Starving myself FAT
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Calories in vs calories out is obviously the fundamental thing that affect weight loss, however those who dispute the idea that starvation can cause long-term weight gain are forgetting the other variables that impact on metabolism, mentality around food, etc that can result from over-depriving yourself for too long, and these variables obviously affect CI/CO. The Minnesota Starvation Experiment is an interesting one, look it up!0
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My epiphany. I recently realized that I was literally starving myself to a fatter me. It's so hard to figure out what to believe in the world of weight loss but this is true! We cannot starve ourselves and get results! I have a very active job working outside since April of this year and I thought I would definitely see some weight loss. I decided to skip breakfast and lunch, eat a late snack and then a small dinner and I hadn't lost a lb! I'm not a 'breakfast person' but I've been forcing myself to eat in the morning, eat lunch each day and an earlier dinner. In the last three days the scale has gone down. I'm sure I'll plateau after I lose water weight but it's good info to get the ball rolling! Eat!
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My epiphany. I recently realized that I was literally starving myself to a fatter me. It's so hard to figure out what to believe in the world of weight loss but this is true! We cannot starve ourselves and get results! I have a very active job working outside since April of this year and I thought I would definitely see some weight loss. I decided to skip breakfast and lunch, eat a late snack and then a small dinner and I hadn't lost a lb! I'm not a 'breakfast person' but I've been forcing myself to eat in the morning, eat lunch each day and an earlier dinner. In the last three days the scale has gone down. I'm sure I'll plateau after I lose water weight but it's good info to get the ball rolling! Eat!
You think you are starving yourself due to increases energy output, but you are still eating more than you burn. This can easily happen by snacking or constant grazing and you are not aware of it.
You are just plain eating too much high calorie food, because there is no way to eat under in calories and not lose, even if it is just a little bit.
You need to honestly log and weigh all solids and measure all liquids and you probably will be able to figure out what's wrong.
But no one has ever starved themselves fat; other wise the concentration camps, or nowadays the refugee camps would be full of extremely fat people.
There is no scientific proof that you need to eat a certain number of meals a day. You must do what is comfortable and sustainable for you, as long as you eat at a sustainable deficit and not starving yourself.
Meal frequency and time are a personal choice...nothing more.
Good Luck !
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wrebecca02 wrote: »I am working with a Nutritionist through my insurance company. She explained that if you eat too little your body starts out gaining weight because the body starts storing the food to protect itself.
I was told that I needed to eat 1200 calories spread out through 5 mini-meals a day. She had me set up an account here on MFP. I started gaining weight after a car wreck. I am almost always nauseated so it has been hard to eat, combined with all the medication I am on.
Basically I eat 3 small meals and 2 snacks a day. I have never been on a diet so it is interesting to log in my food and see how low the calories are. I have only been doing this for 4 days and I have only been able to hit 1200 calories once. I have dropped 2 pounds, but I am guessing that is water weight. I do hope each of you reach your goals.
This is patently untrue and I am sorry that you are receiving such terrible advice.
BTW: Depending on your height, age, and activity level, 1200 could be too low.
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Starvation Mode is real...
just not in the way that you think OP...0 -
wrebecca02 wrote: »I am working with a Nutritionist through my insurance company. She explained that if you eat too little your body starts out gaining weight because the body starts storing the food to protect itself.
With all due respect, your insurance should get rid of their nutritionist.
If a person eats to little it means they are in caloric deficit and lose weight. Some people lose faster and some people slower, but everyone in deficit loses.
It is science that applies to everyone everywhere....no exceptions.
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You're eating more than you think, that's it. Log EVERYTHING.0
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Starvation mode doesn't mean gaining weight on a low amount. It means your body adapting to maintain on very low amount, then gaining weight very quickly once you up your calories even a moderate amount. So in starvation one could be maintaining on 600-700 a day, then suddenly gain weight when they increase to 1200. Most of that fat would initially be stored around the internal organs. So no, you won't gain weight by the initial over-restriction; you will gain it from restricting for a period of time, then increasing. I'm not sure how well some element of this apply to those who aren't underweight though.0
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worldofalice wrote: »Starvation mode doesn't mean gaining weight on a low amount. It means your body adapting to maintain on very low amount, then gaining weight very quickly once you up your calories even a moderate amount. So in starvation one could be maintaining on 600-700 a day, then suddenly gain weight when they increase to 1200. Most of that fat would initially be stored around the internal organs. So no, you won't gain weight by the initial over-restriction; you will gain it from restricting for a period of time, then increasing. I'm not sure how well some element of this apply to those who aren't underweight though.
