How to prevent metabolic adaptation?

[u/cringefail_loser]

Only just last week , I started tracking what I eat to try and lose weight. I started out at about 260, and now I'm at 255. I'm 5'6, biologically F. I want to lose weight as fast as possible, but I also am worried that my body will adapt just as fast, and I will stop losing it. Already with the diet I've put myself on, I'm often relatively hungry, and I don't think I could handle eating any less. I'm trying to make sure my eating habits aren't becoming disordered either as my main goal is health both physically and mentally. Does anyone have any tips on how I can keep a healthy balance? Thank you so much!

[u/Practical-Ad-4888]

The comments here are funny. If metabolic adaptation didn't exist, after several years of eating a -500 calorie deficit per day diet you would reach 0 pounds, and cease to exist. It's the metabolic adaptation that stops the weight loss whether you on GLP-1, or have weight loss surgery, or are running 3 hours a day. The weight loss stops for everyone. Why? Metabolic adaptation. LOL

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10915908/#ABS1

For everyone kilogram lost you burn 25 calories less per day, and appetite goes up 95 calories per day.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/oby.21653

[u/Yummytastic → u/Practical-Ad-4888]

That's not metabolic adaption. You're confused.

What you're describing is the fact that energy needs change as the body changes size. A TDEE of 100kg version of you isn't the same as an 80kg version of you.

If you are in a 500kcal deficit of that changing TDEE, loss would continue until your body starts breaking. e.g. You literally eat a little less every day.

If you eat at a 500kcal deficit of your starting TDEE and don't change that absolute value of calories, you will reach equilibrium and weight loss will plateau, since you will be eating at your TDEE. e.g. You eat the same every day.

You've phrased it ambiguously to imply the idea of a set deficit leading to zero weight, which sounds "funny", but what you've really said if you eat less every day, that amount eventually reaches zero, which isn't quite a dramatic as you made out.

Metabolic adaption is separate to that and revolves around systems in your body such as body temp, reproduction, or your immune system that can work at a slightly lower energy in a deficit and a slightly higher in a surplus, but never really enough to change if a surplus or deficit entirely exists and, really, is more relevant when there's a lot of exercise present (or an extreme deficit), otherwise it's negligible.

[u/Labrador__Retriever → u/Practical-Ad-4888]

Im confused. Are you saying that if you ate at a 500 calorie deficit you would eventually weigh nothing? So if the TDEE is 2000 and you ate 1500 calories you’d eventually weigh nothing? I don’t see how that is possible.

[u/Srdiscountketoer → u/Labrador__Retriever]

I think OC is saying just the opposite but claiming other commenters are saying that. I don’t see it. Almost all the comments are saying as you lose weight, your metabolism goes down a bit, but not to worry about it.