Research
Hormonal
During weight loss maintenance, adaptive thermogenesis is driven by low leptin levels associated with reduced fat mass, leading to decreased non-resting energy expenditure (AEE) and increased muscle work efficiency.
After losing weight, your body defends its new, lower weight by reducing energy expenditure, particularly through increased muscle efficiency and reduced activity-related energy expenditure. This is driven by low leptin levels due to reduced fat mass. This metabolic adaptation makes long-term weight maintenance challenging.
GoodSupportsHIGH confidence
During maintenance of reduced body weight, TEE remained reduced... This relates to AT in the non-resting component of EE; it is accompanied by increased skeletal muscle work efficiency, decreased plasma levels of leptin and T3 associated with low SNS activity.
Why this rating
Based on controlled experiments by Leibel and Rosenbaum and other cited studies.
Source
Changes in Energy Expenditure with Weight Gain and Weight Loss in Humans
Manfred J. Müller et al. · Current Obesity Reports · 2016
DOI 10.1007/s13679-016-0237-4
narrative_reviewCited 255×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
More from this paper
- Adaptive thermogenesis (AT) during caloric restriction primarily manifests as a reduction in resting energy expenditure (REE) driven by glycogen depletion and insulin suppression, rather than changes in fat mass or leptin levels.Good
- Adaptive thermogenesis during overfeeding does not significantly increase resting energy expenditure (REE) or diet-induced thermogenesis (DIT); instead, energy dissipation occurs primarily through increased activity-related energy expenditure (AEE).Good
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