Nope, that's not how it works, either. No one would be able to maintain their weight on 600 - 700 calories a day. Just not physically possible. Unless they were a young child, maybe.
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Especially with people who dieted for two weeks, then started eating more and saw it drop off, it's possible they simply started their diet during the worst part of their cycle, when they weighed the most. Then time the "eating more" with the portion of your cycle that has you releasing any water weight gain - BAM! Weight loss due to eating more food! Except no - the drop was coming, anyway. Water weight can mask fat loss for some time. Just not forever0
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My epiphany. I recently realized that I was literally starving myself to a fatter me. It's so hard to figure out what to believe in the world of weight loss but this is true! We cannot starve ourselves and get results! I have a very active job working outside since April of this year and I thought I would definitely see some weight loss. I decided to skip breakfast and lunch, eat a late snack and then a small dinner and I hadn't lost a lb! I'm not a 'breakfast person' but I've been forcing myself to eat in the morning, eat lunch each day and an earlier dinner. In the last three days the scale has gone down. I'm sure I'll plateau after I lose water weight but it's good info to get the ball rolling! Eat!
@tlroof good for you. When we start listening to our bodies it will tell us what it likes. Keep experimenting on you.
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GaleHawkins wrote: »My epiphany. I recently realized that I was literally starving myself to a fatter me. It's so hard to figure out what to believe in the world of weight loss but this is true! We cannot starve ourselves and get results! I have a very active job working outside since April of this year and I thought I would definitely see some weight loss. I decided to skip breakfast and lunch, eat a late snack and then a small dinner and I hadn't lost a lb! I'm not a 'breakfast person' but I've been forcing myself to eat in the morning, eat lunch each day and an earlier dinner. In the last three days the scale has gone down. I'm sure I'll plateau after I lose water weight but it's good info to get the ball rolling! Eat!
@tlroof good for you. When we start listening to our bodies it will tell us what it likes.
How is "forcing myself to eat in the morning" = listening to her body? <confused>0 -
snickerscharlie wrote: »GaleHawkins wrote: »My epiphany. I recently realized that I was literally starving myself to a fatter me. It's so hard to figure out what to believe in the world of weight loss but this is true! We cannot starve ourselves and get results! I have a very active job working outside since April of this year and I thought I would definitely see some weight loss. I decided to skip breakfast and lunch, eat a late snack and then a small dinner and I hadn't lost a lb! I'm not a 'breakfast person' but I've been forcing myself to eat in the morning, eat lunch each day and an earlier dinner. In the last three days the scale has gone down. I'm sure I'll plateau after I lose water weight but it's good info to get the ball rolling! Eat!
@tlroof good for you. When we start listening to our bodies it will tell us what it likes.
How is "forcing myself to eat in the morning" = listening to her body? <confused>
@snickerscharlie I guess it was kind of like me forcing myself to stop eating carbs. Man can be double minded when it comes to food.
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Sorry, it doesn't work this way.0
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oh that is why all the hungry people in the world gain weight after eating just one bowl of rice a day..or even nothing.0
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OP if you believe on the basis of 3 days results that you eating breakfast , lunch and an early dinner is the key yto your weight loss, then go for it. I think just about everyone here thinks you do not understand how weight loss works. I would hope other new people just read the stickies and understand how it really works. Plenty of people here dont eat breakfast or lunch, but have lost just fine over a period exceeding 3 days.0
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Maybe "Starvation Mode" didn't happen to you and others on this site, but it sure happened to me. For years, I was eating maybe 800 calories: no weight loss. In fact, I slowly gained weight over the years until I was well over 200 lbs. When I joined this site and started to log my food, I started to eat more (1450 calories!), but I started to eat better.NikiChicken wrote: »Your body doesn't work that way. If you're starving yourself, you'll lose weight. But eating that little could set people up for binges, which would negate their progress.
You don't have to eat breakfast if you don't want to; just fit those calories in at a later time.
OP, the "Starvation Mode" you described does NOT exist. It just doesn't. It's a bunch of hogwash that needs to just die already and quit being spread around. You were likely overcompensating at dinner for skipping breakfast and lunch and that was the cause of the no loss. Your body was starving after all day not eating! You are likely losing now because you are no longer letting yourself get so darned hungry before eating.
Now, I will 'fess up that (I believe) a major problem was my sugar intake during the starvation years was way too high for a pre-diabetic. When I got my sugar below 30 g daily, weight loss went much easier. But, even now, more than 40 lbs later and around 1200 daily caloric intake, I'm still eating more than I did when I started.
