Starvation Mode
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Immerito
Posts: 105 Member
At what point (on average, I realize it may differ depending on the individual) do calories expended through exercise exceed calories eaten and the body says "You nitwit; I'll start sacrificing muscle tissue to keep you alive!"
300 calorie deficit?
1000?
1500?
300 calorie deficit?
1000?
1500?
0
Replies
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In other words, "dont be dumb; don't let your calorie deficit exceed _____________."0
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I don't think there's an answer to that. It depends on a large amount of factors such as how lean the person is, genetics, hormone levels, exercise regime, protein intake, length of deficit, you name it. The range of acceptable deficits is going to be enormous.
Having said that, I have seen a lot of people parrot the old "1% of BW" rule, in which it's not recommended to lose more than 1% of your BW per week. That seems like a good starting point/generic guideline to me.
Finally, Lyle did a little write-up on this a while back: http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/size-of-deficit-and-muscle-catabolism-qa.html/
Which, to summarize, basically states that a good training program, adequate protein and not-insane diet lengths will result in no/minimal muscle loss regardless of deficit.0 -
Curious if you are really attempting to burn more calories in exercise than you eat, or interested in doing so, or think for weight loss you must do it that way?
You may have misunderstanding on what is required for weight loss depending on what you really meant by the phrase used in your question.
Here's a study where those with 25% deficit and doing no workout saw negative effects (if you consider being required to eat even less than possible a negative anyway) and those with bigger deficit saw bigger.
Other group not so bad at all. But they started the whole weight loss attempt right then, nothing prior to the study. Took 3 months to get there, and after 3 more months was starting to get better.
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/heybales/view/reduced-metabolism-tdee-beyond-expected-from-weight-loss-616251
To above 1%, I'd heard the 0.7 to 1.4% - depending on how much fat to lose. Obviously at the extremes the scaling loses it.
Because 1% for a 230 lb weight lifter down at 7% bodyfat wanting to drop say 5 lbs, a 1150 cal deficit might be a tad bad for 2 weeks.0 -
everything that I have read says that you would have to have a pro longed period of starvation for your body to turn on itself. I forget how long the Minnesota Starvation experiment was, but I would say that you would have be eating under 1000 calories for thirty or sixty plus days for this to start to happen…
why are you even asking this question OP?0 -
Not an expert, but I will offer an opinion and credit Dr. Layne Norton ("BioLayne") for helping me understand some of this.
The way I understand it is there isn't a specific point where your body goes "OK let's go into catabolism (or anabolism for that matter) mode." The human body isn't static. It's very dynamic. It's constantly breaking down muscle and fat (and other tissue) as well as creating new muscle and fat (tissue) simultaneously. In other words your body is constantly renewing and adapting itself. However, there can be a difference in the rate of catabolism and anabolism. When you have a surplus of calories, your body reacts by increasing the anabolic rate higher than the catabolic rate. The process works the opposite when there is a calorie deficit.
Now back to your original question. There is no magic number, however, the higher the deficit, the more catabolic your body will be. Whether your body will catabolize more muscle rather than fat while in an extreme deficit is a bit more complicated and a topic that sparks a lot of legitimate debate. You also get into metabolic slowdown, etc. Also, it is outside of my current knowledge on the subject.0
