'if you starve yourself, you'll gain weight'

mysilverrose · February 2013

okay guys, I've heard it all about 'starvation mode' etc, but i still don't really understand what it all means.
I usually always eat bellow 1000 calories a day, if i exceed that i feel very bad and guilty*.
people have told me that the reason i'm not losing is because i'm not eating enough, how can this be true?
i don't have time to exercise and i have a low metabolism so i'm a bit worried about eating over about 800 calories, i'm sorry if this sounds ridiculous but i really need some help and advice as i'm struggling and feeling very bad if i feel i overeat.

thanks

*i know that it is normal to eat 1200 calories or above so please do not be offended by this, its just a personal thing and i don't recommend anyone else to eat under 1000 calories.

concordancia · February 2013

What makes you think you have a low metabolism?

The main issue is your feelings of guilt IF YOU EAT NORMALLY. This is at lest an unhealthy relationship with food, typical of an eating disorder.

PLEASE SEEK PROFESSIONAL ASSISTANCE!

SRT4twg · February 2013

"Starvation mode" Is just an easy way to say your body thinks its not getting enough food so its stores it instead of burning it off. You can trick it by eating more often with smaller portions.

How much you eat depends on many factors but weight is a big one. My maintenance calories would be 2400 a day or 1500 to loose weight (that includes working out 4-5 days a week without eating back calories) I'm 190 lb and 5' 2.5" tall.

I'd still recommend 1200 cal but if your not very active at all and not getting light headed or headaches or feel super lethargic you could probably eat 1000. And remember that the quality of what you eat is very important too. You can also zig-zag your calories eating 200-300 more one day and 200-300 less the next(keep varied) and this will help you loose weight also.

Lt_Starbuck · February 2013

A lot of people like to think of weightloss and getting fit and getting a good body as a 'journey', I like to think of it as a road trip.

Now let's say you want to drive from California to NYC (for funsies). You calculate exactly how much gas it will take you to get from here to there. Let's say, for funsies, that it is 2800 miles, and you know to the drop how much gas that will take.

This is what I would refer to as your BMR. This is how much gas you need just to turn on the engine and drive there. In other words, cardiovascular system, central nervous system, basically just enough fuel (or calories) to drive straight there.

Now - you decide to only bring enough money for 1800 miles and just force your car to work with that. This is considered 'eating below your BMR' and it is very very dangerous to the engine. It will affect your miles per gallon, how often you have to change oil, tough on the gears, crap on everything. Just bad bad bad for the car.

Now - on your way from LA to NYC - you decide to do a few other things - like stop and sightsee here and there. Maybe go off course and find some fun things to do, stop and see friends, go to the bathroom, buy a souvenir or two, stretch your legs, get off the highway, splurge on a hotel, use a phone....

This would be stuff like exercise, cleaning your house, having sex, visiting friends, walking all over the place, playing with kids outside - other things that burn calories ON TOP OF what you burn just 'running' your body's vital systems.

But you still only brought 1800 miles worth of gas money and nothing else...

So now you're stuck in the Midwest. With no gas.

In other words... now you're stuck at this weight.. and you can't do more til you get more fuel.

Give yourself enough gas to get where you're going and do stuff you need to / want to along the way. LIKE EXERCISE.

At first you'll gain a little - and then your body will adjust and it will go away again and take extra pounds with it.

True story.

:drinker:

Muddy_Yogi · February 2013

Please seek help. If you feel guilty eating FOOD your FUEL to keep your body RUNNING, then you surely need someone to help you NOT think that way. Your body needs a certain amount of calories to SURVIVE and unless you have been told by a medical professional that your body only needs 800 or 1000 calories you should not be doing that. You are starving yourself. I don't care if you are losing or not. It isn't healthy and ultimately that is what should be making you feel guilty, not consuming things that your body needs to say....keep your heart beating!

BeingAwesome247 · February 2013

A lot of people like to think of weightloss and getting fit and getting a good body as a 'journey', I like to think of it as a road trip.

Now let's say you want to drive from California to NYC (for funsies). You calculate exactly how much gas it will take you to get from here to there. Let's say, for funsies, that it is 2800 miles, and you know to the drop how much gas that will take.

This is what I would refer to as your BMR. This is how much gas you need just to turn on the engine and drive there. In other words, cardiovascular system, central nervous system, basically just enough fuel (or calories) to drive straight there.

