Research

Energy balance

A low-calorie diet (800 kcal) induces a transient 25% decrease in adipose PPAR-gamma2 mRNA expression during weight loss, which rebounds to pre-weight-loss levels during weight maintenance.

When you lose weight with a very low-calorie diet, your body's fat-storing signals (PPAR-gamma2) drop, but they bounce back to pre-weight-loss levels once you stop losing weight, even if you maintain the new weight. This molecular rebound may contribute to the difficulty of keeping weight off, suggesting that long-term maintenance strategies need to account for this biological drive.

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The expression of PPAR-gamma2 decreased (25%) after a 10% reduction in body weight... and returned to pretreatment levels after 4 wk of maintenance of reduced body weight.
Antonio Vidal‐Puig et al. · Journal of Clinical Investigation · 1997

Why this rating

Human in vivo study with a clear intervention protocol and temporal tracking of molecular markers.

Source

Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gene expression in human tissues. Effects of obesity, weight loss, and regulation by insulin and glucocorticoids.

Antonio Vidal‐Puig et al. · Journal of Clinical Investigation · 1997

DOI 10.1172/jci119424

cohort · n=45Cited 788×
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DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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