"Starvation Mode"

Bluestar083

Best post ever.
just got told off after a poster said he/she wasn't losing weight on 1200 cals and would he/she GAIN weight if he/she ate 1000 calories....believe the starvation mode people
When I pointed out people in famine stricken countries aren't GAINING weight and I sometimes ate 1000 calories a day i was reported for encouraging eating disorders.
Um. Right.
Idiots.
Best post ever.

suzieduh

Best post ever.
just got told off after a poster said he/she wasn't losing weight on 1200 cals and would he/she GAIN weight if he/she ate 1000 calories....believe the starvation mode people
When I pointed out people in famine stricken countries aren't GAINING weight and I sometimes ate 1000 calories a day i was reported for encouraging eating disorders.
Um. Right.
Idiots.
Best post ever.

:bigsmile: :bigsmile:

jellybaby84

Brilliant post, I totally agree.

I hate seeing the constant "eat more" "up your calories" "you're in starvation mode" responses all the time from soooo many people.

bigbugboo

When this happens to me I go a day or two with no exercise and more calories..seems to confuse the heck out my body and usually gets me outta the no weight loss rut

Funny you should say that! Yesterday I was out all day at auctions, so couldn't do my usual workout. I was sat around most of the day in the auction room and went a little over my prescribed 1200 calories, and voila! A very unexpected loss of 1lb this morning!

engineman312

‎"You cannot "eat more" calories to force your body to "lose weight". The laws of physics and thermodynamics will simply not allow it.

myfitnesspal scoff at physics!! ha ha!!

These aren't my words .They're from a facebook friend who's a nutitionist!

if it was on facebook, then it has to be true.

Gigi_licious

Best post ever.
just got told off after a poster said he/she wasn't losing weight on 1200 cals and would he/she GAIN weight if he/she ate 1000 calories....believe the starvation mode people
When I pointed out people in famine stricken countries aren't GAINING weight and I sometimes ate 1000 calories a day i was reported for encouraging eating disorders.
Um. Right.
Idiots.
Best post ever.

I really hope that it was not my friend who really can't eat over 1,000 because she WILL gain due to the medication she's on and her doctor AND a specialist have told her not to eat more than that. She has tested it and tried it, in her case she physically CAN'T eat more than than without facing a big disappointment on the scale. I only say I hope it wasn't her because she does post in the forums a lot trying to get advice, and I have seen people get really snarky with her. I was one of them before we were friends.

LilMissFoodie

hate to break it to you but most nutritionists are pretty clueless beyond what they were taught in school. Maybe your friend is different, but I don't buy it as "this is true b/c my nutritionist friend said so".

Really? I'm not a nutritionist, but I am a registered dietitian. I could not tell you any of the things I learned at university (although, they may be similar to the things I am still learning about now), since I have learnt so much more since I started working. I am legally required to document a certain amount of continued professional development each year... I'm not sure how you would get away with not knowing anything beyond what you were taught in school!

Tisha247

I agree whole heartedly to this post! it is common sense.

suzieduh

bump

iwatts

Bump

piratepiet

great post! i have been fighting about this with so many people... it would just be witchcraft if you would gain weight by "starving" - go and tell that the starving people around the world - wait - just the fat starving people. Can't find any? exactly!

reason over bs - you are a hero! :-)

M3CH4N1C

What does it mean when people reply "bump".

suzieduh

What does it mean when people reply "bump".

either they are on a smartphone and don't have time to read it. when you reply to any post it goes into My Topics, making it easier for you to access at a later date when you are sat down with your laptop/PC. Or it can be bumped to ensure the topic is bumped up to the top of the Message Board as thats how MFP works!

fteale

I don't agree with this.

According to all the calculators, my BMR (which is supposed to be how many calories I would burn if I did nothing but rest) is over 1800. I never eat more than 1800 calories in a day unless it's a day that I have worked out, but my net is always way under 1800 calories. And I work out (usually an hour of zumba) 3-4 times a week, which I've been told that for a normal weight person, which I am over 100lbs overweight, burns at least 800 calories. Plus I work full times, a single parent with 2 kids, yadda yadda, so the only rest I get is my sleep at night which is only 5 - 7 hours.

