How do some lose so much without starvation mode kicking in?

kristif815

I have always been curious on how people lose huge amounts of weight without going into starvation mode. For example the contestants on The Biggest Loser. I understand they have a large amount to lose, and work out a lot, but don't they still have a large deficit to get them to lose that weight?
Thank you for your insight.

Cindyinpg

My understanding is that starvation mode (or a slowing of your metabolism) does not apply as strictly to the morbidly obese. Starvation mode is a term that is misconstrued a lot. People have success with large deficits, the question is whether that is sustainable. For the short term, and under a physician's care, like the Biggest Losers, it can obviously be successful. Whether they keep it off is another story.

Lyadeia

Starvation mode is a greatly misunderstood phenomenon.

Eating a true starvation diet will cause you to lose weight, no doubt about it. Eating a deficit that is too large for you, while not a true starvation diet, causes stalls in weight loss because things slow down...but you are not in starvation mode, you are just conserving energy and slowing your metabolism.

j6o4

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1017045-a-very-interesting-and-informational-read-on-deficits?hl=deficit

This is why obese people can lose more fat than muscle on an aggressive calorie deficit and why some one leaner would lose more muslce than fat on an aggressive calorie deficit.

kristif815

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1017045-a-very-interesting-and-informational-read-on-deficits?hl=deficit

This is why obese people can lose more fat than muscle on an aggressive calorie deficit and why some one leaner would lose more muslce than fat on an aggressive calorie deficit.

kristif815

I just found this article and it was great! I have always been told I don't eat enough when losing weight. I've been eating about 1200 calories and I'm not hungry. Definitely going to rethink this idea since I upped my calories this week.

mistadj

Good Question and different dieticians say different things. I think it can be a mixture of things. Since not everything works the same for every person, i dont think there is 1 fact out there. I think it still depends on other activity and eating habits. For instance, how their workout routines are and if they are supplementing. Some people are on those programs where they eat food once a day and 2 protein shakes....those people might lose weight but not show muscle definition if thats all they are doing. someone else who is doing weights along with that, might look different.
Basically...i think everything is trial and error because for me...Im working out 5 days a week and im eating but if im still 1000 calories under from what i burned, does that mean im still in Starvation mode??

Cindyinpg

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1017045-a-very-interesting-and-informational-read-on-deficits?hl=deficit

This is why obese people can lose more fat than muscle on an aggressive calorie deficit and why some one leaner would lose more muslce than fat on an aggressive calorie deficit.

Great read. Thanks!

LexiAtel

Totally agree with these posts... Your body will attack what you got. At first it will see likeyou are starving, but you're not... Maybe that is why the body STORES excess "food", it's preparing in case you need it one day. In reality, if all food source came to an end, obese people whould be the last to die.

Not saying you would WANT to live that way until you died... just saying...

The problem with dieting hardcore is after a while, your body will start eating your muscle, and that's when you really need to start increasing protein ESPECIALLY if you are exercising.

grimendale

Starvation mode won't necessarily keep you from losing weight, it will just change the distribution of what is lost. If you reach and maintain at that point, you will lose a larger proportion of lean body mass along with fat. For the morbidly obese, the proportion of body fat is so high that this is not a major concern. Plus, it is often a calculated risk on the part of the physician prescribing the diet. They might lose muscle mass, but they will develop a host of problems if they do not lose the weight. When you have closer to a healthy body fat level, a higher percentage of the weight lost will be lean body mass. It's part of the reason anorexics look so bony: theire bodies have devoured their muscle mass to make up the deficit. It take more energy to maintain muscle than fat, so if you are not getting enough calories, enough protein and enough resistance work to convince your body that the muscle tissue is needed and that fat is a better option, it will often pull from lean body tissue to try and make the calories you do eat last as long as possible. When I was younger, I went on a long term starvation diet (and would strongly advise against it) wherein I only ate about 200 to 300 calories a day and was exercising five or six days a week. I lost, but I had no muscle definition and felt weak all the time. I got down to 185 lbs and had a 36" waist. This time, doing the healthy option, I am at 195 lbs, but I have much better definition and a 34" waist. A much larger part of the weight dropped this time is fat, and I feel a lot better.

savithny

I have always been curious on how people lose huge amounts of weight without going into starvation mode. For example the contestants on The Biggest Loser. I understand they have a large amount to lose, and work out a lot, but don't they still have a large deficit to get them to lose that weight?
Thank you for your insight.

Who says Biggest Loser contestants don't go into tarvation mode?

There's been research done. They're messing up their metabolisms like crazy. There's been formal research done, now.

This blog post discusses it, and has a link to the article:
http://www.weightymatters.ca/2012/04/biggest-loser-destroys-participants.html

Darcy Johannsen and friends studied the impact 7 months of Biggest Loser weight loss had on the resting and total energy expenditures of 16 participants. They used all the latest gadgets to do so including indirect calorimetry and doubly labeled water. So what happened? By week 6 participants had lost 13% of their body weight and by week 30, 39%. More importantly by week 6 participants metabolisms had slowed by 244 more calories per day than would have been expected simply as a function of their weight loss and by week 30, by 504 more.

