Under eating

Oh goodness I am so dumb, what is starvation mode?
I see this all the time and I wonder how someone can starve if they eat, although the calories may be too low. I guess all the homeless people are in starvation mode. Will someone explain it real good for the OP and for me, cause as old as I am, a great grandma, I never knew of anything like it. thanks.

Starvation mode is when your body doesn't get enough food/calories to function properly, so it thinks you are starving. Your body then slows down your metabolism greatly, causing your body to store more of the food you eat instead of burning it off. Because of this, you could maintain your body weight if your in starvation mode even though your eating around 800 cals. For woman, starvation mode usually occurs under 1200 cals, and 1500 cals for men.
I hope this explanation helps.

ACK!! Starvation mode, as it is being applied here, is a fable! A person will not enter starvation mode until their body fat % drops to near 0. The body does not partition weight according to the number of calories being eaten. A slight drop in metabolism can be caused by adaptive thermogensis. It can also be caused by losing weight too fast and losing lean body mass, which is what drives your metabolic rate.

Did you read the link? To tell someone they will enter into 'starvation mode' if they eat less than 1200 (a woman) or less than 1500 (a man) is just plain wrong. What they may be in danger of is malnutrition. But they are not in danger of entering some mythical zone where their body will start 'holding onto to every calorie it can'. :flowerforyou:

If someone has hit a plateau, it is NOT because they are not eating enough. Even people who are actually starving, still lose weight.

Very low calorie diets often fail because not enough calories are being consumed to fuel physical activity, and this underfeeding can diminish metabolic processes. These intense energy restrictive diets are not only tough to maintain, but actually trigger the body to suppress its RMR by as much as 20% (Hill. 2004). Biological processes adapt as if the body were in a state of famine (which was a valid threat to our ancestors), so it increases metabolic efficiency by burning less calories to do the same work than an equally matched effort would burn in an adequately-fueled individual (Benardot and Thompson, 1999).

http://www.unm.edu/~lkravitz/Article%20folder/metabolismcontroversy.html

our body is so efficient that if we decrease our food intake for a week or two without increasing our physical activity, our metabolic rate slows to compensate for our calorie deficient. In times of famine, this attribute is helpful but when weight loss is the goal, it can be stifling. Humans are much more efficient at storing fat than burning fat. For this reason, it is imperative to stop weight gain before it occurs. The body was built to protect against famine rather than fighting weight gain.

http://www.urmc.rochester.edu/encyclopedia/content.aspx?ContentTypeID=1&ContentID=227

Significantly reducing calories lowers the body’s metabolism. Your body treats any reduction in food intake as an impending starvation situation and slows your metabolism to conserve calories. The more drastically you cut calories, the more your metabolic rate drops.

http://wellness.ucr.edu/Metabolism%202011.pdf

Problems with Restrictive Dieting
When you restrict calories too much in an effort to lose weight very quickly, the following may happen and can be detrimental to your weight, health, academic success, and social life:
● Your metabolism slows down in order to adapt to the lower caloric intake (so it can function with less fuel). And, it actually begins to be more efficient at holding on to the calories you eat and storing them as fat (since it’s not sure you will feed it later). This is why people who diet, usually gain back their weight (and more!) once they start eating normally again.

http://www.snac.ucla.edu/documents/HO.Dodietswork2010.pdf

Don't starve yourself. A very low-calorie diet slows metabolism and doesn't burn much fat. Instead, it burns the lean muscle mass that helps boost metabolism.

http://cancer.dartmouth.edu/pf/health_encyclopedia/abn2424

Those quotes didn't say how many calories constitutes starvation mode. If the goal was 1200cal for women, that would mean I've been in starvation mode for the past month and a half. Which is BS because instead I've lost 26 pounds and still going.

Read this>> http://www.aworkoutroutine.com/starvation-mode/

Those quotes didn't say how many calories constitutes starvation mode. If the goal was 1200cal for women, that would mean I've been in starvation mode for the past month and a half. Which is BS because instead I've lost 26 pounds and still going.

