Starvation Mode is a Myth: The Science

1200 calories was the minimum amount a WOMAN would need to eat daily to avoid starving to death, as determined by the WHO (World Health Organization). This was arrived at in an effort to determine the amount of aid that would need to be sent to a region without resources, such as war or natural disaster. It really wasn't related to "starvation mode", per se.

See I understand this, for some people, but saying "woman" vs. "person" doesn't really make any difference because there still are women of all different sizes so I don't understand how 1200 could be the minimum for every single woman. Maybe the average woman? But how is that defined?

See this what makes changing your life style so hard. Some people say you must eat x amount or you are going to go into starvation mode and others say no. I know people talked about the Eat Stop Eat Diet and it is based around the concept of fasting. So has anyone tried it?

I use Eat Stop Eat. It is a great read, and a useful way to 1) Learn what being hungry really feels like 2) Cut out about 20% of your calories in a week in flexible way. The first while it is difficult to do without eating all the calories you cut out that day, but after a while I have started to learn that a good hearty supper will satisfy me.

To clarify, what definition are you using for "starvation mode"? I've seen a few conflicting ones. Is it a slowdown of metabolism that happens (or does not happen) after a couple days' worth of eating very few calories? Or is it a slowdown of metabolism that happens (or does not happen) after a prolonged period of eating very few calories? (Or something else entirely?)

Starvation mode refers to a prolonged period of time that a body is denied the nutrients necessary for its survival. Just because you fast for a day, doesn't mean your body will enter starvation mode. I try to fast every month, having a 1-day water-only fast. This does not mean that my body enters starvation mode, and I don't think MFP or any personal trainer or nutritionist will disagree.

I think that's VERY important for people to see, because people will cut their calories to insanely low amounts in the pursuit of weight loss, and completely ruin their health. I think your definition of "starvation mode" is unclear in your original post, and am afraid someone will see it and say "hey yeah, that means eating 500 calories a day every day is OK!"

There's no myth. What you are burning is revealed easily via what you expel through your lungs.

1200 calories was the minimum amount a WOMAN would need to eat daily to avoid starving to death, as determined by the WHO (World Health Organization). This was arrived at in an effort to determine the amount of aid that would need to be sent to a region without resources, such as war or natural disaster. It really wasn't related to "starvation mode", per se.

This is a great bit of detail too as CONTEXT MATTERS! Alot. We aren't in a war-torn or droughted nation (U.S.) and therefore, our bodies are responding to a very different set of environmental factors from physical to psycho-emotional - which can take a toll on energy, nutrition and alter responses to nutrients and how our bodies physiologically respond to food or lack thereof. Context is huge so I feel that to apply this number arbitrarily to people living outside of the realities that were the cause for the determinations is a massive clinical error.

What a great example of research misrepresentation/misuse. My gosh.. the diagnostic criteria from a physical standpoint alone are so extremely variant from what WHO determined under the conditions.........wow. But then, if I recall right, WHO has been put in the spotlight for questionable research data before. I don't know what came of those instances, though.

More info...including SCIENTIFIC studies and EXPERTS...on what starvation mode is and is not.

http://caloriecount.about.com/truth-starvation-mode-ft28742

http://unu.edu/unupress/food2/UID07E/UID07E11.HTM


I have stopped using the term "starvation mode" and instead, am using "nutritional deprivation". You may not starve by eating too little, but you will definitely deprive yourself of necessary nutrition.

Personally, I will continue to encourage people to learn to eat reasonable quantities with a small, sustainable deficit, in order to maintain a healthier lifestyle permanently while feeling in top form. As opposed to...crashing to their desired goal with a enormous deficit, all without learning a single tool to prevent a recurrence of the habits that got them to the overweight point.

Ditto, Ditto, Ditto

I would like to point out that the first article you cited is statistically insignificant. First of all, it was done in 1987, and secondly it was done on 6 MEN. For anyone who does not analyze data or review research articles regularly, this essentially means that the information that they claim in the article is not scientifically reliable as : # 1. does have nearly enough subjects, and #2. there were no women in the study, and finally the article is over 20 years old. ALso of note in the study was that the subjects resting metabolic rate DECREASED from 73.5 to 63.8 after 3 days. So in other words their metabolism decreased after 3 days.

More info...including SCIENTIFIC studies and EXPERTS...on what starvation mode is and is not.

http://caloriecount.about.com/truth-starvation-mode-ft28742

http://unu.edu/unupress/food2/UID07E/UID07E11.HTM


I have stopped using the term "starvation mode" and instead, am using "nutritional deprivation". You may not starve by eating too little, but you will definitely deprive yourself of necessary nutrition.

