Starvation mode/myth, 10 pounds in 13 days

I read the article in the New York Times, “4 Days, 11 Pounds” (http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/22/4-days-11-pounds) with great interest. In it, researchers had participants on an extremely low-calorie diet of 360 calories per day, while also having them walk for eight hours each day. The average participant lost 11 pounds, and seemed more able to keep it off than typical dieters.

Now I had done the typical dieting in the past. I started at 227, and over the course of nine months I dropped to 172, averaging a bit better than 1.5 pounds a week, through a combination of calorie reduction and running. Of course, like most people, I gained a lot of it back. I immediately rebounded to 187, and I pretty much stayed between 187 and 194 for the next two years.

While I tried to get back into dieting, I couldn't seem to recapture the weight-loss mindset. I was no longer obese, but I was still overweight, and I wanted to get my BMI back under 25. (I'm a 5'11 male, 43 years old.) The NY Times article intrigued me; I was off for the summer (college professor), I had a lot of free time, and I had about four weeks before our traveling began and tracking calories would become difficult.

While 360 calories and eight hours of walking a day both seemed impossible... what was possible? Could I drastically lower my calorie intake, radically increase my exercise, and do a four-week crash diet? And could I remain healthy doing so?

THE RESEARCH: My first goal was to research starvation mode, the almost mythical body reaction to having less than 1200 calories a day. If you Google “starvation mode real” you will find on the first page of links what amounts to a holy war between people who think it's a real think and those who think it's a myth. After reading many articles on the subject, I just decided to remain agnostic, and simply see what the results were for me. And I can't emphasize enough, this is what happened TO ME. Your mileage may vary.

THE EXERCISE: I exercised for between two and five hours per day, splitting my activities between an elliptical trainer, riding my bicycle, and walking/running. I did whatever I felt like, and I usually did two of the activities every day. Of course, I began the process on a Friday, and I can't exercise nearly as much on the weekend as I can on the weekdays, so you'll see my

THE FOOD: My calories ranged drastically on any given day. I tried to listen to my body, to feed it only enough to stave off the hunger. Some days that was more than others, as you'll see below. It helped that I had gone on a low-carb diet less than a week before, so I had already passed through the “Atkins Flu” and was not getting the hunger pangs and low-sugar grouchiness that I typically got when I was hungry.

My original goal was to eat less calories than I exercised off each day. So if my exercise got me 800 calories, that was my calorie limit. That way, all of my BMR would be used burning fat. This didn't happen as much as I hoped, but my net calories was still well under 1200 almost every day. And there were days where I “bonked”, where I could feel my body just saying, “Enough!” Those days I ate many more calories, and it seemed to work to reset my body back into severe weight loss mode.

Eating was generally boring. Breakfast was 2 egg whites, salsa, and a turkey sausage patty (94 calories). Lunch was a 100-calorie Chobani Greek Yogurt Simply 100. Afternoon snack and dinner varied greatly, but I mostly stuck with pure protein and raw vegetables.

THE TOOLS: I used My Fitness Pal to track all my calories, and I used a FitBit Flex to track my exercise. I accepted whatever numbers it gave me for my walking and running. I used the calorie numbers from the elliptical trainer. For biking, I also let the FitBit calculate based on the time spent and distance pedaled. I'm sure there's error in all those numbers, but again, consistency was my goal.

THE RESULT: So, here's my chart of numbers over the days of my experiment. To make it easier to see how each day's input and output changed my weight, the weight that I give for each day is actually the next morning's weight, e.g. the result of the previous day's work. By the way, I should point out that since I'd started low-carb the previous weekend, I already had the initial weight loss associated with that; I was 194 on 5/17, so I'd already dropped 3.8 pounds in the five days before this experiment began.

DATE FOOD EXER NET WEIGHT
5/17 Begin low-carb 194.0
5/22 Begin very-low-cal 190.2
5/23 632 -760 -128 188.6
5/24 307 -501 -194 188.2
5/25 1078 -228 850 187.2
5/26 1049 -175 874 186.8
5/27 997 -1532 -535 185.8
5/28 2100 -643 1457 185.6
5/29 1123 -523 600 184.8
5/30 800 -635 166 184.0

MY CONCLUSIONS: From my personal experience, if you have the time to exercise an awful lot to keep your metabolism up, and you're willing to listen to your body when it tells you that it's had enough, I think this extreme dieting can work to take off a large amount of pounds in a short period of time. I only did very-low-calorie eating for eight days, and one of those eight days I consumed 2100 calories, so really it was only seven out of eight days. I'll probably try it again in August, but for now, I'm happy to have shed ten pounds in a very short period of time.