Getting out of Starvation Mode

aberman6

I know that there have been many posts on this topic that have already been created, but more than anything I just wanted to vent about my experiences somewhere.

I recently returned to school and vowed to finally lose the excess weight I've been carrying around for years. I've been eating around 500 net calories a day for about 3 weeks because I didn't believe I should be eating back my exercise calories (which I now realize is wrong). In about 4 weeks I lost about 5 lbs, which was a reasonable loss, so I wasn't overly concerned at first. For the past couple days I've been trying to slowly up my calories, but my weight has suddenly jumped up around 3 lbs in 2 days. I know this can't possibly be fat, but it's still freaking me out. I'm also really disappointed in myself that I did so much work in what I thought was a healthy way, and clearly was doing it all wrong.

Like I said, I know I'm being repetitive. Mostly I am looking for support or advice about where to go from here.

heybales

I know that there have been many posts on this topic that have already been created, but more than anything I just wanted to vent about my experiences somewhere.

I recently returned to school and vowed to finally lose the excess weight I've been carrying around for years. I've been eating around 500 net calories a day for about 3 weeks because I didn't believe I should be eating back my exercise calories (which I now realize is wrong). In about 4 weeks I lost about 5 lbs, which was a reasonable loss, so I wasn't overly concerned at first. For the past couple days I've been trying to slowly up my calories, but my weight has suddenly jumped up around 3 lbs in 2 days. I know this can't possibly be fat, but it's still freaking me out. I'm also really disappointed in myself that I did so much work in what I thought was a healthy way, and clearly was doing it all wrong.

Like I said, I know I'm being repetitive. Mostly I am looking for support or advice about where to go from here.

Well, like you said, being realistic with what happened.

Most people drop 3-5 lbs in first week and that is obviously not all fat either, so you had big water weight drop, and now water weight gain.

This time though, since exercising, your body is probably finally getting a chance to store glucose with required water.

Since you are now thinking healthy, I sure hope with so little to lose, you have also selected weight loss goal of 1lb a week. Anything more is not healthy for you, besides fact of needing to eat back exercise calories to maintain that same healthier deficit.

BTW, what you might do is increase daily calories by only 200 for a week, and then another week, until you get up to the new daily goal when you change the loss to 1 lb weekly.

Being just 4 weeks, you likely didn't really mess up your metabolism, though only 5 lbs in 4 wks is rather little for the huge deficit you took, so it has slowed down for sure, or you'd be losing a lot more if it had not.

batigol1985

Hey OP,

I actually just posted about a similar issue I had. I too have been eating really really low calories ( usually 400-500Kcal net). Sometimes with exercise I was in minus net calories. Then I would have a day at maybe 1200kcal and look at scales and just panic!!

If you read from my post I have had a week of 2 days extreme starvation then a huge binge. Like you said I cant possibly have put on lots of weight in that time but I feel I need to punish myself tomorrow for binging today. What I think we need to do is focus on eating sustainably healthy diet. Im probably underweight and should eat at minimum 2000kcal maintenance....if i get a quarter of this at the moment I probably think I have overdone it. My mindset is totally unhealthy and dangerously so