I would say you are massively overestimating your exercise cals. Zumba doesn't burn anything like 800 cals an hour. More like 400-500 from what I have seen on here.
Also the amount of sleep you are getting may be a factor. I hit a 5 week plateau over the summer and it was because I was only getting 5 hours sleep a night. I had a few nights of 8 hours sleep and dropped 5 lbs in a few days. I water retain hugely when I don't get enough sleep.

pshearer7777

I don't think that you will gain weight by starving yourself, but I think that the importance of eating too little (wherever that line is for each person) cannot be overlooked.

If you do eat too few calories, your body does cannibalize muscle to make up the deficit. This is a scientific fact that can be verified when reading the research on people with eating disorders. Yes, they lost weight, but their muscle:fat ratio is way off. And since it is also fact that a pound of muscle burns more calories than a pound of fat, heading down that road lowers your overall metabolism and is self-defeating for those trying to lose weight in a healthy, sustainable manner and increase overall health.

That is why it is important to do three things. 1) Restrict calories, but not too far. There is a line and a point at which you are not making yourself more healthy (whether or not the scale moves down). Where is too far? Ask a doctor. 2) Do some sort of muscle training. This is important because no matter what, with calorie restriction, you risk a certain amount of muscle breaking down. You must build it back up. 3) Do cardiovascular exercise. When you get yourself worked up to a certain point, your body must break down fat stores moreso than carbs. This is explained fairly well here: http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/busting-the-great-myths-of-fat-burning.html among many other places.

So, someone who is stalling on the scale may be eating too many calories or too few calories (by slowing metobolism and lowering their BMR, causing their body to try to hoard) or not exercising cardiovascularly enough. Someone who is gaining is almost always eating too many calories. Short of a huge hormone imbalance, I can't imagine a time when someone gaining is eating too few calories. However, someone could have damaged their body to the point where their daily BMR is only 800 calories and if they eat 1000, then they will gain. Such a person should not be seeking advice from amateurs and "second hand experts" (myself even included here... I've only done research from textbooks and speaking with doctors) and should see a doctor directly for their issue.

fteale

I think the biggest aspect to focus on is calories vs. nutrients. If you consume mass amounts of calories but they are "empty" calories, and contain very little nutrients i.e. american diet, then your body can still be in hunger mode because its starving for nutrients. Technically, your diet can consist of little calories but if high in nutrients will satisfy your body, and vice versa. Remember all these ideas and information are a part of science, not law. There are still mysteries of the human body yet to be learned, and thats a good reason why you should pay good attention to to yourself and how you feel. Instead of using these guides like they are holy nutrition books. If you are only paying attention to calories, then maybe your body is in starvation mode?

I agree with this to a certain extent. When I started uni the food was awful in college and we didn't have any cooking facilities. I basically lived on cheese toasties and apples for a year because there simply wasn't anything else I could cook in my room, and although I ate enough calories, I was starving all the time, because I wasn't getting enough nutrition-wise.

fteale

I thought the muscle burning more calories at rest thing was a total myth?

pshearer7777

I though the muscle burning more calories at rest thing was a total myth?

"For example, muscle tissue has been observed to burn roughly seven to 10 calories per pound per day, compared to two to three calories per pound per day for fat. "

Source: Dr. Cedric X. Bryant, ACE's Chief Science Officer; ACE FitnessMatters, Mar/Apr 2006

Therefore, muscle burns as little as 2x and as much as 5x as much as fat.

M3CH4N1C

Thanks, I know what bump means on MFP.

Alloranx

Proof that starvation mode is utter bull$#!7:

http://pdfcast.org/pdf/382-day-fast

276 lbs lost in 382 days (an average of 0.72 lbs/day) while eating nothing but multivitamins, mineral supplements, some yeast, and water or other zero calorie fluids. And he kept it off for 5 years afterward, only regaining 16 lbs.

No starvation mode there....after 382 days of near 0 calories.

Note: don't try this at home, this was done with lots of medical supervision.