Now - you decide to only bring enough money for 1800 miles and just force your car to work with that. This is considered 'eating below your BMR' and it is very very dangerous to the engine. It will affect your miles per gallon, how often you have to change oil, tough on the gears, crap on everything. Just bad bad bad for the car.

Now - on your way from LA to NYC - you decide to do a few other things - like stop and sightsee here and there. Maybe go off course and find some fun things to do, stop and see friends, go to the bathroom, buy a souvenir or two, stretch your legs, get off the highway, splurge on a hotel, use a phone....

This would be stuff like exercise, cleaning your house, having sex, visiting friends, walking all over the place, playing with kids outside - other things that burn calories ON TOP OF what you burn just 'running' your body's vital systems.

But you still only brought 1800 miles worth of gas money and nothing else...

So now you're stuck in the Midwest. With no gas.

In other words... now you're stuck at this weight.. and you can't do more til you get more fuel.

Give yourself enough gas to get where you're going and do stuff you need to / want to along the way. LIKE EXERCISE.

At first you'll gain a little - and then your body will adjust and it will go away again and take extra pounds with it.

True story.

:drinker:

I think this is the best analogy I've ever read

who922 · February 2013

That is so stinking good!!!! Talk about painting a very vivid picture! Excellent!! and right on the money. I have had to go up on calories three times in my weight loss journey to start losing weight again.

A lot of people like to think of weightloss and getting fit and getting a good body as a 'journey', I like to think of it as a road trip.

Now let's say you want to drive from California to NYC (for funsies). You calculate exactly how much gas it will take you to get from here to there. Let's say, for funsies, that it is 2800 miles, and you know to the drop how much gas that will take.

This is what I would refer to as your BMR. This is how much gas you need just to turn on the engine and drive there. In other words, cardiovascular system, central nervous system, basically just enough fuel (or calories) to drive straight there.

Now - you decide to only bring enough money for 1800 miles and just force your car to work with that. This is considered 'eating below your BMR' and it is very very dangerous to the engine. It will affect your miles per gallon, how often you have to change oil, tough on the gears, crap on everything. Just bad bad bad for the car.

Now - on your way from LA to NYC - you decide to do a few other things - like stop and sightsee here and there. Maybe go off course and find some fun things to do, stop and see friends, go to the bathroom, buy a souvenir or two, stretch your legs, get off the highway, splurge on a hotel, use a phone....

This would be stuff like exercise, cleaning your house, having sex, visiting friends, walking all over the place, playing with kids outside - other things that burn calories ON TOP OF what you burn just 'running' your body's vital systems.

But you still only brought 1800 miles worth of gas money and nothing else...

So now you're stuck in the Midwest. With no gas.

In other words... now you're stuck at this weight.. and you can't do more til you get more fuel.

Give yourself enough gas to get where you're going and do stuff you need to / want to along the way. LIKE EXERCISE.

At first you'll gain a little - and then your body will adjust and it will go away again and take extra pounds with it.

True story.

:drinker:

taliar93 · February 2013

Sounds like you've got the beginnings of an eating disorder. and not to sound rude or anything but like many people have said on MFP, nobody is a snowflake, our bodies are all the same, so eating under 1200 cals a day and saying it's because you have low metabolism, don't exercise etc. is NOT an excuse, there's a reason MFP cals will only go down to 1200 a day, because it's what our bodies need to survive. Go to a doctor, they'll tell you the same thing, and then probably refer you to psychiatrist. In the meantime, have you considered looking into some meal replacement shakes to get your calories up a bit?

joeymalone142 · February 2013

In other words... now you're stuck at this weight.. and you can't do more til you get more fuel.

Give yourself enough gas to get where you're going and do stuff you need to / want to along the way. LIKE EXERCISE.

At first you'll gain a little - and then your body will adjust and it will go away again and take extra pounds with it.

True story.

:drinker:

You're a rockstar! I love this!

dakotababy · February 2013

The only way to go into starvation mode is to have no caloric intake for about 72 hours straight.

Capt_Apollo · February 2013

in otherwords, don't get stuck in the midwest without gas money. you'll have to do things. things you'll regret.

tinak33 · February 2013

A lot of people like to think of weightloss and getting fit and getting a good body as a 'journey', I like to think of it as a road trip.

Now let's say you want to drive from California to NYC (for funsies). You calculate exactly how much gas it will take you to get from here to there. Let's say, for funsies, that it is 2800 miles, and you know to the drop how much gas that will take.

