#93 How to Avoid Metabolic Adaptation with Intermittent Fasting Q&A

Siim Land (0:00)

Do you want to go on a diet and lose some weight, but you're afraid of slowing down your metabolism? Metabolic adaptation is indeed one of those negative side effects of dieting that you do want to avoid as much as possible. So in this episode of the Body Mind Empowerment Podcast, we're gonna have another live Q&A from my YouTube channel, and we're gonna talk about how to avoid metabolic adaptation with intermittent fasting. Do you want to know what it is? It's Body Mind Empowerment. Get stronger, faster, smarter, quicker, friendlier, more helpful, more driven. Everything the body needs. Control your mind.

And as you can see from the title of this live stream, then we're gonna talk about how do you avoid metabolic adaptation with intermittent fasting. So usually they describe metabolic adaptation to describe this process where your body gets used to a lower caloric intake over the course of several weeks of dieting and such. And it basically means that your metabolism is slowing down. And in order to maintain that, you're going to have to keep decreasing your calories and keep eating fewer calories in order to maintain the weight loss. And that happens usually with people who go on the starvation diets for too long, or people who are doing too much high intensity exercise without adequate recovery and such. And some people who are doing intermittent fasting the wrong way can also experience it. But what I wanted to talk about is actually how can you avoid this process with intermittent fasting instead. So it's kind of like somewhat of an unexpected scenario of thinking that not eating and doing fasting can actually prevent a slow metabolism and such, which I think like if you do things correctly, then it can happen. So I'm gonna basically start off by talking about, you know, metabolic adaptation occurs over the course of a prolonged period of dieting. And it's not necessarily like a bad thing. It's simply your mitochondria and your body is becoming more efficient with the calories it is burning. And you need less energy from food to maintain your energy functioning, so to say, to maintain the energy balance. And it literally is accompanied by your mitochondria becoming more efficient at burning energy, and you need fewer calories to kind of keep going. And on the opposite end, if your mitochondria are inefficient, then you have this quote unquote fast metabolism, or it's very hard for you to put on weight because you're kind of wasting away a lot of energy. Whereas on the other hand, with metabolic adaptation, you have like a quote unquote slower metabolism, but it simply means that your mitochondria are super efficient and you need less energy to keep going. And you need less energy to carry out any kind of process. In the context of survival, like if you are in the savanna somewhere, then you would benefit from like having a slightly lower metabolism and it would accompany like people think that hunter gatherers burn a bunch of calories because they're moving around all day. In reality, they're not really burning any more than an average person in the West. They simply have like super efficient metabolisms and they get like nutrient dense foods that help them to sustain their functioning with fewer calories. So to say, they eat like natural whole foods, wild plants, animals, livers, organ meats, bone marrow, like those sorts of stuff. They're like super nutrient dense, but they have fewer calories and they help the body to stay healthier without having to over consume a bunch of extra calories. So that's why like in some situations, it is kind of better to have a more efficient metabolism.

