"Starvation Mode"

sigh.
i don't know the science, i don't understand the math.

here's what i do know:
Week 1 on MFP: tracked every single bite. cut out caffeine, pop, processed food, and aspertame. Stuck to 1150-1200 calories a day, 3 litres of water.
Gained 2lbs.

Week 2 on MFP - all of the above, only I ate 1400-1500 calories a day.
Lost 3lbs.

The reason we rely on science is that little anecdotes like this have too many variables to tell us much, if anything. 1 week is not enough time to evaluate any diet plan. The fact that you did these two back to back also skews the results, we don't know what holdover effects from the first week might have affected the second week. We don't know what your BMR or weight or BF% is. We don't know what your diet was before you began this little experiment. 3lbs is a kind of a huge amount of weight loss, and so is 2 lbs of gain in a week. It makes me wonder if you were weighing at the same time of day each time. 3 liters of water is a lot in addition to your food intake, so water weight variances could be at play. We have no idea of your activity levels during these two weeks. You also sound like you radically altered your diet composition during the first week, so who knows if it just took time for your body to sort things out....about a week, perhaps?

Way too many variables. Anecdotes are next to worthless.

For all the people saying that starvation mode is real: science means testing its not about what you believe. There are some reasons why you can hit a plateau, maybe the lowest weight was after using the toilet and the weight 5 days later was before, or after workout (sweat makes about 2 lbs when i was walking for one hour) and so on... but if you eat less calories than you burn there is no way, no way, to gain weight or don't loose weight in the long run. I meassure my weight daily and sometimes i go up 2 lbs in one day or down 3 the other,

Just like Alloranx said - there are too many variables for one week or even one month, but if you really calculate the true calories you will get rid of that belly.

Thanks for that, I was having this discussion with my husband just today, it's cleared up a few questions that we had.

sigh.
i don't know the science, i don't understand the math.

here's what i do know:
Week 1 on MFP: tracked every single bite. cut out caffeine, pop, processed food, and aspertame. Stuck to 1150-1200 calories a day, 3 litres of water.
Gained 2lbs.

Week 2 on MFP - all of the above, only I ate 1400-1500 calories a day.
Lost 3lbs.

So...yah.

And yet......I started out on 1200 cals a day - lost 0.6 lbs a week, exactly what MFP predicted.
Near goal raised to 1360 cals per day - lost 0.2 lbs a week - as MFP predicted.
At goal switched to 1500 cals a day - and have maintained for 3 months now.

I didn't see any great drop in weight from eating more. Quite the reverse, my body has done exactly what was predicted.

I don't agree with this.

According to all the calculators, my BMR (which is supposed to be how many calories I would burn if I did nothing but rest) is over 1800. I never eat more than 1800 calories in a day unless it's a day that I have worked out, but my net is always way under 1800 calories. And I work out (usually an hour of zumba) 3-4 times a week, which I've been told that for a normal weight person, which I am over 100lbs overweight, burns at least 800 calories. Plus I work full times, a single parent with 2 kids, yadda yadda, so the only rest I get is my sleep at night which is only 5 - 7 hours.

I would say you are massively overestimating your exercise cals. Zumba doesn't burn anything like 800 cals an hour. More like 400-500 from what I have seen on here.
Also the amount of sleep you are getting may be a factor. I hit a 5 week plateau over the summer and it was because I was only getting 5 hours sleep a night. I had a few nights of 8 hours sleep and dropped 5 lbs in a few days. I water retain hugely when I don't get enough sleep.

Exactly my point! It's not just about calories in and calories out! And even if I didn't do any zumba at all, just "living" and "moving" grocery shopping, walking to the office building, walking up and down the stairs, I still wouldn't net any where close to 1800 calories a day. I should be losing something, not gaining!

If I net 1800 cals a day, I would put on weight at a rate of 1 lb a week or thereabouts. I think you are massively overestimating the amount you should be eating.

I am currently maintaining on 1500 cals day plus exercise cals of 480 cals per hour of fast running on the days I run. Just for comparison.

The difference is I weigh over 250lbs where you only weigh 130lbs. My body takes more just to function because of my higher weight.

Best post ever.
just got told off after a poster said he/she wasn't losing weight on 1200 cals and would he/she GAIN weight if he/she ate 1000 calories....believe the starvation mode people
When I pointed out people in famine stricken countries aren't GAINING weight and I sometimes ate 1000 calories a day i was reported for encouraging eating disorders.
Um. Right.
Idiots.
Best post ever.

