'Starvation Mode' Is it real?
mmjclark04
Posts: 54 Member
I'm 5'4
Starting weight 55 days ago 233
Lost 20lbs in 50 days
Over the last week gained 3lbs back
Eating fluctuates between 800 and 1200 calories. I weigh most foods
Exercise is a mix of cardio and strength training
The ONLY change in the last week was a slight increase in weight and I added a different core exercise that is making me OH SO SORE.
Yesterday I spoke to a distant friend who is a personal trainer. He ripped me to shreds telling me that my calories should NEVER be more than 300 to 500 deficit. He said the body freaks out and holds on to what we eat when the deficit dips below that. He never said 'starvation mode' but I think thats what he was eluding to. So...is my weight gain due to my low calorie intake?? If I were to stick to a deficit of 500 then I would eat close to 2000 calories a day. I thought I had a handle on calories in vs calories out but now I'm wondering if I'm doing more harm than good. I've not had a single issue with binge eating or anything of that sort with my current calorie intake. My willpower is strong. I can't understand the 3lb gain when I KNOW my calories were in line. Is he right? Have I screwed up?
Edited to add....He said brought up a lot of 'science' and said that it backs him up.
Starting weight 55 days ago 233
Lost 20lbs in 50 days
Over the last week gained 3lbs back
Eating fluctuates between 800 and 1200 calories. I weigh most foods
Exercise is a mix of cardio and strength training
The ONLY change in the last week was a slight increase in weight and I added a different core exercise that is making me OH SO SORE.
Yesterday I spoke to a distant friend who is a personal trainer. He ripped me to shreds telling me that my calories should NEVER be more than 300 to 500 deficit. He said the body freaks out and holds on to what we eat when the deficit dips below that. He never said 'starvation mode' but I think thats what he was eluding to. So...is my weight gain due to my low calorie intake?? If I were to stick to a deficit of 500 then I would eat close to 2000 calories a day. I thought I had a handle on calories in vs calories out but now I'm wondering if I'm doing more harm than good. I've not had a single issue with binge eating or anything of that sort with my current calorie intake. My willpower is strong. I can't understand the 3lb gain when I KNOW my calories were in line. Is he right? Have I screwed up?
Edited to add....He said brought up a lot of 'science' and said that it backs him up.
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Replies
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No it's not real, you're probably retaining water.
On that note, there's a reason doctors tell people to not go under 1200 a day. Our bodies need fuel to live. My mom was on a very restricted diet with about 800-1000 Cals per day for 6 months. She lost 100 lbs however, now she's dealing with hair loss, digestive problems and gallstones.
Don't be in a rush to lose weight, what you're doing now is not maintainable. You need to do this for life to keep it off for life. Your trainer was right about upping your Cals and keeping your deficit around 500 a day. Slow and steady wins the race, fast and extreme
Is just short term results.6 -
New exercise, especially strength training, makes you retain water. Hence the jump in your scale. 1lb= 3500 calories. Unless you had a serious binge, you would not gain that much.
How much weight do you have to lose? 1200 is the bare minimum a woman NEEDS and MFP too does not endorse eating less than that. Typically, the less you have to lose the smaller your deficit needs to be.
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You definitely should up your calories, but not to lose weight faster, you should do it to lose weight more sustainably and for better health and nutrition.
3 lb seems like a normal fluctuation, particularly if you have sore muscles (which retain water to repair).
Starvation mode isn't real, but eating 800 calories isn't wise either.1 -
The difference in exercise will cause temporary water weight as will that time of the month.
800 calories is WAY THE HECK low.
Yes there is such a thing as "starvation mode" at one point in my life I ate about 400 calories every day and a half. Needless to say there was a point where the pounds wouldn't budge. Lesson learned.
Set your profile for 1 lb loss and eat back a portion of your exercise calories.
At 50 years old I've knocked out 13lbs in 5 weeks and I eat well.
Best of luck and eat more food.
