Don't believe in "Starvation Mode"?

The theory of starvation mode as it is presented in forums such as these IS a myth. It breaks the laws of thermodynamics; there's no way around that.

You are mistaken. Here's why I think so. I am no medical doctor, but I know a few things about basic physics.

Here are the laws: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_of_thermodynamics Conservation of energy must apply to weight loss. That is true.

You put energy into your body by eating caloric food. The Calorie is a unit of energy, so it is directly a measure of how much energy you put into your body.

Your body has multiple ways to use energy that it receives:
- store it as chemical potential energy for later use == gain weight as fat
- use it to convert proteins into body parts == gain muscle mass (and more generally maintain your body cells)
- exercise (intentional or otherwise) == mechanically move your body to spend the energy, transferring the energy to other systems.

So, to violate the 1st law of thermodynamics, you would have to take in less calories that you use, and still gain weight (that is, put calories into fat storage). On the surface, that appears to be what people are talking about. It is not. The problem comes when you try to understand and predict how many calories your body burns.

Starvation mode is mechanically this: your body reacts to your diet by changing the efficiency at which it burns calories. Where MFP or any other site would tell you that your body burns an average of (lets say) 1800 calories per day. When you go into starvation mode, it could drop to 900 calories per day. (I am no biologist, these are just numbers out of the air.) So, this person goes on a 1100 net calorie diet, they start to lose weight. 1100 calories in - 1800 calories burned = -700 calories/day or 78g of fat burned from the body stores to make up the deficit. Then they hit "starvation mode" and their body quietly shuts down to burn only 900 calories per day (no this is not an instant process, just showing the difference here). The next day they consume 1100 calories, and the body burns 900 of them. The other 200 calories go into the fat stores, gaining back 22g fat per day.

Full starvation is when the body starts to consume protein stores (that is, vital parts of the body) to provide energy. That's obviously a lot more dangerous.

Ultimately the problem is with understanding how many calories your body is going to use. It is known and well documented in this thread that there is a Starvation Mode threshold that causes the body to change its energy usage. That's hard to predict and it invalidates the estimates provided by MFP. Thus: avoid starvation mode, and their estimates should be reasonably accurate, and you should continue to lose weight. If you hit starvation mode, the estimates are out the window, so you need to recalculate how many calories you need to continue to lose weight. If you lower your calorie intake further you risk reaching true starvation and causing damage to your body. They recommend (and rightly so) that you keep your body out of the starvation mode reaction so you can keep your energy usage up at the predicted levels and thus maintain the calorie deficit in a healthy way.

The theory of starvation mode as it is presented in forums such as these IS a myth. It breaks the laws of thermodynamics; there's no way around that.

You are mistaken. Here's why I think so. I am no medical doctor, but I know a few things about basic physics.

Here are the laws: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_of_thermodynamics Conservation of energy must apply to weight loss. That is true.

You put energy into your body by eating caloric food. The Calorie is a unit of energy, so it is directly a measure of how much energy you put into your body.

Your body has multiple ways to use energy that it receives:
- store it as chemical potential energy for later use == gain weight as fat
- use it to convert proteins into body parts == gain muscle mass (and more generally maintain your body cells)
- exercise (intentional or otherwise) == mechanically move your body to spend the energy, transferring the energy to other systems.

So, to violate the 1st law of thermodynamics, you would have to take in less calories that you use, and still gain weight (that is, put calories into fat storage). On the surface, that appears to be what people are talking about. It is not. The problem comes when you try to understand and predict how many calories your body burns.

Starvation mode is mechanically this: your body reacts to your diet by changing the efficiency at which it burns calories. Where MFP or any other site would tell you that your body burns an average of (lets say) 1800 calories per day. When you go into starvation mode, it could drop to 900 calories per day. (I am no biologist, these are just numbers out of the air.) So, this person goes on a 1100 net calorie diet, they start to lose weight. 1100 calories in - 1800 calories burned = -700 calories/day or 78g of fat burned from the body stores to make up the deficit. Then they hit "starvation mode" and their body quietly shuts down to burn only 900 calories per day (no this is not an instant process, just showing the difference here). The next day they consume 1100 calories, and the body burns 900 of them. The other 200 calories go into the fat stores, gaining back 22g fat per day.