I gain weight when I don't eat enough. So, call me an idiot, tell me I'm stupid or whatever... but, I know my body and I know that I gain weight. I consume 2200-2500 NET calories a day (yes, net) and I am maintaining my weight (143-145lbs). When I drop below 2000 calories for too many days, I start to see a slow gain on the scale. If I continue with it for a week or more, I will watch as the scale jumps back up to 150lbs (which I maintained from Sept 2010 to May 2011, when I decided to up my calories to see what happens... and I dropped those 5-7lbs to bring me into the mid 140's). So, say whatever you want to say. Our bodies are all different and there is no exact science to explain why some bodies respond one way and others respond a different way.

I think it is ignorant of people to assume that just because something works for YOU it'll work for EVERYONE. I know that there are people out there who consume 1200 calories a day, workout like crazy and are losing weight. If *I* did it, I know I would gain weight. Just like I can eat carbs all day, everyday and don't have any issues with them but other people look at a piece of bread and gain weight. Ditto to sodium - sodium rarely affects me whereas other people have horrible side effects of it.

I personally do not care what study you can find that will disagree with me nor do I care about the science behind it all. After almost 2 years on this journey, *I* know MY body and *I* know what works and what doesn't work for me.

BTW, my BMR is 1338. My TDEE is around 2100 calories. So, I'm certainly in the "normal range" for my body and activity level. There is just so much that you have to take into account when it comes to weight loss or maintenance.

AMEN!!!

chevy88grl - i think i love you

I personally do not care what study you can find that will disagree with me nor do I care about the science behind it all. After almost 2 years on this journey, *I* know MY body and *I* know what works and what doesn't work for me.

Exactly! The human body is immensely complex and the only way to figure out what works for you is to try something and gauge the results. N=1 experiments rock, but only for that N

Over estimating calories burned is 100% true.....I was using the treadmill and it told me that i had burned 750 calories...and before i get shouted at yes it did have all my details like weight, age etc.......but my Ki fit or body bugg in the u.s.a which is very accurate said I had burned only 330.....now if I had "EATEN BACK" my calories i would be well over by 420 calories, add that to under estimating calories in food and result = weight gain !

I gain weight when I don't eat enough. So, call me an idiot, tell me I'm stupid or whatever... but, I know my body and I know that I gain weight.

I'm not calling you stupid. But you are incorrect to suggest that the only possible explanation for that weight gain is that you "aren't eating enough." PB67 gave a very reasonable alternative explanation: your daily activity which is *not* exercise, including such things as fidgeting, shifting positions, walking from place to place in your house or work, typing, bending over to pick stuff up, working in the yard, etc. may actually have decreased when you decreased your calories without you even knowing it. It is not possible to keep track of all that stuff. Your regular exercise may have varied in intensity too, even if it was the same routines and it felt the same to you. There are too many variables involved for you to be able to say that "eating too little" is the sole cause of your weight gain. You may think you know your body better than anyone else, and in a sense, that's true. Even if it's true, there is a whole lot about your body that you can't possibly know without doing a lot of complicated and expensive tests to measure it.

Another issue is that you have no idea what the composition of that weight gain is. Is it fat? Water? Muscle? You assume it's fat, but you don't really know, do you?

I think it is ignorant of people to assume that just because something works for YOU it'll work for EVERYONE.

I think it's arrogant of you to assume that scientists are so stupid as to not consider the variability among individuals. However, it doesn't matter who you are: thermodynamics applies equally to everyone, and indeed, to every situation in the universe. There is a reason why you gained weight when you decreased your calorie intake, and it isn't that you are just eating less. Something else changed that caused you expenditure to go down *even further* than your calorie intake did. Otherwise it is impossible that you could gain weight. Either your BMR went down, you are exercising less, you are retaining water, you are building muscle (unlikely for the amount of weight gain you said) or you are eating more than you think

This should be intuitively obvious to you, no scientific studies required: If your TDEE is way above your calorie intake, why would your body store food calories as either fat or muscle? That would be a profoundly stupid thing for your body to do (and I would personally ask God for a refund): what it should in fact be doing is pulling energy from your stores to make up the difference between your intake and the TDEE. If it does store your food calories, then that only increases the deficit in what is needed to keep your body running. This, to me, would indicate not that your body is a "unique and beautiful snowflake," but that you have a metabolic disease.

So how else can we explain this? How about that your TDEE is actually lower than you think it is? Doesn't that seem like a more likely explanation?

I know that there are people out there who consume 1200 calories a day, workout like crazy and are losing weight. If *I* did it, I know I would gain weight.

No, you just suspect that you would gain weight. If you haven't tried it, you don't know.