Personally, I will continue to encourage people to learn to eat reasonable quantities with a small, sustainable deficit, in order to maintain a healthier lifestyle permanently while feeling in top form. As opposed to...crashing to their desired goal with a enormous deficit, all without learning a single tool to prevent a recurrence of the habits that got them to the overweight point.

Bingo

Scientists have identified the first gene essential to extending the lives of animals on low-calorie diets, raising the prospects of a longevity pill.

In earlier research, "caloric restriction" extended the life, sometimes 40% longer than average, of creatures ranging from mice to worms. Some studies in people and monkeys are exploring whether near-starvation diets, which consist of perhaps 70% of the calories consumed in a normal diet, will help them live longer, too.

But "those diets are pretty tough to stick with," says Andrew Dillin of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., whose international team's gene research is reported in today's issue of the journal Nature. Discovery of the gene, called PHA-4, raises hopes that uncovering the genetic machinery behind caloric restrictions may enable people to skip starvation and still live longer.

Other genes have been linked to low-calorie diets and life extension in the past, but in the new study, the team found that the presence or absence of PHA-4 in worms was the make-or-break factor in whether a starvation diet extended their lives, regardless of whether they had any of those other genes.

Dillin calls PHA-4 the "primordial" gene underlying a process that likely arose in feast-or-famine conditions in the past, where creatures that evolved metabolisms that worked more efficiently under starvation conditions survived. Versions of the gene, which the team has patented in worms, are found in mammals, too, and the team is conducting experiments on mice to see its effect.

"We are on the threshold of some pretty big discoveries in caloric restriction," says MIT biologist Leonard Guarente, who was not part of the PHA-4 study. A number of recent discoveries, such as last year's report by Harvard Medical School researchers that resveratrol, which is found in red wine, has life-extending properties in mice, also have boosted hopes for life-extension treatments.

"My suspicion is that (treatment) won't be a substitute for a healthy lifestyle. You'll still need to go to the gym," Guarente says. "But if you are fit, we'll find something to make you fitter and if you aren't, we'll likely find something to help."

In the study, Dillin's team turned their gene on and off by adding gene-silencing compounds to the worm's food. If similar experiments work in mice, a final step would be to try boosting the activity of the mammalian version of the gene, called Foxa1, in people.

Starvation is nothing new in human history, Dillin notes, but in previous centuries people lacked antibiotics, sanitation and hospitals, likely disguising any longevity benefits hidden in famine.

(c) USA TODAY, 2007

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Source: USA Today, MAY 03, 2007
Item: J0E177937660207


2005 Abstract:
Abstract:Much research interest, and recently even commercial interest, has been predicated on the assumption that reasonably closely-related species – humans and mice, for example – should, in principle, respond to ageing-retarding interventions with an increase in maximum lifespan roughly proportional to their control lifespan (that without the intervention). Here, it is argued that the best-studied life-extending manipulations of mice are examples of a category that is highly unlikely to follow this rule, and more likely to exhibit only a similar absolute increase in maximum lifespan from one species to the next, independent of the species’ control lifespan. That category – reduction in dietary calories or in the organism’s ability to metabolize or sense them – is widely recognized to extend lifespan as an evolutionary adaptation to transient starvation in the wild, a situation which alters the organism’s optimal partitioning of resources between maintenance and reproduction. What has been generally overlooked is that the extent of the evolutionary pressure to maintain adaptability to a given duration of starvation varies with the frequency of that duration, something which is – certainly for terrestrial animals and less directly for others – determined principally by the weather. The pattern of starvation that the weather imposes is suggested here to be of a sort that will tend to cause all terrestrial animals, even those as far apart phylogenetically as nematodes and mice, to possess the ability to live a similar maximum absolute (rather than proportional) amount longer when food is short than when it is plentiful. This generalization is strikingly in line with available data, leading (given the increasing implausibility of further extending human mean but not maximum lifespan in the industrialized world) to the biomedically and commercially sobering conclusion that interventions which manipulate caloric intake or its sensing are unlikely ever to confer more than 2 or 3 years’ increase in human mean or maximum lifespan at the most. Copyright © 2005 S. Karger AG, Basel [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR].
Copyright of Gerontology is the property of Karger AG and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.).
Author Affiliations:1Department of Genetics, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
ISSN:0304324X.

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2005 Abstract
Abstract:This article presents an interview with Michael Rae, an advocate for the Calorie Restriction (CR) diet. When asked about the limits of the diet, Rae refers to the anti-aging effect and the inverse of calories to the point of starvation. He believes in eliminating food that provides no nutritional benefits. He comments on the aging process and says that if CR participants didn't have a strong horror of degenerative biological aging, there would be no motivation..
Full Text Word Count:2969.
ISSN:00249262.
Accession Number:23707356.
Database: Academic Search Premier..
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Sorry I'm unable to provide direct links - these are articles from my university online library so access is limited to students and staff. If anyone wants more, I'll save as a pdf and email but only by request as I have no further use for these articles and no reason to retain them on my computer.