That's basically a meal's worth of calories a day that Biggest Loser contestants no longer burn as a direct consequence of their involvement. How do you think you'd do at maintaining your weight if you ate an extra meal a day?

55in13

There is a huge misunderstanding about how the slowing of metabolism happens. There is a point at which it begins to slow down so that each additional calorie the diet is reduced by adds less than a calorie to the deficit. But it never "crosses zero" - there is no point at which reducing consumption doesn't increase the deficit. A previous poster provided some info on research done on biggest loser participants that bears this out; they didn't quit losing, they just lost less than they would have if the metabolism was higher. But to get the metabolism higher they would need to eat more and end up with a smaller deficit. The competition is to lose the most weight, not to do it in the healthiest way.

sunlover89

I have always been curious on how people lose huge amounts of weight without going into starvation mode. For example the contestants on The Biggest Loser. I understand they have a large amount to lose, and work out a lot, but don't they still have a large deficit to get them to lose that weight?
Thank you for your insight.

The more fat you have the less calories you can eat. So you can have a larger deficit.

There are 3 phases that you can be in
1. Moderate deficit(fat loss)
2. Large deficit(stall out)
3. Starvation( mostly muscle loss some fat)

so if someone is not losing weight they are in phase 2 or not at a deficit at all.

Err actually, it's mostly fat, some muscle!

Mokey41

The whole deficit thing is a bit iffy to me. If I eat 1200 calories a day of good nutritious food and I don't do any crazy amount of exercise, my body is going to take what it needs from my food source first. The whole starvation mode thing doesn't apply to the average dieter. You need to be taking in less than 500 calories a day (taking in, not exercising off) for months to get anywhere close to something that might be called starvation mode.

You may slow your metabolism down by drastically dieting but it isn't the same as starving. I spent 3 weeks in Africa and a lot of people there were living on a handful of rice and beans (dried, before cooking for measurement) a day. They were thin but not emaciated and most were also working some kind of job on this. Their bodies had become very efficient and using those calories they took in efficiently

I'd really like to stop seeing the term "starvation mode bantered around on these forums. Maybe metabolism slow down or some other term but without having a serious eating disorder there would be very few North Americans anywhere close to starving.

kristif815

The whole deficit thing is a bit iffy to me. If I eat 1200 calories a day of good nutritious food and I don't do any crazy amount of exercise, my body is going to take what it needs from my food source first. The whole starvation mode thing doesn't apply to the average dieter. You need to be taking in less than 500 calories a day (taking in, not exercising off) for months to get anywhere close to something that might be called starvation mode.

You may slow your metabolism down by drastically dieting but it isn't the same as starving. I spent 3 weeks in Africa and a lot of people there were living on a handful of rice and beans (dried, before cooking for measurement) a day. They were thin but not emaciated and most were also working some kind of job on this. Their bodies had become very efficient and using those calories they took in efficiently

I'd really like to stop seeing the term "starvation mode bantered around on these forums. Maybe metabolism slow down or some other term but without having a serious eating disorder there would be very few North Americans anywhere close to starving.

Agreed we are definitely not starving... I use that term because that's what people refer to it as. I don't want to slow my metabolism so this is why I ask. If your body thinks it is not getting enough food it stores fat... or at least that's what they always have said. Just trying to figure out if this is true, no matter what it is called.
I'm doing well on just eating 1200 calories a day, but some days burn over 700 working out, so I want to know if I am doing damage.... I have a high % of fat to lose and don't want to sacrifice muscle.

55in13

Agreed we are definitely not starving... I use that term because that's what people refer to it as. I don't want to slow my metabolism so this is why I ask. If your body thinks it is not getting enough food it stores fat... or at least that's what they always have said. Just trying to figure out if this is true, no matter what it is called.
I'm doing well on just eating 1200 calories a day, but some days burn over 700 working out, so I want to know if I am doing damage.... I have a high % of fat to lose and don't want to sacrifice muscle.

You should take a look at this thread:

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1016612-why-1000-1200-calorie-diets-are-bad-backed-by-science

Read a few pages and you will see that some people took the time to read the whole study and make a pretty strong case for an opposing view point when exercise is factored in. The study actually showed that you could keep metabolism from dropping by exercising. On page I posted my numbers and calculated it out and it does seem like I am seeing very little drop in metabolism after 6 months of mostly eating below 1200 a day. I am basing that on using a calculator of sedentary TDEE, calculator for calories burned running and using that against my diet and coming up with a deficit that matches up with weight loss fairly well.

jimshine

I just wonder if the body gives us signs when we are not eating enough. When I started here, I would often be 400-600 calories under my daily goals and I lost the color in my face and had no energy. When I brought it up, my color returned and the energy came back. Is there a middle ground where you maintain a healthy color and have energy while still starving the body?

