the myth, starvation mode, and dont eat before bed.

brianlocal3

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carmenstop1

Was doing some research this morning on "starvation mode" and found this health science article very informative. Not sure if it has been posted already or not.

http://www.healthscience.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=512:are-you-in-the-starvation-mode-or-starving-for-truth&catid=102:jeff-novicks-blog&Itemid=267

and this lady did an excellent job of explaining the above article

http://fattyfightsback.blogspot.com/2009/03/mtyhbusters-starvation-mode.html

Here's what's frustrating for me.

1. Yes you can lose weight in "starvation mode" but some people literally do stall completely. I've been there, and I've seen it dozens of times working with people at my gym.
2. What's the point of trying to eat as little as possible? If we are overweight to begin with, doesn't that kind mean we enjoy eating food. Sorry, but a life of anorexia is not one I want to live.
3.I've said this many, many times, a deficit of calories leads to a slow down of metabolism. Whether it's a 500 calorie deficit or a 2,000 calorie deficit. The difference is how extreme the slowdown happens.
4. What breaks this trend? A SURPLUS of calories. Think about it, if your body has enough calories to STORE some energy like glycogen, how can it be in "starvation mode"
5. What do I know? Maybe something because it's been 7 years since I lost over 100lbs and I am in the best physical shape of my entire life right now and I eat like a King on my spike day.
6. Losing as much weight as I did should have destroyed my metabolism and I should be stuck eating less and exercising daily to keep it off, but I don't. I eat somewhere around 20,000 calories a week and I workout between an hour and 2 hours a week.

If you want to lose weight and keep your metabolism strong, 6 days deficit, 1 day surplus, it really is as simple as that.
We can all agree the term "starvation mode" is the wrong term, but I don't see how anyone can argue that it doesn't happen. The "experts" who disregard it probably have never been fat their entire life. They don't have a clue of what it is really like. To me it's like a politician talking about Irag without ever being in a war.
Is this a problem for people who need to lose 10lbs? No, but for those who are trying to lose 50+ pounds, it absolutely is. Counting hands, how many of us have been through 2-3+ week plateau?
My hand is raised.
Sorry for the rant, but this is personal to me. IMO, there is nothing worse than this while dieting. We eat perfect, we exercise, and we don't lose weight. It's a huge slap in the face.

I agree with a lot of what you said Russell. I also really believe everyone's body responds differently and they have to do what is best for them. Where I get annoyed is every single time someone complains "I'm not losing, what is wrong" 30 people will log in to tell them oh you don't eat enough, your body is in starvation mode. I can almost guarantee that isn't true for most of those people.

I think everyone hits a plateau because their body has their own internal schedule where it needs to stop and readjust itself. Does eating more calories help jump start it along? Maybe? Or maybe for that person it wouldn't have mattered what their calories were, higher or lower. After x amount of time it starts moving again.

Again my opinion only based on my readings of science and nutrition articles. I just think we need to stop telling every single person who hits a plateau, "Oh you are starving, eat more."

Russell, I agree with you 100%! Well said and I love your passion about it!

Meinco, I agree with you about what you said about everyone having their own schedule, but about 90 % those people who come on here and say they are not losing weight are eating less than 1200 calories a day and not losing....I was one of them. I was told to eat more and eat my exercise calories back, and guess what.... I started losing again! I was in starvation mode and I agree, it is probably not the best term, when people hear starvation mode they think of children in 3rd world countries, but it is what it is, call it survival mode if you prefer. It does exist, I know tons of people who have been through it and I know how much it sucks!

carmenstop1

There are tons of articles out there that both support and deny starvation mode:

http://www.burnthefat.com/starvation_mode.html

http://caloriecount.about.com/truth-starvation-mode-ft28742

http://optimalbodyweight.com/qa/weight-loss-tips/body/starvation-mode-weight-loss

http://www.weightlossresources.co.uk/calories/burning_calories/starvation.htm

Russellb97

I believe in the numbers, 3,500 calories of a deficit to lose a pound of fat. If someone has a weekly deficit of 7,000+ calories they should lose 2lbs. Does this always happen? No, usually because of water weight.

The problem is water weight shouldn't bring on a 3-4 week stall.

So then the problem if they are being honest with their food intake and exercise, has to be on the calories OUT. If they are are exercising than the activity is there leaving metabolism as the issue. This is a huge problem, because we can exercise until we are blue in the face and burn very little fat. Our body will use very little fat for exercise energy. Metabolism is our biggest opportunity to burn fat for energy, and if it's not strong, we will have a hard time burning fat.

