starvation mode might be a myth
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Selina_Kyle_60
Posts: 41 Member
ok I know this might be controversial but I was curious. I was wondering if my weight loss was stalling bc I was not eating enough. so I was looking online to find info about the starvation mode theory and this is one persons opinion. Im not saying I agree but its interesting. By the way I found very similar info on several sites, so Im really questioning this
"So what is the Starvation Mode Myth? It goes like this: "If you don't eat enough, you won't lose weight!" Okay, so all I have to do to lose weight is ... eat more food! Wow, isn't that awesome? If I stall out at 800 calories, I'll just go up to 1000. And if I stall at 1000, I'll go to 1200. If that doesn't work, how about 1500? 1800? 2200? Oh wait, when I ate 2200 calories, I weighed 223 pounds. Okay, that's not going to work. But what if I just don't go below the magic "1200" that "everyone" says "no one" should go below? That must be what they mean by "starvation mode," right? If I stay at 1200, I will lose weight but if I go below that, I won't. The problem with this idea is that, if it were true, no one would die from starvation and obviously people do. Clearly, even if you eat what is obviously too few calories to be healthy, such as an anorexic does, you will continue to lose weight. So where did this idea -- that not eating enough calories makes you not lose weight -- come from? It started with the famous Minnesota starvation study. Some normal-weighted men agreed to live on a compound where their exercise and diet was strictly controlled. For portions of the study, they were on a "starvation diet" which is defined as 50% of the calories your body needs to function. For me, these days, that's about 750-850 calories a day. So I was on a starvation diet up for the first four months after my surgery. Yet I lost weight just fine during that period -- better than fine, really. Most of the people on The Biggest Loser are also on starvation diets, from what I can tell. They may eat a lot more than I do but they also exercise strenuously 6-8 hours a day. So they are often below 50% of their calorie expenditure for the day. They seem to lose just fine too. How can this be?! The answer lies in what actually happened to the Minnesota guys when they were on their starvation diets. Like most of us on a diet, their metabolisms did slow down. In fact, after they'd been on this diet for a while -- we're talking months, not days here -- their body fat percentage got to a point below what is considered minimal to live on (about 5% for a guy, 6% for a gal). At this point, their metabolism had slowed down as much as 40%. But -- and this is the important point for those of us on a diet -- they continued to lose weight. Even with that big of a slow down in their BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate), they were still operating at a great enough calorie deficit to lose. If this is true with a 40% slow down, it's even more true when the slow down is somewhere in the 14 - 22% range, which is more where if falls with normal dieting."
"So what is the Starvation Mode Myth? It goes like this: "If you don't eat enough, you won't lose weight!" Okay, so all I have to do to lose weight is ... eat more food! Wow, isn't that awesome? If I stall out at 800 calories, I'll just go up to 1000. And if I stall at 1000, I'll go to 1200. If that doesn't work, how about 1500? 1800? 2200? Oh wait, when I ate 2200 calories, I weighed 223 pounds. Okay, that's not going to work. But what if I just don't go below the magic "1200" that "everyone" says "no one" should go below? That must be what they mean by "starvation mode," right? If I stay at 1200, I will lose weight but if I go below that, I won't. The problem with this idea is that, if it were true, no one would die from starvation and obviously people do. Clearly, even if you eat what is obviously too few calories to be healthy, such as an anorexic does, you will continue to lose weight. So where did this idea -- that not eating enough calories makes you not lose weight -- come from? It started with the famous Minnesota starvation study. Some normal-weighted men agreed to live on a compound where their exercise and diet was strictly controlled. For portions of the study, they were on a "starvation diet" which is defined as 50% of the calories your body needs to function. For me, these days, that's about 750-850 calories a day. So I was on a starvation diet up for the first four months after my surgery. Yet I lost weight just fine during that period -- better than fine, really. Most of the people on The Biggest Loser are also on starvation diets, from what I can tell. They may eat a lot more than I do but they also exercise strenuously 6-8 hours a day. So they are often below 50% of their calorie expenditure for the day. They seem to lose just fine too. How can this be?! The answer lies in what actually happened to the Minnesota guys when they were on their starvation diets. Like most of us on a diet, their metabolisms did slow down. In fact, after they'd been on this diet for a while -- we're talking months, not days here -- their body fat percentage got to a point below what is considered minimal to live on (about 5% for a guy, 6% for a gal). At this point, their metabolism had slowed down as much as 40%. But -- and this is the important point for those of us on a diet -- they continued to lose weight. Even with that big of a slow down in their BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate), they were still operating at a great enough calorie deficit to lose. If this is true with a 40% slow down, it's even more true when the slow down is somewhere in the 14 - 22% range, which is more where if falls with normal dieting."
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Replies
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y is there so much confusion about weight loss
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I just saw a throw-away comment by a "nutrition expert" in "Health" magazine that the body will break down muscle for fuel after....missing one meal. WHAT?0
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That is true regarding the Minnesota Starvation experiment. If you're interested in reading more you can find some good info here:
http://jn.nutrition.org/content/135/6/1347.full
The full version is free, which is nice.
eta: standard disclaimer-- that doesn't mean it's a good idea to eat so low0 -
Selina_Kyle_60 wrote: »y is there so much confusion about weight loss
Because too many people don't trust science and would rather believe myths like detoxes, cleanses, starvation mode, HRM marketing, etc.0 -
Starvation mode is your body shutting down lower priority functions to conserve energy when it isn't getting enough food. That does exist. What doesn't happen is this idea that your body can continue to function normally but hold onto fat because you aren't eating enough. In starvation mode, you continue to lose weight, but you lack energy and you harm your body.0
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All I know is that if I don't eat enough, I will have a splitting headache and get angry.0
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Op it might behoove you to use the handy dandy search feature and find the thousands of posts on this topic before posting another starvation mode thread0
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"might be"
LOL0 -
I just saw a throw-away comment by a "nutrition expert" in "Health" magazine that the body will break down muscle for fuel after....missing one meal. WHAT?
The body breaks down muscle continuously - you don't even need to miss a single meal.
The key is in the when and how it gets replaced.
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many_splendored wrote: »All I know is that if I don't eat enough, I will have a splitting headache and get angry.
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Cliffs are:
Starvation mode is not real because people still starve to death and the Minnesota Starvation Experiment showed only a 40% decline in metabolism, which means the participants still lost weight.0
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