BTW my diary is open (past couple of days have been scary) and best of luck.1 -
2011rocket3touring wrote: »The difference in exercise will cause temporary water weight as will that time of the month.
800 calories is WAY THE HECK low.
Yes there is such a thing as "starvation mode" at one point in my life I ate about 400 calories every day and a half. Needless to say there was a point where the pounds wouldn't budge. Lesson learned.
Set your profile for 1 lb loss and eat back a portion of your exercise calories.
At 50 years old I've knocked out 13lbs in 5 weeks and I eat well.
Best of luck and eat more food.
BTW my diary is open (past couple of days have been scary) and best of luck.
You must have been retaining fluid as I lost on 500 a day plus 2 hours cardio (yes I was anorexic, no it wasn't a smart idea, yes I am recovered)6 -
DaniCanadian wrote: »No it's not real, you're probably retaining water.
On that note, there's a reason doctors tell people to not go under 1200 a day. Our bodies need fuel to live. My mom was on a very restricted diet with about 800-1000 Cals per day for 6 months. She lost 100 lbs however, now she's dealing with hair loss, digestive problems and gallstones.
Don't be in a rush to lose weight, what you're doing now is not maintainable. You need to do this for life to keep it off for life. Your trainer was right about upping your Cals and keeping your deficit around 500 a day. Slow and steady wins the race, fast and extreme
Is just short term results.
At 1200 calories a day...which is what MFP has set for me...my deficit is more like 1000 to 1200 calories a day. If I were to keep my deficit at 500...I would have to eat closer to 2000. I suppose that is why I'm so confused. I COMPLETELY understand needing to stay at 1200 for nutrition reasons and will make that effort but a deficit of only 500?0 -
While I don't believe it's necessary to cut back any lower than 1200, even that number will cease to work very well after you lose another 30 or 40 pounds. It's pretty easy to eat low-cal when you have plenty of body fat. All that body fat is fuel.
The other thing though - three pounds is nothing. I fluctuate 3-5 pounds regularly due to salt or lack of salt, sleep or lack of sleep, stress, hydration, and mostly - New Exercise. New exercise that uses new muscle groups cause those muscles to retain fluid to help them heal (inflammation.) So I would guess that your (temporary) weight increase is due to fluid retention. Stay the course, the water will drop back off.1 -
"Starvation mode" is a real thing - with prolonged very low calorie intake your metabolism does slow - but it doesn't reverse weight loss, just slows it down, and your intake has to be pretty dramatically low over quite a long period.
I think your "gain" is from your workouts. That muscle soreness, delayed onset muscle stiffness, occurs when by exercising you sustain tiny tears in your muscle fibres (that's a good thing). Water and salts move into those fibres to heal them, and it's that healing that makes the muscles larger and stronger - but while they're sore, they're also swollen.
You probably should up your calories, to make sure you're getting enough nutrients to maintain good health and to help to build your fitness - 800 really isn't enough. But you're not in starvation mode, just getting stronger
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I don't know, but when I tried to eat too few calories and exercise a lot for like a week I noticed I didn't lose any weight. Then after that I upped my eating a bit and I started losing again.0
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New exercise, especially strength training, makes you retain water. Hence the jump in your scale. 1lb= 3500 calories. Unless you had a serious binge, you would not gain that much.
How much weight do you have to lose? 1200 is the bare minimum a woman NEEDS and MFP too does not endorse eating less than that. Typically, the less you have to lose the smaller your deficit needs to be.