Read this>> http://www.aworkoutroutine.com/starvation-mode/

Semi-Starvation Period (24 weeks): During the 6-month semi-starvation period, each subject’s dietary intake was cut to approximately 1,560 calories per day. Their meals were composed of foods that were expected to typify the diets of people in Europe during the latter stages of the war: potatoes, rutabagas, turnips, bread and macaroni.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Starvation_Experiment

I've never been more than 20 lbs overweight and am not anorexic. If I'm not hungry I don't eat, I don't care how many calories I "need".
Sometimes you're just not hungry. Maybe your body is not ready for food or has some issues it is dealing with and needs you to slow down on the eating for a day or two. If I eat when I am not hungry I feel sick. I wouldn't "make" one of my children eat anyway. Generally it makes them throw up or have a belly ache. I believe your body knows what it needs. Look at it on a calories per week basis and it will generally all balance out. :flowerforyou:
(This does not apply to an anorexic disorder, of course.)

I've never been more than 20 lbs overweight and am not anorexic. If I'm not hungry I don't eat, I don't care how many calories I "need".
Sometimes you're just not hungry. Maybe your body is not ready for food or has some issues it is dealing with and needs you to slow down on the eating for a day or two. If I eat when I am not hungry I feel sick. I wouldn't "make" one of my children eat anyway. Generally it makes them throw up or have a belly ache. I believe your body knows what it needs. Look at it on a calories per week basis and it will generally all balance out. :flowerforyou:
(This does not apply to an anorexic disorder, of course.)

^^ good advice

Some days I'm just not as hungry especially if I'm not very active that day. Don't stress! I believe in listening to your brain AND your body. Also, if you're eating calorie dense foods or drinking a lot of water it will make you feel fuller

Thanks for the links. Unfortunately those are all OP ED articles perpetuating the same myths that are not supported by any peer reviewed published scientific studies. One that especially jumped out at me as erroneous was this "You see, our body is so efficient that if we decrease our food intake for a week or two without increasing our physical activity, our metabolic rate slows to compensate for our calorie deficient." This is misleading and just wrong. Severe caloric restriction leads to a decrease in NEAT (non-exercise activity), lean body mass as well as fat loss. This does not mean your metabolism is slowing down. It means you are moving around less, you have less muscle to burn calories while your body is burning muscle and fat for fuel. If kept up long enough for the body's fat reserves to become nearly exhausted, starvation mode enters the picture. But certainly not at only 2 weeks in. And not at 1200 calories per day for women and 1500 calories a day for men.

noone is saying 1200 for women and 1500 for men... In any case, this is taken directly from your link:

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1077746-starvation-mode-adaptive-thermogenesis-and-weight-loss

from his 4th and 5th posts


in regard to the "Maintenance of a 10% or greater reduction in body weight in lean or obese individuals":

2) What are these neuroendocrine changes? At the simplest level they correspond to increased adrenal activity and decreased thyroid and gonadal activity. This gets complex quickly and involves how hormones help regulate and balance things like activity, mood, hunger and body temperature and interact with the autonomous nervous system (the part of nervous system that works without our concious will). So what does increased adrenal activity really mean? Well, it results in an increase in appetite, reduced metabolic activity, and an increase in cortisol levels, which in turn result in loss of LBM and "increase the partitioning of stored calories to fat." (3) A variety of pathways such as those that regulate things from sexual drive to cognition to bone reconstruction are also modulated down.

if even maintaining a 10% or greater reduction in body weight can cause a reduction in metabolic activity, I imagine a drastic caloric deficit well below one's maintenance will further supress their metabolic activity.


in regard to these ideas in practice

3) Take diet breaks and go to maintenance with the most calories that do not result in a weight gain when needed to reduce or recover the effect of adaptation. These diet breaks can be extensive (And this creates a logical framework for me for the Eat More to Loss process – if eating more “resets” the metabolism, then a loss will occur at what was maintenance)

this was almost exactly my advice to the original poster, in regard to "re-setting" her metabolism by eating up to maintenance for 3 days, then start cutting again. the post where you said "no, noway"