How to Destroy Your Metabolism for Life in One Easy Step

Diet.

This is what we can learn from the strangest of places: television. From The Biggest Loser.

Here’s the plot. A group of overweight people arrive at a compound. They’re greeted with niceties, then the dogs come out. The dogs are celebrities cast in the roles of mostly mean, occasionally-faux-sensitive-in-a-passive-aggressive-way “wellness professionals”. They immediately put the participants on low-energy diets (diets low in “calories”) and start force-exercising (the exercise version of force-feeding) them. Drama ensues, and everyone loses a lot of weight. Over six months, the participants went from an average of 325 pounds to an average of 200 pounds. (1)

The credits rolled, the participants went home, the advertisers collected their millions, and millions of fans were inspired: “I’m gonna do that!”

But the plot thickens.

Thankfully, some of the nerds from high school made it to adulthood as scientists, physicians, and researchers, and they have another story to tell that goes a bit deeper than the always-shallow stories told by vapid Hollywood types.

These researchers poked and prodded the participants for the six months of filming of the show and for six years after that. What’s the rest of the story?

First, the participants went from an average of 200 pounds right after the show to an average of 290 pounds six years after the show. They gained most of the weight back.

What the researchers discovered next is absolutely fascinating. It’s also something you absolutely need to know if you’ve ever lost weight and gained it back.

Resting metabolic rate is a measure of how much energy you expend just from being alive.

The initial data:

Before the filming of the show, the average resting metabolic rate of the subjects was 2,607 kilocalories per day. After the filming of the show—and enduring six months of dieting—the average resting metabolic rate of the subjects was 1,996 kilocalories per day. At that point, dieting suppressed the subjects’ resting metabolic rates by an average of 611 kilocalories per day. (1)

The researchers continued to measure resting metabolic rate for the six years following the filming of the show:

Six years after the filming of the show, the average resting metabolic rate of the subjects was 1,903 kilocalories per day. At that point, dieting suppressed the subjects’ resting metabolic rates by an average of 704 kilocalories per day. (1)

The researchers also compared the actual resting metabolic rates of the subjects at each of those moments in time with the predicted resting metabolic rates of age-matched, sex-matched peers to determine their metabolic adaptation, a more accurate way of measuring resting-metabolic-rate suppression:

At the end of the filming of the show, the subjects’ average metabolic adaptation was 275 kilocalories per day. Six years after the filming of the show, the subjects’ average metabolic adaptation was 499 kilocalories per day. (1)

Dieting greatly suppresses your metabolism, and the effects last long after you’ve stopped dieting.

In practical terms, if your metabolism is suppressed by 499 kilocalories per day, it means:

1. You eat a Big Mac every day of your life, before you get out of bed in the morning, without enjoying a morsel of food.
2. You have to exercise two hours for every hour an age-matched, sex-matched peer has to exercise.

It means you live with a Big Mac penalty every day.

It means your first hour of exercise every day gets you nowhere.

It means your metabolism is broken. (Don’t worry, it can be repaired by eating well and living well.)

This is what dieting does. It’s the primary physiological reason why today’s dieters become tomorrow’s yo-yo dieters. The very process that helps you lose a lot of weight in the short run ensures that you’ll gain a lot of weight in the long run.

This is what “diet gurus” are doing to you. Like master manipulators, they give you what you want and take it away from you at the same time. Then, they blame it on you. They get to walk around without any blood on their hands. They get to say, “I helped those people. They lost a lot of weight. It’s too bad they weren’t able to keep it off.”

Behind closed doors, they blame it on lack of willpower. This after they put their victims in metabolic debt. That’s what living with a broken metabolism is: metabolic debt. At best, people carry their broken metabolisms around like bad credit scores. It’s very hard on them, and it takes a long time to turn things around. At worst, and this is very common, people carry their broken metabolisms around like felony offenses on their criminal records: forever.

Diets should come with a Surgeon General’s warning:

1. This diet will suck. It’s completely unnatural to starve yourself.
2. The money you spend on this diet will be a waste. You’ll never get it back. Diets don’t work. (2)
3. In the future, when you start a new diet, you’ll refer to this diet you’re about to go on as stupid.
4. If you lose weight on this diet, you’ll gain most of it back. As a result of this diet, you might end up weighing more than you do now in a few years. (1)
5. This diet will slow your metabolism by about 500 kilocalories per day for the rest of your life unless you eventually learn to eat well and live well. (1)
6. This diet will begin or continue your pattern of weight cycling. Weight cycling will make you sick and shorten your life through chronic stress and chronic inflammation. (3,4)
7. This diet will increase your risk of developing an eating disorder. (5,6)
8. This diet might involve the consumption of diet pills or powders described as “natural”. Pills and powders aren’t natural. Pills and powders don’t grow on trees. Apples and almonds are natural. Apples and almonds grow on trees.
9. This diet might be labeled a “cleanse”, a “detox”, or a “fast”. In most cases, programs with these labels are diets. They’re different names for the same thing. All of them are exclusion-based, restriction-based approaches to eating, and all of them require unnatural deprivation in ways that are generally very damaging—physically, emotionally, and mentally.