Ultimately I have another 80lbs to lose.0 -
I don't see why you can't maintain a 1000 calorie deficit if you want to. 2 pounds a week is reasonable and listed as a healthy weight loss rate everywhere.0
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Feel your pain big time !!!!I have started #teamlean uk 16 week fat loss guide and have been putting my heart and soul into workouts .Used to be just cardio which I know now is a complete waste of time !!Anyway they put me on a 1800 cal programme but I have been gaining week on week for the past 4 weeks since I started .Sticking to the 1800 and eating some exercise cals back as well.My husbands personal trainer suggested they had put me on to high a calorie intake .Its so frustrating .0
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You guys have no idea how much this helps. I was terrified I had screwed up. And while I know I need to work on eating 1200 calories for nutrients that isn't as terrible as feeling like I had screwed up my metabolism. And yes...I've never had my core hurt this GOOD lol. So hopefully the gain is from that.2
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Eating too few calories for a prolonged period can slow your metabolism and the longer you do it, the harder it is to reverse and get your metabolism up to a "normal" range. Especially the older you get, the harder it is to "fix" the damage of an unbelievable low calorie diet like you're on. I don't think you HAVE to have only a 500 calorie deficit. But you're definitely not doing your body any favors by eating so little. Especially if you're exercising regularly. I'm 5'0" and I work a desk job for 8 hours a day and I drive 45 minutes each way- so I'm mostly sitting for about 10-11 hours each day. My calories are set at 1360. And that has been a good number for me. I'm not left feeling super hungry all day and if I am feeling hungrier I'll eat back some of my exercise calories.0
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My version of starvation mode is that going low on calories for a few days too many leads to some binge eating behavior.
I go under sometimes because not listening to my body when it said it wasn't hungry is how I ended up fat, so if my appetite is nil, I don't force it.
But only let that go for maybe 2-3 days. After that, sip a protein shake or something through the day to up your total calories without adding junk.
That 1200 calories is minimum for proper bodily function. Eat less than that for long and you risk missing micronutrients or suffering from other problems like gallstones and migraines.
Losing weight should be a little difficult, but not a lot painful!0 -
jvanessa89 wrote: »I don't know, but when I tried to eat too few calories and exercise a lot for like a week I noticed I didn't lose any weight. Then after that I upped my eating a bit and I started losing again.
I'm guessing you are a lot closer to an ideal weight range than mmjclark. The "upping calories" thing is usually for when you've been under-eating. mmjclark is fine at 1200 at her weight and height. As she gets smaller, she's going to find that she needs to eat a little more (like maybe around 1500 instead of 1200) - but she's fine where she is for now. She's 5'4". Her maintenance at her goal weight is probably 1600-1800, unless she's really active or really sedentary.
mmjclark, are you eating a little more on exercise days? I would suggest eating more like 1400-1600 on days you exercise for more than 30 minutes. That might be a compromise between what your trainer friend suggests and staying too low. On this site, you are given 1200, BUT (huge "but") you are supposed to eat a bit more on exercise days. Enter your exercise into your diary here and then eat some of that - it will likely give you 400-500 calories. I suggest eating at least half that. You need it to fuel workouts and recovery. Otherwise, in a short time you will start to feel fatigue, irritability, etc.0 -
mmjclark04 wrote: »DaniCanadian wrote: »No it's not real, you're probably retaining water.
On that note, there's a reason doctors tell people to not go under 1200 a day. Our bodies need fuel to live. My mom was on a very restricted diet with about 800-1000 Cals per day for 6 months. She lost 100 lbs however, now she's dealing with hair loss, digestive problems and gallstones.
Don't be in a rush to lose weight, what you're doing now is not maintainable. You need to do this for life to keep it off for life. Your trainer was right about upping your Cals and keeping your deficit around 500 a day. Slow and steady wins the race, fast and extreme
Is just short term results.
At 1200 calories a day...which is what MFP has set for me...my deficit is more like 1000 to 1200 calories a day. If I were to keep my deficit at 500...I would have to eat closer to 2000. I suppose that is why I'm so confused. I COMPLETELY understand needing to stay at 1200 for nutrition reasons and will make that effort but a deficit of only 500?
Have you ever calculated your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) or your Basic Metabolic Rate (BMR)?
