Metabolic Adaptation: The Biology of Chronic Dieting and Weight Regain (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781919546124)

For decades, weight loss has been framed as a simple equation: eat less, move more. When that equation stops working, the explanation is often reduced to willpower, discipline, or a supposedly "broken" metabolism.

Metabolic Adaptation: The Biology of Chronic Dieting and Weight Regain offers a different perspective.

Drawing on fifteen years of clinical experience and established metabolic research, Lead Critical Care Dietitian Chikaodili Frances Ozojie examines what actually happens in the body during prolonged energy restriction. Rather than treating stalled weight loss as a personal failure, the book explores it as a predictable biological response. When energy availability falls and stress signals rise, the body does what it evolved to do: conserve resources, protect essential systems, and defend against perceived scarcity.

Using clear explanations and parallels drawn from critical care physiology, the book explores mechanisms such as adaptive thermogenesis, changes in non-exercise activity, shifts in appetite signalling, and the often misunderstood early changes in body weight driven by glycogen and fluid balance. It also examines why recovery from prolonged restriction is frequently slower and more complex than expected.

The aim of this book is not to provide another dieting method. Instead, it offers a framework for understanding the biological pressures that shape weight regulation and the lived experience of chronic dieting.

Written for clinicians, researchers, coaches, and readers interested in the physiology of metabolism, Metabolic Adaptation invites a reconsideration of a familiar narrative. When the body resists prolonged restriction, it may not be malfunctioning. It may be responding exactly as it was designed to.