Starvation mode

http://www.aworkoutroutine.com/starvation-mode/
Is a great resource!

My thought is that you can't live on 1200 calories forever (unless your a sadist) and when you do start eating more than 1200 calories, your metabolism will react and you will gain weight, even though, say, 1500 calories might be a maintenance level for you. So while 1200 calories a day will not put you into "starvation mode" (I put that in quotations because the term is controversial), it will end up causing more damage than good.

There are several factors to metabolic slowdown that people don't take into consideration.

Here's some basic information. Through a strict caloric restriction, more than 50% of your maintenance calories, for a period of 6 months, will see you're metabolism slow down a bit. Now, this is very important, if you're obese, this will not be the case, your body, have so much extra fat to burn from, will be eating more of it's stored fat and you'll see far less response in that way.

Now, when you lose your weight. If you've been obese for years, or, like someone in my case, their entire life. WHen you go onto maintenance, your body will always require that you eat 20% less than your maintenance weight, if you've done a bit of a severe calorie restriction, less than 50% of your maintenance calories to lose the weight, expect an additional 12% in metabolic slow down.

Now, the major mistake people make, is that they eat the calories they were eating when they were their original weight. As you lose weight, even losing 10 or 20 pounds, your maintenance goes down, and so too does your need.

Starvation mode is a myth. The real danger to your body and your weight, as malnutrition. When you're on a restricted diet of 1,000 to 1,200 calories, you're going to need to make healthier and better choices so that you get the nutrition that you need into your body.

I don't seem to be hungry enough to eat 1200 calories everyday.... I'm averaging 900-1100. Is this bad?? I also don't want to eat right before bed just to hit my 1200 calories. I am losing (I have to update my weight), 8 pounds total, but concerned about the message I get at the end of everyday about starvation mode! Oh and this is my third go round... I just started dieting again a bout a month ago.

it's not great. I mean there is a chance that you are actually eating more then you think, especially if you are not having any of the other symptoms of under eating, but other then lethargy these symptoms don't turn up until you are already quite malnourished.

If you need to lose weight then in the not so distant past you had no problem eating more then 1200 calories, so to say now that you just can't seems a little weird.