How to Not Become Another Weight Regain Statistic

You may statistically be likely to gain it all back, but that doesn’t mean you have to.

By: Dylan Dacosta
11 min read

Oh the old weight gain rebound. The common foe of the crash diet. Also, an overlooked component of any fat-loss goal. It is not overstated when the intuitive eating crowd tells you that you are overwhelmingly likely to gain back all of the weight from any fat loss diet. They are right. In a 29 study meta-analysis (collection of studies) it was shown that after 5 years of the initial weight loss over 80% of the weight was gained back.

Statistics like these are neither uncommon nor encouraging. You may think “well why even bother then?” and I wouldn't blame you for that thought process. What I will say, is that these stats don’t tell the whole story.

Let’s start briefly with why this fat regain might be so common. Dr. Layne Norton calls this the three-pronged approach of self defence against fat loss in his book Fat Loss Forever, cowritten by Peter Baker. This theory is based on the mechanisms behind weight re-gain; defend, restore, and prevent. The first line of defence is metabolic adaptation. The second is through the restoration of fat lost via hormone/appetite changes encouraging overeating. The final prong is through the prevention of future fat-loss due to an increase of overall fat cells. I will say, the prevention system theory here seems to be subject to aggressive overfeeding after a fat loss diet in rodents.

This would be very hard to replicate in humans as it would require having them lose large amounts of fat, only to have them aggressively overfeed and assess if any new fat cells were generated to accommodate the energy storage.

The defend component is based on metabolic adaptation. This is when your metabolism responds to underfeeding and weight loss by slowing down — resulting in you expending less calories and inevitably slowing down or halting fat-loss. If you’ve ever lost a significant amount of weight, you’ve probably experienced this. The diet you were on may have eventually stopped working. This could be because what used to be an energy deficit, has now become your maintenance. This is metabolic adaptation at play. You weigh less, which results in less energy expenditure. You’re eating less, which also results in less energy expenditure and finally — as a defensive measure, you probably move less without even knowing it. This is called NEAT (non-exercise adaptive thermogenesis) and it’s simply all of your non exercise movement throughout a given day. In fact, there is evidence of reductions in NEAT persisting even 1 year after sustaining fat loss of >10% initial body weight. 
So metabolic adaptation is a real pain in the ass, but it is a significant and unavoidable part of fat loss that must be accounted for if you want to maintain your results.

The restore component is based on appetite/hormonal adaptations that impact your behaviour. This impact is usually driving you to eat more.

Your energy requirements are lower via metabolic adaptation/weight loss but your appetite may still be the same or even increased as a response to dieting. For example, you may need 2100 calories per day to maintain your new weight, but your appetite is steering you toward 2500. This would be a 400 calorie energy gap. If you just started eating intuitively without implementing strategies to help keep energy intake in check, you may start gaining the weight back. Two key hormones (while there are many more) at play here are leptin and ghrelin.

Leptin is important for appetite regulation (feeling full) and your metabolic rate. Ghrelin is important as it signals hunger. This is why it’s called the hunger hormone. One response to dieting has been changes in the secretion of leptin from the adipocytes (fat cells) and an increase in ghrelin mainly from the stomach. Weight loss/being in an energy deficit can trigger an increased amount of ghrelin which can lead to increased hunger, while low energy intakes and fat loss can inhibit the secretion of leptin. So fat loss can elicit an increase in a key hunger hormone and a decrease in your appetite controlling hormone. Hence the power that this restore component can have.

I will summarize the prevent component by saying that it does have some merit but also has the least amount of evidence. If we work on the assumption that it is possible, and by that I mean if you overfeed aggressively enough post diet you could actually create new fat cells (called hyperplasia), then this could be a scary outcome. One reason being is because of body fat set point theory. Body fat set point theory is controversial and definitely not set in stone, but researchers have claimed that the body weight/body fat content being maintained points to some level of weight regulation. More recently, the idea of the dual intervention model has been put forward by researchers in the field. Instead of a rigid set point, this model essentially gives a range of body fatness you’ll be able to hang around and where you gravitate toward in that range will likely be influenced heavily by your environment.

