Hoarding Calories

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Replies

  • chandanista
    chandanista Posts: 986 Member
    Reading the title made me think this was going to be a thread about people who save all their calories throughout the day for one big splurge. Oh, how wrong I was.

    Me too

    Me three
    [/quote]

    I was hoping the thread would be WOW related somehow, sigh.

    Calories! For the Hoarde!
  • Achrya
    Achrya Posts: 16,913 Member
    Misleading title is misleading. I am disappoint.

    Noting the OP for future "Why aren't I losing" shenanigans.

    Also reading this while considering how to spend the rest of my 1800 calories today.
  • allisonrinkel
    allisonrinkel Posts: 224 Member
    Hkq3c.gif


    HAhahahahahaha Love this gif LOL
  • scrttwtt
    scrttwtt Posts: 30
    First it uses what you ate, then it will use glycogen stores, then fat stores and finally muscle.

    This highlights my issue particularly well. You need to eat less than the amount of energy you use every day, because the point of losing weight is that you are trying to use up some of the energy which you have stored as fat.
    Also your body has a capacity to remember from day to day what type of fuel you are supplying it.

    What is the mechanism for this? Your body remembering things?
    Case in point, I had my sigmoid colon removed. I didn't eat for 6 days. Guess how much weight I lost? Zip, nada, zilch. I actually gained a couple pounds.

    See, when I had my appendix removed, I lost over 12 lbs in the week I was in hospital (I was not given any food for five of those days).
  • tbrain1989
    tbrain1989 Posts: 280 Member
    i love these repeat arguments.

    case for the defence = explain to me why its 1200 calories minimum net calories ? where does that come from? would 1150 put em in starvation mode?

    case for the prosecution = ive tried the 2 different diets and lost more eating more.

    time to move on surely? SW, SW, SW, N

    Some Will, Some Wont, So What .. NEXT
  • scrttwtt
    scrttwtt Posts: 30
    I'm getting a lot of responses saying "Oh, noting you for future lack of weight loss" etc. I am asking for actual information regarding the science behind people claiming that your metabolism will just CHANGE if you eat too little from day-to-day. I'm not positing a weight-loss technique.

    I'm getting a lot of replies telling me, "You can't run a car without fuel". Well, human beings are like cars which have a huge reserve of lovely, thick fuel, hidden just below their car-skin, so unless somebody has very low body-fat, we are not going to run out of fuel.

    I ask, not because I am claiming that we all ought not to eat, but because I am interested in the mechanisms behind the science that people keep saying, but not backing up.

    I ask, because the only times I have ever lost any substantial amount of weight are,
    1) after I put on a LOT of weight when I first got an underactive thyroid, then starved myself for 5 days straight, back in college. I lost a stone and have never put that weight back on.
    2) When I had my appendix removed, and was not fed for almost a week. I lost a stone, but put it back on.
    3) Last year, I was very depressed, lived on almost no food, lost 24 lbs, put a lot of it back on when my mental health improved.

    The second two times when I lost a lot of weight were both due to ill-health, and I have no inclination to repeat the experiences I had, but I also believe that my metabolism was not affected whatsoever, and that I put weight back on because I went back to eating the same foods as soon as I stopped being ill.

    Discuss.
  • scrttwtt
    scrttwtt Posts: 30
    I think there are two points to address your questions.

    1. Nothing happens overnight. If you eat way below your calories once or twice, even once or twice per week, your body will not likely go into starvation mode. If that were the case, people would go into starvation mode when they get sick and can't eat or when they fast for religious or "cleanse" reasons. However, if you starve your body enough, it will go into starvation mode. And eating too far below what you body needs to function is starving your body. It would be like trying to fill a cup up with 8 ounces, but trying to squeeze ounces back out of it. Your body would always be on empty.

