The Starvation Mode Myth...again.

aldousmom

I applaud your efforts, but starvation mode will never die on mfp

I think this, too.

Sox90716

Starvation mode is not a myth.
Raspberry ketones work wonders.
Strength training for women will make them grow chest hair.
Bigfoot does exist and owns a condo near Area 51.
Live long and prosper.

Frood42

This study was done on normal weight men who did not have histories of voluntary dieting for weight loss. Science says that we shouldn't automatically apply what was discovered in one population under one set of variables to a completely different population and different set of variables.

Yeah, it's true that if we put a bunch of people in a locked ward and feed them 500 calories a day, they would eventually die of starvation, generally with no energy and lots of stalls or plateaus all along the way.

But, how helpful is that knowledge, really, when it comes to planning a healthy diet that will help us lose weight and keep it off permanently? We're trying to live--not die.

Time after time, controlled studies and anecdotal experiences have shown the following--
*metabolic rate drops *quickly and sharply* as a result of severe caloric restriction
*this is an unpleasant state, physically and emotionally, for the people who endure it
*it is not sustainable as a long-term way of life
*people on extreme diets lose both fat tissue and lean tissue, or muscle
*during a long diet, many people experience weeks or months of no weight change (stalls, or the plateau effect), even at very low calorie intakes
(presumably, when a person can't lose on very low calories, that person would readily gain if more were added, even if the total intake were still "low")
*after the diet, fat is regained far more quickly and to a greater degree than lean tissue; on returning to the same weight, the individual is fatter than before

Maybe "starvation mode" isn't the best term for it, but except for the rare individual who can lose weight one time on a single, lifetime 500 calorie diet and keep it off indefinitely, it is reasonable to suppose that there is some risk to the long-term metabolic suppression that goes with extreme dieting (and this was clearly evidenced in the Minnesota study).

My history is that after losing 50# and keeping it off for six years, I had a severe and life-threatening illness during which I was unable to eat, or could eat only very little for an extended period of time (months). I was on bedrest or limited activity for a long time, too. So, call it starvation mode, or call it something else, but after being on bedrest and eating next to nothing for a very long time, my metabolism was pretty well trashed! During my illness and recovery, I gradually gained weight while eating very, very little--even, as time went on, trying to eat as little as possible and yet watching the scale go up, up, and up. I was eating so little, trying not to gain, that my family was alarmed for me. (I was eating less than 1000 calories a day and often well under.)

So, I did some research and have been experimenting with increasing my calories (1800-2000) and increasing the percentage of fat in my diet (keto-paleo). It took some time for things to reset, but the weight has finally started to come off. I've lost my first 10# pretty quickly, and my adult children are pretty relieved to see me eating full meals again! Eating more, I find that my depression is gone, I have FAR more energy, I have a far greater sense of well-being, and have regained my ability to do a normal amount of work and exercise. We'll see where it goes from here, but I'm really hoping I can get back into my old wardrobe again.

I'm not sure why people who haven't experienced it want to prove that deep metabolic suppression ("starvation mode") isn't real, but it is real. Extreme metabolic suppression happens to some of us (it happened to the men in the Minnesota study, it happened to me). Those of us who have been down that road know how awful it can be, how hard it is to starve and starve and not lose weight, and how depressing it can be not to have any energy or be able to do much.

"Calories in-calories out" has a deeper reality. When I wasn't eating enough I could barely climb stairs and work was exhausting. Eating more, I can go jump on a treadmill or bike and go, go, go!

NoleGirl0918

Bump for later

etoiles_argentees

hmmmm....read the book and the studies.

However, let’s look again at the Minnesota study for further compelling evidence why semi-starvation is not a good idea for long-term weight loss. In the latter half of the Minnesota Starvation Study the men were allowed to eat ad libitum again. Researchers found they had insatiable appetites, yet never felt full, these effects continued for months afterwards. Semi-starvation diets don’t work long-term for this simple reason – under ordinary pressures, when eating resumes, people put the weight back on and oftentimes, gain more.

