starvation mode myth

Society world has people brainwashed that if they eat less and workout more they will lose weight.

Care to elaborate? What's the alternative to a caloric deficit?

The Starvation Myth
The idea that "not eating enough" causes the body to stop losing weight because it goes into "starvation mode" is a popular myth among dieters.
Article By: The Weight Watchers Research Department

You won't stop losing weight in starvation mode, but what you are completely missing the point on is what starvation mode means. It means your body begins breaking down more muscle instead of primarily fat, in order to try to give you the caloric energy you usually metabolize through eating food. Your body can only break down a certain amount of fat in one day. If that is not enough to keep up the calories needed, it also begins to break down muscle to make up the caloric difference.As you begin to "eat your own muscles" you still lose weight, simply because you are losing muscle mass. So yeah, starvation mode is great if you want to have no muscle tone, no strength, no energy, and still look flabby when you are underweight.

This is exactly what happened to me...... I destroyed my body. : ( I regret it....

I dont mean to sound arrogant, but I can only go by my own experiences.

I am down 81lbs eating at a 700-1000 kcal deficit a day (I eat around 1900-2000 now). Any lower than that and I do not have the energy to work out and my weight loss slows down. I have lost an average of 3lbs per week with this method. I am not the only person who has done so either. I would put my method up against anyone doing a VLC diet and gladly compare. Bet I would win...

The only thing that would be arrogant is that you would dare to talk sense in the LCD echo chamber where the logic is all circular and all the proff sources are somehow twisted to say just eat fewer calorie. I think 400 would be good for you, don't you think?

Keep on keepin on brother!

These types of studies are so inconclusive. They don't take in to account if someone has a thyroid problem, age, different metabolism types, menopause, if they are lifting heavy weights, light weights, doing aerobics etc. So for the 10% (+/- 9.9%) it may represent, yes it's true.

The Starvation Myth
The idea that "not eating enough" causes the body to stop losing weight because it goes into "starvation mode" is a popular myth among dieters.
Article By: The Weight Watchers Research Department

You won't stop losing weight in starvation mode, but what you are completely missing the point on is what starvation mode means. It means your body begins breaking down more muscle instead of primarily fat, in order to try to give you the caloric energy you usually metabolize through eating food. Your body can only break down a certain amount of fat in one day. If that is not enough to keep up the calories needed, it also begins to break down muscle to make up the caloric difference.As you begin to "eat your own muscles" you still lose weight, simply because you are losing muscle mass. So yeah, starvation mode is great if you want to have no muscle tone, no strength, no energy, and still look flabby when you are underweight.

This is exactly what happened to me...... I destroyed my body. : ( I regret it....

Thanks for posting. I have seen many other posts like this. The advocates of VLCD just ignore this kind of thing and cherrie pick info to substantiate thier preformed conclusion. Heck I've even seen some posters on this thread take a post that disproved thier point and tried to twist it to say it actually supported thier misinformed conclusions. What ever! That's why I call it the VLCD Echo Chamber. Those that enter only can hear the same bogus and irresponsible stuff echoing around until they believe it.

I hope with time, a good eating plan and the right workout plan, you can reverse the damage!

The Starvation Myth
The idea that "not eating enough" causes the body to stop losing weight because it goes into "starvation mode" is a popular myth among dieters.
Article By: The Weight Watchers Research Department

You won't stop losing weight in starvation mode, but what you are completely missing the point on is what starvation mode means. It means your body begins breaking down more muscle instead of primarily fat, in order to try to give you the caloric energy you usually metabolize through eating food. Your body can only break down a certain amount of fat in one day. If that is not enough to keep up the calories needed, it also begins to break down muscle to make up the caloric difference.As you begin to "eat your own muscles" you still lose weight, simply because you are losing muscle mass. So yeah, starvation mode is great if you want to have no muscle tone, no strength, no energy, and still look flabby when you are underweight.

This is exactly what happened to me...... I destroyed my body. : ( I regret it....

Thanks for posting. I have seen many other posts like this. The advocates of VLCD just ignore this kind of thing and cherrie pick info to substantiate thier preformed conclusion. Heck I've even seen some posters on this thread take a post that disproved thier point and tried to twist it to say it actually supported thier misinformed conclusions. What ever! That's why I call it the VLCD Echo Chamber. Those that enter only can hear the same bogus and irresponsible stuff echoing around until they believe it.

I hope with time, a good eating plan and the right workout plan, you can reverse the damage!