Full starvation is when the body starts to consume protein stores (that is, vital parts of the body) to provide energy. That's obviously a lot more dangerous.

Ultimately the problem is with understanding how many calories your body is going to use. It is known and well documented in this thread that there is a Starvation Mode threshold that causes the body to change its energy usage. That's hard to predict and it invalidates the estimates provided by MFP. Thus: avoid starvation mode, and their estimates should be reasonably accurate, and you should continue to lose weight. If you hit starvation mode, the estimates are out the window, so you need to recalculate how many calories you need to continue to lose weight. If you lower your calorie intake further you risk reaching true starvation and causing damage to your body. They recommend (and rightly so) that you keep your body out of the starvation mode reaction so you can keep your energy usage up at the predicted levels and thus maintain the calorie deficit in a healthy way.

Good post, in the Minnesota Semi-Starvation Study, subjects dropped their metabolism by 30-40%
This is very significant, since metabolism is our best tool for burning body-fat.

No one can tell me it isn't real since I've been through it.

I don't usually comment on stuffs but leptin is only significant in mouse not in human. Just FYI. the hormone is presented in our body but changing altering the hormone itself does nothing for human weight lost or weight gain.

That's not true, many obese people are leptin resistant just like diabetics are insulin resistant. So in some it means nothing, but the hormone definitely helps to regulate hunger and food satisfaction.

You are right, I haven't read the entire 7 page thread....because I have children and don't have time for that kind of thing.

I put on weight after I stopped rowing. I stopped rowing because I left university and had to actually have a life, not spend all day doing sport.

Nothing to do with starvation mode.

Sure for you it wasn't but for others it is.

How else do you explain it when someone eats 1,200 calories a day, has a BMR of 1,400 and burns 500 calories 5 days a week working out and they don't lose weight for a month or even gain weight?

I've seen the above happen several times, most non-believers say they are lying about their food intake and that might be true in some cases but I know in some it wasn't in all of them.
I know that it has happened to me. I logged everything and I was honest about it.

You are right, I haven't read the entire 7 page thread....because I have children and don't have time for that kind of thing.

I put on weight after I stopped rowing. I stopped rowing because I left university and had to actually have a life, not spend all day doing sport.

Nothing to do with starvation mode.

You don't have to read the whole thing, but the original poster (among many others) put together well thought out explinations on what "starvation mode" or "nutrition deprivation" is, how it works and why it affects so many people, particularly on this website. Your post tried to wave that off with limited empirical evidence which had been addressed several times.

To be clear:

What 75% (my estimate) of MFP users would define "Starvation Mode" as...

THAT, I do not believe in.

Testimonials, anecdotal evidence, all of it means NOTHING in my opinion. Show me scientific evidence of a starving person that gains weight as a direct result of their starvation.

The 'gaining weight' part of Starvation Mode: You don't consume many calories for days in a row. Your body will start to crave the nutrients it isn't getting. So your metabolism comes to a screeching halt. Your body stops burning fat and starts to hang onto it. You give in to the cravings and eat the wrongs kinds of carbs and sugars (the bad ones). Your body stores that as fat because your metabolism has slowed so much.

The 'losing weight' part of Starvation Mode: You fight through those cravings and continue to consume too few calories. You continue to lose weight but you are not losing fat at this point. You don't have enough of for your body to think it's okay to burn off. So it turns to lean muscle mass for fuel and that starts to decrease. This decrease causes your metabolism to slow down even more. So your body starts to figure out what functions it needs to stop to help conserve energy (a calorie is a unit of energy - our fuel). So it starts shutting down systems and organs (this can include your brain functions). It becomes a 'starvation diet'. You can read about those effects by searching "The Minnesota Starvation Diet Experiement:".

