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calories before starvation mode kicks in

turningaway
turningaway Posts: 2 Member
edited January 28 in Food and Nutrition
Hi

First post and a question.

According to MFP 1200 calories a day is tha bsolute minimum to eat in a day before going into starvation mode and actually make weight loss more difficult. I get that - it makes absolute sense.

My question relates to how exercise fits into that. So for example say I burn another 500 calories through exercise in any one day. Does that mean I now have to eat 1700 calories a day to avoid starvation mode or do I still stay within the 1200 level and let the extra calorie burn add to weight loss?

At the moment my calorie goal is 1200 and I'm actually doing about 600-700 a day in exercise. I'm easily hitting the calorie goal of 1200 but dont know whether I am inadvertently putting myself in starvation mode in the process.

Any thoughts views gratefully accepted

Thanks

Steve

Replies

  • mich1902
    mich1902 Posts: 182
    You got it right-eat back exercise cals
  • MzPix
    MzPix Posts: 177 Member
    I really wish MFP would quit telling people they are starving.
    My advice is to discuss your goals with your physician or dietician and then use MFP as a tool to track numbers and find support.
  • turningaway
    turningaway Posts: 2 Member
    Thast interestying becuase I dont even feel like I am starving!! :)
  • grimendale
    grimendale Posts: 2,153 Member
    The term "starvation mode" gets thrown around a lot, and causes a lot of division. Yes, MFP expects you to eat back your calories. Whenever you burn calories, a portion is fat and a portion is lean tissue. When you eat at a small deficit, the larger proportion of calories burned is drawn from fat reserves. As the deficit grows larger, the balance shifts towards burning more muscle and less fat. This is because fat cells require fewer calorie to maintain than muscle cells, so if a large deficit extends over a long period of time, you will have fuel reserves for the longest possible time. True starvation mode only comes about if you eat at an extremely large deficit and maintain that deficit over a long period of time. This is typically what happens to anorexics. It is part of the reason they look so skeletal: their bodies have burned off most of their muscles before burning off fat reserves, so by the time they lose they fat they want, they have no substantial muscle mass left.

    MFP builds a reasonable deficit into the numbers provided to you assuming that you do no exercise. Thus, if you do exercise, you burn off more calories than assumed, and your deficit grows too large to maintain an optimal ratio of fat burned to muscle burned. Eating back your exercise calories, therefore, brings you back to your original deficit. You will still lose weight if you don't eat them back, but a larger portion of the weight lost will be muscle, which is not what you are looking for. If you want to use a method where you don't have to worry about eating back calories, the link below provides a good explanation.

    http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/975025-in-place-of-a-road-map-short-n-sweet?hl=short+and+sweet&page=10#posts-15694678

    Hope that helps.
  • jacksonpt
    jacksonpt Posts: 10,413 Member
    2 things.

    1) yes, you are right... based on grand generalizations, at 1200 cals you should be eating back whatever you burn through exercise.

    2) starvation mode is generally linked to calorie intake, which is a flawed way to look at it. Starvation is actually a function of nutrients as much as it is calories. It's possible for someone to be perfectly healhty on 1000 cals per day if they are getting enough of the necessary nutrients, while someone on 1600 cals per day might not be if they are falling short in required nutrients.
  • bootsiejayne
    bootsiejayne Posts: 151 Member
    I really wish MFP would quit telling people they are starving.
    My advice is to discuss your goals with your physician or dietician and then use MFP as a tool to track numbers and find support.


    ^^^This, this right here^^^
  • jacksonpt
    jacksonpt Posts: 10,413 Member
    The term "starvation mode" gets thrown around a lot, and causes a lot of division. Yes, MFP expects you to eat back your calories. Whenever you burn calories, a portion is fat and a portion is lean tissue. When you eat at a small deficit, the larger proportion of calories burned is drawn from fat reserves. As the deficit grows larger, the balance shifts towards burning more muscle and less fat. This is because fat cells require fewer calorie to maintain than muscle cells, so if a large deficit extends over a long period of time, you will have fuel reserves for the longest possible time. True starvation mode only comes about if you eat at an extremely large deficit and maintain that deficit over a long period of time. This is typically what happens to anorexics. It is part of the reason they look so skeletal: their bodies have burned off most of their muscles before burning off fat reserves, so by the time they lose they fat they want, they have no substantial muscle mass left.

    MFP builds a reasonable deficit into the numbers provided to you assuming that you do no exercise. Thus, if you do exercise, you burn off more calories than assumed, and your deficit grows too large to maintain an optimal ratio of fat burned to muscle burned. Eating back your exercise calories, therefore, brings you back to your original deficit. You will still lose weight if you don't eat them back, but a larger portion of the weight lost will be muscle, which is not what you are looking for. If you want to use a method where you don't have to worry about eating back calories, the link below provides a good explanation.

    http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/975025-in-place-of-a-road-map-short-n-sweet?hl=short+and+sweet&page=10#posts-15694678

    Hope that helps.

    While I agree with the greater point of you post regarding starvation mode and low cal intake over long periods of time, I feel like I should clarify something.

    To say you burn muscle or fat when you exercise is, at the very least, misleading, and in many cases, simply wrong. You burn calories when you exercise. In most cases, those calories come from glycogen stores. Yes, in some very specific situations you can burn actual tissue, but in most cases, most energy is supplied by stored glycogen, not by the breakdown of tissue.
  • neanderthin
    neanderthin Posts: 10,505 Member
    Everyone experiences some kind of metabolic adaption when losing weight, but unless you have a low body fat percentage and in a fairly large deficit, starvation mode ain't going to happen.
  • jakkisr
    jakkisr Posts: 175 Member
    yes, you add the calories 'earned' through exercise on to your calorie allowance for the day.

    Are you sure you've worked this out correctly though? 1200 is usually the default MFP for a woman - and you're a guy so I would have expected it to give you a default minimum of 1440.

    Look on the forums for TDEE and BMR advice, there's loads of gurus who can help on here (and some less than helpful people! trust your instincts and don't get offended by the snarks that you will no doubt come across at some point!) scoobyworksheets are pretty good for entering your personal measurements and working out a reasonable starting point for your calories.
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