Along the same lines, if starvation mode were real, bariatric surgery (or very low calorie diets) would not work. We know objectively that bariatric surgery works very well. Therefore, starvation mode is BS.

Does metabolism go down during fasting or very low calorie diets? Yes. Does it go down to zero? OF COURSE NOT. The only time your BMR is zero is when you are dead. If you have stalled losing weight at a certain caloric level, then eating less will begin you losing again. In every situation. If you don't believe it, then fast for a few days, eating nothing and drinking only water, and then tell me about how much weight you gained. You won't gain any, because that's physically impossible (unless you are drinking ridiculous amounts of water and refusing to urinate, defecate, or breathe). You would have to have a negative BMR so that your body is actually producing matter from nothingness. That would technically make you Jesus or something.

I am not advocating very low calorie diets or extended periods of fasting here. They usually (but not in all cases) will have a problem with rebounding weight gain after the diet is done. Clearly our guy above who lost 276 lbs and kept it off is an exception. They can be effective for some people, but it is usually done under strict medical supervision. I am saying that if you are having trouble losing weight at a certain calorie intake, one of three things is happening:

1. Your BMR has decreased, and it could be for any number of reasons. Those formulas are only estimates for the average person with your parameters, your BMR may be considerably lower than the predicted. As you lose weight, your BMR will naturally decrease somewhat. The solution to this is not "eat more." It's "eat less." There is actually an absolute floor to how low your BMR can go that is the true minimum to keep your body from dying. Your body will burn body fat like a crazy monkey to support this minimum BMR, and it will not stop until it has no fat left, because it likes being alive. By contrast, there is no minimum to how few calories you can consume except 0. You can always outpace your BMR, and force your body to burn fat to keep you going.

2. You are overestimating the amount of calories you burn from exercise. Keep in mind that the BMR formula here takes into account your activity level, so eating back your exercise calories does not make sense except in the case that you exercised very much more strenuously than your reported normal level of activity when you set up your account, and even then you should not eat back all your exercise calories, as some of them are accounted for, again, in the formula.

3. You are not keeping track of all of your calorie sources, and are actually getting more calories per day than you think. Double check that you are taking into account *accurately* all the butter/oil/dressings you use in cooking, and aren't forgetting to log anything.

None of those things is starvation mode. That guy that lost 276 lbs above? At no point in that 382 day fast was he truly in starvation mode. Starvation mode occurs when there is no fat left in your body except so-called "essential fat", and your body is forced to start eating all your muscles to survive. There is probably no one on this forum who has ever experienced this kind of starvation, and you probably never will unless you develop a severe case of anorexia nervosa, or you go to a developing country during a famine and stay there for an extended period. Basically, if you are in starvation mode, you are about to die from lack of calories, and you have practically no subcutaneous fat left at all. Anyone who is obese is nowhere near that level. I think part of this confusion is from the way we as a society use the word "starving" so flippantly after we miss 1 meal, when really almost none of us know what that word really means through experience.

And for that matter, the idea that you will lose primarily muscle if you eat too little (which I hear all over the internet) is pitifully ignorant. Fat's primary purpose in your body is to be a buffer to prevent your body from having to burn muscle in times of famine. It would make about as much sense for your body to burn protein preferentially over fat as it would for you to preferentially burn tables and chairs and ceiling rafters instead of a pile of perfectly good firewood when winter rolls around. Our bodies try *desperately* to avoid burning protein until they have no choice but to do so, and at that point, as I said above, you are close to death from starvation. That's not to say your body won't burn some protein from muscle before that point, it totally will. But it will minimize it absolutely as much as it can and try to use fat for everything. There is abundant research evidence for this and many different mechanisms for it that have been studied.

Is it all as simple as calories in / calories out? No. There are a lot of hormonal and probably hereditary factors at play, and not all calories are equal. But calories in / calories out is in fact the *major* determinant of weight. You will never, ever gain weight from eating too few calories, as that is physically impossible. Even on a low carb diet, if you eat enough protein and fat to hit maintenance calories, you will not lose weight, and you certainly won't lose fat. Low carb is an assistance tool, not magic.

suzieduh

Proof that starvation mode is utter bull$#!7:

http://pdfcast.org/pdf/382-day-fast

276 lbs lost in 382 days (an average of 0.72 lbs/day) while eating nothing but multivitamins, mineral supplements, some yeast, and water or other zero calorie fluids. And he kept it off for 5 years afterward, only regaining 16 lbs.

