How to tell if you're in starvation mode
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justinejacksonm
Posts: 75 Member
Simply put it seems like a very vague concept with little or no scientific evidence to back it up.
As recommended I increased my calories and protein and focus on strength training with weights and I've lost pretty much no fat looking muscle and places too much then desired.
My boyfriend believes in skipping a meal rather than eating a nutritious one which is what I do. I've also made it a point to eat snacks throughout the day healthy wants of course that are within my calorie budget but I really feel like I did much better when I just reduced my calories a lot.
If starvation mode is a thing how do you know if you were in it!? it seems counterproductive to me to force myself to eat if I'm not hungry and I don't feel sick and I have energy.
As recommended I increased my calories and protein and focus on strength training with weights and I've lost pretty much no fat looking muscle and places too much then desired.
My boyfriend believes in skipping a meal rather than eating a nutritious one which is what I do. I've also made it a point to eat snacks throughout the day healthy wants of course that are within my calorie budget but I really feel like I did much better when I just reduced my calories a lot.
If starvation mode is a thing how do you know if you were in it!? it seems counterproductive to me to force myself to eat if I'm not hungry and I don't feel sick and I have energy.
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Replies
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Starvation mode does not exist. Track and weigh all of your food and maintain a calorie deficit and you will lose weight.18
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It isn't really a thing.
There is adaptive thermogenesis - this is when you undereat for a long period of time, we're talking months here, and your body adapts to run on less calories. This will still not stop weight loss, just slow it down.
The diet industry takes this real thing and twists it into starvation mode.
Having said that, there are lots of reasons not to undereat consistently. But an occasional day where you aren't hungry and you come in 100 cals under goal is no big deal, it usually evens out in the end.
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10569458/why-eating-too-little-calories-is-a-bad-idea/p1
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/1077746/starvation-mode-adaptive-thermogenesis-and-weight-loss/p18 -
If starvation mode were actually real then people wouldnt die or become ill of starvation would they.5
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Starvation mode isn't a thing. Adaptive thermogenesis is a thing. Also severely restricting calories and substantially under-eating has numerous negative health impacts. I only say that because more often than not when I see someone talking about "why force myself to eat when I'm not hungry" it is usually accompanied by very low calories...too low to be healthy.5
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justinejacksonm wrote: »Simply put it seems like a very vague concept with little or no scientific evidence to back it up.
As recommended I increased my calories and protein and focus on strength training with weights and I've lost pretty much no fat looking muscle and places too much then desired.
My boyfriend believes in skipping a meal rather than eating a nutritious one which is what I do. I've also made it a point to eat snacks throughout the day healthy wants of course that are within my calorie budget but I really feel like I did much better when I just reduced my calories a lot.
If starvation mode is a thing how do you know if you were in it!? it seems counterproductive to me to force myself to eat if I'm not hungry and I don't feel sick and I have energy.
You got it right with the bolded part.5 -
Ask anyone who has been through a famine if you quit losing weight...7
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It's not a thing, in the sense that you mean it anyway. So good news: you're not in it!2
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Minnesota Starvation Experiment3
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Ex anorexic here (more times than I care to remember at death's door) - believe me, starvation mode is not real.20
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Starvation mode is not real, but undereating and under nourishing is. You should eat your MFP recommended calories.5
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justinejacksonm wrote: »Simply put it seems like a very vague concept with little or no scientific evidence to back it up.
As recommended I increased my calories and protein and focus on strength training with weights and I've lost pretty much no fat looking muscle and places too much then desired.
My boyfriend believes in skipping a meal rather than eating a nutritious one which is what I do. I've also made it a point to eat snacks throughout the day healthy wants of course that are within my calorie budget but I really feel like I did much better when I just reduced my calories a lot.
If starvation mode is a thing how do you know if you were in it!? it seems counterproductive to me to force myself to eat if I'm not hungry and I don't feel sick and I have energy.
As others have said, starvation mode, in the sense of your weight loss stopping because you eat too little, is not a thing.
Eating a little over goal some days when extra hungry, and a little under when not so hungry, is not a dangerous thing. Neither is undereating somewhat more on a rare occasion. But persistently undereating is a bad plan (see the links others have recommended).
Here's the thing: I underate for a while by accident (MFP underestimated my calorie needs). I felt great until, very suddenly, I didn't. I got weak and fatigued. That's not a good thing. The consequences of undereating don't show up right away, but they catch up with you. It can be weakness and fatigue, it can be hair loss, it can be other, worse things. It's a bad plan.
That said, if you're not losing weight (as in zero weight decrease) after a period of a month or more, the odds are good that you're eating more calories than you think . . . but that's a whole different topic.