They did not all gain more.

There are several books available, not just the results of the Minnesota Starvation Experiment in a two-volume, 1,385 page text entitled The Biology of Human Starvation (University of Minnesota Press)

Todd Tucker, The Great Starvation Experiment: The Heroic Men Who Starved so That Millions Could Live, Free Press, A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., New York, New York, ISBN 978-0-7432-7030-4, 2006.

J. A. Palesty and S. J. Dudrick, “The Goldilocks Paradigm of Starvation and Refeeding,” Nutrition in Clinical Practice, April 1, 2006; 21(2): 147 - 154.
Handbook for the Treatment of Eating Disorders, D.M. Gardner and P.E. Garfinkel (editors), Gilford Press, New York, N.Y., 1997.

The Good War and Those That Refused to Fight It, an ITVS film presentation, produced by Paradigm Productions, a non-profit media organization based in Berkeley, California. Directed by Rick Tejada-Flores and Judith Ehrlich. Copyright 2000.

Friday, March 18, 2011
Historical Context, Part 3 - Ancel Keys

Ancel Keys, a University of Minnesota physiologist, deserves much of the credit for convincing the public that dietary fat and cholesterol are killers. He initially became famous through his development of the "K-ration" for feeding combat troops in World War II; the "K" stood for Keys. He then performed a series of human starvation studies and wrote the book "The Biology of Human Starvation", which made him a well-known, reputable nutrition researcher. Originally, Keys did not believe dietary fat and cholesterol had anything to do with the rising heart disease rates, but his opinion changed when he attended a conference in Rome in 1951, where he spoke with a physiologist from Naples, Italy who boasted about the lack of heart disease in his city. The diet in southern Italy was low in animal products, and the people there, especially the poor, tended to have lower cholesterol than those in the United States. The rich in Naples, however, ate more meat, and had higher cholesterol levels and heart disease rates. This convinced Keys for the first time that dietary fat from meat was driving the heart disease epidemic in the United States.

There were two key observational studies performed by Ancel Keys that ended up having an impact on the public's view of dietary fat. The first, which many researchers did not taken seriously, was the 1953 study he performed involving six countries, comparing their fat intake to their heart disease rates. The six countries he reported on (United States, Canada, Australia, UK, Italy, and Japan), showed a very strong association between fat intake and heart disease. Now, of course, this is only an observational study and no cause and effect can be determined. But the biggest problem with his study is that he left out the data from the 16 other countries for which data was available. When all 22 countries are considered, his perfect correlation turns into a much weaker one.

Initially, in 1957, the American Heart Association (AHA) opposed Ancel Keys on the diet-heart hypothesis. They wrote a 15-page report that year denouncing Keys and similar researchers for jumping to conclusions about the diet-heart hypothesis when there was no good evidence that it was true. Less than four years later, in December of 1960, the AHA flipped their stance and adopted the diet-heart hypothesis as their new philosophy on heart health, proclaiming that "the best scientific evidence of the time" strongly suggested a low-fat diet, or at least replacing saturated fats with polyunsaturated fats, is preventative of heart disease. What had changed in that four-year period? Not the evidence. There was no new evidence to either confirm or reject the diet-heart hypothesis. What had changed is that Ancel Keys and Jeremiah Stamler, another supporter of Keys, had now made up two of the six members on the AHA committee. Soon after, Ancel Keys was enshrined as the face of dietary wisdom in America in an article in Time magazine. The article discussed Keys' idea of a heart-healthy diet as one in which nearly 70% of calories came from carbohydrates and just 15% from fat. Despite the fact that there was ZERO evidence from clinical trials to back up this claim, the article only contained one short paragraph explaining that Keys' hypothesis was "still questioned by some researchers with conflicting ideas of what causes coronary heart disease."