No starvation mode there....after 382 days of near 0 calories.

Note: don't try this at home, this was done with lots of medical supervision.

Along the same lines, if starvation mode were real, bariatric surgery (or very low calorie diets) would not work. We know objectively that bariatric surgery works very well. Therefore, starvation mode is BS.

Does metabolism go down during fasting or very low calorie diets? Yes. Does it go down to zero? OF COURSE NOT. The only time your BMR is zero is when you are dead. If you have stalled losing weight at a certain caloric level, then eating less will begin you losing again. In every situation. If you don't believe it, then fast for a few days, eating nothing and drinking only water, and then tell me about how much weight you gained. You won't gain any, because that's physically impossible (unless you are drinking ridiculous amounts of water and refusing to urinate, defecate, or breathe). You would have to have a negative BMR so that your body is actually producing matter from nothingness. That would technically make you Jesus or something.

I am not advocating very low calorie diets or extended periods of fasting here. They usually (but not in all cases) will have a problem with rebounding weight gain after the diet is done. Clearly our guy above who lost 276 lbs and kept it off is an exception. They can be effective for some people, but it is usually done under strict medical supervision. I am saying that if you are having trouble losing weight at a certain calorie intake, one of three things is happening:

1. Your BMR has decreased, and it could be for any number of reasons. Those formulas are only estimates for the average person with your parameters, your BMR may be considerably lower than the predicted. As you lose weight, your BMR will naturally decrease somewhat. The solution to this is not "eat more." It's "eat less." There is actually an absolute floor to how low your BMR can go that is the true minimum to keep your body from dying. Your body will burn body fat like a crazy monkey to support this minimum BMR, and it will not stop until it has no fat left, because it likes being alive. By contrast, there is no minimum to how few calories you can consume except 0. You can always outpace your BMR, and force your body to burn fat to keep you going.

2. You are overestimating the amount of calories you burn from exercise. Keep in mind that the BMR formula here takes into account your activity level, so eating back your exercise calories does not make sense except in the case that you exercised very much more strenuously than your reported normal level of activity when you set up your account, and even then you should not eat back all your exercise calories, as some of them are accounted for, again, in the formula.

3. You are not keeping track of all of your calorie sources, and are actually getting more calories per day than you think. Double check that you are taking into account *accurately* all the butter/oil/dressings you use in cooking, and aren't forgetting to log anything.

None of those things is starvation mode. That guy that lost 276 lbs above? At no point in that 382 day fast was he truly in starvation mode. Starvation mode occurs when there is no fat left in your body except so-called "essential fat", and your body is forced to start eating all your muscles to survive. There is probably no one on this forum who has ever experienced this kind of starvation, and you probably never will unless you develop a severe case of anorexia nervosa, or you go to a developing country during a famine and stay there for an extended period. Basically, if you are in starvation mode, you are about to die from lack of calories, and you have practically no subcutaneous fat left at all. Anyone who is obese is nowhere near that level. I think part of this confusion is from the way we as a society use the word "starving" so flippantly after we miss 1 meal, when really almost none of us know what that word really means through experience.

And for that matter, the idea that you will lose primarily muscle if you eat too little (which I hear all over the internet) is pitifully ignorant. Fat's primary purpose in your body is to be a buffer to prevent your body from having to burn muscle in times of famine. It would make about as much sense for your body to burn protein preferentially over fat as it would for you to preferentially burn tables and chairs and ceiling rafters instead of a pile of perfectly good firewood when winter rolls around. Our bodies try *desperately* to avoid burning protein until they have no choice but to do so, and at that point, as I said above, you are close to death from starvation. That's not to say your body won't burn some protein from muscle before that point, it totally will. But it will minimize it absolutely as much as it can and try to use fat for everything. There is abundant research evidence for this and many different mechanisms for it that have been studied.