I think my points are, 1. Circumstances alter cases: there are potentially too many factors at play for each individual to make one-size-fits-all conclusions, including CICO, and 2. No one on these forums can know the eating habits/lives of anyone else unless they live with them. If people could stop making inferences and snap-judgments, that would be great. We'll all just trying to lose/gain/maintain weight here. Thanks.
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Gained weight on 800 calories. Classic0
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Maybe "Starvation Mode" didn't happen to you and others on this site, but it sure happened to me. For years, I was eating maybe 800 calories: no weight loss. In fact, I slowly gained weight over the years until I was well over 200 lbs. When I joined this site and started to log my food, I started to eat more (1450 calories!), but I started to eat better.NikiChicken wrote: »Your body doesn't work that way. If you're starving yourself, you'll lose weight. But eating that little could set people up for binges, which would negate their progress.
You don't have to eat breakfast if you don't want to; just fit those calories in at a later time.
OP, the "Starvation Mode" you described does NOT exist. It just doesn't. It's a bunch of hogwash that needs to just die already and quit being spread around. You were likely overcompensating at dinner for skipping breakfast and lunch and that was the cause of the no loss. Your body was starving after all day not eating! You are likely losing now because you are no longer letting yourself get so darned hungry before eating.
Now, I will 'fess up that (I believe) a major problem was my sugar intake during the starvation years was way too high for a pre-diabetic. When I got my sugar below 30 g daily, weight loss went much easier. But, even now, more than 40 lbs later and around 1200 daily caloric intake, I'm still eating more than I did when I started.
I think my points are, 1. Circumstances alter cases: there are potentially too many factors at play for each individual to make one-size-fits-all conclusions, including CICO, and 2. No one on these forums can know the eating habits/lives of anyone else unless they live with them. If people could stop making inferences and snap-judgments, that would be great. We'll all just trying to lose/gain/maintain weight here. Thanks.
The show "Secret Eaters", comes to mind. Just saying...0 -
cwolfman13 wrote: »Starvation Mode is real...
just not in the way that you think OP...
PS- Sure, there are no overweight people in concentration camps. Anorexics will also vouch for its existence. No disputing that. I'm just stating that I lost weight when I ate sensibly, is all.
/activates flame shield0 -
Maybe "Starvation Mode" didn't happen to you and others on this site, but it sure happened to me. For years, I was eating maybe 800 calories: no weight loss. In fact, I slowly gained weight over the years until I was well over 200 lbs. When I joined this site and started to log my food, I started to eat more (1450 calories!), but I started to eat better.NikiChicken wrote: »Your body doesn't work that way. If you're starving yourself, you'll lose weight. But eating that little could set people up for binges, which would negate their progress.
You don't have to eat breakfast if you don't want to; just fit those calories in at a later time.
OP, the "Starvation Mode" you described does NOT exist. It just doesn't. It's a bunch of hogwash that needs to just die already and quit being spread around. You were likely overcompensating at dinner for skipping breakfast and lunch and that was the cause of the no loss. Your body was starving after all day not eating! You are likely losing now because you are no longer letting yourself get so darned hungry before eating.
Now, I will 'fess up that (I believe) a major problem was my sugar intake during the starvation years was way too high for a pre-diabetic. When I got my sugar below 30 g daily, weight loss went much easier. But, even now, more than 40 lbs later and around 1200 daily caloric intake, I'm still eating more than I did when I started.
I think my points are, 1. Circumstances alter cases: there are potentially too many factors at play for each individual to make one-size-fits-all conclusions, including CICO, and 2. No one on these forums can know the eating habits/lives of anyone else unless they live with them. If people could stop making inferences and snap-judgments, that would be great. We'll all just trying to lose/gain/maintain weight here. Thanks.
I'm really not trying to be rude or dismissive, but it didn't happen to you because it is a physical impossibility. Seriously.
It's possible you thought you were eating 800 calories a day, but if that were true, you'd have lost a ton of weight and ended up in an eating disorder program. You say you were eating a lot of sugar and didn't start logging until around the time that you upped your calories, so there is no way you could know how many calories you were eating before.
Again, I'm not trying to belittle your experience, it's just that it's literally impossible to gain weight up to 200 lbs on 800 calories a day.
ETA I'm also not implying you are lying or obviously delusional about your perceived calorie intake; even after years of logging I can think "I should eat a big dinner; I can't have eaten more than a few hundred calories today", but then add up my intake and find that it's 2 or 3 times the calorie level of my quick "guesstimate".0 -
Maybe "Starvation Mode" didn't happen to you and others on this site, but it sure happened to me. For years, I was eating maybe 800 calories: no weight loss. In fact, I slowly gained weight over the years until I was well over 200 lbs. When I joined this site and started to log my food, I started to eat more (1450 calories!), but I started to eat better.