Me too : (

These types of studies are so inconclusive. They don't take in to account if someone has a thyroid problem, age, different metabolism types, menopause, if they are lifting heavy weights, light weights, doing aerobics etc. So for the 10% (+/- 9.9%) it may represent, yes it's true.

THANK YOU!. This, this, this comment.

I hate the phrase starvation mode. I prefer to call it "sure, you'll still lose pounds, but a disproportionate amount will be from muscle mass so you'll look a lot worse when you get to your goal weight than you would have if you ate a little bit more and weren't so focused on the damn scale, not to mention that you're training your body to survive on a small amount of food, so you're going to be stuck 'dieting' just to maintain a healthy weight" mode.

But it's a bit wordy.

LOVE THIS!!!

"...Most dieters tend to drop calories extremely low based on the idea that the greater the deficit, the more weight that will be lost. Up to a point this appears to be true, in that greater caloric restriction yields greater fat loss. However this ignores the potential effects of extreme caloric restriction on metabolic rate, muscle loss, etc. A recent review of twenty-two studies found that extremely low calorie levels, below 1000 calories/day, caused a much greater drop in metabolic rate than even 1200 calories/day. So, there appears to be a threshold level of caloric intake where metabolic rate is more greatly affected."

Credit:
Lyle McDonald, The Ketogenic Diet
Physiological responses to slimming. Proc Nutr Soc (1991) 50:441-458.

Yup! And how about:

Why Take a Full Diet Break: Physiological Reasons


The physiological stuff is the stuff I talk about all the time here on the site, on the forum and elsewhere. When folks diet and lose weight/fat, the body adjusts metabolic rate downwards. While a majority of this is simply due to weighing less (smaller bodies burn fewer calories), there is also an adaptive component, a greater decrease in metabolic rate than would be predicted due to changes in things like leptin, insulin, thyroid hormones, etc.

By moving to roughly maintenance for a couple of weeks, many of those hormones are given time to recover. Thyroid hormones come back up, as does leptin. This is a big part of the reason for the recommendation to raise carbs to 100-150 grams per day as a minimum.

Thyroid hormones are distinctly sensitive to carbohydrate intake as are leptin levels (especially in the short-term). Just raising calories but keeping the diet very low carb doesn’t accomplish everything hormonally I want the full diet break to do.

This is also the rationale behind the duration, thyroid hormones and the effects that they exert aren’t immediate. It may take 7 days of eating at maintenance for thyroid levels to come back to normal, but you need at least another week to get many of their effects to max out. So in answer to the question “Can I make the break shorter?”, the answer is “No.” I know that everyone wants to GET LEAN NOW but unless you are a contest dieting bodybuilder or figure chick and there’s no real-time constraint, what’s the hurry?

There are other effects as well. Hormones like testosterone often go down during dieting and female hormones can be whacked out too. Cortisol generally goes up when you diet and raising calories and carbs helps shut that off for a bit.

I’d note in this regards that many find that, after a period of hard dieting, they often keep leaning out into the first week of a planned break. As I discussed in the article Of Whooshes and Squishy Fat, some of it may simply be dropping water.

But some of it does seem to be true fat loss. People keep bugging me for the mechanism and my current best-answer is “Magic!”. At some point, I might throw out some of my theories on it. Not today.

As well, for leaner individuals, even if they do everything ‘right’, there is often a loss of performance or muscle mass during a diet. The two weeks with raised calories gives them the capacity to train a bit more and recover what they’ve lost before moving into the next stage of dieting.

Full text here:
http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/the-full-diet-break.html

Yeah, no scientific evidence at all.

That's why I call it the VLCD Echo Chamber. Those that enter only can hear the same bogus and irresponsible stuff echoing around until they believe it.

What do you consider a VLCD? For me, 1200 calories is not a 500 calorie deficit from my TDEE. While it may be VLC for a different person, it's certainly not for me. I think medically, VLCD is defined as around 800 calories or less.

But in any case, I'm not sure it's fair to call people who are not fans of the eat more method "the echo chamber." I don't see much difference between the two camps in the way they discuss/debate/argue except for the details. I see many people immediately say to posters, "Maybe you need to eat more" or "Eat more! You need to fuel your body" to a lightly active female eating 1700 + calories a day.

I don't dispute the "Eat Enough." I do dispute that 1200 is not enough for some of us.

Also, if you truly care about the people believing the dangerous things, not calling them the echo chamber may help them hear something you have to say.