There's a fine line between losing weight and burning fat. You can lose weight while not burning much fat, and visa versa if you do it correctly.

kcavities

I love your argument! To the people who disagree... think about anorexia. If you don't eat, you're going to lose weight. And the first time you eat after not eating for 2 weeks, you aren't going to suddenly gain weight.

that would, of course, depend on how much you eat. But I would say in a general sense that you actually WOULD gain weight after 2 weeks of starvation rather easily. Plus you'd become pretty sick if you tried to eat to much. There's a reason why they put people who've been POW's and malnourished on very strict low calorie "re-feeding" diets to gradually introduce them to healthy amounts of food again, because the body takes time to recognize again that it's not starving, if you go from no food to a (relatively) high amount of food that person WILL gain weight in the form of fat very fast, far faster than if their metabolism was healthy.

yeah, i don't think the person who mentioned anorexia has personal experience with it (that's a good thing, though). the body will generally lose weight during a fast and gain weight after being reintroduced to food; even if this is done very slowly, the body will typically gain water/food weight immediately. (but yes, it's true that not-eating generally leads to weight loss. of course, it's very unhealthy, realistically unnecessary, and not recommendable.)
i wish the majority of eating disorder specialists and treatment centers would be intelligent enough to treat their patients in the same way as you say malnourished POWs are. my friend, when she was anorexic, went into IP weighing 100 pounds and came out less than two months later weighing 140. 1) that is an unhealthily FAST weight gain 2) they made her overweight for her height, which is counterproductive, but of course they seem just to want people out of their hands 3) jillions of patients experience refeeding syndrome (google it; the wiki article is pretty well informative, in fact) from being fed (sometimes via NG tube) thousands--like 3,500+--calories a day with seriously restricted physical activity. try telling me being forced to eat six massive meals a day and being disallowed to exercise in any way is going to help your health or metabolism. IT'S NOT. by the way, if you think the weight gain was her fault, you try starving yourself until you land in the inpatient-outpatient system which locks you in because when you're underage, your consent doesn't matter, and you won't be allowed to go to school or see your family until you put on the weight they want you to gain.

essentially: starving is bad. binging is bad. yeah, eating enough to compensate for your age-BMI trajectory and activity level IS GOOD. but starvation mode? it's called plateauing and it happens to everyone. still, it didn't keep me from getting to 98lbs a few years ago. i just had to push myself even harder, and i found that giving myself a calorie surplus usually only caused me to gain weight. sure, there were a few bizarre rarities in which i'd restrict for a week, eat over 2000 calories the last day, and then wake up having LOST weight. everyone does not have the same metabolism and our behaviors can certainly affect our metabolisms. it's just so annoying when people say "oh no if you don't eat enough you'll completely stop gaining weight, bad bad bad!!" are you serious? you know there are girls in this world in hospital because their BMIs are under 14 and you're saying...what, they got there by eating a calorie surplus? no, i don't believe so.

here're my two cents about the eating-before-bed concept: i've employed the rule to myself not to eat after 7:00pm, and it has helped me to lose weight. BUT i don't think it has anything to do with my body being better equipped to burn my food during the day. actually, i think the reason the don't-eat-late-at-night rule usually works so well is because many people have a habit of snacking or even binging at night out of boredom, stress, or whathaveyou; and when one sets a mental boundary for oneself--eg DONT EAT AFTER 7 PM or DONT EAT 3 HOURS BEFORE BED--one, with enough willpower or dedication, eliminates the possibility of late-night binging & snacking. it's not about your lowered metabolism when sleeping. trust me, if you don't eat until 9pm and you eat a healthy amount of calories, etc, your deficit will come from the daytime--you might see water/food weight on the scale the next morning, but give yourself another day and things will even out; you may even find that you've continued to lose weight, because the time of day PER SE does not really affect fat loss or gain.

registers

1. Yes you can lose weight in "starvation mode" but some people literally do stall completely. I've been there, and I've seen it dozens of times working with people at my gym.

I wrote about this before. I believe we all due agree that we come to a stand still sometimes. I said this before, I actually posted a topic on it, it's my belief on how starvation mode works. I'll try to state a summary of it.

I believe it works like this, it's about macro nutrient ratios and of course exercise. If you don't exercise it will slow down, no question about that. You can still stall with exercise.