Now, I will 'fess up that (I believe) a major problem was my sugar intake during the starvation years was way too high for a pre-diabetic. When I got my sugar below 30 g daily, weight loss went much easier. But, even now, more than 40 lbs later and around 1200 daily caloric intake, I'm still eating more than I did when I started.
I think my points are, 1. Circumstances alter cases: there are potentially too many factors at play for each individual to make one-size-fits-all conclusions, including CICO, and 2. No one on these forums can know the eating habits/lives of anyone else unless they live with them. If people could stop making inferences and snap-judgments, that would be great. We'll all just trying to lose/gain/maintain weight here. Thanks.
You're saying you got to 200 pounds eating 800 calories a day?0 -
Seems legit ....lolLiftng4Lis wrote: »Maybe "Starvation Mode" didn't happen to you and others on this site, but it sure happened to me. For years, I was eating maybe 800 calories: no weight loss. In fact, I slowly gained weight over the years until I was well over 200 lbs. When I joined this site and started to log my food, I started to eat more (1450 calories!), but I started to eat better.
Now, I will 'fess up that (I believe) a major problem was my sugar intake during the starvation years was way too high for a pre-diabetic. When I got my sugar below 30 g daily, weight loss went much easier. But, even now, more than 40 lbs later and around 1200 daily caloric intake, I'm still eating more than I did when I started.
I think my points are, 1. Circumstances alter cases: there are potentially too many factors at play for each individual to make one-size-fits-all conclusions, including CICO, and 2. No one on these forums can know the eating habits/lives of anyone else unless they live with them. If people could stop making inferences and snap-judgments, that would be great. We'll all just trying to lose/gain/maintain weight here. Thanks.
You're saying you got to 200 pounds eating 800 calories a day?
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Maybe "Starvation Mode" didn't happen to you and others on this site, but it sure happened to me. For years, I was eating maybe 800 calories: no weight loss. In fact, I slowly gained weight over the years until I was well over 200 lbs. When I joined this site and started to log my food, I started to eat more (1450 calories!), but I started to eat better.NikiChicken wrote: »Your body doesn't work that way. If you're starving yourself, you'll lose weight. But eating that little could set people up for binges, which would negate their progress.
You don't have to eat breakfast if you don't want to; just fit those calories in at a later time.
OP, the "Starvation Mode" you described does NOT exist. It just doesn't. It's a bunch of hogwash that needs to just die already and quit being spread around. You were likely overcompensating at dinner for skipping breakfast and lunch and that was the cause of the no loss. Your body was starving after all day not eating! You are likely losing now because you are no longer letting yourself get so darned hungry before eating.
Now, I will 'fess up that (I believe) a major problem was my sugar intake during the starvation years was way too high for a pre-diabetic. When I got my sugar below 30 g daily, weight loss went much easier. But, even now, more than 40 lbs later and around 1200 daily caloric intake, I'm still eating more than I did when I started.
I think my points are, 1. Circumstances alter cases: there are potentially too many factors at play for each individual to make one-size-fits-all conclusions, including CICO, and 2. No one on these forums can know the eating habits/lives of anyone else unless they live with them. If people could stop making inferences and snap-judgments, that would be great. We'll all just trying to lose/gain/maintain weight here. Thanks.
The least expensive tissue in the human body to maintain is pure fat which generally costs 2 calories per pound to maintain. So if you weighed 200 lbs of pure fat (no organs, muscle, or bones), you might, might maintain at 800 calories. You'd have to also have to live a bed ridden existence on top of that though.
You also said your weight loss happened after you joined MFP. Would I be correct in the impression that while you feel you were eating 800 calories before, you weren't weighing, or even logging that food?0 -
I could get to 200 on 800 calories a day. Of course, I'd be starting above 200.
Nobody gained weight up to 200 eating 800 calories a day. It just didn't happen, whether you believe it did or not. You'd be more believable if you claimed you could fly. At least there could be some discussion on gliding versus flying. There's no reasonable discussion to be had on gaining up to 200 on 800 calories a day.0 -
Caloric surplus at 800 calories? Hah, only if your BMR is 500.
This comment is to be said to the rhythm of "Baby Got Back" by Sir Mix A Lot.0 -
I starved myself into the hospital...impossible to eat fewer calories and get 'fat'...0
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I starved myself fat too. Then I started really logging EVERYTHING I ate or drink for 2 weeks. Turns out I was eating a lot of stuff and forgetting I ate it. Or I was eating food and not realizing how many calories I was actually eating. I wasn't starving myself at all, I was eating way more than I realized hence I was slowly but surely gaining weight.0
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