Research

Hormonal

During weight loss maintenance, a low-fat (LF) diet results in significantly lower postprandial energy availability (EA) in the late postprandial period (180-300 minutes) compared to low-glycemic index (LGI) and very low-carbohydrate (VLC) diets, primarily due to suppressed free fatty acid (FFA) and beta-hydroxybutyrate (BHB) levels.

If you are maintaining weight loss, be cautious with very low-fat diets. This study suggests that restricting fat to 20% of calories may reduce your body's ability to use stored energy (fat and ketones) after meals, which could make you more prone to regaining weight. Consider diets with moderate fat (LGI) or higher fat (VLC) to maintain better metabolic fuel availability.

ModerateRefutesMEDIUM confidence
However, EA in the late postprandial period was significantly lower after the LF test meal than the LGI (p,0.0001) and VLC (p,0.0001) test meals... differences in late postprandial EA were instead due to significantly lower levels of FFA after the LF meal as compared with the LGI and VLC meals, and lower levels of BHB after the LF meal as compared with the VLC meal.
Carolyn O. Walsh et al. · PLoS ONE · 2013

Why this rating

Randomized crossover design with objective metabolic measures, but limited by a very small sample size (n=8) and short duration (4 weeks per diet).

Source

Effects of Diet Composition on Postprandial Energy Availability during Weight Loss Maintenance

Carolyn O. Walsh et al. · PLoS ONE · 2013

DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0058172

crossover · n=8Cited 40×
Read the paper
DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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