The second important study done by Ancel Keys was considered to be his masterpiece, The Seven Countries Study. This study is still, today, considered to be a landmark study because of the pivotal role it played in the acceptance of the diet-heart hypothesis. Launched in 1956, Keys' followed 16,000 middle-aged men for over a decade and tracked their diets and their heart-disease risk. The populations he chose came from seven countries: Italy, Yugoslavia, Greece, Finland, the Netherlands, Japan, and the United States. The results showed, again, a remarkably clear association, but this time the association was between saturated fat and heart disease. Keys drew three conclusions from this study: 1. Cholesterol levels predicted heart disease. 2. The amount of saturated fat predicted cholesterol levels and heart disease. 3. Monounsaturated fats protected against heart disease.

Seems pretty clear huh? Not quite... there are a number of problems with the study. First and foremost, this is an observational study, and like I've said a million times, you cannot determine any causality from it. Secondly, Keys chose countries that he knew would fit his hypothesis. Had he chosen at random, he may have included countries like France or Switzerland that consume high amounts of saturated fat and have very little heart disease. Third, we know now that middle-aged men are the only population for which total cholesterol numbers can predict heart disease, and the Seven Countries Study only looked at middle-aged men. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, Keys didn't look at total mortality, even though what we really want to know is whether or not we'll live longer. Coronary heart disease accounted for less than a third of deaths. He said himself in a 1984 follow-up paper, "little attention was given to longevity or total mortality." Interestingly, if all-cause death had been taken into account, Keys would have found that the American population he studied lived longer than any other population with the exception of the Crete islanders, despite their high cholesterol.

Even with all of the problems with Ancel Keys' research, his findings on saturated fat and cholesterol would have a profound impact on the public due to a sort-of perfect storm of events that would eventually lead up to the first government dietary recommendations, Senator George McGovern's 1977 Dietary Guidelines for America.

djmp92

So great to actually see science on a health and fitness forum rather then the usual meathead broscience that's so casually thrown around

MsPudding

The good thing is you don't have to worry about the starvation mode myth if you are fat. Only skinny people have to worry about starvation mode.

Well all I can say is that I did a VLCD of 500 calories a day for 4 months. It being Lighter Life, you have to get sign off from a doctor before you start and I had blood work done with that. When I came off it I had more blood work and my hormones levels were screwed up, my red blood-cell magnesium levels were dangerously low and my B12 levels were low....resulting in me needing Magnesium/B12 jabs in my butt every week for a month.

On top of that I got terrible insomnia, felt weepy and lethargic. But hey, I lost nearly 60lbs so that's good right? Yeah...apart from the small issue of putting it all back on again in the 6 months after the VLCD.

Bollocks to that. I'm obese (again) and now I'm happy to take the slow path - lose 1lb or even 0.5lb on a 5:2 intermittent fast and simply contentrating on good food choices for most of the time on feed days (I purposefully say 'most' because, like everyone else, I'm not immune to the odd beer, slice of pizza or chunk of chocolate.)

toxicstarvation

This but also people constantly wave around starvation mode as a clean cut fact, saying that starving absolutely does not cause weight loss. Well, obviously it does, it just doesn't work for some people, some people have the thrifty gene so they hold onto fat more stubbornly.

shawnamarie509

Thanks for the post !

anubhavsharma18

Some more information on it
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8FRuXJuImM

melindasuefritz

A lack of food can cause the body to go into starvation mode, or starvation response, according to an article in the March 2006 edition of the journal "Annual Review of Physiology." Starvation mode is a metabolic response to the body being deprived of food, which may occur during periods of famine or economic depression, when using a fad diet, or when suffering from anorexia nervosa. A variety of specific signs and symptoms affect those whose body has gone into starvation mode.