Your BMR is the amount of calories your body uses just to survive. Let's say you're in a coma; your body still needs a minimum amount of calories to live. You're obviously not in a coma but your body will still need that basic amount in order to function. The minimum amount recommend for women is 1200, although your own personal amount may be higher than that. You can calculate your BMR here: http://www.iifym.com/bmr-calculator/
Your TDEE is all the calories you burn in a day, which includes all movement and exercise. You can calculate your TDEE here: http://www.iifym.com/tdee-calculator/
In order to lose weight in a safe manner, your daily calorie intake needs to be somewhere between your BMR and TDEE.
So to give an example, let's say your BMR is 1350. You should not eat less than that number. And let's say your TDEE is 1600. To lose weight you would need to eat less than that. This would give you a range of 1351 to 1599 calories per day for safe weight loss ( well the numbers aren't that precise but hopefully you get the idea).1 -
mmjclark04 wrote: »DaniCanadian wrote: »No it's not real, you're probably retaining water.
On that note, there's a reason doctors tell people to not go under 1200 a day. Our bodies need fuel to live. My mom was on a very restricted diet with about 800-1000 Cals per day for 6 months. She lost 100 lbs however, now she's dealing with hair loss, digestive problems and gallstones.
Don't be in a rush to lose weight, what you're doing now is not maintainable. You need to do this for life to keep it off for life. Your trainer was right about upping your Cals and keeping your deficit around 500 a day. Slow and steady wins the race, fast and extreme
Is just short term results.
At 1200 calories a day...which is what MFP has set for me...my deficit is more like 1000 to 1200 calories a day. If I were to keep my deficit at 500...I would have to eat closer to 2000. I suppose that is why I'm so confused. I COMPLETELY understand needing to stay at 1200 for nutrition reasons and will make that effort but a deficit of only 500?
You are, by BMI standards, still at class 2 (severe) obesity (SW 233, less 20 lbs, = 213 lbs CW @ 5'4" = 36.6 BMI), so no, you don't need to limit yourself to a 500-calorie deficit. You have plenty of stored fat to fuel a daily 1,000 calorie or 1,200 calorie energy deficit without your body having to unnecessarily raid lean body mass for energy. That said, only eating 800 or even 1200 calories a day at your weight, while doing cardio and strength training, is not advisable without medical supervision. If it were me (and it basically was me nearly 3 years ago), I'd raise it to 1400 and eat back at least some of the exercise calories.
Your cousin the trainer is giving you advice more aimed for people who are already at a healthy weight and who are in the cut phase of a bulk-and-cut cycle trying to increase the ratio of lean body mass to fat. And he's packaging it with what is at best a misleading explanation of what happens if you have too large a deficit. At a large deficit, your body will begin reducing the energy it spends on less-than-vital functions, like growing strong hair and nails, repairing skin tissue, building and maintaining strong muscles and bones, maintaining your immune system at optimal levels, and preparing your body every month to carry a child. I suppose one could describe that as "the body freaks out and holds on to what we eat," but I think most people hearing that explanation thinks it means your body somehow manages to not lose weight or even to gain weight on a large deficit. That will not happen.1 -
mmjclark04 wrote: »DaniCanadian wrote: »No it's not real, you're probably retaining water.
On that note, there's a reason doctors tell people to not go under 1200 a day. Our bodies need fuel to live. My mom was on a very restricted diet with about 800-1000 Cals per day for 6 months. She lost 100 lbs however, now she's dealing with hair loss, digestive problems and gallstones.
Don't be in a rush to lose weight, what you're doing now is not maintainable. You need to do this for life to keep it off for life. Your trainer was right about upping your Cals and keeping your deficit around 500 a day. Slow and steady wins the race, fast and extreme
Is just short term results.
At 1200 calories a day...which is what MFP has set for me...my deficit is more like 1000 to 1200 calories a day. If I were to keep my deficit at 500...I would have to eat closer to 2000. I suppose that is why I'm so confused. I COMPLETELY understand needing to stay at 1200 for nutrition reasons and will make that effort but a deficit of only 500?