This is to address all the research concerns of the originally cited studies. Let it be known that I did several searches and none of them rendered negative articles so I've not picked and chosen ones that agree with one side or another. This is what was present. Unless someon is interested in the link of blood-brain barrier and obesity which doesn't have much to do with this topic.

I hope this helps.

There are certainly people here and elsewhere who use the term "starvation mode" incorrectly and out of context. Using that as an excuse to decry the concept is rather silly though. Just because some people do not fully understand it, or its applications, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Most commonly, the actual circumstance (around here) is underfeeding. A consistent, long term lack of nutrition, and a lack of fuel, is real and unfortunately quite pervasive here and in other weight loss communities. Trying to say it's rare or some kind of anomaly is a bit naive, IMO.

What does is exist is the body's natural inclination to adjust to extreme conditions. If you lower your calorie intake to a level that deprives it of the energy (which is what a calorie is) it needs to function at an optimal level, it will not function at an optimal level. Pretty simple. RMR will decrease. The body will begin to break down and utilize a higher ratio of muscle to fat. It's quite well documented. Does it mean you won't lose weight? No. It means the weight you lose will not be mostly fat. It will be mostly muscle. Does it happen right at 1200 cals? No. It happens at different points for different people. Does it take 3 days or 30? No telling - each individual has different variables that will impact the outcome.

MFP has made an effort to assist people in utilizing the site as a tool to aid in healthy, sustainable weight loss. To this end, they discourage people from eating too little or too much. Perhaps the tactic they use is a bit overdramatic, in the 1200 cal rule - but unfortunately, that's what it takes to get a lot of people's attention. Some very small women can eat below 1200 and be healthy. But the bell curve puts them well outside the vast majority. Trying to create a program that fits every exact situation is impossible. But they've done their best to make the site as user-friendly and customizable as possible, while trying to discourage people from using unhealthy means of weight loss. It is perfect? No. But I, for one, appreciate their attempts. If nothing else, it's encouraged a lot of people to actually go out and try to educate themselves. :flowerforyou:

Agreed on many points - and, just to take the side of the outliers, for those that DO fit this category, it's crazy frustrating to have an inaccurate fear placed in your head which actually detracts from your goals - not because they're "wrong" per se but they're wrong for YOU (in this case, me) but no one will acknowledge that and threatens you with extreme adverse effects. We have to be careful not to uniformely accept one aspect of the dichotomy over the other. We do have to account for the outliers, recognize them (us) and adjust our thinking, perceptions, attitudes AND responses to accomodate ALL variances. Who knows, what happens if someone shows up that is an outlier on the other end and has to consume 5000 cals just to maintain a healthy weight? Is everyone going to jump on the hypo(er)glycemic bandwagon and tell them their going to get diabetes and lose their feet and eventually die of gangrine if they don't decrease their intake?

Personally, this is the take home message in my mind: don't discount the outliers; they're real and valid and fear only isolates and diminishes the sense of self, the same as it does with anyone else. This is a very personal issue for me *because* I'm one of those outliers and it's incredibly off-putting when someone tells me I'm "sick" or I'm going to send my system into "starvation mode". I've done the starvation thing. I've gone 3 weeks without eating (years and years ago). I know the difference and trust me, I wasn't starving then either. Pretty depleted in some nutritional areas, yeah... but I wasn't anywhere near wasting away or dying or being hospitalized (although I was threatened with it which, ultimately, was probably a good thing). This isn't to say not eating is a good idea. It's not. What I'm saying is I've gotten some experience on that end of the spectrum and what we use here on MFP is inaccurate.

Yes DO encourage people to eat healthy and watch their macro nutrients AND their micronutrients. Those are ridiculously important. No one is suggesting otherwise. The problem is, we're putting too much emphasis on this..... unit of measurement called a calorie and not enough emphasis on nutritional standards. You want to talk worriesome data, how many women are dying from cancer that may have been mitigated by getting enough Omega-3s, Calcium and Vitamin C? We have entire organizations of millions trying desperately to get the message across about what we eat and health and yet we're quibbling over calories? Really? I'd rather quibble over my iron deficiency than my caloric deficiency and learning how to get my balance of calcium, iron and protein without over-consuming in fats and cholesterol at the same time! If I can keep that diet AND keep my cals at 800... hell yeah! If all my nutrients are at 100%+ and my daily consumption is 700 kcals - what's the problem? Really? And I think therein lies the issue. We're not talking calories. We're talking sufficient nutrition as the articles I've posted suggest.