If you’re angry, it’s justified. You’ve been lied to. In the culture that brought you Santa Claus; weapons of mass destruction; and no-money-down, no-income-verification, adjustable-rate mortgages—all with a straight face—are you surprised? Nothing in pop culture has been created with your interests in mind. Certainly not diets.

With the citations for this article, I’ve added bonus information for you in the form of quotes from the scientists, physicians, and researchers who conducted these scientific studies. Stay informed.

(1) Persistent Metabolic Adaptation 6 Years after The Biggest Loser Competition. Obesity, 2016, 10.1002/oby.21538.

“To the best of our knowledge, this study is the longest follow-up investigation of the changes in metabolic adaptation and body composition subsequent to weight loss and regain. We found that despite substantial weight regain in the 6 years following participation in ‘The Biggest Loser’, RMR remained suppressed at the same average level as at the end of the weight loss competition. Mean RMR after 6 years was 500 kcal/day lower than expected based on the measured body composition changes and the increased age of the subjects.”

(2) Ineffectiveness of Commercial Weight-Loss Programs for Achieving Modest but Meaningful Weight Loss: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Journal of Health Psychology, 2017, 10.1177/1359105317705983.

“CWLP frequently fail to produce modest but meaningful weight loss as the majority of individuals who embark on a CWLP lose less than 5 percent of their initial body weight. Program completion increases the likelihood of achieving ³ 5 percent weight loss; however, high rates of attrition indicate that many consumers find dietary changes required by CWLP unsustainable.”

(3) Metabolic Dysfunction Following Weight Cycling in Male Mice. International Journal of Obesity, 2017, 10.1038/ijo.2016.193.

“In conclusion, despite the uncertainty regarding the effects of weight cycling and yo-yo dieting, here we demonstrate multiple weight cycling events have an acute effect on fat composition, specifically increasing the amount and proportion of the metabolically adverse internal adipose. These data, in conjunction with our 6 week cycling model, are suggestive of an altered, adverse phenotype arising from rapid fluctuations in body weight.”

(4) Weight Cycling Increases T-Cell Accumulation in Adipose Tissue and Impairs Systemic Glucose Tolerance. Diabetes, 2013, 10.2337/db12-1076.

“Multiple studies indicate that weight cycling is associated with worsened metabolic and cardiovascular outcomes. However, the mechanism(s) by which weight cycling promotes metabolic dysfunction are not known. In this study, we show that weight cycling worsens obesity-associated systemic glucose intolerance and AT IR in mice. Accompanying these metabolic changes is a significant increase in CD8+ T cells, CD4+ T cells, and the expression of Th1 cell-derived cytokines in AT of weight-cycled mice. These novel findings suggest that an amplified T-cell response occurs in AT during weight cycling.”

“Taken together, our studies show for the first time that weight cycling modulates AT T-cell, but not macrophage, composition. This increase in proinflammatory T-cell populations suggests that an exaggerated adaptive immune response in AT contributes to the negative metabolic consequences of weight cycling.”

(5) Rigid vs. Flexible Dieting: Association with Eating Disorder Symptoms in Nonobese Women. Appetite, 2002, 10.1006/appe.2001.0445.

“These findings suggest that rigid dieting strategies, but not flexible dieting strategies, are associated with eating disorder symptoms and higher BMI in nonobese women.”

(6) Obesity, Disordered Eating, and Eating Disorders in a Longitudinal Study of Adolescents: How Do Dieters Fare 5 Years Later? Journal of the American Dietetic Association, 2006, 10.1016/j.jada.2006.01.003.

“Dieting and unhealthful weight-control behaviors predict outcomes related to obesity and eating disorders 5 years later. A shift away from dieting and drastic weight-control measures toward the long-term implementation of healthful eating and physical activity behaviors is needed to prevent obesity and eating disorders in adolescents.”

About Jason Gootman
Jason Gootman is a Mayo Clinic Certified Wellness Coach and National Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach as well as a certified nutritionist and certified exercise physiologist. Jason helps people reverse and prevent type-2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and other ailments with evidence-based approaches to nutrition, exercise, stress reduction, holistic wellness, and, most importantly, lasting behavior improvement and positive habit formation. As part of this work, Jason often helps people lose weight and keep it off, in part by helping them overcome the common challenges of yo-yo dieting and emotional eating. Jason helps people go from knowing what to do and having good intentions to consistently taking great care of themselves in ways that help them add years to their lives and life to their years.