Calling BS on the starvation mode (plz no E/D rants)

GamerLady

I agree with the OP.

No_Finish_Line

This is probably one of the most controversial subjects on this site. I personally think that if you eat to little the only way your body can compensate for that is by slowing your base* metabolic rate down a bit, but quite frankly think it is impossible for you body to just say screw you, I'm gonna take all the food you give me and store it as fat! I've played around with my food consumption and exercise enough to know my own body.

I'd agree that this part is probably something of a myth or grossly over emphasized

It's a scientific fact that when a person goes with out food the body first uses any available carbs in the system, then the fat reserve's, and finally it starts to break down its own muscle tissue (mainly from voluntary muscles) to supply the essential organ functions with energy to survive. So that goes to say that starvation mode, in the sense of muscle wasting, is only obtained by complete starvation and complete fat reservoir depletion, only then I would think, the body would start to use critical tissue to survive.

I"ve read that the energy sources are used in the progression that you describe. But you assume that source #1 and #2 have to be fully depleted in order for source # 3 (muscle) to be tapped as energy, and i don't think thats true.

but really the only points i have to back this up come from common sense and experience:

1) you have to eat less then you really need in order to lose mass. I think its just wishful thinking to assume that 100% of that mass is going to be fat.

2) if i don't eat enough when i'm doing something like Insanity, my bench press took a nose dive. Hell my bench press is currently taking a nose dive during p90x. and i'm not eating and an oober high defecit. If i was only losing fat i'd assume my bench would goup or stay relatively the same.

How about this, if your weight training and your lifts aren't suffering then whatever defecit your eating at isn't to severe

No_Finish_Line

apparently i'm the only one feelinga little under feed on the p90x diet lol

AnabolicKyle

NormInv plz go!

Mads1997

Thanks for that Mads1997 - at last, some actual evidence of something!

Your numbers confirm what I figured all along, and support much of the wealth of anecdotal evidence around - that yes, given the chance, your body will burn muscle as well as fat in a calorie deficit - it may even burn it for preference (look at how people's muscles waste when in a leg caste). But if you actually work your body to build or maintain muscle, then it will try to do that using what available calories it can get, which means from fat reserves (if you have any), if you are eating a deficit. Anything else wouldn't make sense - your body is not going to stop repairing damaged muscle (i.e. building it) when there is ample energy available to fuel that process.

I imagine that you'd have to be pretty thorough in doing an 'all-body' workout to try to maintain muscle mass all over, or your system may 'rob Peter to pay Paul' and burn muscle in an un-exercised part of the body to help maintain it elsewhere.

The impedance test also breaks the body into 5 sections. Top left and right, bottom left and right and trunk. I can roughly see where I am losing the fat and lean weight from. I am happy to say since doing stronglifts most fat has come off from my stomach while lean proportions have stayed pretty much the same. I noticed in greatly in my clothes the way they are now fitting.