Does not eating enough slow down your metabolism?

rlprice1231

Hi I was just wondering if eating less than your recommend calories would cause your metabolism to slow down a lot? I'm definitely eating enough but I've heard this EVERYWHERE and I'm wondering if it is true.

ninerbuff

Yes. Any calorie deficit will. The more extreme, the more the body adapts to homeostasis.

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yashila88

Well..if you're wondering if your body will go into the much cited "starvation mode", that theory a myth. For the real starvation mode to happen, you'd have to be ...literally starving, not just eating at a daily deficit.

The true part is that being in a deficit DOES in fact cause your metabolic rate to slow down over time. This is known as adaptive thermogenesis, and it happens as a result of any prolonged deficit. The more excessive (in terms of size and duration) the deficit is, the more significant this drop will be.

The false part however is the idea that this “metabolic slowdown” is significant enough to actually STOP weight loss. It’s not. And it sure as hell isn’t significant enough to cause weight gain.

cafeaulait7

Eat some higher days here and there on purpose if you are concerned about it. That always helps keep me on track anyway Not binge days, though. Just like at maintenance, where you get to fit in more goodies every now and then.

rankinsect

Yes, you do get a metabolic slowdown, but as yashila88 said, it won't stop weight loss. There's no point at which eating more would make you lose weight faster.

If you go too far into a calorie deficit, however, you'll eventually get more severe health effects - more rapid muscle loss, hair loss, loss of menstruation, weakening of the immune system and slower tissue repair, etc. You're also more susceptible to many types of malnutrition because you don't take in enough volume of food to get all essential nutrients. Of course eventually on a prolonged and extreme deficit you can get serious organ damage, even death. Barring a lack of access to food or a severe eating disorder, however, that's not realistically going to happen.

It also makes dieting much harder to sustain, and it's really the sustenance that breeds success - going at a pace too rapid to sustain tends to lead to failure. I'm actually far more successful on a 1900 calorie/day diet than I ever was on a 1350 cal/day one. In fact, ironically, I'm even losing at a faster rate - not because somehow I burn more calories by eating more, but because I actually consistently meet my calorie goals rather than over-restricting some days and binging on others.

cafeaulait7

To be clear, I didn't mean eat more on a consistent basis. I just mean avoid the 'prolonged' part of a (large) prolonged deficit by having higher days here and there.

ModernRock

rlprice1231 wrote: »

Hi I was just wondering if eating less than your recommend calories would cause your metabolism to slow down a lot? I'm definitely eating enough but I've heard this EVERYWHERE and I'm wondering if it is true.

No, not by "a lot". The effect is not worth considering assuming you are eating 1200+ calories a day.

rlprice1231

Thank you all so much for clearing things up for me!!!