Physiological Symptoms

Reducing calories to a very low level prevents the body from obtaining proper nutrients and energy, according to the "Annual Review of Physiology" article. As a result, fatigue is common because the body does not have ample energy to function. The body breaks down muscles to be used as fuel as it attempts to keep vital organs like the heart and lungs functioning. Vitamin deficiency is another result of a lack of nutrients, and can lead to anemia, diarrhea, rashes, edema and heart failure. Testosterone levels decrease during starvation mode, so sexual drive also decreases. The primary drive in a food-deprived body is to eat to regain energy and nutrition, not to reproduce. In women, irregular menstruation or a complete absence of a menstrual cycle may occur.


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Read more: http://www.livestrong.com/article/458832-signs-symptoms-of-starvation-mode/#ixzz2RC67vpXa


STARVATION MODE IS NOT A MYTH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

melindasuefritz

no not only skinny people go into starvation mode. fat people w ho eat 500 - 1000 calories a day do too
it s not a fat or skinny thing

Colleen790

Bump

husseycd

Regardless of whether it's a myth or not, why would people want to restrict their calories so low when they could eat a reasonable amount (say 1700 calories for the average 5'4" woman) and exercise moderately and daily. I feel like so many people set themselves up to fail by being in a huge hurry to drop as many pounds as possible.

If your doctor deems it necessary to restrict your calories so low, then by all means do it. I guess I have seen too many friends severly restrict their calories most days, have a few "cheat" days and barely lose any weight, if they lose at all. Maybe they're sneaking snickers behind my back, but I seem to outeat women 40lbs heavier than me. I'm not *that* active and I definitely cheat from time to time.

What the heck is wrong with eating TDEE-20%, or eating at your goal weight TDEE as fat2fitradio suggests? Seems like a more manageable "diet" to me, and sets a person up to succeed long term instead of losing a bunch of weight and then gaining it back. Which, as far as I can tell just by looking around, is definitely not a myth.

*begin digress* I do think some people (women more than men, IMO) like to brag about how little they eat. Like it's some sort of badge of honor. Eating like a bird and all that. As if eating gets lumped into bodily fuctions, like farting, and should be avoided. Joking aside, I do realize there is social stigma against eating, especially if you're carrying a little extra weight, or your body image is skewed and you think you're overweight. *end digress*

lizzardsm

bump

avskk

I think a lot of people confuse "starvation mode" and plain old starvation. You can be starving and be fat; you can starve and not lose weight. Starvation is severe nutritional deprivation, whether of calories alone, calories and nutrients, or just nutrients -- and it's a different thing from "starvation mode," which is a metabolic process alteration that presents in very specific long-term circumstances.

DancingDreams1234

I applaud you.

Ophidion

Yes - I can't help but feel that in many cases people get a bit tired and actually over estimate exercise done as they don't do much (maybe using MFP figures), while underestimating food they've actually eaten.

Calories in vs calories out still always stands - it's just a case of working out the right figures .

QFT, nicely put...simple and elegant.

Missyb322

The problem with most of the studies is to realize all people can not be grouped in the same manner. All people lose weight different and not every method will not work for every person. You basically have to learn your own body and go from there. Nobody denies the fact that in severe starvation mode many things happen to your body. The dilemma is....no one can say how long exactly does starvation mode set in. Many people would have you believe that if you skip breakfast this morning, OMG you're now in starvation mode. Most people realize this to be false. So basically it's a matter of you figuring out what works best for your body. Your body knows when it's stressed and will definitely let you know.

