Confused about the starvation mode theory

mascarablue
mascarablue Posts: 7
edited October 19 in Food and Nutrition
Hi all

I am a bit confused about the whole starvation mode. That if you eat too little carlories your body will go into starvation mode and uses muscle instead of fat for fuel. Now if you have a high body fat (which I do) then it doesn't make sense that the body will keep the fat and burn the muscle. It goes against the whole survival mechanism which is the basis of if you eat too much calories, your body will store it as fat to use it for energy in times when thee is a lack of food.

Can someone shed some light on this? Also if you have high body fat does the muscle burning come into effect once your body fat store is depleted? v. confused!!

Thanks

Replies

  • briocktj
    briocktj Posts: 128
    ummmm.... I have no idea about this... other than what I have read on here
  • missfluffyuk
    missfluffyuk Posts: 245
    Basically, if you are consistently eating far too few calories, your body will use muscle for fuel rather than fat as a) it is easier for the body to break down and b) your body is hoarding fat stores because it does not know when it will be getting more food.
  • Elf_Princess1210
    Elf_Princess1210 Posts: 895 Member
    Bump
  • becoming_a_new_me
    becoming_a_new_me Posts: 1,860 Member
    You can maintain starvation mode for an extended period of time to lose body fat, but there are consequences. I am post-operative gastric bypass from 9 years ago. The whole point of the surgery is malabsorption and starvation mode. Since the "pouch" only holds 2 oz, you are not hungry and eat very little. Eventually the body adjusts to this and the person feels hunger again, but only after a few years. Here are the risks of maintaining starvation mode too long:

    1. Lack of protien means that not only with the body use stored fat for fuel, it will also attack muscles and organs. Protien is essential.
    2. Hair loss-the body is so busy keeping up with trying to fuel itself, that it stops other non-essential functions
    3. Sagging skin - excess loss of adipose tissue at an accelerated rate means the skin cannot keep up with elasticity. You also are not getting enough fuel to keep the skin firm, you end up with skin flapping all over the place.
    4. The body becomes accustomed to a lower calorie diet so when you are done with starvation mode, you can't go back to maitenance mode without gain.
    5. Memory loss - the body is taking all the fuel you do take in to keep itself working, so the brain is not getting fed enough. This results in a form of dementia.
    6. Organ shut-down - maintaining starvation mode results in the organs not getting the fuel they need to work, so they can shut down.

    If you want to do this, get the help of a knowledgable doctor and make sure you are using supplements and vitamins to ensure your body gets the needed nutrients. Better yet, just eat a healthy diet and work out and while the loss is slower than starvation mode, it is more maintainable long-term.

    Mary Ann
    http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/iddreams/view/overcoming-the-obesity-mindset-194711
  • Eufy
    Eufy Posts: 14
    Read ....... (source: http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/nutrition/nutrient-metabolism-overview.html)


    What About Starvation?

    Now seems like as good of a time to talk about starvation, the consumption of zero food. I should mention that therapeutic starvation (as it was called) was tried during the middle of the 20th century for weight loss, frequently causing rather rapid losses of weight. But it had an unfortunate problem, which I’m going to address below. For now, let’s look at starvation and what happens.

    So let’s say you stop eating anything and look at what happens (a much more detailed examination of this and many other topics can be found in my first book The Ketogenic Diet). Over the first few hours of starvation, blood glucose and insulin levels both drop. This signals the body to break down glycogen (stored carbohydrate) in the liver to release it into the bloodstream. As well, the body starts mobilizing fat from fat cells to use for fuel. After 12-18 hours or so (faster if you exercise), liver glycogen is emptied. At this point blood glucose will drop to low-normal levels and stay there. Blood fatty acids will have increased significantly by this point.

    After a day or so, most cells in the body, with a few exceptions, are using fatty acids for fuel. Obese individuals may derive over 90% of their total fuel requirements from fat while leaner individuals may only derive about 75% of the total from fat. So far so good, right, the body is mobilizing and utilizing an absolute ton of fatty acids for fuel: 90% of your total energy expenditure if you’re fat and 75% if you’re lean (I’ll talk about what fat and lean is in another chapter).