And I'm no expert but I have been there and I have been researching this for 5 months now. I might not have explained as well as other people and I'm not good with words. And I gained 20 pounds in less than a year by "not eating".

(This scientific name for Starvation Mode is "Thermogenesis". It is real). It just gets put into a very, very strict definition here because most people are black/white when it comes to dieting.

To be clear:

What 75% (my estimate) of MFP users would define "Starvation Mode" as...

THAT, I do not believe in.

Testimonials, anecdotal evidence, all of it means NOTHING in my opinion. Show me scientific evidence of a starving person that gains weight as a direct result of their starvation.

The 'gaining weight' part of Starvation Mode: You don't consume many calories for days in a row. Your body will start to crave the nutrients it isn't getting. So your metabolism comes to a screeching halt. Your body stops burning fat and starts to hang onto it. You give in to the cravings and eat the wrongs kinds of carbs and sugars (the bad ones). Your body stores that as fat because your metabolism has slowed so much.

The 'losing weight' part of Starvation Mode: You fight through those cravings and continue to consume too few calories. You continue to lose weight but you are not losing fat at this point. You don't have enough of for your body to think it's okay to burn off. So it turns to lean muscle mass for fuel and that starts to decrease. This decrease causes your metabolism to slow down even more. So your body starts to figure out what functions it needs to stop to help conserve energy (a calorie is a unit of energy - our fuel). So it starts shutting down systems and organs (this can include your brain functions). It becomes a 'starvation diet'. You can read about those effects by searching "The Minnesota Starvation Diet Experiement:".

Indeed. And the point is constantly being made that the situation that the Experiment refers to is not one that may people on MFP will ever encounter.

Weight is a very fickle thing. You could weigh yourself 10 times during the day and get a different reading each time. I admit I have a tendency to sometimes go over my calorie goal.I don't actually think this has done me any harm at all,I still managed to lose 4 lb last week. But sometimes I am too far under and get told by MFP that my body will go into starvation mode. While I agree that starvation mode is real,i do not think that your body will start to store fat if you don't eat the required calories for one day. If you have had 3 meals,i think your body will be fine.

The issue here isn't one day over or under. It isn't even about a week over or under. It's about prolonged habits that alter the body's chemistry and energy demands. In addition, it's not that long term under eating makes the body store more fat. It slows down the rate that the body burns the fat it already has. That tissue is very high energy, and if a body goes into survival mode it is going to want to hang on to that as long as possible. Again, it's not that it's making more, it's just not burning the fat it has.

Along those lines, from what I have observed (anecdotal, no science reference), is that folks prone to long term under eating are also prone to binge cycles. That kind of behavior seems to be what lead to weight gain on low calorie diets. The body is desperate for energy, but instead of burning those extra binge calories, it packs them away for use later.

Adding to bookmarks!

Hello,

any advice is greatly appreciated...

Can anyone out there help me to understand this whole "eating enough" business? I know I am only on the beginning steps of my journey, and a lot older than I was the last time I kicked it into high gear, but I have to say I am getting frustrated! Although I am still consuming 1200-1500 calories a day, I have cut out nearly that amount from my prior "diet". I was incredibly unhealthy; consuming nearly a case of sodas a day! I know...scary right?!?! I don't know how I got so out of control...just my only vice, I guess; and I totally believe that soda drinks are addictive, but my increasing weight, and a wake up call from both my MD and my dentist inspired me to quit cold turkey! So, perhaps it was wishful thinking, but I just assumed that cutting out a whole daily vaue of calories, and probably a week's worth of sugar a day that I would see results rather quickly. Now, I knew that things would level off, but I guess I had hoped for a pretty big drop in the beginning. So here's my question, and I know few of you are registered to make any medical diagnoses, or give advice on that level, but was hoping some of you may have learned ( trough experience, or education) why I may be experiencing this phenomenon. Is my body essentially in starvation/storage mode since I have reduced caloric intake so dratically, or am I just not yet consuming few enough calories for my body to burn as least what I eat and more? Thanks in advance for any help you can offer....