Calorie intake

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jferri39
jferri39 Posts: 1 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Is it possible to reduce your calorie intake too much and not lose weight? I was told by a fitness trainer that your body can go into “starvation mode” and hold onto fat stores if you don’t eat enough calories.

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  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
    edited January 2021
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    jferri39 wrote: »
    Is it possible to reduce your calorie intake too much and not lose weight? I was told by a fitness trainer that your body can go into “starvation mode” and hold onto fat stores if you don’t eat enough calories.

    Just like cardio "Fat burning HR zone" and "HIIT workouts", there was some original good info regarding many things including "Starvation Mode" (aka now called Adaptive Thermogenesis because of what has happened to original term) that has been twisted and myths thrown on it and used as fad responses to questions.

    Trainer is like verbatim quoting a myth - "run away, run away!!"

    Negative effects of AT are true, but if they start out with myth, not useful thinking.
  • quiksylver296
    quiksylver296 Posts: 28,442 Member
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    Yeah, no. Time for a new trainer.
  • ahoy_m8
    ahoy_m8 Posts: 3,053 Member
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    This is a pretty basic thing to get wrong. Like the others above, it would seriously undermine my confidence in this trainer's information sources and education.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,382 Member
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    No, but it's possible to reduce your calorie intake too much and start burning useful tissue (muscle, say), becoming weak and fatigued, having your hair fall out, maybe even cause some long-term heart damage** or some other kind of health issue.

    Eating too-low calories is a really bad idea . . . but not because you won't lose weight.


    ** For example, https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10761904/under-1200-for-weight-loss/p1
  • kevchenk01
    kevchenk01 Posts: 24 Member
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    I have been training in negative calories for months now and my weight has dropped but my strength has increased. Being in the negative, my body is burning fat during my training session after fuel is depleted. As long as you don’t go too far into negative. You should be eating your maintenance calories at least I would say.

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