Lose More Fat and Less Muscle with Slow Weight Loss

A new paper in the British Journal of Nutrition asks whether the pace at which you lose weight affects how much of that lost weight is fat (as opposed to muscle) and the impact on your metabolism after weight loss. To answer this question, the authors pooled the results of seven studies that compared rapid to gradual weight loss, where both groups lost about the same amount of weight but at different speeds.

This is a question that I am very interested in, so I was excited to find a breakdown of this new study in a recent issue of the Nutrition Examination Research Digest, a terrific publication affectionately known to subscribers as NERD.

Advantages of slower weight loss

For years, I've been advocating slow weight loss as a better way to achieve sustainable weight loss, which is the only kind that really counts and the hardest to achieve.

Make smaller but more permanent changes to your habits and behavior. The weight comes off more slowly, but you aren’t just losing weight; you’re learning how to be someone who weighs less.

Part of my rationale for this approach is psychological and behavioral. To lose weight quickly, diets usually involve a dramatic but temporary change in your behavior. Once you’ve lost the weight, however, you tend to revert to old habits and behaviors that lead you to regain the weight you’ve lost.

Instead, I’d rather see you make smaller but more permanent changes to your habits and behavior. The weight comes off more slowly, but you aren’t just losing weight; you’re learning how to be someone who weighs less.

But another big part of my rationale is physiological. Many popular diets are designed to produce weight loss at a rate of 5-10% of your body weight per month. But that’s significantly faster than most people can shed body fat. If you’re losing weight faster than you can lose fat, that means you’re losing lean muscle, and that’s not what you want to be losing.

RELATED: How Fast Can You Lose Fat?

I’m convinced that slower weight loss (2% or less of your body weight per month) results in losing more body fat (and less muscle). It’s also less likely to cause a slowdown in your metabolism, which is going to make it easier to maintain the weight loss. And I’m always on the lookout for research to either support or refute this belief.

To date, there have only...

Keep reading on Quick and Dirty Tips