Starvation Mode - Adaptive Thermogenesis and Weight Loss

God bless you sweetly for doing all this work for us. It makes so much sense to me. I have actually put it into practice. In the past I lost a good deal of weight because I was weight training an hour a day and doing aerobics an hour a day, with no dietary change. I lost ten pounds a month by so doing. A year ago I started dieting. I had to adjust the nutritional content of my food for health reasons. I began working on developing a lifestyle based on this new regimen. I lowered my caloric intake to half of what I was eating (I was overeating) but I didn't exercise in an effort to track the efficiency of the new dietary changes.

With a deficit of 1000 calories a day, I am only losing a litlle less than a pound a week. In the previous regimen, I lost 2.5 lbs a week and I felt energetic, healthy and in control. On my current focus on diet...no exercise, I am tired, have no energy, am not losing weight very quickly and have recently been fighting depression which is unfounded to my lifestyle and circumstances. I thank you for your information, it answers a good many questions for me. I will now increase my calories to a sustainable healthy amount and increase my gym time accordingly. Your research is invaluable and I thank you from the bottom of my currently chubby little heart.

In case you did not see it, there is an HBO documentary - The weight of the nation - where Adaptive Thermogenesis is discussed.

In this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2i_cmltmQ6A you can see a study designed by dr. Rosenbaum and Liebel. They talk about a 20% reduction caused by AT, so higher than the 10-15% cited before.

Dr. Rosenbaum affirms "[...] this efficiency will persist, probably for the rest of your life" and dr. Liebel adds "[...] the effect never goes away". Granted, their study lasted 9 months, so maybe they are not in a position to make such strong claims, but still...

Can anyone suggest any study regarding diet breaks effect? They are usually indicated as a strategy to contrast AT but I couldn't find any data about it.

Thank you Max, I knew Lyle McDonald website and indeed I found useful information, I just seem to have missed the actual studies on the refeed effect on Adaptive Thermogenesis: I'll check again.

Following.

Why are the studies with a reasonable deficit so few, perhaps they did have some on a protocol of smaller deficit?

I may be wrong, but I think it has to do with the time frame of most studies: it's faster to use a very low calories intake so that you can see and record significant results in a few months, instead of having to wait a full year or more.

bump will read later.

What about weight loss surgery patients? Any difference?

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Bookmarked

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thanks for posting! great read and clarifies a lot