"Starvation mode" a myth?

I've been trying to figure this out as well. Every day when I log in my food to myfitnesspal, I get the red warning that I need to eat more calories. It just doesn't feel right to increase my intake when I'm content where I am at. When I talked to my husband about it, we wondered if starvation mode was some kind of a myth because when people get bariatric surgery, it restricts calories and they lose weight...? Looking forward to some well informed responses.

starvation mode does not apply if you are morbidly obese, obese, or normal weight and trying to lose weight. it it's a long term phenomenon for people with low BF% who are severely deprived of their caloric needs.

whatever idiot trainer who first started talking about starvation mode with his/her weight loss clients really deserves a swift kick to the you-know-whats for ever bringing it up and muddying the waters of good weight loss information.

this is what I meant to quote..still new here..

now that starvation mode is out of the way, there does seem to be such a thing as metabolic slowdown due to dieting. that's what happens with people who spend years on yo-yo low calorie diets. they aren't depriving themselves to the point where there organs begin to be consumed, but they do deprive themselves enough to slow down their overall metabolism. it's uncertain just how much of a slow down occurs though.

so you don't want to try and live off of 800 calories a day even if you're 100 lbs overweight because after a number of months, you could affect your metabolism. i think part of that will be due to loss of LBM, but part of it also probably just your body adapting to the low calorie intake. once you go back to eating normal, the metabolism stays lower and you then put on weight more quickly. this alone is a good reason to avoid VLCD and yo-yo dieting.

other people have covered the subject in much more detail than i can.

so the executive summary is:

a) starvation mode? no, virtually nobody on MFP would ever have to worry about that.
b) metabolic slowdown? yes, this can happen if you have bad dieting habits, but we don't know how much that slowdown would be. avoid this if you can.

Metabolic "slowdown" happens to most people. If you are sensible on your diet, and as you lose weight, you will have to eat less and less to continue to lose weight. That's just common sense. If you start at 300lb, and you're now 150, the amount you were eating to lose the first 10 lbs will probably not work to help you lose anymore.

Metabolice "syndrome" happens to many female fitness models or bikini models. They are so cardio focused and they have to diet so long that eventually their body essentially becomes super efficient on very very little caloric intake. Some girls cannot shed weight eating 900 calories a day and doing 3-4 hours of low intensity cardio. This is also not 95% of MFP'ers. This damage occurs over years of dieting, then adding weight, and dieting again, so their bodies no longer respond to dieting.

I am a big eater. I eat all the time. Pretty much healthy natural foods, but lots and lots. I couldn't go in starvation more if I wanted to.

But this is me. Take my mother for example, and for her, the entire 5 small meals a day is garbage. She can only lose weight if she doesn't eat. Period. A couple of fruits and veggies. No sweets, fried stuff, refined carbs, sugar, meat. Maybe 2 meals a day for her, small. And then she loses weight. She tried the 5 small meals a day and it never works for her. Never, no matter how healthy she eats.
So I truly believe that everybody's metabolism is different. And starvation mode is a myth for at least 90 percent of people who live in today's day and age.
Starvation more was the body's mechanism of survival back in the time when humans were gatherers and hunters. When the body knew food was scarce and unpredictable. But those genes have long been modified. So yes, maybe a handful of people still have that problem... but mostly, it's not true. Unless you are doing the hunger strike.

it's not a myth, it's just that 95% of people around here and EVERY OTHER weight loss site use the term mistakenly.

starvation mode is what happens when you have a low BF% and deprive yourself for a long period of time of the necessary calories to maintain your body. you're body will start to consume itself to stay alive when you nearly run out of fat reserves and are not eating enough calories.

this is what happened in WWII concentration camps.

starvation mode DOES NOT happen if you fast for 3 days or go to bed without eating dinner. people who think that are so badly misinformed it's scary.

there are studies about the subject.

look up the Minnesota Study done in the 1940's or 1950's with soldier volunteers, IIRC.

^ That exactly ^

The majority of this does not line up with fact. In fact the Minnesota study mentioned in the first quote actually contradicts the idea that you need low body fat in order to enter starvation mode. Most of the participants recorded BMR decreases of between 15% and 25% (please make a note that if all goes as planned, in a reduced calorie diet, you should optimally never reduce BMR) while still in the first period of the study, when their body fat % was still well within normal ranges. Another corruption of starvation mode. Also, starvation mode isn't what is being described, the first quote is describing starvation, a completely different concept, starvation mode is simply adaptive thermogenesis, I.E. the body's recognition of a large caloric deficit over a period long enough to deplete glycogen reserves, which results in the reduction in Basal functions in the body, which means less energy expended and thus what you THINK you should be eating to lose weight is usually higher than what you actually need to lose weight, the body also places a priority on fat storage and lean mass reduction (efficiency) in order to reduce (again) energy expenditure.