Does your body get use to a diet?
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katiehepp1
Posts: 138 Member
Somebody at work told me that after a month/3 months your body gets use to your diet and stops losing weigh. So for instance if you were losing 1lb a week and cut 500 calories a day and ate 1700 a day, that after a while your body would stop losing weight because it gets use to the lower calories and learns to function on that amount and no extra?
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No.7
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No. But your smaller self likely needs less calories now and therefore you'll need to reduce calories to continue to lose weight. But if you are always 500 under your TDEE you'll theoretically always keep losing.13
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Adaptive thermogenesis is a thing which is why people take "diet breaks" to reset. I'd say it takes longer than a month though unless you're just crashing your diet, and it's not like you just stop losing...your metabolism dials back a bit, but it's not like that just becomes your new maintenance...that doesn't happen.
Also, as you get smaller, your calorie requirements go down...so if you're eating at the same target you were in the beginning, it will not be the same kind of deficit...it'll be smaller.4 -
No, though you do need to re-run your stats every few pounds lost, because as you lose weight you need to adjust your calorie intake. I did this every 5lbs lost.0
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katiehepp1 wrote: »Somebody at work told me that after a month/3 months your body gets use to your diet and stops losing weigh. So for instance if you were losing 1lb a week and cut 500 calories a day and ate 1700 a day, that after a while your body would stop losing weight because it gets use to the lower calories and learns to function on that amount and no extra?
Nope. So wrong. Look up TDEE. If you eat anything below that, you're gonna lose.0 -
If that were true no one would ever reach their goal weight.
ETA - So many diet myths out there that keep getting repeated.4 -
As long as you live, you have a TDEE. Your TDEE varies depending on your weight, muscle mass, and recent feeding habits. If your deficit is consistently more than -500 calories, you will force your TDEE to decline, both because you're losing weight and because you're starving it.. Your weight loss is determined by the differential between your food intake and your TDEE. If your TDEE is falling, your food intake has to fall to maintain the differential that is necessary to maintain the rate of weight loss you want. Most of us don't want to live a life with steadily reducing the amount of food we eat, and instead choose to allow the rate of weight loss to diminish as the expression of our declining TDEE and our consistent level of food intake.1
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Your body does "adapt" but not in the way you have described.1
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Not so much diet, but there can be longer-term adaptations to weight loss that decreases the thermic effect of food (Am J Clin Nutr 2008;88:906 –12).
What usually happens over the longer term is that you "adjust" to your (new) habitual food intake and activity patterns, and so you go back into an energy balance.
In addition, when one follows a "diet", it usually involves changes in eating habits that cannot be sustained long-term. There is usually a number of factors--behavioral, physical, genetic, lifestyle, psychological, etc--that contribute to weight gain. Focusing on the big two--diet and exercise--without addressing the others usually means that, over time, the old psychological/behavioral drives reassert themselves.
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Yes. It's called metabolic adaptation. It's a survival tactic the body employs. It slows down the metabolism after prolonged calorie deficit.0
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Hmmmm am doing 1000 calories per day i hope my body doesn't adapt to this.1
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crzycatlady1 wrote: »No, though you do need to re-run your stats every few pounds lost, because as you lose weight you need to adjust your calorie intake. I did this every 5lbs lost.
Can you do this on MFP??0 -
crzycatlady1 wrote: »No, though you do need to re-run your stats every few pounds lost, because as you lose weight you need to adjust your calorie intake. I did this every 5lbs lost.
Can you do this on MFP??
I wasn't on MFP for my weight loss phase, but I think you need to manually re-enter your info here, for it to adjust your calories? I don't think it automatically does it.0 -
It automatically adjusts your calories when you update your weight.2
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I have not adjusted my intake at all and I have lost 35 pounds so far and I still lose about a pound every week or week and a half. Your body eventually will get to a point that you are consuming about what you burn. That is when you stop losing weight. Also My Fitness Pal has never adjusted my calories after a certain amount of weight loss. People keep saying this happens but I have yet to see it.0
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singingflutelady wrote: »
Because I need to lose 4 pounds a week to hit my goal. I cant do that if i eat 2500 a day.0 -
4lbs a week isn't a healthy recommendation for weight loss rate...why so much? MFP recommends 2lbs unless under the supervision of a professional4
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singingflutelady wrote: »
Because I need to lose 4 pounds a week to hit my goal. I cant do that if i eat 2500 a day.
Are you morbidly obese? 4 lbs a week is super aggressive and not recommended unless you are under doctor supervision.3 -
singingflutelady wrote: »
Because I need to lose 4 pounds a week to hit my goal. I cant do that if i eat 2500 a day.
You don't need to lose 4lbs a week. You're under eating.5
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