This is what I would refer to as your BMR. This is how much gas you need just to turn on the engine and drive there. In other words, cardiovascular system, central nervous system, basically just enough fuel (or calories) to drive straight there.

Now - you decide to only bring enough money for 1800 miles and just force your car to work with that. This is considered 'eating below your BMR' and it is very very dangerous to the engine. It will affect your miles per gallon, how often you have to change oil, tough on the gears, crap on everything. Just bad bad bad for the car.

Now - on your way from LA to NYC - you decide to do a few other things - like stop and sightsee here and there. Maybe go off course and find some fun things to do, stop and see friends, go to the bathroom, buy a souvenir or two, stretch your legs, get off the highway, splurge on a hotel, use a phone....

This would be stuff like exercise, cleaning your house, having sex, visiting friends, walking all over the place, playing with kids outside - other things that burn calories ON TOP OF what you burn just 'running' your body's vital systems.

But you still only brought 1800 miles worth of gas money and nothing else...

So now you're stuck in the Midwest. With no gas.

In other words... now you're stuck at this weight.. and you can't do more til you get more fuel.

Give yourself enough gas to get where you're going and do stuff you need to / want to along the way. LIKE EXERCISE.

At first you'll gain a little - and then your body will adjust and it will go away again and take extra pounds with it.

True story.

:drinker:

HAHAHA
I just read this in yoovie's blog!! :happy: LOVE it!

Lt_Starbuck · February 2013

The only way to go into starvation mode is to have no caloric intake for about 72 hours straight.

This does not mean that what she is doing isn't damaging her engine though.

Think beyond the title and try to actually help her instead of just just responding to her title. Just because starvation mode isn't the problem, doesn't mean that there is no problem. Not eating enough WILL stall your weight loss without any kind of startvation mode myth or reality ever even coming into the picture.

:flowerforyou:

lhgalant · February 2013

A lot of people like to think of weightloss and getting fit and getting a good body as a 'journey', I like to think of it as a road trip.

Now let's say you want to drive from California to NYC (for funsies). You calculate exactly how much gas it will take you to get from here to there. Let's say, for funsies, that it is 2800 miles, and you know to the drop how much gas that will take.

This is what I would refer to as your BMR. This is how much gas you need just to turn on the engine and drive there. In other words, cardiovascular system, central nervous system, basically just enough fuel (or calories) to drive straight there.

Now - you decide to only bring enough money for 1800 miles and just force your car to work with that. This is considered 'eating below your BMR' and it is very very dangerous to the engine. It will affect your miles per gallon, how often you have to change oil, tough on the gears, crap on everything. Just bad bad bad for the car.

Now - on your way from LA to NYC - you decide to do a few other things - like stop and sightsee here and there. Maybe go off course and find some fun things to do, stop and see friends, go to the bathroom, buy a souvenir or two, stretch your legs, get off the highway, splurge on a hotel, use a phone....

This would be stuff like exercise, cleaning your house, having sex, visiting friends, walking all over the place, playing with kids outside - other things that burn calories ON TOP OF what you burn just 'running' your body's vital systems.

But you still only brought 1800 miles worth of gas money and nothing else...

So now you're stuck in the Midwest. With no gas.

In other words... now you're stuck at this weight.. and you can't do more til you get more fuel.

Give yourself enough gas to get where you're going and do stuff you need to / want to along the way. LIKE EXERCISE.

At first you'll gain a little - and then your body will adjust and it will go away again and take extra pounds with it.

True story.

:drinker:

I think this is the best analogy I've ever read

I would agree; this is an excellent analogy. I sure will use this as an example in helping to educate friends around me. Thanks!!!

d2footballJRC · February 2013

This will be a debate for the times..

Lyle McDonald explains it this way:

In general, it's true that metabolic rate tends to drop more with more excessive caloric deficits (and this is true whether the effect is from eating less or exercising more); as well, people vary in how hard or fast their bodies shut down. Women's bodies tend to shut down harder and faster.

But here's the thing: in no study I've ever seen has the drop in metabolic rate been sufficient to completely offset the caloric deficit. That is, say that cutting your calories by 50% per day leads to a reduction in the metabolic rate of 10%. Starvation mode you say. Well, yes. But you still have a 40% daily deficit.