If you recently added weight training and increased calories, then it's likely that you have some water weight that's masking what's really going on behind the scenes, plus higher average digestive system contents. It's important to stick with a new routine for 4-6 weeks minimum (whole menstrual cycle plus a bit for premenopausal women), then evaluate average weekly results. Shorter time periods are easily confounded by shifts in water weight and digestive contents.
Hang in there!
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I'm genuinely confused ...I'm in treatment right now and our dietician literally just ran a group the other day about starvation mode being very real...4
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guacassassin wrote: »I'm genuinely confused ...I'm in treatment right now and our dietician literally just ran a group the other day about starvation mode being very real...
Was this a Registered Dietician? I ask because RD's are trained in facts. The commonly used phrase "starvation mode" is not well defined, and one certainly misuses the word "starvation" if it is used to describe weight gain.0 -
guacassassin wrote: »I'm genuinely confused ...I'm in treatment right now and our dietician literally just ran a group the other day about starvation mode being very real...
Dieticians can be idiots just like any other people. So can doctors. There’s an old joke: What do you call the doctor who graduated last in the class? Doctor.
It’s possible your dietician is using the term to refer to adaptive thermogenesis, or that they were taught bad information, or that they just are not qualified to do the job.7 -
rheddmobile wrote: »guacassassin wrote: »I'm genuinely confused ...I'm in treatment right now and our dietician literally just ran a group the other day about starvation mode being very real...
Dieticians can be idiots just like any other people. So can doctors. There’s an old joke: What do you call the doctor who graduated last in the class? Doctor.
It’s possible your dietician is using the term to refer to adaptive thermogenesis, or that they were taught bad information, or that they just are not qualified to do the job.
Or trying to scare you to eat more.6 -
singingflutelady wrote: »rheddmobile wrote: »guacassassin wrote: »I'm genuinely confused ...I'm in treatment right now and our dietician literally just ran a group the other day about starvation mode being very real...
Dieticians can be idiots just like any other people. So can doctors. There’s an old joke: What do you call the doctor who graduated last in the class? Doctor.
It’s possible your dietician is using the term to refer to adaptive thermogenesis, or that they were taught bad information, or that they just are not qualified to do the job.
Or trying to scare you to eat more.
Which is not an excuse to give people bad information.5 -
Well, speaking of doctors, mine gave me permission to eat nothing but a little broth for around three or four weeks once. I was incredibly, unbelievably ill with some unknown problem and food was impossible for me. Since it seemed viral my doctor advised me to try wait it out, because in the long run not eating for a few weeks wasn't such a big deal as long as I was hydrated.
That scale number dropped. Hard. And didn't really go back up for quite some months. If starvation mode was a thing you'd think that would have caused it.
Anyways. I don't recommend the broth diet or the stomach virus, they sucked.6 -
guacassassin wrote: »I'm genuinely confused ...I'm in treatment right now and our dietician literally just ran a group the other day about starvation mode being very real...
When you severely, severely undereat, you body will do its best to keep you alive as long as possible. It will slow things down; it will make you tired so you rest more and sleep more; it will make you decide not to do as much housework and be less energetic at work and socially and in workouts; and things like that. If the undereating is very severe, your body will jettison what it sees as optional for staying alive, like hair growth (so hair falls out) and that sort of thing. That's adaptive thermogenesis, in an oversimplified way.
The net of that is that if people persistently and severely undereat, they do experience slowed weight loss, and a lower daily TDEE (total daily energy expenditure, the calories you burn doing everthing from breathing to exercise), over time. If you're in treatment, I suspect that that's the kind of of message your dietitician is trying to get across: That severely undereating is counterproductive for weight loss and especially health. Starvation is real.
If a person eats less than they burn, they will lose weight. That "slowdown" thing, described above, just means they burn a bit less. They can get into a dangerous down spiral: Eat less, slow down physically, see slow weight loss, eat even less, slow down more, etc. That's very dangerous. Outside of an ED scenario, the extreme cases are less likely. Bodies also try to compensate by making us hungry, so we eat more. So, outside the extreme weight loss ED kind of realm (which itself can include binge behaviors), we also see a lot of yo-yo dieting (over-restrict, overeat, over-restrict, etc.).
Moderate (slow, gradual, manageable) weight loss is usually a good answer.
Anecdotally, some people seem a little more sensitive in their intake to output balance, i.e., if they undereat, some people are slowed sooner than others. For most people, there's probably some optimal level of calorie deficit, where they're eating enough for good energy level and continuing health, but they are losing body fat.10
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