the myth, starvation mode, and dont eat before bed.

KillingAurora-- Thank you for inejcting some sanity into this silliness. Best part? People overestimate their activity levels and undercount their intake. I bet some people went to look up how many calories were burned responding on this topic so they could justify eating more food while continuing to ignore how they look naked in the mirror... sorry I insist that the sarcasm is necessary.

I'm hungry right now; check out my profile pics, the pic with my hand in my pocket and my shirt on was taken early this month. I am about 5lbs light then that right now, I don't think I am wasting away from a muscle perspective. But I'm hungry because I continue to tweak and reduce my calories and most recently carb count. And I am not eating back my calories. My 4 highly intense BB & Power combo weight training workouts are still vigorous and plenty energetic. I have my bodyfat% (taken via calipers professionally), my weight, and pics to track my progress. And these increasing hunger pangs. I like to tell people this because it is true, it can be very hard and very easy to rationalize eating more. But this is working for me. Will it work for everyone? I'm not interested in proving that to people who very agilely will scour the net to selectively post studies against my thought. My message: Hey go put all that effort into achieving YOUR body image goals. Forget proving ME wrong. But after you post all this and that for and against anything and everything on the forums, go look in the mirror naked or in a binki or briefs and answer truthfully to yourself: Do you like what you see? Are you happy? Are you being honest? The frightening thing is that some people won't do this or will make exuses there too.

Best wishes to all. Let's post more about what our actual progress is, and how we are doing it. Less and less about who is right and who is wrong. Don't you see, in the end, the proof is in YOUR mirror...

I hate the whole term "starvation mode" in terms of those in the world who are starving I just find it insulting.

However I have two simple questions to ask.

If it is purely a case of calories in and out - why is there a well known british slimming club on which you can eat lean meat fruit and veg freely ( so you are bound to go over calories recommended on here - that works?

also irrespective of excercise ( and i know I am hypothyroid) if I am sticking to 1300 net calories per day - why have my scales been stuck for about 9 weeks?

jansus, the beauty of counting and tracking calories accurately is that you have a great base to test a hypothsis; in your case, stuck on the scale for 9 weeks, yet you've been diligently sticking to that calorie count. So go try a modest increase, make sure there is quality protein in that increase, and run that for 4 weeks and see what happens. You have the basis for effectively answering this question for yourself. I mean, you can only do 3 things right? Reduce calories, see what happens, maintain, increase.

Starvation mode is very real. Technically if we are burning up our stored reserve energy, ie, bodyfat and glycogen because we have a negative balance of energy, we are in a way starving.
Yeah "Starvation" is not too PC when some people don't have enough food to eat. IT should be "metabolism Slow-Down Mode" or something like that.

It's not as drastic as some think and it takes a while before it's a real issue.

For example if I ate only 500 calories today, my metabolism wouldn't just drop me into a starvation state, but after one day it would slow down a bit simply because I am metabolizing less food than normal, and the metabolism of food is part of RMR.

Now if we eat too little for too long, we run the risk of losing muscle mass, and this also happens if we don't eat enough protein and too many carbohydrates. More carbs typically inhibit fat oxidation. If we drop muscle mass, we drop metabolism.

The big problem is long-term dieting, when our hormones get involved and our body has a large drop in leptin and t3, which does happen when we have a large calorie deficit for a long period of time.

Personally, no one can ever tell me it's just a myth, that is bogus. I've lived it.
I know beyond reasonable doubt that it's true, and if it isn't then I must have magical powers or something, because I eat more now and exercise less than when I was over 300lbs.

The 2nd part of the OP post is spot on, it is far better for fat-loss to limit carbs throughout the day and eat more calories at night.

just curious but why would we want to be like cavemen, wasnt their life expectancy like in the 30's?

In defense of that whole 'lifestyle' paleo thing...there was a lot of other things that contributed to that life expectancy than just what they ate. Their lifestyle was very hard on them...for one. If you too 20 of us, trained us to live as cave men, and threw us in the wild...I'd be surprised if we made it 30 years. The whole 'paleo/caveman' thing was an unfortunate way to spark people's imagination and get them interested. Everyone is so literal minded nowadays unless they're thinking about themselves lol. It's more a 'back to basics' approach to eating...with whole foods, no grain, minimal carbs (not NO carbs)...and oddly enough, you can EAT ALL YOU WANT, unlike ascriminal's approach.

Just thought I'd clarify there.