Just like I can eat carbs all day, everyday and don't have any issues with them but other people look at a piece of bread and gain weight. Ditto to sodium - sodium rarely affects me whereas other people have horrible side effects of it.

No one has horrible side effects from sodium. Sodium is absolutely essential for life, if you cut it out entirely, you will die, 100%. Some people just have to limit sodium because they have diseases that make higher levels of it dangerous or uncomfortable (for example, it can cause ankle swelling).

Likewise, no one gains weight from having carbs. First off, having some carbs is completely unavoidable, no one eats zero carbs unless they're fasting. Second, they gain weight because they binge on carbs and go over their daily energy expenditure.

I personally do not care what study you can find that will disagree with me nor do I care about the science behind it all. After almost 2 years on this journey, *I* know MY body and *I* know what works and what doesn't work for me.

So your two years of experimenting with dieting invalidates the billions of hours of work by hundreds of thousands of our species' brightest thinkers for the last several hundred years to understand thermodynamics, conservation of matter and energy, metabolism and the workings of the human body? Wow.

If you insist, though I suggest you take me up on a challenge: do a 3 day water fast and see if you gain weight. Do your own experiment if you don't trust any of those stupid scientists. This will take a lot of variables out. You will have 0 calorie intake for three days. If you do gain weight, I will never say another word on this forum about starvation mode, and I will apologize for spreading misinformation, to you and everyone. Also, I will turn you in to the government for being a mutant that can do photosynthesis :noway:

Weigh yourself one morning before breakfast to get a baseline (ideally after you go to restroom). Start the fast that same evening after dinner, and after that point, you can have nothing but water, and a multivitamin, if you like (and of course any other medicines your doctor has prescribed). Weigh yourself on the next three mornings right after you get up, and post the results. We'll see if I eat crow. I'll even do it with you, and post my results too, if you like. I've done 5 and even 7 day fasts before with no trouble, this one will be easy.

I'm still confused....

So did the chicken come first? or the egg...

the egg because it had no carbs:bigsmile:

Thanks for the post. My calorie intake usually comes in abuout 300-400 under the magic 1200 and I was worried about this "starvation mode" but I'm good now thanks to your post. However I do find that the calories I am consuming seem to be "empty" and my sodium intake is way too high. Can you suggest any really fast on the go snacks with more of the nutrients I need?

I keep a pre-measured tiny container of almonds in my purse, and sometimes and apple, orange,or banana. Those work great in an emergency. Also, I like greek yogurt -- even the premixed kind is sweetened with honey, fruit, or cane sugar, so it isn't as sugary as regular.

I gain weight when I don't eat enough. So, call me an idiot, tell me I'm stupid or whatever... but, I know my body and I know that I gain weight.

I'm not calling you stupid. But you are incorrect to suggest that the only possible explanation for that weight gain is that you "aren't eating enough." PB67 gave a very reasonable alternative explanation: your daily activity which is *not* exercise, including such things as fidgeting, shifting positions, walking from place to place in your house or work, typing, bending over to pick stuff up, working in the yard, etc. may actually have decreased when you decreased your calories without you even knowing it. It is not possible to keep track of all that stuff. Your regular exercise may have varied in intensity too, even if it was the same routines and it felt the same to you. There are too many variables involved for you to be able to say that "eating too little" is the sole cause of your weight gain. You may think you know your body better than anyone else, and in a sense, that's true. Even if it's true, there is a whole lot about your body that you can't possibly know without doing a lot of complicated and expensive tests to measure it.

Another issue is that you have no idea what the composition of that weight gain is. Is it fat? Water? Muscle? You assume it's fat, but you don't really know, do you?

I think it is ignorant of people to assume that just because something works for YOU it'll work for EVERYONE.

I think it's arrogant of you to assume that scientists are so stupid as to not consider the variability among individuals. However, it doesn't matter who you are: thermodynamics applies equally to everyone, and indeed, to every situation in the universe. There is a reason why you gained weight when you decreased your calorie intake, and it isn't that you are just eating less. Something else changed that caused you expenditure to go down *even further* than your calorie intake did. Otherwise it is impossible that you could gain weight. Either your BMR went down, you are exercising less, you are retaining water, you are building muscle (unlikely for the amount of weight gain you said) or you are eating more than you think

This should be intuitively obvious to you, no scientific studies required: If your TDEE is way above your calorie intake, why would your body store food calories as either fat or muscle? That would be a profoundly stupid thing for your body to do (and I would personally ask God for a refund): what it should in fact be doing is pulling energy from your stores to make up the difference between your intake and the TDEE. If it does store your food calories, then that only increases the deficit in what is needed to keep your body running. This, to me, would indicate not that your body is a "unique and beautiful snowflake," but that you have a metabolic disease.