500 a day is about a pound a week. So even if you up it to 2 lbs per week that still gives you 1500 Cals per day. You're a lot more likely to maintain a weight loss if you do it gradually. If you have extra calories left, there's no harm in using them to indulge in something you love. If I have some left I'll eat a fudgecicle or a portion size of chips or whatever else in craving at be time.
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Starvation mode is indeed real, however, there is nobody on this site that should ever have to worry about it. It is misunderstood completely, by those that say it is real..and also by those who claim it is a myth. It is real, but it is called starvation mode for a reason. You would literally have to be starving for it to affect you. It is something that happens based on long term calorie restriction. The technical term for it is “adaptive thermogenesis” I believe. It is not something that anyone should ever have to deal with on this forum.
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mmjclark04 wrote: »I'm 5'4
Starting weight 55 days ago 233
Lost 20lbs in 50 days
Over the last week gained 3lbs back
Eating fluctuates between 800 and 1200 calories. I weigh most foods
Exercise is a mix of cardio and strength training
The ONLY change in the last week was a slight increase in weight and I added a different core exercise that is making me OH SO SORE.
Yesterday I spoke to a distant friend who is a personal trainer. He ripped me to shreds telling me that my calories should NEVER be more than 300 to 500 deficit. He said the body freaks out and holds on to what we eat when the deficit dips below that. He never said 'starvation mode' but I think thats what he was eluding to. So...is my weight gain due to my low calorie intake?? If I were to stick to a deficit of 500 then I would eat close to 2000 calories a day. I thought I had a handle on calories in vs calories out but now I'm wondering if I'm doing more harm than good. I've not had a single issue with binge eating or anything of that sort with my current calorie intake. My willpower is strong. I can't understand the 3lb gain when I KNOW my calories were in line. Is he right? Have I screwed up?
Edited to add....He said brought up a lot of 'science' and said that it backs him up.
Your friend is correct that your deficit is too severe, even though you have quite a bit to lose. However, he's wrong about starvation mode.
We gain weight from eating too much, just like we lose from eating too little.
Weight also naturally fluctuates, so the 3 pound gain is either water retention or you're eating more than you realize. Weight loss is also not linear, so some weeks you might gain, not lose anything, or lose more than you have set your goals for.
I suggest that you don't weigh just some foods, you weight all solid foods, and measure all liquids. Log everything you eat and drink.0 -
BiggDaddy58 wrote: »Starvation mode is indeed real, however, there is nobody on this site that should ever have to worry about it. It is misunderstood completely, by those that say it is real..and also by those who claim it is a myth. It is real, but it is called starvation mode for a reason. You would literally have to be starving for it to affect you. It is something that happens based on long term calorie restriction. The technical term for it is “adaptive thermogenesis” I believe. It is not something that anyone should ever have to deal with on this forum.
As to the bold: big presumption. Within the context of her question, starvation mode is a myth.
Adaptive thermogenesis is a different ballgame.
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[/quote]
As to the bold: big presumption. Within the context of her question, starvation mode is a myth.
Adaptive thermogenesis is a different ballgame.
[/quote]
I'm sorry..most people do not ask within any context..and far too many people on this site claim it's a myth. It isn't..It simply does not apply to people on here.0 -
Starvation mode is real but it is extremely hard to get your body into and on even a high deficit you will not be anywhere near the limits.0
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One of the biggest things you'll learn in this journey is both patience and acceptance.
If it's any consolation, I gained 5lbs over the course of a weekend not too long ago. I hadn't been very good with my water intake, and ate stuff that was both carb-y and salty. I figured it was water retention, posted a question here to confirm, and yes - everyone else here confirmed that it was likely water retention and to just be patient.
Sure enough... after about a week and a half of eating normally and upping my fluid intake to normal levels, the weight dropped off. Just be patient - I find it helpful to set goals that don't have anything to do with my scale weight. It helps keep my grounded when it goes up and down. For you, perhaps you might find it encouraging to focus on new strength training goals 2
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