"Starvation Mode" and How to Fix
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stevencloser wrote: »BarbaraJatmfp wrote: »"The Biology of Human Starvation" is a 1200-page book reporting a starvation study done back in 1940. They took 20+ college-age men of average weight and reduced their calories by 50%. This went on for weeks. The men lost weight - of course - and were reduced to walking skeletons. After the study ended, the men were gradually returned to their previous caloric intake levels. What they found was that the calories previously required to maintain a weight now caused those same people to gain weight.
This study was used to reefed the starving people after WW II: concentration camps, POW camps, and starving people in the countries affected by the war.
Call it what you want (starvation mode, or whatever), but they found that we should not reduce our calories by more than 75%.
Google it if you want: "Biology of Human Starvation".
Of course they'd gain on the calories they used to maintain at. They're dozens of pounds lighter and lost a bunch of lean mass.
^^^This is what I was getting at, too.2 -
Least anyone is starving.
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Well we are now!3
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Annnnnd OP disappears...lol4
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BarbaraJatmfp wrote: »The point of my post is that after starving, the calories those people ate no longer maintained their weight. The same number of calories caused them to gain weight. Starvation mode is not a good place to go. You will pay for it later.
Do you mean that their previous amount of maintenance calories caused them to gain more than what they weighed before?
this was my thought exactly... I mean, obviously!
If you have someone who maintains at 1500 calories and you reduce their intake to 700... say they lose 50 lbs and you start refeeding at 1500... the person will gain weight.2 -
beatyfamily1 wrote: »Apparently starvation mode is a real thing. It's just usually not referred to as "starvation mode". It offers ways on how to fix it. I thought this was an interesting and informative article by Dr. Jade Teta.
https://www.t-nation.com/diet-fat-loss/truth-about-metabolic-damage?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=article3624
I read it. Not convinced. Sorry
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Though I am an oddity. During refeeding hospitalization the start you on 1500 calories and add 300 a week with the hopes of 1-2 kg gain. They do this until at least 2100, you gain more than 2kg or you hit your bmi 20. At that point they will keep you on that amount. I went to the highest available 3600 and never gained a kilogram a week. I was always between 0.6-0.8. we were pretty supervised so no real exercise but I am a fidgeter. I can't believe I didn't gain 2 kg a week on 3600. I don't have a fast metabolism (I obviously did during recovery) and my BMR is around 1300.0
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There should be a Godwin's type law on these type of threads along with a cpmpetition to see how many posts it takes before someone is crass and inhumanly tasteless enough to bring up Holocaust survivors in their rush to pass judgement on people who have difficulty with their diets.
Trufax: not a single sane human being is going to go to the lengths of people who were put in death camps in order to lose weight. So stop it.2 -
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*looks down at belly* clearly starvation is not a problem I am having. I gained back 10 lb when I had no access to a gym for a few months and now I am having to lose it back off. But I think that the true "starvation mode" is a thing that happens when people's metabolism slows down under extreme and prolonged conditions of nutritional deprivation. I can't see it applying to people eating a minimum of 1200 calories, working out and getting adequate nutrients.1
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I'm sorry, but one article on t-nation.com by someone with "Dr." before their name doesn't make something real.
Dr. Jade Teta is a naturapath who makes a living selling books, workout programs, and training through his weight loss company whose primary message is "fixing" metabolic problems. In other words, he is far from an unbiased author.
Adaptive thermogenesis is a real thing, but it's not something the average dieter needs to worry about. If you severely restrict calories over a very long period of time, your metabolism will slow down over time. But we are talking about a large deficit over a long period of time with no breaks. That's why if you have a lot of weight to lose that will take years to complete, it is recommended that you take a couple of weeks every 3 or 4 months and eat at maintenance. But even though it's a real thing, it won't stop you from losing weight, it just slows it down a little. Otherwise anorexics, people who go on hunger fasts, starving people in war-torn countries wouldn't get to the point where they were skin and bones, they would just get sluggish wouldn't they?