Is it all as simple as calories in / calories out? No. There are a lot of hormonal and probably hereditary factors at play, and not all calories are equal. But calories in / calories out is in fact the *major* determinant of weight. You will never, ever gain weight from eating too few calories, as that is physically impossible. Even on a low carb diet, if you eat enough protein and fat to hit maintenance calories, you will not lose weight, and you certainly won't lose fat. Low carb is an assistance tool, not magic.

^^ this

FelizMi

I don't agree with this.

According to all the calculators, my BMR (which is supposed to be how many calories I would burn if I did nothing but rest) is over 1800. I never eat more than 1800 calories in a day unless it's a day that I have worked out, but my net is always way under 1800 calories. And I work out (usually an hour of zumba) 3-4 times a week, which I've been told that for a normal weight person, which I am over 100lbs overweight, burns at least 800 calories. Plus I work full times, a single parent with 2 kids, yadda yadda, so the only rest I get is my sleep at night which is only 5 - 7 hours.

I would say you are massively overestimating your exercise cals. Zumba doesn't burn anything like 800 cals an hour. More like 400-500 from what I have seen on here.
Also the amount of sleep you are getting may be a factor. I hit a 5 week plateau over the summer and it was because I was only getting 5 hours sleep a night. I had a few nights of 8 hours sleep and dropped 5 lbs in a few days. I water retain hugely when I don't get enough sleep.

Exactly my point! It's not just about calories in and calories out! And even if I didn't do any zumba at all, just "living" and "moving" grocery shopping, walking to the office building, walking up and down the stairs, I still wouldn't net any where close to 1800 calories a day. I should be losing something, not gaining!

HouseTargaryen

I don't agree with this.

According to all the calculators, my BMR (which is supposed to be how many calories I would burn if I did nothing but rest) is over 1800. I never eat more than 1800 calories in a day unless it's a day that I have worked out, but my net is always way under 1800 calories. And I work out (usually an hour of zumba) 3-4 times a week, which I've been told that for a normal weight person, which I am over 100lbs overweight, burns at least 800 calories. Plus I work full times, a single parent with 2 kids, yadda yadda, so the only rest I get is my sleep at night which is only 5 - 7 hours.

Now I've been doing this same thing since I had lap band surgery almost 2 years ago. Since the beginning of this year I have lost nothing, not a single pound. I will flux 5 or so lbs up and down, but I'm actually netting a gain right now. If all it is to weight loss is calories in vs calories out, why have I not lost anything all year?

I would say you need to be eating fewer calories then.

From my experience BMR calculators assume far too much. They usually assume they know the lean vs. non-lean composition of your body based solely upon your height, weight, age and gender. They definitely don't. Even then, if you used the best measurement of lean body mass (perhaps from DEXA [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEXA]) it still isn't right on. There is so much at work in your body that it those calculators should only be considered a very rough estimate, if even that.

According to my weight and APPROX bmi (using calipers), I should be able to eat 1800 calories in a day of do-nothingness, and gain nothing. This might be close to true, but I know that unless I'm netting about 1200-1300 in a day I will not be losing any weight to speak of. It's one of those things where you have to play around with the numbers some until you see some results.

HouseTargaryen

(in other words I guess I'm just agreeing with you lol)

FelizMi

I don't agree with this.

According to all the calculators, my BMR (which is supposed to be how many calories I would burn if I did nothing but rest) is over 1800. I never eat more than 1800 calories in a day unless it's a day that I have worked out, but my net is always way under 1800 calories. And I work out (usually an hour of zumba) 3-4 times a week, which I've been told that for a normal weight person, which I am over 100lbs overweight, burns at least 800 calories. Plus I work full times, a single parent with 2 kids, yadda yadda, so the only rest I get is my sleep at night which is only 5 - 7 hours.

Now I've been doing this same thing since I had lap band surgery almost 2 years ago. Since the beginning of this year I have lost nothing, not a single pound. I will flux 5 or so lbs up and down, but I'm actually netting a gain right now. If all it is to weight loss is calories in vs calories out, why have I not lost anything all year?