And then he follows with the note about the Minnesota men still continuing to lose fat even thugh their metabolic rates had dropped to 40% below baseline. He says, further, that no study that he's aware of where people were put on strictly controlled diets failed to acknowledge weight or fat loss.

http://www.thefactsaboutfitness.com/research/ lyle.htm

Did the Minnesota men suffer negative consequences from the experience. They most certainly did, and, interestingly, many of the same consequences that anorexics experience. You can read all about the various negative consequences at this site and the implications for EDs.

http://www.possibility.com/epowiki/Wiki.jsp?p age=EffectsOfSemiStarvation

Another starvation study was done in England, at Cambridge University, to determine the different effects starvation had on lean people versus obese people. It's findings are quite relevant to our discussion. The entire study is found at http://www.unu.edu/unupress/food2/UID07E/uid0 7e11.htm.

Does starvation mode slow down the metabolism? No, and Yes.

In the first 2 days of starvation, there is a small absolute increase in BMR relative to values obtained from overnight fasting. Overnight fasting is what every one of us does during our sleeping hours.

So it is not true that going below recommended calories for one day is going to slow down your metabolism -- quite the contrary, it may speed it up just a little.

Does Starvation mode cause our bodies to catabilize (devour our muscles and other lean mass)? Yes and No.

Lean individuals lost great amounts of fat-free, lean tissue during starvation, but obese individuals lost much more fat tissue. Obese individuals have a mechanism that conserves lean mass and burns fat instead. In the study, an example of a lean subject studied after death from starvation: it can be deduced that loss of body fat accounted for 28-36% of the weight loss and fat-free mass 64-72%. In obese individuals, the proportion of energy derived from protein (Pcal%) is only 6% compared to 21% in the lean individual. More than half the weight loss in the obese is fat, whereas most of the weight loss in the lean individual is fat-free mass.

And the loss of lean mass is not as critical to the obese person as to the lean person simply because an obese person has more lean mass than a person of the same age and height but normal weight.

Grossly obese individuals (FORBES, 1987; JAMES et al., 1978) may have over 30% more fat-free mass than lean individuals of the same height. In the example shown in Figure 3, the obese individual weighting 140 kg has a fat-free mass that is 29% greater than the 70 kg man. Obese individuals appear to have more muscle and bone than lean individuals, and these help support and move the excess body weight. Obese subjects have large vascular volumes and larger hearts, which are necessary to pump more blood around larger bodies, especially during weight-bearing activities. Obese individuals may also have visceromegaly (NAEYE and ROODE, 1970).

But when you think about it, doesn't that make fat storage sense? Why would our Maker create us with the ability to store fat if it couldn't sustain us and preserve our lean mass in cases of extreme want?

So the effects of a starvation diet upon a normal weight teen would be substantially more devastating than to me, a morbidly obese person.

Now, if the above gives anyone "permission" to undertake a starvation diet, I recommend remedial reading classes.

My opinion is, you should not go below your goal weight maintenance calories to lose weight, and you should do adequate research and dietary analysis to ensure you are getting the best nutrition you can for your calories.

If reducing your calorie intake to goal weight maintenance creates greater than 1000 calorie a day deficit, then I strongly suggest that you do a value half-way until you have lost some of your weight. - See more at: http://caloriecount.about.com/forums/weight-loss/truth-starvation-mode#sthash.xOV2LTkC.dpuf

Hellbent_Heidi · February 2013

i don't have time to exercise

How is this possible that you don't have ANY time to exercise in your day at all?

You can't possibly be that much busier than everyone else here who MAKES time to exercise.

You need to take a good look at yourself and stop making excuses...either you want to be healthy, or you don't...

Lt_Starbuck · February 2013

That's how you teach someone. Drop a dumptruck of text on them. :drinker:

grimendale · February 2013

The last time I tried to lose weight, I tried to live by your logic. I only ate about 400 to 500 calories a day (if that) and worked out constantly. I did drop weight, albeit slowly. However, I was always tired and hungry, so it wasn't sustainable. As soon as I started eating again, I blew up. I would starve myself again to try and lose the weight, but it would inevitably come back. I ended up gaining a little over 100 lbs. This time around, I've gone slower and kept my calories at a reasonable level. I'm only 5 lbs heavier than I was at my lightest while starving myself, but I'm eating three times as much food. I have more energy and I am not concerned that I'll gain it back when I start eating normal, since this is normal for me now. Plus, I've lost fat without sacrificing muscle this time around, which makes it easier to burn and makes me not look so scrawny and sickly.

'if you starve yourself, you'll gain weight'

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