    2. Your body doesn't have to "think" to do things. You breathe every second without your body "thinking" about it. Breathing is a biological, involuntary function. The body does it because that's what it's required to do for survival. On a basic biological level, that's what organisms do. It's the same thing with regulating hormone levels in your body, your heart beating, digesting food, etc. It's the same with caloric metabolism.

    In giving yourself too few calories to survive, you'll likely lose weight at first because your body hasn't been triggered into starvation mode. But the longer you deprive your body, the more your body will respond to the deficit. It first responds by slowing the metabolism down so that it uses less energy. When that no longer works, the body will use what it has until it runs out of steam. Ask any surviving anorexic what happens when their body runs out of steam. It's not pretty.

    Sorry about the long post. I was a pre-med major my first three years in college and that crap is ingrained in me. lol

    This is more like what I was looking for, thank you!
  • pennydreadful270
    pennydreadful270 Posts: 266 Member
    If your metabolism had slowed at all you would expect to put the weight back on quickly. How do you gauge your own metabolism? Seems to me like you had two different experiences after a short period of starvation, shouldn't they be the same?
  • SteelySunshine
    SteelySunshine Posts: 1,092 Member
    Reading the title made me think this was going to be a thread about people who save all their calories throughout the day for one big splurge. Oh, how wrong I was.

    I have to be about the 15th person to say this again. Oh well.

    I don't know or care if starvation mode is a real thing. I think that people can lower their metabolism for real though, I guess that makes it real but it seems that even at a lowered metabolism people still lose weight if they don't eat.

    I don't plan on finding out personally what starvation mode is. I don't see the point of eating so little that my metabolism would slow down. It's bad enough dealing with the lower requirements that my lower body weight has caused. So far dealing with it by exercising more. But, I suppose I could hit a wall there at some point.
  • elyelyse
    elyelyse Posts: 1,454 Member
    I'm getting a lot of responses saying "Oh, noting you for future lack of weight loss" etc. I am asking for actual information regarding the science behind people claiming that your metabolism will just CHANGE if you eat too little from day-to-day. I'm not positing a weight-loss technique.

    if you want "actual information" then do some research using medical journals, etc. For the most part people here on the forums are going to share what they know from personal experience; if that isn't what you are looking for, you are looking in the wrong place.
    Many people here have had the actual experience of eating too little at first, and later stalling; the difficulty seems to correct itself when those people slowly up their intake to a more reasonable amount. It may be only anecdotal evidence, but this is a forum of laypeople, not scientists.
  • totem12
    totem12 Posts: 194 Member
    This is a blog, not a journal, but it seems to summarise pretty well what I always thought to be correct about starvation mode:

    http://labcoatsunbuttoned.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/the-food-series-1-these-starvation.html
  • Joehenny
    Joehenny Posts: 1,222 Member
    Yes and no. The starvation mode that most mfp obsess over is a myth. Now metabolic damage due to prolonged periods of dieting is real.

    My rate has slowed drastically but thankfully no where near as slow as it was around Feb. Cutting too long is bad on hormones.

    Layne Norton on Metabolic Damage:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHHzie6XRGk
  • Joehenny
    Joehenny Posts: 1,222 Member
    Reading the title made me think this was going to be a thread about people who save all their calories throughout the day for one big splurge. Oh, how wrong I was.

    That is what I thought...

    That's what I came for...IF crew checking in.
  • snoopycool
    snoopycool Posts: 37
    Reading the title made me think this was going to be a thread about people who save all their calories throughout the day for one big splurge. Oh, how wrong I was.

    Ha! Me, too.
  • bcattoes
    bcattoes Posts: 17,299 Member
    Case in point, I had my sigmoid colon removed. I didn't eat for 6 days. Guess how much weight I lost? Zip, nada, zilch. I actually gained a couple pounds.

    See, when I had my appendix removed, I lost over 12 lbs in the week I was in hospital (I was not given any food for five of those days).

    It would take 7000 calories above TDEE in 6 days to gain 2 lbs of fat. That's pretty much impossible without eating. Water weight is very common with gut problems.