55in13

Agreed we are definitely not starving... I use that term because that's what people refer to it as. I don't want to slow my metabolism so this is why I ask. If your body thinks it is not getting enough food it stores fat... or at least that's what they always have said. Just trying to figure out if this is true, no matter what it is called.
I'm doing well on just eating 1200 calories a day, but some days burn over 700 working out, so I want to know if I am doing damage.... I have a high % of fat to lose and don't want to sacrifice muscle.

You should take a look at this thread:

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1016612-why-1000-1200-calorie-diets-are-bad-backed-by-science

Read a few pages and you will see that some people took the time to read the whole study and make a pretty strong case for an opposing view point when exercise is factored in. The study actually showed that you could keep metabolism from dropping by exercising. On page I posted my numbers and calculated it out and it does seem like I am seeing very little drop in metabolism after 6 months of mostly eating below 1200 a day. I am basing that on using a calculator of sedentary TDEE, calculator for calories burned running and using that against my diet and coming up with a deficit that matches up with weight loss fairly well.

I said this above

There are 3 phases that you can be in
1. Moderate deficit(fat loss)
2. Large deficit(stall out)
3. Starvation( mostly muscle loss some fat)


sounds like you're in phase 3.

Just noticed that I didn't get the "page 4" in there, but I guess you found my comments since you interpret them to mean I am starving and losing muscles that I didn't have. I will have to make a before/after profile pic later. I had a round face and a big belly. It is extremely obvious that I lost substantially more fat than anything else. I do also tone a little with dumb bells and I am meeting with a trainer at the Y next week to start working on my core and upper body. I am also planning to switch gears on dieting and lose the last 5 pounds very slowly (as in over 2-3 months) so that maintenance won't be such a jarring change. Up until about 5 years ago, I was about the size I am now for most of my adult life and I am in my 50s.

55in13

Some interesting tidbits from another thread that are very relevant here.

...
Dr. Kevin Hall, an investigator at the National Institute of Health, has focused his research on the various mechanisms that regulate human body weight and much of his work was based on the previous findings of fellow obesity researcher Gilbert Forbes. Hall recently published a new paper in the International Journal of Obesity
...
The amount of lean body mass lost is based on initial body fat level and the size/severity of the calorie deficit
Lean people tend to lose more lean body mass and retain more fat.
Fat people tend to lose more body fat and retain more lean tissue (revealing why obese people can tolerate aggressive low calorie diets better than already lean people)
Very aggressive calorie deficits and low calorie diets tend to erode lean body mass to a greater degree than more conservative diets.
whether the weight loss is lean or fat gives you the real answer of what is the required energy deficit per unit of weight loss
The metabolizable energy in fat is different than the metabolizable energy in muscle tissue. A pound of muscle is not 3500 calories. A pound of muscle yields about 600 calories.
If you lose lean body mass, then you will lose more body weight than if you lose fat.
...

I find this really interesting as it pretty much proves that I could not have lost that much muscle or I would have lost a lot more weight. In order to make any sense of my numbers for deficit and the amount of weight lost, it has to be almost entirely fat.

55in13

I look "thinner" on the right... but I also lost about 20-30lbs of LBM(lean body mass) I was very sick and couldn't eat for a while.

Yes it's true what you said about fat availablilty and bigger people can get away with a bigger deficit. But ask yourself, "how long can you be in a big deficit? How much LBM(Lean body mass) will you lose?" Those things are tough to measure, I am pretty sure you're in a highly catabolic state. This means you're probably losing a lot of LBM.

You should measure your body fat and keep track of it.

I took a profile pic of current. Yes, I have a little of that "skinny fat" going on where I have a spare tire that is more like a bike inner tube now around the waist and my chest and shoulders need more toning.

I m having trouble finding a "big" photo that is candid enough. I was aware of sucking in what I could and standing the right way to try to keep from looking too big.


Anyway, how much longer can I do that deficit? Not much longer at all. I within 12 pounds of goal, which I actually extended or I would be within 7. I am starting to adjust some now. Keep in mind that my loss has been 2 pounds a week average for 24 weeks. 2 pounds is the max recommended for overweight people to lose. My current BMI is 25.8, so I am still technically overweight. I really haven't violated the suggested max loss. MFP suggested 1230 for me, BTW. But I haven't been eating back exercise.

You did understand the point of my referring to that paper done by Dr Hall, right? It takes almost 6 times as much muscle loss, by weight, to get the same energy as fat loss. It is near impossible to get the numbers to work by suggesting that much of the deficit was made up by muscle instead of fat. And slower metabolism does not reduce the extra calories required to run. The metabolism slows by doing less work, not by doing the same work more efficiently. Running is a quantifiable amount of work - moving mass over distance. I understand and appreciate your concern, but I think I am far better off today than I was 6 months ago.

55in13

Found another that was a little more candid. It is from a few years back though, not at my highest weight. I was pretty good at avoiding cameras last year. The "big" picture in the previous post is also a couple of years old. I would guess I was about 210-215 in those pictures and I got up to 225.



and here is face shape in May. You may also notice just a bit of loose skin on the neck...