So how else can we explain this? How about that your TDEE is actually lower than you think it is? Doesn't that seem like a more likely explanation?

I know that there are people out there who consume 1200 calories a day, workout like crazy and are losing weight. If *I* did it, I know I would gain weight.

No, you just suspect that you would gain weight. If you haven't tried it, you don't know.

Just like I can eat carbs all day, everyday and don't have any issues with them but other people look at a piece of bread and gain weight. Ditto to sodium - sodium rarely affects me whereas other people have horrible side effects of it.

No one has horrible side effects from sodium. Sodium is absolutely essential for life, if you cut it out entirely, you will die, 100%. Some people just have to limit sodium because they have diseases that make higher levels of it dangerous or uncomfortable (for example, it can cause ankle swelling).

Likewise, no one gains weight from having carbs. First off, having some carbs is completely unavoidable, no one eats zero carbs unless they're fasting. Second, they gain weight because they binge on carbs and go over their daily energy expenditure.

I personally do not care what study you can find that will disagree with me nor do I care about the science behind it all. After almost 2 years on this journey, *I* know MY body and *I* know what works and what doesn't work for me.

So your two years of experimenting with dieting invalidates the billions of hours of work by hundreds of thousands of our species' brightest thinkers for the last several hundred years to understand thermodynamics, conservation of matter and energy, metabolism and the workings of the human body? Wow.

If you insist, though I suggest you take me up on a challenge: do a 3 day water fast and see if you gain weight. Do your own experiment if you don't trust any of those stupid scientists. This will take a lot of variables out. You will have 0 calorie intake for three days. If you do gain weight, I will never say another word on this forum about starvation mode, and I will apologize for spreading misinformation, to you and everyone. Also, I will turn you in to the government for being a mutant that can do photosynthesis :noway:

Weigh yourself one morning before breakfast to get a baseline (ideally after you go to restroom). Start the fast that same evening after dinner, and after that point, you can have nothing but water, and a multivitamin, if you like (and of course any other medicines your doctor has prescribed). Weigh yourself on the next three mornings right after you get up, and post the results. We'll see if I eat crow. I'll even do it with you, and post my results too, if you like. I've done 5 and even 7 day fasts before with no trouble, this one will be easy.

No. I am telling you that when I consume 2000 calories - I gain weight. Nothing changes. I still go to work every single day and I work in an environment where I am in constant motion and I do not get down days while I am there. I still do all my normal stuff.

When I eat 2000 calories - I gain. Plain and simple. I don't give a rat's white behind what YOU try and tell me. It is MY body and quite honestly.. I know how it works. When I consume 2000 calories - my weight goes right back up to 150lbs. When I go back to my normal range - it comes right back off. There's NO change in my daily activities. I do the same things every single day. Plain and simple.


Considering this is MY body and *I* know MY body best, I'd appreciate YOU not telling me what is really going on. You have no idea since it is MY body.

I have eaten 1200 calories and worked out. Didn't lose a single pound and was sick as a dog - no energy, hair started falling out, etc.

Honestly.

Know it all's about other people's bodies are annoying as heck. I really despise people who think they can tell someone else what works for THEIR body. I wouldn't tell you what works for YOU.

As for sodium - if my grandma consumes too much sodium -- her hands and feet swell to the point she can not put on shoes or make a fist. THAT is a horrible side effect and one that her doctor has told her to avoid - as it puts too much strain on her system.

I am only arrogant as far as my own body goes - and I don't give a crap what YOU say about my body. I know it. I understand it. I know how it works.


*rolls eyes*

Thanks for the info. Can you help me with something or a tip on how I can fix things? The other day I woke up late ( i worked nights) so breakfast was at about 1:00pm and lunch around 4. I tracked all my food but since i had a "short day" and had to work an early morning shift the following day, i was only able to eat 1080 cals and then I walked 2 hours, walking 7 miles. while walking a stopped several time to do high knees, tricep dips, planks, push ups, etc. after that walk i was in a cal deficit of about 800. i weighed myself the next evening and it said i had gained weight (but i weighed in at a weird time) and the following morning i weighed myself at my normal time and it said i was the same weight (no including that gain day). How is that possible that i have not only dropped my cal consumption from weeks ago, but had a huge deficit and worked out that much and seen no result 1 week into my weightloss journey.Clearly I don't understand the dietary aspect of weightloss. Can you provide some explanation by chance?