But as we all know that in the modern world, it's not necessarily the best thing, because you may end up packing on a bit of extra few pounds just because of that. And it's more difficult for you to stick to a lower caloric intake in an environment where food is abundant and it surrounds us all everywhere, so to say. And in the context of modern life, you would want to have like slightly faster metabolism because it helps you to get away with things easily. And at the same time, too slow metabolism or too efficient metabolism is also bad because you're eventually going to get like insulin resistance and you're eventually going to predispose yourself to obesity and other metabolic disorders. So the goal is to kind of strike this sort of balance between having efficient enough of a metabolism, so to say, that it's not going to make you obese whenever you over consume a little bit of food and you're not going to have to struggle losing the weight either. You have like a plenty of a buffer zone to decrease your daily caloric intake because metabolic adaptation occurs when you keep reducing your caloric intake over the course of days and weeks of low caloric intake, so to say. Let's say like your basal metabolic rate for most people is about 2000 calories per day. And in order to lose the weight, you would have to be consuming maybe like 1800 or 1700, somewhere around that, you know, after a while, your metabolism will get used to that sort of energy deficit and your basal metabolic rate will drop to maybe like 1900 calories. So in that case, to keep on losing weight, you have to kind of dramatically or you have to continuously lower the daily caloric intake as well. And you may be end up having to consume like 1500 calories, so to say, to lose weight. And if you do it for too long, if you get so efficient with like a lower caloric intake, then you may have to eat only like 1200 calories or 1000 calories every day just to lose weight or just to maintain as well. Like you're going to end up gaining weight because your body is in like in this situation where it detects, OK, we're not getting enough calories, therefore we have to become super efficient with the fuel that we have. And we have to make the mitochondria more efficient and we have to kind of spare more energy and we don't have anything to waste. So it's like that also is like accompanied by this spontaneous lack of movement or like a decrease in spontaneous movement. So to say like non-exercise activity, thermogenesis or NEET, that is like this phenomenon that describes basically fidgeting around moving your body. That doesn't count as exercise. Some people who are, some people who may be burning more calories during the day, they simply may be like fidgeting sporadically and they may simply like move themselves around more. They like may take the stairs more often. They may stand up more and they may go for longer walks or whatever it is. All those things will kind of add up to the point of increasing their daily caloric expenditure, so to say. And to prevent that from happening, then probably the best thing to do is to avoid these longer periods of severe caloric restriction. Because they will kind of send your body to this serious energy deficit, and it's going to make the body more difficult to keep losing weight, so to say, because it's like lowering your basal metabolic rate all the time. And what I think like the best way of circumventing that is to not be on these yo-yo diets, so to say. You don't want to go into like a serious energy deficit, and then follow it up with a huge caloric surplus right away, because it can cause a lot of rebounding, and it can cause like this metabolic damage effect, so to say, that may occur. And whenever you are going on a diet, then you don't want to stay on the diet for too long. Like people say that for sustainable weight loss and to avoid this sort of metabolic crash, you would want to kind of gradually keep lowering your energy and caloric intake over the course of like weeks and weeks to prevent like this adaptation process. But in my opinion, it would be actually better to kind of lose the fat as fast as possible, so you would stay on the diet for a shorter period of time as well. And then afterwards, you can exit the diet and you can return to a normal caloric intake, so to say. It's like you burned a fat really fast and then you start eating normally after that. Of course, it is inevitable that if you lose your body weight, if you like start weighing less, you have less weight to carry around, then your total daily energy expenditure will also be lower because you have less body weight to maintain, so to say. You don't have to feed your fat tissue, so to say. You have less kind of energy expenditure just because of having a lower body weight. But that difference is somewhat minor compared to the actual consumption of food. In most cases, you would actually be better off by simply losing the fat. And the critical component is to actually focus on losing the fat instead of just body weight, because you don't definitely want to be losing muscle. And because muscle burns more calories by default, it also makes you more insulin sensitive, and it's generally healthier as well for longevity and such. So how do you maintain more muscle and burn exclusively more fat when you are dieting? So the keys of any type of diet, in my opinion, or the keys to any successful caloric deficit is to induce ketosis, because when you are in ketosis, then you're shifting your metabolic furnace from burning glucose into burning fatty acids. And in that case, if you are in ketosis, then that caloric restriction isn't going to be that harmful for your lean tissue either, because you can maintain all of your cellular functioning with the presence of ketones and fatty acids, so to say. All the energy that your body needs can be derived from your body fat, like literally the brain can get energy from your body fat by converting body fat into glucose as well as ketones, as well as your muscles can also sustain their functioning from your body fat, at least for a short period of time, so to say. You can create glycogen from body fat. You can maintain energy balance with your body fat and such. So it is quite a miraculous thing that you literally can run on just your body fat for quite a long time before you run into any troubles. And even like water, hydration can also be covered with your body fat. And you don't have to even drink for several days by just converting your body fat into water. So yeah, like the keys of caloric restriction or to keys to avoiding the negative side effects of caloric restriction is to be in ketosis, because if you're not in ketosis and you're eating fewer calories, then your body's energy demands for glucose remain the same. So in that case, there's like this glucose induced gluconeogenesis, so to say that there is the demand for glucose and because there is no glucose in the bloodstream, because of like consuming fewer calories, in that case, then the bodies will sacrifice some of the lean tissue to create that glucose and give the brain energy because it doesn't know how to use ketones that efficiently. So like a caloric deficit with a glucose burning metabolism is going to create gluconeogenesis by demand and that's going to sacrifice your lean tissue just because muscle isn't a priority for survival as much as fat, so to say. That's why fasting and like a low carb diet is super easy to kind of lose weight with because you don't really feel the negative side effects of the caloric restriction either. Like you do suffer from, of course, like some energy deprivation or you have like maybe slightly more fatigue, but it is because of like the caloric restriction, not because of like the absence of carbohydrates, so to say. You will probably feel less hungry. You will feel more mentally clear. You will feel more satiated and you will feel generally better if you are in a caloric deficit with ketosis. And that's going to basically help you to lose the fat faster and that's going to prevent the like rebounding effects as well. Because if you are on like a really serious diet for too long, then not only will you slow down your metabolism, but you will also kind of create these psychological cravings of, oh, I have to whenever I get the chance to eat some real food or whenever I get to chance to eat some something stimulating, then I'm going to overeat because I'm like my body has been deprived for so long and I'm going to compensate for that. And in my own experience, then you don't really feel that when you're doing like a keto diet or when you're doing like longer fasts because you're kind of resetting your taste buds and you're resetting this sort of a psychological desire to eat as well. You get like really satiated really fast and you don't really rebound. If you do happen to rebound, then it's mostly a matter of lack of certain minerals and electrolytes.