbs (I lost 1lb when I went back into a caloric deficit). So I would say there is some AT in my case.
For people who are interested to try out the caloric estimation in the link, I am very interested to hear your supposed caloric allowance, and the actual caloric intake you can have in maintenance
Remember that DURING restriction there will be a larger degree of AT than after you have resumed normal eating for a while. And that this is further off-set by the strategic use of re-feeds and diet breaks.
Anecdotically I can tell you that my "resting" heart rate increased by about 10-12 bpm during a four month increase of about 2.8lbs in trending weight, and decreased by about 8 to 10bpm during a one and a half month decrease of about 1.9lbs in trending weight.
I was not able to observe a difference in the degree of correspondence to my Fitbit TDEE .
What does this tell me?
While there is no question in my mind that something is happening (slower resting heart rate, feeling colder etc, all signs of AT), the degree of caloric burn change is small enough that it is getting lost in the noise of the other ~2800 to 3200 Cal spent every day.4 -
You have to eat less in maintenance than you did when you were heavier. But compared to someone else, who knows? Personally, I have found the TDEE calculators to be spot on I assume they account for the law of averages.3
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Yeah. I THINK I need to eat less than women with my stats who have been at a healthy weight all their lives. But I'm not 100% certain. I'm trying to counteract it with more activity. But I'm tired.
To feed off the "I THINK" part...
The problem with this type of conversation is that it assumes 2 people are logging/estimating with the same degree of accuracy, which is a HUUUUGE assumption. 2 people could very likely be maintaining at the same calorie count, but actually eating (and netting) vastly different numbers.
Agree2 -
I use the super tracker, and it is pretty close for me so far.0
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Ok, I ran my numbers.
Using my start weight, 130lbs, and end weight 100lbs I got 1490* which was correct once I had established maintenance.
If I use 100lbs for start and goal weight, I get 1608, which is correct for now, 8+years into maintenance.
My cals have increased slowly over time. No explanation, could be moving more, could be working out more intensely, could be AT. who knows.
NB: I started losing when 54, now 64, so the assigned (Expected drop in activity) decrease in BMR would probably be 50 cal over the 10 years.
Cheers, h.
* that 1490 is slightly higher than my initial maintenance.
I initially had 1200 cals and I ate 200 for each hour I exercised. That lasted about 6 month while establishing maintenance.1 -
I would say I had some AT during my weight loss but after a few months at maintenance that fixed itself. After a period of stable weight maintenance and calories I started losing weight again and had to bump my calories up to maintain.
Something that strikes me from stalking the Maintaining Weight forum for years is that many people are too fearful (IMHO) of experimenting with increasing calories for a few weeks so see if they can maintain on a higher allowance. In theory these people would be prolonging AT by having unconsciously depressed NEAT and lowered exercise performance. Despite trusting calorie counting to lose weight there is a bit too much fear of temporary and reversible weight gain.8 -
I lost all my weight (I'm 5'10" and went from 245/250 down to 170 at my lowest) on a different site. I tracked religiously for 2 or 3 years. I haven't tracked for around 2 years now. I eat a ton and don't gain weight. I have a "red line" that if I go above, I'll start tracking again.
I'm currently 189 (roughly 18% body fat) or so but I've picked up around 17 lbs of muscle over four years. I train hard around 8 hours a week (I do a niche sport - competitive indoor rowing and compete against former college rowers and Cross Fitters mostly). If I had to give a good guess, I eat around 3000 calories a day. I probably burn 800 a day, though, so net 2200. When I was losing, I stuck to around 1900/2000 a day. Not much difference except I workout much harder now than when I started losing. I've gone from just trying to regain fitness to competitive training.
I might be a bad example because I went dairy/gluten free 2 years ago (to support my wife's health) and because of that, I'm very, very limited what I can eat as far as processed foods. I mostly eat real food that has to be prepared. I honestly think that probably has the most to do with it (that and the additional muscle).
I also utilize IM Fasting, though, nearly every day. I stop eating around 8 and don't eat until after my workouts at lunch the next day. I pack a ton of calories, though, in between 1 and 8 every day!0 -
There is research that suggests that the effect persists long-term after one has lost a noticeable amount of weight.
That’s one of the reasons why most of the people who have long term success with a weight-loss program, continue to follow a vigorous exercise program.3 -
I have no idea and it's not something I even concern myself with...with a moderate amount of activity I maintain on about 2800-3000 calories. Basically desk job...8-10K steps per day and moderate 30-45 minutes of cycling (or other cardio) 3-4 days per week and lifting 2-3x per week. 3,000-3,500 when I'm more actively training.
I have no way of knowing whether or not someone who never had to lose weight being of the same stats and activity would have the same energy expenditure, so it's not even worth thinking about really.4 -
There is research that suggests that the effect persists long-term after one has lost a noticeable amount of weight.
That’s one of the reasons why most of the people who have long term success with a weight-loss program, continue to follow a vigorous exercise program.
^^^^^^^^^^
That!3 -
That but also what cwolfman said.
So go with what I say!
Take care to minimize and don't trivialize... but expect to have to live with and deal with the portion of it that you can't avoid!
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I eat more than MFP recommends and have maintained for over a year. However, I also get a lot of exercise as a distance runner. Running 45 miles a week and walking another 20, I can pretty much eat whatever I want. I am actually a bit underweight, but I am not willing to try to gain weight until after my April marathon. I think that your activity level makes a big difference in metabolism. At 61, the charts assume I'm more of a couch potato than I actually am.4
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Hmm interesting, it's also reassuring that the effect of AT is not as bad as I thought it would be during maintenance (after I read the study about the suppressed metabolism contestants of the Biggest Losers have even after weight gain, I freaked out a bit). If I can only eat 1800 calories to sustain my maintenance weight (I have around 15lbs to go) while hitting 10K everyday or strength training for 1 hr 2 times in a week. As an 18 years old, I am scared that (i hope I'm not offending anyone here) I will only be able to eat grass to maintain at 70+ yrs old
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