I believe this is because of our macro nutrient ratios. I think that if you eat a high carb diet on low calories, you will obviously burn glycogen for energy. You keep on introducing the glycogen in to the diet which will prevent fat loss to some extent. This is just about energy expenditure of glycogen, I haven't mentioned insulin yet. Most people know that carbs increase insulin levels, on a high carb diet??? this will also store fat. SO you're preventing your fat burning abilities 2 ways.

Can you still lose fat on a high carb diet? Yes, but it takes a "ton" of exercise. I know a guy from this webpage he was eating a 1000 calories a day on a high carb diet. He lost a ton of weight. It made no sense to me, then it hit me, i said "how much did you exercise?" he said "i did 60-120mins of high intensity training."

If you're on a high carb low calorie diet, you need amino acids to support the body, if you don't provide adequte protein, it will get it from the muscle, hence your catabloic state of low calories.


If you do the complete opposite, high protein low calorie diet. I think the effects will be the opposite. For those of us who don't know, protein releases glucagon which liberates fat from the body. It detects low insulin levels, so glucagon is releases to put sugar back in to the blood stream, once it runs out, it starts to use fat.

The common question is "we need glucose too to support brain function." Yes we do, protein can also be converted to glucose. It depends on how much protein you take determines if you lose muscle or not, this depends on your caloric intake of protein.

3.I've said this many, many times, a deficit of calories leads to a slow down of metabolism. Whether it's a 500 calorie deficit or a 2,000 calorie deficit. The difference is how extreme the slowdown happens.

I never thought of it like this, but yes. This is true. As we lose weight, we weigh less, putting less stress on our BMR, which will lower.

registers

Russell, I agree with you 100%! Well said and I love your passion about it!

Meinco, I agree with you about what you said about everyone having their own schedule, but about 90 % those people who come on here and say they are not losing weight are eating less than 1200 calories a day and not losing....I was one of them. I was told to eat more and eat my exercise calories back, and guess what.... I started losing again! I was in starvation mode and I agree, it is probably not the best term, when people hear starvation mode they think of children in 3rd world countries, but it is what it is, call it survival mode if you prefer. It does exist, I know tons of people who have been through it and I know how much it sucks!

This is the interesting thing, I don't think people realize or think about. When you increase your calories, by default this increases certain macro nutrients. Which can promote greater fat loss. If this is true, it's not really so much a caloric issue, more of a macro nutrient issue.

Something I never talked about on this forum, I did mention the basic body types such as Ectomorph, Mesomorph or Endomorph, personal trainers are familiar with this.

Think of a skinny lanky guy, a guy who is moderately fit with little exercise, and a guy who is really big.

By default, the lanky guy can probably run the longest, the heaviest guy can probably guy is probably the strongest. The medium size guy is in between both.
Like comparing a marthon runner to a powerlifter.

Of course part of their physic is sport specific, but we have all seen people like this.

What does this mean? They have a "better" ability to burn certain macro nutrients more efficient than the other person. For example the lanky guy can probably burn carbs most effectively. The big guy can probably utilize protein more effectively. Hence his bigger structure.

jules_lives_outloud

If you are under your calories, you are under your calories. It doesn't matter when you eat. The concept behind this is simple. Eating at night doesn't mean eating a third full dinner at 3:00am. It means consuming enough calories to sustain your life.

ch0c0lati3r

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crisanderson27

Something I never talked about on this forum, I did mention the basic body types such as Ectomorph, Mesomorph or Endomorph, personal trainers are familiar with this.

Think of a skinny lanky guy, a guy who is moderately fit with little exercise, and a guy who is really big.

By default, the lanky guy can probably run the longest, the heaviest guy can probably guy is probably the strongest. The medium size guy is in between both.
Like comparing a marthon runner to a powerlifter.

Of course part of their physic is sport specific, but we have all seen people like this.

What does this mean? They have a "better" ability to burn certain macro nutrients more efficient than the other person. For example the lanky guy can probably burn carbs most effectively. The big guy can probably utilize protein more effectively. Hence his bigger structure.

This is by far the most interesting thing I've seen you say yet. Particularly the last paragraph.

Nice =D.

Cris

webbed1

ASM, I agree with Cris on this, I really like this observation and line of thinking. To add to it, I have seen guys with what I think are crudely designed and executed workout routines, heard them talk about long layoffs, and their partying and eating, and they still look good. Granted, they are very early 30s and I don't care what your genetic advantages are, at some point in the age curve this will hit them very ugly. But still, it points to a further inference: The reason you must diligently experiment and document and try to research and interpret data is that we all have some differences. You can take a guide and then must customize it for yourself.