Why Have You Stopped Losing Fat? (Adaptive Thermogenesis)

                                     

                       

                                                    METABOLISM

Your metabolism, which means all the processes going on in the body, require energy to be carried out.
Every action, voluntary or involuntary uses the calories you take. In this regard, the term Total daily
Energy Expenditure (TDEE) is used. It means all the energy you use in a day.

TDEE can be categorized into,

BASAL METABOLIC RATE (BMR):

The minimum energy required by the body to fully perform the functions at rest. Functions like breathing, cell production, blood circulation are included in this. Your TDEE should be such that your BMR is 70-75% of it. A person’s BMR can be calculated by

Harris-Benedict’s formula:

For men: BMR= 66.47+(6.24× weight in lbs) +( 12.7 × height in inches) – (6.755×age)

For women: BMR= 655.1+(4.35× weight in lbs) +( 4.7 × height in inches) – (4.7×age)

THERMAL EFFECT OF FOOD: Thermal effect of food, also known as Dietary Induced Thermogenesis This includes the energy your body expends to digest, absorb and dispose nutrients. This is about 10% of your TDEE. The TEF for all macronutrients is different.

1) For carbohydrates, TEF is 5-15%
2) For proteins, TEF is 20-35%
3) For fats, TEF is also about 5-15%

It means that protein is hardest nutrient to break and therefore, greater protein intake is recommended
for fat loss. Some foods are also thought to be negative-calorie which means they have a greater TEF
than the total calories in it. This is just a myth related to low calorie foods like lemon, raw celery, apple, grapefruit etc.


THERMAL EFFECT OF PHYSICAL ACTIVITY:
TEPA makes up 15-20% of your TDEE and you can control or lose weight using TEPA. TEPA includes:

1) Exercise: e.g. endurance, strength, balance and flexibility.

2) Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis:

This includes all your activities other than exercise such as standing, sitting, walking to the school bus, lifting that jug of water. Yes, these activities also burn your calories. NEAT can be called as a body’s natural resistance against obesity. Leaving the sedentary life behind and just being active in your daily life can make some difference. Adopting healthy activities like cycling, going for a walk,
playing some sports.

Why Have You Stopped Losing Fast?

Well, this is specifically for those who are pretty lean and have successfully lost fat but have hit a
plateau. We are going to explain something really important in terms of your fat lose, and this has come down to this term “Adaptive Thermogenesis (AT)”. The leaner we get the harder it becomes to shift that stubborn fat. So why is this? because essentially the evolution of our body means that our body does not care that we want to look good on Instagram and it doesn’t care that we want to be 8% shaded with abs. Our body wants to preserve an amount of stored fat as energy for times of emergency. So, as we lose body fat and lose over all weight our body will readjust to our new weight, and our caloric expenditure will decrease as our body becomes more efficient at using calories with that lesser body mass. Therefore, AT based on fat lose is the process whereby the body is readjusting the amount of energy that it can operate on, and depending on the speed of our fat lose this can become a disproportionate in relation to the lower number of calories you are eating. Now this hormone called Leptin (the energy hormone) is really important, and so what will happen is your body will decrease the amount of leptin thereby increasing hunger and encouraging you to eat more to return your body more sustainable fat loss level according to how your body perceives it. so, the leaner you get the harder it’s going to be to simulate this fat loss.

So, What Can You Do?

There are few approaches we can take to overcome this problem. In terms of nutrition we don’t have
the research to backup these nutritional approaches to breaking these plateaus, but we can use good
common sense and solid principles to approach this. Well, we are not nutritionists so we need to be
careful to not outreach but on aspect of nutrition that we do feel confident in stating that maintaining
Adequate protein levels are vital during these times of fat loss and these times when you are leaner and approaching theses fat loss plateaus. Why is that? because of course on the one hand you guys know that protein is vital in terms of building and minting muscle mass, but because of the TEF (THERMAL EFFECT OF FOOD) of protein is comparatively high we can use it to manipulate our body against this plateau. And the other approach we can take is to increase your Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT) that will help you to increase the BASAL METABOLIC RATE (BMR). You can also think about your training sessions, now of course resistance training is essential for minting muscle mass and increasing muscle mass which of course is going to increase your BMR, but these intense training sessions will put this energy demand on your body. It is really important to maintain an intense level of training that will come down to intangible factors of discipline, the motivation and that’s something that needs to come from you.