What Is Metabolic Confusion, and How Do You Do It?

Metabolic confusion is the term for a dietary plan that suggests varying your caloric intake from day to day. Metabolic confusion is similar to intermittent fasting plans.

Losing weight and keeping weight off are challenging for many people. The diet industry suggests all kinds of methods for losing weight, most of which involve cutting back on the amount of food you eat. That can lead to weight loss, but it may also cause your metabolism to slow down and undermine your long-term goals. 

A plan called “metabolic confusion” aims to achieve weight loss by alternating your daily calorie intake. In theory, this will mimic sufficient caloric intake and prevent your metabolism from slowing down. Learn more about how to create metabolic confusion and promote weight loss. 

Metabolic confusion is the term for a dietary plan that suggests varying your caloric intake from day to day. This plan is also sometimes called calorie shifting or calorie cycling. The theory is that your body will never know how many calories you’re going to ingest, so your metabolism will work harder all the time. 

Part of the rationale behind this eating plan is that it will prevent your metabolism from slowing down. Eating plans that require restricting calories every day over a long period of time can lead to a lower resting metabolic rate. Your body becomes less efficient at burning calories in an effort to conserve the few calories you’re eating. This can be a long-lasting effect that r esults in weight gain in the future.

With calorie shifting, you have days of consuming sufficient calories, which should encourage normal metabolic activity. During days of lower caloric intake, your metabolism continues to work at its normal rate, using up the reduced caloric intake and then burning stored fat. Your body won’t interpret that as extended deprivation, so it won’t slow down to preserve calories.

This plan is similar to intermittent fasting plans. With intermittent fasting, you eat at specified times and then consume no calories at all in between. The no-calorie times are the fasting periods. Fasting periods may be a portion of a day; for example, you could eat within an 8-hour window and then fast the remaining 16 hours. Other intermittent fasting plans call for full days of fasting or eating only a few hundred calories.

Intermittent fasting allows your body to fully digest the food you eat. Your body processes all the energy from food before you eat again. While you wait for the next eating period, your body burns stored fat for energy.

With calorie-shifting plans, you don’t engage in periods where you stop eating completely. Instead, you set a schedule of low intake days alternated with high intake days. Your calorie consumption on high-intake days should be only slightly less than the calories you need for normal activities. For an average adult, this can mean eating close to 2000 calories per day. On low intake days, you might only eat 1200 calories.

Research suggests that calorie shifting can result in weight loss. In one study, researchers compared results from a traditional calorie-restriction eating plan with a calorie-shifting plan. One group of participants consumed 1,200 calories per day for the entire duration of the study. The other group restricted their calorie intake for 11 days, followed by three days of unrestricted intake.

Researchers found that the people who restricted calories constantly experienced a significant decrease in their resting metabolic rate. The participants who used the calorie-shifting plan did not experience changes to their resting metabolic rate. In addition, the participants who were on the calorie-shifting plan were more successful at adhering to the diet, reported less hunger, and lost significantly more weight than those who restricted calories continuously.

There is limited research on the long-term effects of calorie-shifting plans. Most of the current research is centered on intermittent fasting.  It’s not clear if the weight loss results continue after one stops following a given plan. There is also little research to see if there are changes to the resting metabolic rate after sustained calorie shifting. 

At the end of the day, though, in order to achieve weight loss, you need a calorie deficit. With a calorie-shifting plan, you need to have more days with significantly reduced calorie intake than days of higher intake. You may also need to ensure that high-intake days aren’t “splurge days” where you eat far more calories than you need. Splurging could offset the overall deficit for several days and reduce the chance of success.

The main goal of calorie shifting plans is to reduce the calories you eat while still allowing the flexibility to eat more at times. The plan doesn’t make any recommendations about what types of food to eat. 

For some people, this doesn’t pose a problem since they are inclined to eat a healthy variety of foods regardless of quantity. However, for other people, a strict focus on cutting calories could lead to nutritional issues. It’s important to maintain a balanced diet. That being said, reducing portion sizes is often a preferable means of reducing calories rather than eliminating particular types of foods entirely. 

Calorie-shifting plans also may not specify any physical activity goals. For many people, a combination of diet changes and physical activity is the best means of achieving sustained weight loss and improved wellness. An active lifestyle should be maintained alongside any eating plan.  

Before you engage in any new eating plan, talk to your doctor. They can tell you if you are healthy enough to make significant changes to your diet or activity levels. If you have underlying health conditions such as diabetes, make sure your doctor explains what your nutritional needs are so your weight loss plan doesn’t harm your overall health, 

If you are unsure how to reduce calories while still getting the nutrition you need, you may wish to consult a nutritionist. They can help you set up an eating plan that promotes weight loss while protecting your health.