Does this make sense to anyone else?

"Just to clarify, starvation mode is a MYTH. You would have to endure months of sustained malnutrition or extreme exercise for your body to "hold onto" anything.
And, while you may not eat much volumetrically, you are probably making up for it in caloric intake when you DO eat. People don't become overweight by not eating much."

I read this as part of a review about a diet. Is this just me or does this make sense to everyone else also, or is it just a bunch of crap??

Yes it makes sense, ever see pictures of the WWII concentration camps, those poor folks were actually starving and they weren’t holding on to any fat.

Oh for crying out loud. It's been proven time and time again that not eating enough and working out too much destroys your metabolism. But if you don't believe it, don't eat. I'm so sick of seeing this argument over and over again on these boards. Why not tag onto one of the THOUSANDS of existing threads on the topic and stop cluttering up the forums with the same argument fifteen times a day?

"Just to clarify, starvation mode is a MYTH. You would have to endure months of sustained malnutrition or extreme exercise for your body to "hold onto" anything.
And, while you may not eat much volumetrically, you are probably making up for it in caloric intake when you DO eat. People don't become overweight by not eating much."

I read this as part of a review about a diet. Is this just me or does this make sense to everyone else also, or is it just a bunch of crap??

I can wee this topic turning into a fight very soon. But I agree with that statement. And agree with what was stated above, people with gastric bypass wouldn't lose weight if under 1200 calories a day caused you to go into 'starvation mode'

Or you could just eat right and excercise...not starve yourself...and see results.


The problem with starving yourself is that even if you lose fat, you're also going to lose a lot of your muscle mass which isn't good.

"Just to clarify, starvation mode is a MYTH. You would have to endure months of sustained malnutrition or extreme exercise for your body to "hold onto" anything.
And, while you may not eat much volumetrically, you are probably making up for it in caloric intake when you DO eat. People don't become overweight by not eating much."

I read this as part of a review about a diet. Is this just me or does this make sense to everyone else also, or is it just a bunch of crap??

Yes it makes sense, ever see pictures of the WWII concentration camps, those poor folks were actually starving and they weren’t holding on to any fat.

Ya the people in those camps were skinny.....gross, but still skinny and you do say that they were STARVING which to me would mean that they weren't eating AT ALL! So of course they weren't holding onto any fat from food......THEY HAD NO FOOD!

If you want to look like an anorexic then become an anorexic!

As the child of Jewish parents, one of whom survived a concentration camp (Auschwitz), I find the constant reference to concentration camp survivors to prove or disprove "starvation mode" rather tasteless. Please refrain.

Thank you all.

If you weren't eating enough per day to cover what your body burns, yes it would lose fat. What happens in 'starvation mode' is when you start to eat at a regular level again, your body will retain as many calories as it can. This is an evolutionary response caused by times when food was scarce, floods, famine and the like. It helped the human race to survive because the people whose bodies did this lived, those who didn't died. The time of there being enough food for everyone, in the west at least, is in evolutionary terms, still very recent. We haven't had time yet for us to evolve past this response.

No, eating less than your BMR calories every now and then probably won't trigger it. Everyone's had days that for one reason or another they haven't eaten much or anything at all.

No-one's saying that you'll get fatter by eating less than your BMR. It's when you return to eating a surplus number of calories that your body will store as much of it as fat as it can.

As to the comment about people with gastric bypass, the likelihood is that they're still eating enough calories to cover their BMR, daily activities and any exercise they do as it's volume that the gastric bypass limits, not number of calories.

Also, there's a lot of comment on the message board about this magic number of 1200 calories. Everyone is different. A 6'7" man would need more calories to survive than a 5'7" woman would need to survive. One size does not fit all.

Amen lodro!

Oh for crying out loud. It's been proven time and time again that not eating enough and working out too much destroys your metabolism. But if you don't believe it, don't eat. I'm so sick of seeing this argument over and over again on these boards. Why not tag onto one of the THOUSANDS of existing threads on the topic and stop cluttering up the forums with the same argument fifteen times a day?

There is really no reason to be so damn rude. I had simply read this somewhere and I had personally not seen it on the forums so just wanted to see what people thought. If it bothers you so much, don't read the threads. Sorry to those who have taken a serious offence because I posted this

What bothers me is that clearly you have seen it discussed on the forums or you wouldn't have brought it up here. You're right, I didn't have to read the post. But I did. And since you posted this topic for discussion, you need to be open to the fact that people are going to have an opinion. And my opinion is that everybody needs to stop finding excuses to starve themselves, and instead treat our bodies right, feed ourselves healthy food, exercise, and stop trying to force our bodies to lose insane amounts of weight in a short amount of time. We need food to live. When we don't get it, bad things happen. Call it starvation mode, call it slow metabolism, call it low energy, call it whatever you want, but our bodies need food, and we need to take in more than we put out in order to survive and be healthy. It's not a difficult concept.

I DID go to my doctor, and i spoke to a nutritionist at my gym and when I explained to them that I was eating 1200 calories a day and I was not losing any weight, they both told me to eat a little less. My doctor told me that supervised, I can eat a diet between 800-900 calories a day and I will not die and my organs will not shut down. Guess what. Im not dead, I have energy and im ACTUALLY LOSING WEIGHT. I have lost 7lbs, over 2 weeks, not too fast, i have energy to workout and i feel great. Im not saying dont ever eat, thats just stupid im just saying that eating less wont kill u as long as you are eating more than a cracker a day obviously

Well I'm glad it's working for you. 7 lbs in 2 weeks IS actually pretty fast, for what it's worth. 2 lbs a week is a healthy rate for someone with a lot of weight to lose, and you're losing faster than that. Did your doctor look into other potential health issues that might be slowing your weight loss? Thyroid issues? Hormonal imbalances? Or did he just tell you to not eat so much?

If eating fewer calories is working for you and you're not losing muscle mass, then awesome. But that does not mean that it's the healthy choices for everyone, or even the majority of people. Most people will wreck their metabolism eating so few calories. It's just a fact.