The concept of metabolic adaption is scary to me. Not because it’s right or wrong, but because it’s often prescribed to dieters without any examination.People are told that if they have been dieting for a long period of time and are now having problems losing weight, then their hormone levels have been compromised by all the dieting and therefore they must ‘eat up’ for a length of time to restore their hormone levels.And this *MAY* be true, but it also may not be true.The problem with telling a person that their hormones levels are up or down is that you typically do not have any kind of baseline measurements.It’s rare to hear that a person has a record of their blood profiles that were recorded when they were at their healthiest or at their ideal (ie. not overweight and not dieting).Even if blood samples were taken right before a diet started, these numbers would be confounded by the fact the person most likely has extra fat to lose (so the levels may not be a true ideal, but instead depressed or elevated by the extra fat).Most of the time, ‘metabolic adaptation’ is being diagnosed, and changes in hormone levels are being blamed, without a baseline measurement to compare to. And without a baseline, you’re just guessing.Yes, we do have population averages – but typically these are wide ranges, sometimes very wide.

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The Dangers of Metabolic Adaptation | Brad Pilon's 'Eat Blog Eat'

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