how does eating too little halt weight loss?

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know1seep
know1seep Posts: 55 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
and does this apply even if one is doing good workouts every day? this issue comes up a lot, especially in the intermittent fasting community

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  • AmyRhubarb
    AmyRhubarb Posts: 6,890 Member
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    The way I understand it - eat too little for too long and you're giving your body a reason to want to store fat rather than burn it. Especially if you're working out a lot - the body is trying to work hard on very little fuel, so it wants to store whatever it can, and the metabolism slows down to match the low intake as well.
  • herblackwings39
    herblackwings39 Posts: 3,930 Member
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    Preface: I might be wrong. It has been known to happen. Asking a professional would be best...but...

    The body requires a certain amount of calories/nutrients to function at a basic level (BMR). If you eat below what your body needs to simply survive it wants to hold on to anything extra it can just to keep you alive. If your BMR is ...1400 and you eat 1400 that's enough to keep you alive if you do nothing. Now you exercise and burn away 400 calories of that and you're at 1000. Your body needs the net at the very least.

    This is my understanding of it.
  • _Zardoz_
    _Zardoz_ Posts: 3,987 Member
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    it doesn't it just slows it down. If you eat a little more you have more energy so you can without harder and lose more weight that way.
  • SideSteel
    SideSteel Posts: 11,068 Member
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    Lyle has some pretty good speculation about it here:

    http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/why-big-caloric-deficits-and-lots-of-activity-can-hurt-fat-loss.html
  • Yanicka1
    Yanicka1 Posts: 4,564 Member
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    Lyle has some pretty good speculation about it here:

    http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/why-big-caloric-deficits-and-lots-of-activity-can-hurt-fat-loss.html

    bumping this
  • Guitar1969
    Guitar1969 Posts: 33 Member
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    Escellent article. I have been doing the 5:2 fast and I can attest to this. The hardest thing is to not think I need to keep calories low on my nonfast days, but what I am finding is if I eat normal balanced meals on those days and not worry too much about counting calories as long as I stay below mt TDEE, my results are better. Seems alot of people in MFP that are doing the 5:2 fast and variations, are trying to calorie restrict on the feed days to and are complaining about results.

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