    There must be a drawback and here it is: the few tissues that require glucose are getting it via gluconeogenesis in the liver. As above, gluconeogenesis occurs from glycerol, lactate, pyruvate and amino acids. Now, if the person isn’t eating any protein, where are those amino acids going to have to come from?

    That’s right, from the protein that is already in the body. But recall from last chapter that there really isn’t a store of protein in the body, unless you count muscles and organs. Which means that, during total starvation, the body has to break down protein tissues to provide amino acids to make glucose. The body starts eating its own lean body mass to make glucose to fuel certain tissues. This is bad.

    Now, as fatty acids start to accumulate and be burned in the liver, ketones will start to be produced. Initially, for reasons totally unimportant to this book, muscles will use the majority of ketones that are produced. As I mentioned above, after a few weeks, the brain will adapt so that it is using ketones and deriving most of its fuel from them; the small remainder comes from the glucose being produced via gluconeogenesis.

    Now, the adaptation to ketosis occurs for a profoundly important reason. Once again, much of the glucose produced in the body is from amino acids which are coming from the protein in muscle (and to a lesser degree, organs). If such a breakdown continued in the long term, so much muscle would be lost that the individual who was starving would be unable to move. Quite in fact, the loss of too much lean body mass (muscle and organs) causes death. The shift to using ketones decreases the need to break down body protein to make glucose.

    As I mentioned above, therapeutic starvation was often used in the cases where rapid weight loss was needed. And while it did generate rather high levels of weight and fat loss, it had as a problem the loss of excessive body protein. So researchers decided to find a way to try and generate similar levels of weight/fat loss while sparing LBM. And that’s the topic of the next chapter.
  • ShrinkRapt451
    ShrinkRapt451 Posts: 447 Member
    Fat is lipids. You can convert lipids into usable fuel, which many cells can use. But lipids don't make proteins. Which you also need. If your body thinks it's in a "famine" stage, it starts holdring whatever calories come in, after it uses what it needs for immediate energy use. So while it will deplete lipid stores to get fuel if it has to, it'd rather just get that from your food, because that requires less energy expenditure. And it will cannibalize your muscles for proteins. After all, historically speaking, protein-rich foods were not in great supply during periods of famine. And while it's not hard for low-carbers eat around 1100-1200 cals a day and feel full, there are still plenty of folks who are on a low-cal, low-fat, relatively higher-carb/lower protein diet. That's where you'd expect to get more muscle loss.

    Hang out here for just a couple of months and you'll see folks hit plateaus on 1200 cals that then lose again when they up their calories. Particularly if the exercise regularly.
  • dewofthedesert
    dewofthedesert Posts: 1
    What about 800 cal/day of 53% Carbs; 19% Protein; 28% Fat. Is this Starvation Mode? MyFitnessPal keeps saying Starvation Mode but I have been losing weight and building muscle. And I've been doing this for almost a year now! Yes - plateaus have happened and I am going through one right now. Don't know whether to lower cal intake and up cardio or just increase cal intake and maintain cardio. Thoughts?
  • MrsSanthoff
    MrsSanthoff Posts: 272 Member
    bump
  • Craigamears
    Craigamears Posts: 65 Member
    What about 800 cal/day of 53% Carbs; 19% Protein; 28% Fat. Is this Starvation Mode? MyFitnessPal keeps saying Starvation Mode but I have been losing weight and building muscle. And I've been doing this for almost a year now! Yes - plateaus have happened and I am going through one right now. Don't know whether to lower cal intake and up cardio or just increase cal intake and maintain cardio. Thoughts?

    Ms Dew, Are you saying your Lean Body Mass (LBM) is increasing on your 800 cal diet? This figure would go up if you are "building muscles". Your 40 gms or so of Protein may be sparing you from suffering from muscle tissue loss but unless you are real small I wouldn't think so. An 800 cal diet would be like a stomach stapling or lap-band and you can read in the poster above what that is like on the long term, even for a morbidly obese person.

    Just curious
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