Zeff,

You're almost as evil as the restaurant people!!!

My mom is not a nutritionist, but she is a nurse with almost 30 years experience, worked for a good deal of those thirty years with a doctor whose specialty was bariatric medicine. Dr. P eventually left the hospital at which they worked to open a treatment center for the morbidly obese. Mom told me that she once asked him about this topic and he told her that 900 calories per day or less for weeks on end will put an otherwise healthy adult into temporary "starvation mode." This mode will eventually break and a person will begin to drop weight dramatically and in an unhealthy way. After the body runs out of fat stores to use up, it will begin shutting down the less vital organs, in order to devote what little nutrition it's getting to the more crucial parts like the heart and brain. It's pretty scary stuff, but I notice you pointed out that you never felt weak or anything, and I maintain that much of your weight loss journey should be guided by your intuition. I mean, if you are losing weight, then it's working, and if you're losing weight AND feeling pretty good (i.e. have energy, sleeping well, overall sense of well-being, etc etc), then it's working really well. I wouldn't mess with a good thing, especially if you had to force yourself to eat the extra calories. Good luck!

I'm not joking, really! She was talking about a P.O.W. camp....although I sat there for awhile asking myself if it could possibly be anything else...I kept trying to think of things that would be weight related

Really?

Wow.

Now that I read it in your context, it makes sense. I thought it was People Overweight or something.

I'm not the brightest crayon in the box, I'm afraid.

I don't dismiss "starvation mode" as a concept. I've seen many posts around here by people who upped their calories a little and it helped them to start losing again. I'm not saying redflatshoe is in starvation mode. She has obviously found what works for her. I think it's the use of the word "starvation" that is misleading, maybe there's a better term. I think kaplods hit the nail on the head.

Someone who is eating between 1200 - 1500 calories a day is certainly not starving in the technical sense of the word. I don't think the comparison with people that are truly starving is valid. There's a huge difference between someone who is eating 1200 - 1500 calories and someone who is scratching to find 500 calories/day. Obviously your body will react differently to those situations. The 1200 calorie/day body may try to hold on to some weight. For the 500 calorie person, that's just not going to be possible, as there is nothing left to hold on to.

I think it's always a good policy to eat a higher calorie level that will maintain a reasonable rate of weight loss, and then as weight loss slows you can lower your calories accordingly.

I agree. That's what I tell people who want to drastically change their lifestyle to suddenly include an hour of exercise a day and reduce their caloric intake from 2,000 to 1,100 all at once. I think you should do not necessarily the minimum that it takes to start losing pounds, but definitely try to keep a few weapons in your arsenal, so to speak. That is, leave yourself a little room for adjustment if you hit a plateau.

I wonder if maybe hitting a plateau is what gave rise to the idea of starvation mode in weight loss...

Rosie, I don't know if that's the reason, overall, but it's usually the reason that it's brought up here, IMHO. People often write in to say that they are eating (enter number lower than 1200 here) calories a day but they aren't losing. They want to know why. Many times, when they eat a bit more, they start losing again.

I don't think anyone is advising people who are gaining weight to eat more because they are in starvation mode. Just people who are stuck on a plateau but are eating a very small amount of food.

1200-1400 calories a day may not be considered "starving" in the sense of the word. But eating that little while doing intense amounts of exercise would, IMHO. And those who get less than 1200 cals/day in third world countries are described as suffering from starvation and/or malnutrition. So there's some credence to the "starvation" theory. Of course, I'd assume that those people are also doing a lot of physical labor just to get through their daily lives, and that has an impact as well.

I am far from doing physical labor at the office. On my workout days, I do eat an extra cup of yogurt, fruit and nuts (300+ cals more). On non-workout days, the 1200-1400 calories must come from highly nutritious food.

Here's a snap shot of my food journal

3/19/2009
breakfast:
1 cup strawberries
1/2 grapefruit
LF cheese wedge
1 hardboiled egg (no yolk)

snack: SF jello and 1/2 cup blueberries

lunch:
2-3 oz grilled peppercorn pork loin
1 oz grilled tofu
2 cups steamed green beans and chickpeas topped with sliced almonds
1/2 cup brown rice

snack: FF plain yogurt
snack 2: tea and celery slices

dinner:
cucumbers and tomatoes salad
yolk free egg and leeks soup
2-3 oz broiled lemon pepper salmon
2 cups steamed endamame and broccoli

Your diet looks great! And you seem very sensible about it!