For example, if your food environment was full of calorie dense, hyper-palatable food and your social environment was not encouraging of much physical activity, you may gravitate more towards your upper intervention point of body fatness. While the opposite may be true of your environment was one that encouraged more activity and more nutrient dense, low calories dense food. These are simplified examples, but I think you get the point.

Regardless, it does seem that even if there isn’t a rigid body fat set point, there does seem at least be a range of body fatness your body desires. And when we lose fat, we don’t lose fat cells. Instead, the size of our fat cells decrease. So avoiding a rapid regain of fat after a diet could be even worse for weight gain rebound outcomes if gaining new fat cells is possible.

Looking at some of the biological responses to dieting may leave you feeling grim as hell about your fat loss journey, but I’m going to argue that it should empower you.

Being aware of all of this is a blessing. Whether you were aware of it or not, it still exists. Your ignorance towards it only enables you to continue ineffective and potentially, even dangerous fat loss interventions. Knowing this can steer you away from crash diets, excessive exercise and unsustainable approaches. It can also arm you with the necessary knowledge to keep you away from the vulnerable position of being desperate to lose weight and being lied to by a snake oil salesperson trying to sell you bull shit.

Understanding the mechanism of fat loss and how it impacts your body (even at a very basic level) can truly be repellent against the outright lies being sold in the fitness industry.

Now we know that dieting is not easy. We also know your intervention should be individualized and needs to incorporate a plan for once you achieve your goal. So I’m going to say that we are starting with a much better framework and with more realistic expectations.

From here I want to discuss some approaches you can use to avoid being another statistic in regards to weight regain.

Step One: Start with adherence. Always.

If you know me and how I speak, I rarely use absolute language. This is a situation in which it feels appropriate. If your goal is sustained fat loss, then you should always start with adherence. Maybe the biggest issue with dieting in the past has been the adoption of truly unsustainable diets. This is a sure fire way to gain all the weight back because put simply, if you cannot sustain it, you won’t maintain it.  

The key here is take an individual approach to developing strategies that you can sustain long term and developing habits that you can envision doing basically forever.

This means adopting eating behaviours and exercise behaviours that you at least partially enjoy (or just don’t hate to your core) are important. So unless you just love foods that fall into the keto/paleo category, then diet fads such as those aren’t likely to be great for your adherence.

Step Two: Take breaks with your diet, when needed.

Diet breaks are a relatively new practice. They were first used in the physique competition world and for good reason. Getting super lean is a nightmare. The idea of only being 7% body fat and trying to lose more body fat is neither easy nor healthy at that level. So some coaches started using them when their athletes hit plateaus or couldn’t mentally handle another week of dieting. Fast forward to today and they’re used more ubiquitously. We even have some research on them now. The MATADOR study showed some positive evidence in using a two week dieting phases followed by two week maintenance phases. The weeks at maintenance were still educational (meaning they still went into the lab to get assessed and learn about diet) but they were just eating at maintenance. Both groups underwent 16 weeks of dieting, but the diet break group did it in 32 weeks. The evidence showed that even though weight loss was similar between groups, the diet break group lost more weight from fat and had less metabolic adaptation (although not much) than the continuous dieting group. Finally, after a 6 month follow up, the diet break group maintained more fat loss as well. Two reasons for this could be they had less metabolic adaptation (I’m less convinced of this being key) and already practiced 14 weeks of maintenance by the time the diet had ended (I’m more convinced of this being more helpful).

My conclusion is that it appears to be worthwhile to take breaks - especially if you’re going to be dieting for a while. You don’t need to match time dieting to time maintaining, but you should probably put some breaks in where you need them. The larger the fat loss goal, the more breaks or even extended the breaks may be, too. This might result in it taking a year or even several to achieve your goal, but it will be worth it in the long run.

Step Three: Don’t go at it alone if you don’t have to.

There is sometimes a badge of honour when it comes to grinding in the shadows. I highly advise against that within this context of fat loss. I have struggled my entire life when it comes to managing my weight. The best thing I have ever done was share openly with my partner about my struggles with binge eating. Saying it out loud almost took away the power it held over me. Obviously not completely, but it definitely helped. What helped the most was realizing that the shame I carried from it wasn’t necessary. I thought she would think I was just weak and pathetic if I shared my struggle with her. In fact the opposite happened. She told me she thought I was strong for being vulnerable enough to share something I was so ashamed of. This is how powerful having a support system can be. I no longer go at it alone. In fact, having social support has been shown to be quite helpful in increasing adherence for weight loss interventions.