That's the point of the article. I think people automatically get defensive because of the words "starvation mode" when in fact the article is talking about the different levels of metabolic damage and if you do have metabolic damage there's ways to fix it depending on what level you are in. Obviously, this article doesn't apply to everyone. Everyone knows you can still lose weight if you are on a really low calorie diet. It may not be healthy, but it's still possible. You can't argue the fact people do hit plateaus. What cause their plateau could be a variety of reasons. What is the number on stated phrase on here? Weight loss is not linear. For most people it's likely they are eating too many calories. The metabolic rate will slow down as you lose weight and will take much more to continue losing at the same rate because the body does not burn as many calories as it did when at a much higher weight. The smaller the body, the less energy it takes to operate. There are people out there that do have metabolic damage, but may not know it. I personally did experience something like this. I don't know if it was actually metabolic damage, but when I stopped losing weight I took a break because I was actually hungrier than before I started losing weight. Then I got back on to my routine and weight loss jump started again. This was way before I came across this article. For me it explained something that I couldn't explain. I thought it was an interesting read. People can do with it what they want.
As far as the biased author, I personally don't feel selling other products for income devalues his opinion. Personal trainers, nutritionists, and even medical doctors do it. It doesn't mean his opinion is worthless. If he did not have the references he stated in the article then I would question it. I personally thought it was a valid article. He is a integrative physician. This is what he does: he practices healing oriented medicine that includes both alternative as well as conventional medicine.2 -
I do wonder about the ppl on the "Biggest Loser" show. That is not healthy in the slightest. Those people hurt the crap out of themselves.
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Generally, a plateau is caused by innacurate logging or people thinking that one or two weeks without a loss is a plateau. Nothing to do with adaptive thermogenesis or "starvation mode". By giving it validity it opens up the road to excuses as to why people can't lose and is not helpful or applicable to most of the worlds population.7
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seekingdaintiness wrote: »There should be a Godwin's type law on these type of threads along with a cpmpetition to see how many posts it takes before someone is crass and inhumanly tasteless enough to bring up Holocaust survivors in their rush to pass judgement on people who have difficulty with their diets.
Trufax: not a single sane human being is going to go to the lengths of people who were put in death camps in order to lose weight. So stop it.
People bring up war survivors not to pass judgement on other people, but to test the theory that eating too little makes people gain weight. You shouldn't go to the lengths of being put in a death camp; you just shouldn't try eating more as a way to lose weight, either.4 -
seekingdaintiness wrote: »There should be a Godwin's type law on these type of threads along with a cpmpetition to see how many posts it takes before someone is crass and inhumanly tasteless enough to bring up Holocaust survivors in their rush to pass judgement on people who have difficulty with their diets.
Trufax: not a single sane human being is going to go to the lengths of people who were put in death camps in order to lose weight. So stop it.
The person who brought it up simply said that knowledge gained from a starvation study was used to help starving people after the war. Should we not reference the study because of that?
You know it wasn't just concentration camp survivors that suffered from starvation after the war, right? There was starvation in a lot of places.
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seekingdaintiness wrote: »There should be a Godwin's type law on these type of threads along with a cpmpetition to see how many posts it takes before someone is crass and inhumanly tasteless enough to bring up Holocaust survivors in their rush to pass judgement on people who have difficulty with their diets.
Trufax: not a single sane human being is going to go to the lengths of people who were put in death camps in order to lose weight. So stop it.
The person who brought it up simply said that knowledge gained from a starvation study was used to help starving people after the war. Should we not reference the study because of that?
You know it wasn't just concentration camp survivors that suffered from starvation after the war, right? There was starvation in a lot of places.
There's still starvation in a lot of places. And I don't see a lot of fat people running around in third world African countries where food scarcity is a fact of everyday life.
"Starvation mode" is not a thing in the sense that 99.9% of the people sling it around on MFP. Amongst well-fed people in developed nations who are just trying to lose weight, "starvation mode" will never, ever, ever be a factor.8 -
seekingdaintiness wrote: »There should be a Godwin's type law on these type of threads along with a cpmpetition to see how many posts it takes before someone is crass and inhumanly tasteless enough to bring up Holocaust survivors in their rush to pass judgement on people who have difficulty with their diets.
Trufax: not a single sane human being is going to go to the lengths of people who were put in death camps in order to lose weight. So stop it.
The person who brought it up simply said that knowledge gained from a starvation study was used to help starving people after the war. Should we not reference the study because of that?
