Starvation mode question

So i was thinking about starvation mode and i want to know why they say ohhh if you eat under 1200 calories you will just stop losing because you will go into starvation mode. Well then how do anorexics lose weight???? From their excessive exercise? Now i would like to state by no means am i anorexic or bulemic i eat my 1400 a day and am losing just fine (4 so far!) but it just doesnt make any sense to me... I want to know why they say that if people still eat under 1200 and lose a lot... Curious cat i guess lol

I would love to know the answer to this question as well.Let me know if you find an answer because I am losing weight just fine as well:flowerforyou:

I was wondering also - Is it okay to go under calories for just a day? I have only had 700 cals today, and hadn't realised cause I have just done my food diary now, but its bed time! So I am not gonna go and eat 500 cals!

xxChristy

I ate 800 calories or less for 3 months while taking diet pills and lost 27 pounds. I never stopped loosing weight. As I began to weigh less and less I did start loosing weight slower. My theory was I weighed less so I was burning less calories doing the same things. I am now off the diet pills and its not very difficult for me to stay under 1800 calories which is what I need to stay under to continue loosing at a much slower rate. I am not putting on fat because I am eating more either. I did slowly increase my calories as I neared the end of my course of diet pills though and that may have made a difference.

It is my understanding at least it was for me that in Starvation mode you don't eat regularly, the dietitian told me because I didn't eat anything until supper time every day for many years that my body was in starvation mode and that it didn't matter what I did eat at supper my body would store it all as fat, ended up being 300lbs from not eating... so I'm not sure if you can go into starvation mode if you ate only 1000 calories or not ... but I do know that a lot of my suppers I would eat were over a 1000 calories (fast food) and I was still in starvation mode.

I'm not sure if that helped at all :laugh: just thought i would share that.

First...DON'T EVER STARVE YOURSELF!!!!!!!!!
Second:
If you starve yourself to lose weight, you will find rapid weight loss. You'll lose the weight right off, and you'll look great. HUGE PROBLEM WITH THIS. Your body is smart!!!!!! It knows that you starved it, so as soon as you start eating again, it stores ANYTHING and EVERYTHING it can from the food you are eating, just in case you starve yourself again so that it has something to live off of. When your body is storing all of these things, you'll find yourself gaining weight again rapidly, sometimes more than you initially lost. There's no way to stop this either (unless you increase your intake so you body know you are going to be starving it again..) However, unless you stop eating again, but then the next time you eat your body will again store anything it can take from the food you're eating. Starving yourself to lose weight sounds like an OK idea, but it ends up being harmful. (Also note, people that did starve themselves for a long time never get back to 100% for the rest of their life...not as shine hair, more wrinkles, duller skin, and likely a HUGE physical list of problems from it...trust me...)

Simply stated...if YOU DON'T EAT your MINIMUM calories your body needs to function it is store anything (AS FAT!!) that comes in your mouth. If you have been going UNDER your cals (say 1200) then it knows it and stores the next thing you eat...good or bad food. AND eat the cals you burn from working out. Soooo if you have hit a place where you are not losing and you thinking lowing your food is the best way to "get going again...." STOP and EAT MORE! You will be happily surprised when you are losing weight and eating more....

In short, always always always eat your calories...and if this mean you need to have a jar of peanut butter and toast before you end your day...do it. Your body is soooo much starter than the one "controlling" it!!

:flowerforyou:

Been on MFP now for a week, reading posts and wondering along the same lines. Last month my doctor suggested an 800 calorie/day "liquid diet" (OptiFast) and I decided against it and found myself here instead. Just curious how, if the body so quickly goes into starvation mode, people on doctor-monitored liquid diets - or even very low calorie diets - drop so much weight. My doctor said it would be about 100 pounds in 9 months. Ideas?

Been on MFP now for a week, reading posts and wondering along the same lines. Last month my doctor suggested an 800 calorie/day "liquid diet" (OptiFast) and I decided against it and found myself here instead. Just curious how, if the body so quickly goes into starvation mode, people on doctor-monitored liquid diets - or even very low calorie diets - drop so much weight. My doctor said it would be about 100 pounds in 9 months. Ideas?

First of all, extremely low calorie diets are only appropriate if you have a lot of weight to lose, and are under a Dr.'s care. Essentially, the body fat reserves are what you're "eating" for energy on such a drastic diet. Even then, the weight is more likely to come back if you lose it quickly, and don't establish new, healthier lifelong habits that help you keep it off.

Starvation mode only becomes a problem if you're eating consistently at a very low deficit and not particularly heavy to begin with.

And yes, you can lose weight in starvation mode, but you're not just losing body fat, you're losing muscle mass. This is very, very, very bad. It's why anorexics and bulimics die young from heart attacks (like Karen Carpenter did) they lose muscle mass in their hearts. Not to sound cold, but anorexics are actually starving to death, the very epitome of starvation mode. Also, long term anorexics stay alive for an alarmingly long time on virtually no food, a testament to how well the body can reserve its resources if so stressed.

Remember always, the less you have to lose, the smaller your deficit should be in order to not lose muscle mass. You want to lose body fat, not just body weight.

On youtube there's a story done where 2 journalists go onto a crash diet to drop five dress sizes in five weeks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gY9LLMTCjwg&feature=related

Definitely something to watch and full of info.

What I meant by "scare tactic" was exactly what you said--this is what your body actually does if it is deprived, and it scares me! :yawn:

Been on MFP now for a week, reading posts and wondering along the same lines. Last month my doctor suggested an 800 calorie/day "liquid diet" (OptiFast) and I decided against it and found myself here instead. Just curious how, if the body so quickly goes into starvation mode, people on doctor-monitored liquid diets - or even very low calorie diets - drop so much weight. My doctor said it would be about 100 pounds in 9 months. Ideas?

Sure, for very obese people they can go on really low calories under a drs supervision. It is very hard on your body, it stresses your heart, etc. But, like was already mentioned, as soon as you (a) stop eating the liquid diet or (b) eat real food your body will convert it into fat and you'll balloon up again. That's why diets don't work - that's why people yo-yo, as soon as they go back to eating what would normally be maintenance calories, the body balloons back up with fat, although if not in starvation mode the body would have used those cals as energy.

Of course if you don't eat hardly anything, you'll lose weight. You'll lose muscle, too, because muscle is easier to burn that fat, so your body will attack the muscles first. Ever seen a buff anorexic?? No, they're just skin and bones.

Also, when you lose a lot of weight quickly your skin can't keep up, and so you get big bags of skin that will never reduce. Plastic surgery would be the only answer. But if you do it the right way, slowly, letting your skin keep up with your weight loss and feeding your body what it needs so it's healthy, you will have a much less chance of all that extra skin, depending on the body you started with.

If you weigh 700 pounds and your dr puts you on a plan, sure. But if you weigh 300 pounds or less, then you can do it this way!!!