Now that I have actual support, it’s helped me feel secure enough to share about my struggles openly too. Which is something I never would have done without the necessary support. Without this support, there is a strong chance I would still be engaging in disordered eating behaviours in secrecy. This usually led to excessive restriction and then binging in secrecy. So I recommend leaning on your loved ones a bit, finding a training parter or even working with a coach. Regardless, having support is invaluable when it comes to trying to change your lifestyle.

Step Four. Keep in mind the diet after the diet.

I can’t stress this enough. Do not just go back to your previous lifestyle once you’ve achieved your goal. This is perhaps the most effective way to become another weight regain statistic. It also encompasses everything else I’ve talked about in this article. This will go against the biology of weight loss and also the psychology. If you plan to do whatever it takes to lose weight, then just go back to your old lifestyle, as there’s a strong likelihood of finding yourself right back where you started if you do this. You will need to adopt a lifestyle in order to keep your results in the long term. But more acutely, you should focus on your strategy once the diet ends. You will need to get back to maintenance, but one issue is your new maintenance will likely be less than your previous maintenance before the weight loss. This is where continued monitoring comes into play. You don’t necessarily need to track forever, but practicing maintenance with more attention post diet is an advisable strategy.

This would be akin to applying a similar approach that you had with weight loss, but just with the goal of maintenance. Examples could be:

-Weight tracking
-Calorie tracking
-Step tracking
-Portion control strategies
-Etc. Etc.

Whatever you tracked and did in order to lose the weight, continue to do so post diet for a while with the intention to simply maintain. This way you’ll develop a good idea of what you need to do in order to maintain this new weight. From there you’ll want to develop systems and habits that help keep these behaviours consistent.

Systems/habits could include:

-Regular grocery shopping/meal prepping
-Aiming to train/exercise a certain amount of times per week
-Shooting for a step target range (say if 5-7 thousand steps per day seems to help you maintain your weight, then shoot to keep hitting that range)
-Eating a certain range of protein per day
-Eating a certain range of vegetables/fruit per day
-Eating at a slower and more mindful pace
-Etc. Etc.

The point is, whatever systems and habits that helped you with losing and maintaining said weight loss, should be prioritized for you. As you’ll know they are effective for you personally.

A lot of folks just go back to their old habits post weight loss. And I get why. Behaviour change in general is hard and weight loss maintenance in particular is damn hard. The statistics bare this out. But it’s not impossible. The suggestions in this article should help with this, but they aren’t magic. It will still be a challenge, but as I said, it is doable. Take your time, apply what you can adhere to, utilize the support you have and don’t neglect your maintenance strategy.

If you have any questions/thoughts, make sure to drop them below.

Cheers,
Coach Dylan 🍻

References:

1. Long-term weight-loss maintenance: a meta-analysis of US studies
   https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/74/5/579/4737391
   
   2. Fat Loss Forever (book) By Layne Norton & Peter Baker.
   https://www.biolayne.com/fat-loss-forever/
   
   3. Weight regain after sustained weight reduction is accompanied by suppressed oxidation of dietary fat and adipocyte hyperplasia
   https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18287221/
   
   4. Long-term persistence of adaptive thermogenesis in subjects who have maintained a reduced body weight
   https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18842775/
   
   5. Weight loss increases circulating levels of ghrelin in human obesity
   https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11874411/
   
   6. Narrative Review: The Role of Leptin in Human Physiology: Emerging Clinical Applications
   https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2829242/
   
   7. Is there evidence for a set point that regulates human body weight?
   https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2990627/
   
   8. Role of set-point theory in regulation of body weight
   https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2253845/
   
   9. Set points, settling points and some alternative models: theoretical options to understand how genes and environments combine to regulate body adiposity
   https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3209643/
   
   10. The role for adipose tissue in weight regain after weight loss
   https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4371661/
   
   11. Intermittent energy restriction improves weight loss efficiency in obese men: the MATADOR study
   https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28925405/
   
   12. Weight loss intervention adherence and factors promoting adherence: a meta-analysis
   https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4990387/