FrankieTrailBlazer

BUMP

ndj1979

sigh...here we go again ...

talk about a dead horse..

look if you eat nothing for a period of greater than 72 hours you will be in starvation mode..

if you are eating 1000 cals a day you will not be in starvation mode...

oh and in...for the idiotic debate to come...

ndj1979

The problem with most of the studies is to realize all people can not be grouped in the same manner. All people lose weight different and not every method will not work for every person. You basically have to learn your own body and go from there. Nobody denies the fact that in severe starvation mode many things happen to your body. The dilemma is....no one can say how long exactly does starvation mode set in. Many people would have you believe that if you skip breakfast this morning, OMG you're now in starvation mode. Most people realize this to be false. So basically it's a matter of you figuring out what works best for your body. Your body knows when it's stressed and will definitely let you know.

you need to read more of the threads on here..people call 'starvation mode' at all kinds of stuff, and skipping breakfast is one of them...

ndj1979

Regardless of whether it's a myth or not, why would people want to restrict their calories so low when they could eat a reasonable amount (say 1700 calories for the average 5'4" woman) and exercise moderately and daily. I feel like so many people set themselves up to fail by being in a huge hurry to drop as many pounds as possible.

If your doctor deems it necessary to restrict your calories so low, then by all means do it. I guess I have seen too many friends severly restrict their calories most days, have a few "cheat" days and barely lose any weight, if they lose at all. Maybe they're sneaking snickers behind my back, but I seem to outeat women 40lbs heavier than me. I'm not *that* active and I definitely cheat from time to time.

What the heck is wrong with eating TDEE-20%, or eating at your goal weight TDEE as fat2fitradio suggests? Seems like a more manageable "diet" to me, and sets a person up to succeed long term instead of losing a bunch of weight and then gaining it back. Which, as far as I can tell just by looking around, is definitely not a myth.

*begin digress* I do think some people (women more than men, IMO) like to brag about how little they eat. Like it's some sort of badge of honor. Eating like a bird and all that. As if eating gets lumped into bodily fuctions, like farting, and should be avoided. Joking aside, I do realize there is social stigma against eating, especially if you're carrying a little extra weight, or your body image is skewed and you think you're overweight. *end digress*

maybe because TDEE - 20% does not work for everyone..you have to find what works for you as an individual....Everyone always bombs threads and says TDEE, TDEE, TDEE sounds like the hook in a rap song....as if TDEE - 20% is a cure all for every single persons dieting ills..please....

Sul3i

Bump

deksgrl

maybe because TDEE - 20% does not work for everyone..you have to find what works for you as an individual....Everyone always bombs threads and says TDEE, TDEE, TDEE sounds like the hook in a rap song....as if TDEE - 20% is a cure all for every single persons dieting ills..please....

For some people -25% can be appropriate or -15% or -10% of some other number in between. But, surprise, that amount changes as you lose weight.

demelzanoo

Yes - I can't help but feel that in many cases people get a bit tired and actually over estimate exercise done as they don't do much (maybe using MFP figures), while underestimating food they've actually eaten.

Calories in vs calories out still always stands - it's just a case of working out the right figures .

im always quite surprised at the amount of calories that seem to get burned doing activities on here, i stopped including the calories burned because i felt they were inaccurate.... or worse still... too depressingly low ! I was equally shocked at how many calories i was actually eating, this only came to light when i started actually measuring my food.... turns out i was eating twice as many calories as i thought i was and burning half as many calories as i thought i was.... so now i am re-educated hopefully my calories burned will be more than the calories i eat so i will finally lose some weight!.... its only taken me 16 years to accept that this is the only way to do it!

pj27559

The myths regarding starvation mode will not die out whilst certain sellers of protein products imply that if you do not use (their) protein within 30 minutes of working out your body will become catabolic .

The same (un-named) company also sells a gel to rub on your skin to increase muscle size - I think that's all we need to know about them surely!

moniqueoreilly

Thank you for this post!

ritchiedrama

I love Lyle McDonald.

maybeazure

It would be interesting to see some research on the differing psychological effects of lean vs. obese people. Yes the actually starving men (who were losing muscle mass and looked like starving or anorexic people) started having weird psychological problems. But I would not expect that obese people would necessarily have the same issues, but it would be interesting to see. Does the body recognize the reduction of calories and trigger the starvation response, or does it sense that it is getting dangerously low in fat reserves?