Thank you Scott...
It's so often repeated that "years of dieting killed their/my metabolism" that it's become a standard diet myth... sort of like the advice to "drink 8 glasses of water per day" as if deficit of water is the reason we can't drop weight (rather than the fact we are reaching for nuts and chips and cookies impulsively, instead of calorie-free glasses of water
).
It is quite self evident that when you restrict food intake metabolism does drop, but this is
temporary. Our needs for energy are not 100% fixed, our bodies react and respond and adapt to environment. We are capable of conserving or using energy more liberally depending on the conditions of our diet and lifestyle. Just as the body will slow down metabolism "to survive famine" (aka weight-corrective diet), the body will kick it up again
very rapidly during "to fully take advantage of feast" (aka weight maintenance or weight gain diet). The more you restrict or eat, the more extreme the body will go in its conservation of energy or usage of it. There's a lot of individual variation there; some bodies naturally conserve more, other bodies conserve less. Bodies that conserve more during restriction also tend to use less during feast, making weight gain easier. The converse is true with those who have a hard time putting on weight.
Still I think individual variation in metabolism is rather small (we are all human after all and so our energy needs are going to be much much more similar when age/sex/weight/height matched, than they are different, much like all individual human variation).
Most of this "post dieting wrecked metabolism" nonsense has to do with cyclical dieting causing psychological trauma that triggers or exacerbates dysfunctional and abnormal diet and lifestyle patterns. It is this behavior that causes fat gain, not a wrecked metabolism. An inability to "control yourself" around "bad" food, all food, strange eating schedules (eating nothing all day then binging), strange eating habits (compulsively all day) can all be triggered or made worse by the psychological trauma of dieting.
Furthermore, if there exists a genetic tendency toward insulin resistance, post-dieting dysfunctional eating could trigger the insulin resistance which brings new problems that for physiological reasons also lead to dysfunctional eating, food obsession, and weight gain. In that famous study of starvation involving men, all adopted extremely abnormal post-restriction eating behaviors, all gorged themselves and gained weight. Almost all men weight and eating normalized after a period of time. However,
a minority of those continued to gorge and gain weight even after they reached their old weights and well after restriction ended. My theory is that this minority of men triggered a susceptibility metabolic syndrome by the binging / compulsive eating behavior.
Anyway, I don't think it's possible for our bodies to "learn" to be more thrifty anymore than they can "learn" to be more liberal with energy. All you have are genes and environment, and these two can mix to produce either disease or health... states that are wholly reversible depending on the present mixture of genes and environment. You'll notice no one ever says "oh all that healthy eating "taught my body to burn more energy"". It's assumed that when metabolism increases in response to positive lifestyle changes, that the change is
temporary and dependant only upon continuation of the diet and lifestyle that produced it. Why do we, then, feel that poor eating and lifestyle can "permanently lower metabolism"? Perhaps it's because we don't want to admit it's not so much the metabolism that's permanently lower, but our diet and lifestyle that's permanently unhealthy?
Another factor which fuels this myth is people compare their bodies when they were 17 to when they are 45. "I"m a 45 year old seasoned crash dieter, so I can't lose weight well like when I was 17". Is it the dieting, though, or is it simply age combined with a far less active lifestyle (and less active lifestyles usually mean more food consumption - it's easier to eat when you're sitting on the couch watching CSI vs going out with friends as a kid). I believe metabolism drops with age, and that is normal. Years of dieting did not kill your metabolism, aging did, and it's also very likely that your metabolism being slow has a lot more to do with your eating more and exercising less as an older person
.
But that's all conjecture on my part.
All I can say with certainty is in my own experience, slowing of metabolism and speeding up of metabolism are dependent primarily on the quality, quantity, and nature of your diet and lifestyle. After two straight years of under eating to correct obesity and showing numerous symptoms of "starvation mode" my body rebounds almost instantly when I feed it more food. Please note I never binged or engaged in any extreme post diet dysfunctional eating; my extra food intake was slow and gradual and it came primarily from fat and protein. People who "refeed" by binging and gorging on carbs may see different results (as these are not healthful behaviors and tend to promote fat anabolism). In my personal experience with segueing from under eating to an isocaloric diet, scale weight gain has been insignificant, fat gain almost non-existent, mostly I've noticed much more energy and more muscle definition. I just look and feel healthier, rather than unhealthier (piling on fat weight and feeling tired).