I would say you need to be eating fewer calories then.

From my experience BMR calculators assume far too much. They usually assume they know the lean vs. non-lean composition of your body based solely upon your height, weight, age and gender. They definitely don't. Even then, if you used the best measurement of lean body mass (perhaps from DEXA [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEXA]) it still isn't right on. There is so much at work in your body that it those calculators should only be considered a very rough estimate, if even that.

According to my weight and APPROX bmi (using calipers), I should be able to eat 1800 calories in a day of do-nothingness, and gain nothing. This might be close to true, but I know that unless I'm netting about 1200-1300 in a day I will not be losing any weight to speak of. It's one of those things where you have to play around with the numbers some until you see some results.

Again, if it were as simple as calories in vs. calories, I would have to have a BMR of like 500 to still be gaining. My point simply is that it's not as simple as burn more calories than you take in.

HouseTargaryen

It would be very strange if you could eat 500 calories and gain weight!! :frown:

geekymom57

Without getting into the scientific merits of the discussion, there are several comments that are hot spots for me. First, a nutritionist is not necessarily the same as a trained dietitian. Depending on the country and the professional requirements, they may not be even remotely close. I am in the US, and as such, have much more respect for information that is being provided by a dietitian than a nutritionist.

Second, weight loss is not instaneous. Reducing one's caloreis by exercise, less food intake, etc., will not poroduce an immediate, overnight weight loss. It isn't as simple as weighing a pound of butter at night, taking two sticks off the scale in the morning and weighing it again. As such, weight loss resulting from a couple/three days of reduced net calories is not likely to occur immediately.

Third, my dietitian stressed the need to eat at least 1200 calories (at least for me) based on the nutritional requirements needed to and to appease hunger. And if I understood her explanation of plateaus and why they occur, a plateau is your body's response to a new weight--higher or lower-- and the adjustment to your metablism needed to maintain that new weight. You can't "trick" it out of a plaeau simply by eating a lot more or a lot less--it's more the weight than the calorie intake alone.

lisasdoinit

sigh.
i don't know the science, i don't understand the math.

here's what i do know:
Week 1 on MFP: tracked every single bite. cut out caffeine, pop, processed food, and aspertame. Stuck to 1150-1200 calories a day, 3 litres of water.
Gained 2lbs.

Week 2 on MFP - all of the above, only I ate 1400-1500 calories a day.
Lost 3lbs.

So...yah.

Alloranx

If you do eat too few calories, your body does cannibalize muscle to make up the deficit. This is a scientific fact that can be verified when reading the research on people with eating disorders. Yes, they lost weight, but their muscle:fat ratio is way off. And since it is also fact that a pound of muscle burns more calories than a pound of fat, heading down that road lowers your overall metabolism and is self-defeating for those trying to lose weight in a healthy, sustainable manner and increase overall health.

Your body is always catabolizing muscle and rebuilding it. The issue is whether it is catabolizing muscle or fat to a greater extent, and physiologically, your body will always prefer fat to muscle, because burning muscle compromises the function of your body, and your ability to subsequently find food, if you think about it in an evolutionary context. Adipose deposits have no function other than minor help with heat regulation, and keeping you alive while fasting. Adipose also contains a LOT more energy per unit weight than muscle, and so it is more economical to burn it (it takes some energy to liberate energy from protein and fat). Much research has been done showing that our bodies use multiple different methods when fasting to spare muscle and ramp up fat burning, including increased growth hormone (nearly 6 fold in some studies), increased catecholamines, increased glucagon/insulin ratio, and increased expression of fat utilization enzymes in muscle (your muscles literally eat fat to survive in a fasted state). Fat mobilization increases by up to 50% in the first 24 hours of a fast. If you insist, I can produce many, many studies to this effect.

And, as I said above, after a certain point at which almost all subcutaneous fat is gone, your body *does* begin to metabolize muscle in earnest. This is pretty much the only way I could imagine an anorexic having a poor body fat percentage: when they are so far gone that they are near death, such that their muscle is going very quickly and their essential fat is stable. No one who is obese is in this category.

pitbullmama

bump