You know it wasn't just concentration camp survivors that suffered from starvation after the war, right? There was starvation in a lot of places.
There's still starvation in a lot of places. And I don't see a lot of fat people running around in third world African countries where food scarcity is a fact of everyday life.
"Starvation mode" is not a thing in the sense that 99.9% of the people sling it around on MFP. Amongst well-fed people in developed nations who are just trying to lose weight, "starvation mode" will never, ever, ever be a factor.
Did you actually read my post and that of the person to whom I wrote it?2 -
seekingdaintiness wrote: »There should be a Godwin's type law on these type of threads along with a cpmpetition to see how many posts it takes before someone is crass and inhumanly tasteless enough to bring up Holocaust survivors in their rush to pass judgement on people who have difficulty with their diets.
Trufax: not a single sane human being is going to go to the lengths of people who were put in death camps in order to lose weight. So stop it.
The person who brought it up simply said that knowledge gained from a starvation study was used to help starving people after the war. Should we not reference the study because of that?
You know it wasn't just concentration camp survivors that suffered from starvation after the war, right? There was starvation in a lot of places.
There's still starvation in a lot of places. And I don't see a lot of fat people running around in third world African countries where food scarcity is a fact of everyday life.
"Starvation mode" is not a thing in the sense that 99.9% of the people sling it around on MFP. Amongst well-fed people in developed nations who are just trying to lose weight, "starvation mode" will never, ever, ever be a factor.
Did you actually read my post and that of the person to whom I wrote it?
Yes. Did you see the part I bolded and how it's relevant to my response?
I wasn't contradicting you - I'm pretty sure we're on the same page here, unless I'm misinterpreting your intentions. "Starvation mode", as it's used on MFP, is a perfect example of: a) a little knowledge being a dangerous thing, and b) the inability of people to understand what it really is and apply context to it.3 -
seekingdaintiness wrote: »There should be a Godwin's type law on these type of threads along with a cpmpetition to see how many posts it takes before someone is crass and inhumanly tasteless enough to bring up Holocaust survivors in their rush to pass judgement on people who have difficulty with their diets.
Trufax: not a single sane human being is going to go to the lengths of people who were put in death camps in order to lose weight. So stop it.
The person who brought it up simply said that knowledge gained from a starvation study was used to help starving people after the war. Should we not reference the study because of that?
You know it wasn't just concentration camp survivors that suffered from starvation after the war, right? There was starvation in a lot of places.
There's still starvation in a lot of places. And I don't see a lot of fat people running around in third world African countries where food scarcity is a fact of everyday life.
"Starvation mode" is not a thing in the sense that 99.9% of the people sling it around on MFP. Amongst well-fed people in developed nations who are just trying to lose weight, "starvation mode" will never, ever, ever be a factor.
Did you actually read my post and that of the person to whom I wrote it?
Yes. Did you see the part I bolded and how it's relevant to my response?
I wasn't contradicting you - I'm pretty sure we're on the same page here, unless I'm misinterpreting your intentions. "Starvation mode", as it's used on MFP, is a perfect example of: a) a little knowledge being a dangerous thing, and b) the inability of people to understand what it really is and apply context to it.
Well, my post had nothing to do with current times or starvation mode, but as long as you understood that we're good.
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I learned quite a while back to ignore any and all nutritional advice from t-nation. The lifting advice? Sure. Nutrition? *puppy* no.5
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Of course starvation mode exists. It why there are so many obese Ethiopian orphans. Duh.8
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T nation is geared towards juiced lifters and is full of bioscience.2
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singingflutelady wrote: »T nation is geared towards juiced lifters and is full of bioscience.
Almost every article and page has a supplement to "fix" things.4 -
singingflutelady wrote: »T nation is geared towards juiced lifters and is full of bioscience.
Almost every article and page has a supplement to "fix" things.
"Buy this raspberry keystone enema it literally explodes your fat cells"
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HoldTheDoor13 wrote: »singingflutelady wrote: »T nation is geared towards juiced lifters and is full of bioscience.
Almost every article and page has a supplement to "fix" things.
"Buy this raspberry keystone enema it literally explodes your fat cells"
Oh...you have enough raspberries and yew be 'splodin Lucy.5
This discussion has been closed.
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