How To Repair A Damaged Metabolism - Stavation Mode

Bump

LOVE thanks

bump for later

Bump from me too~

The idea of easing back into eating more calories gradually by 100 or so a week is what I had to do. I was down to eating like 500 a day when I had disordered eating and have now increased it to a healthy amount and continued losing weight. (:

wow...increasing by only a 100 a week? that is a slow process. so glad to hear that you are losing now!

bump for later

bomp

Awesome post.. This is me for sure. I've been eating low cal- think anywhere between 800-1300 calories a day and have now increased to 1500-1600 hundred and packed on two pounds. Good to know that it will come back off eventually.

This is what I've been doing. It helps me to stick to the plan (not cheat) because I know maintenance week is coming, and it resets my leptin levels. My last maintenance week was April 1 and my next maintenance week is July 1. It's working great!

Take Diet breaks: Avoid prolonged periods in aggressive caloric deficits. If you have a lot of fat to lose and it’s going to take more than 3 months to hit your long term fat loss goal, don’t do it all in one stretch. Take a week at maintenance calories after 12 weeks of restricted dieting. This – raising your calories - is the most counter-intuitive of all the metabolism-rebuilding strategies but it’s one of the most important.

Thanks Rick! I was doing the over cardio thing for awhile and it definitely wasn't working for me. I cut back on my exercise and it's really helped. Totally agree about weight lifting. Best change I ever made.

thank you! what a good read!

I like Venuto and his writings a lot, but, at the risk of being nit picky, I think he goes a little into "fear factor" mode here. First I think he is using extreme examples that overstate the "danger" of "metabolic damage". It almost sounds like this is an older article written in response to very low calorie "liquid protein" type diets that were more popular 15 years ago.

When I started my program, I read a lot of research on the topic of metabolic changes and caloric restriction. The effect of lowered metabolism was definitely shown with very low calorie diets, but the changes reversed once normal feeding resumed. There was no long-term "damage".

He also mentions "adaptive thermogenesis". This is a real effect, but it is not necessarily related to "starvation mode". The studies I have seen suggest that It may be an effect of large amounts of weight lost, by whatever reason. It's one of the things that predisposes people who have achieved a large weight loss to future regaining of the weight and it is one of the reasons why an aggressive exercise program is crucial to long-term maintenance of weight loss.

There are definitely adverse reactions to very low calorie diets. I just feel that using simplistic and alarmist language does more to obscure the real issues rather than clarify. There are too many variables involved to make such absolutist statements.

Tag

very interesting. thanks!

bump