When have you reached the 'starving' point?
 

Lately i've been worrying a lot about the point in which my body starts storing fat as if I were starving. I would just like to know how long I can go without worrying about this.

It's not like Im eating so little, but when I get hungry and dont eat for an hour or so after feeling that way, I have panic attacks and imagine Im going to be storing fat for the next year!

These sorts of thoughts plague most people when they are trying to lose weight because they are working so hard to take control of their bodies and become preoccupied with the uncontrollable. In fact, I think this is far less about what you believe your body is actually doing than about a fear of not having control over the outcome of your efforts. This is also understandable. Many of us who have weight issues feel that our bodies are betraying us and that the way in which they store fat is something we didn't contribute to to the extent that weight has been added to our bodies. Since each individual is different, this actually may be true. Some people gain weight eating modestly and others never gain eating a lot. It's no wonder we might feel our actions do not relate to bodily consequences.

This fear is understandable, but dwelling on it will only make you miserable and continue to provoke continued anxiety. The bottom line is that you can't know when, how, or why your body does what it does. You can only make healthy choices and build confidence in yourself that those choices will eventually yield the desired results as long as those choices are not extreme or destructive. Our bodies are designed for stability, not dramatic alteration and the body will only respond atypically if you push it too hard too fast. Only you know how far beyond your normal routine you are pushing yourself.

I would encourage you not to concern yourself with aspects such as this which you cannot control by practicing some mental routines that will alter your thinking rather than dwell upon mechanistic options (changing your routines/diet) and how to tweak them to what you feel may be an optimal state. When you start to feel that fear, tell yourself that the fear is understandable, but it is not based in rational thinking. Repeat to yourself that your actions will achieve the desired outcome through time. Repeat that you must be calm and patient. Most of all, reassure yourself that everything will be okay and your body will respond to your efforts.

The first hundred or so times you do this, it may have no effect, but talking yourself down from the mental ledge you place yourself on will eventually dissipate these thoughts. Treat yourself as gently, kindly, and with forgiveness as you would a frightened child, because emotionally that is where your feelings are coming from. I have had similar issues and panic, and eventually conditioned almost all of them away. We all have this "child" within and act in accord with those feelings. It's not a sign of immaturity, but of human vulnerability, and we deserve compassion and should offer it to ourselves.

I don't think your body will get to a "starving point" as long as you are eating enough calories and nutrition to sustain your bodily functions. For most people that's 1200-2000 calories depending on size, weight and activity level. Going below 1200 is generally frowned upon because you'll be hungry and more prone to losing control.

Being hungry is one thing, starving is another completely. When you're hungry, your stomach is just empty and your body needs another meal or snack. When you're starving, your body is literally feeding off of itself because it isn't getting food. Starving is something that happens if you are continually depriving your body of food over long periods of time. (days, weeks etc...)

There are lots of calorie calculators out there to help you get a rough estimate for how many calories you should consume to lose at a steady pace. For me, it's between 1200-1500 calories. I'm happiest around 1300 calories, though I do vary it throughout the week.

It's no fun to go hungry all the time. If you're finding yourself genuinely hungry all the time try spacing your meals differently, adding light snacks, or upping your calories a little. Find something you can see yourself doing long term and stick with it. :D

Thanks guys, I feel a lot better about it now.

I was mostly worried because everyone said that if you waited too long between meals, your body might start storing a lot more fat, and I didn't want to get to a point where that happened.

When I do get hungry in between meals, I get the healthiest snack I possibly can. Whether I'm in school or at home. I think it'll work :D

I graduated college in a biological science degree and have taken several classes on nutrition, biochemistry, physiology, I even took a class specifically on mammal digestion and metabolism (we discussed animals, but humans were the focus). I know a thingy or two about this so called "starvation point."

For the most part, it is a myth. There is some truth that if a body is deprived of key nutrients and energy for long enough (as in weeks), the metabolism will slow simply because the organs in the body don't have the necessary feul to work properly at absorbing nutrients. "Metabolism" isn't some mysterious concept, all it is is the rate that a body absorbs and utilizes nutrients. When the famine is over, say a person who has been starved for a month suddenly eats a Thanksgiving dinner, the metabolism is still functioning at the debilitated rate. It hasn't had time to recover, so it's still functioning more slowly. The human body is naturally built to store excess energy, that which won't be burned immediately, as fat to store for possible future famines. So if any of us normal well-fed people eat more calories/energy than our body will burn immediately, it will be stored as fat. The starved person that just ate Thanksgiving will store more as fat right away because his metabolism is still slowed. If he's well-fed long enough for his tissues and organs to repair, his metabolism should return to the full rate. If he had been starved for so long that lasting damage had been done, then it may never recover to its full strength. (think of somebody who has been suffocated...if they get air in time, their brain can recover. If it goes too long, parts of the brain start to die resulting in brain damage). But again, this is after significant loooong periods of starvation. Aside from severe cases of anorexia, this is something most Americans will never come close to experiencing.

So other than that extreme case, the starvation mode is mostly a myth. Our bodies are built to be pretty dang efficient at working with very little food. You may not feel fully energetic, but your body isn't in panic mode and storing every calorie.

That said, for optimum health AND sanity, dropping calories too low isn't good either. 1200 is a good minimum for most people. Most people can lose on that number, it will provide adequate energy and nutrients, and it's a decent amount of whole food. I personally zig zag my calories, eating some high days and some low days (not to "fool my metabolism" or anything, but just to save room for treats and some days it's very easy to eat very low cal). On my high days, I might eat 1600-1800 and on low days I might eat as low as 1000. That's 1000 calories of high fiber, complex carbs, colorful fruits and veggies (lots of vitamins and minerals), and lean protein. Even on those low cal days, I'm energetic and satisfied. I'm a fairly little person, my body doesn't need a huge amount of calories.

In short, if you're eating at a calorie level that's causing you to lose at a reasonable pace (average of 1-2lbs/week) and you feel energetic and satisfied and not deprived, then you are at a healthy calorie level. Don't worry about starvation mode.

I'll quote [a pertinent portion ] of a book I'm reading on the topic.

So, your fat cells have a set point they want to be at, and they'll only lose a small amount of it at a time. Once you're hungry, your body isn't simply telling you you're belly is empty - it's saying it's running low on fuel. The longer you go between feeling hungry and eating, the less energy your cells will consume.

It will take quite a while to go into actual "starvation mode", where your body begins cannibalizing lean muscle mass for energy, but being habitually hungry may hamper the free flow of fatty acids in/out of your fat cells. On the flip side, I know a lot of Paleo/Primal eaters who swear by intermittent fasting (only eating in an 8 hour window is what I usually hear) for weight loss.

Another thing I thought I'd add, since it puts an interesting perspective on dieting that many people aren't aware of.

A person is born with exactly as many muscle cells as they will ever have. When body builders (or anybody) work out and lift, those muscle cells get larger but they do not increase in number. They decrease in size when they are not being used.

Fat cells, on the other hand, increase in size AND in number to store excess fat. And here's the kicker, once they are created, they NEVER go away. You are born with a certain number of fat cells in your body. As you gain weight and store more fat, those fat cells get bigger and eventually more cells are made to store more fat. When you lose weight, the fat cells get smaller, but even the ones that had been created never go away.

This is one reason why it's so much easier for people to regain weight. Yo-yo dieters who were very overweight, lost the weight, and fall off the wagon will likely find that they regain the weight much faster and easier than when they initially put it on. That's not because they ruined their metabolism with previous diets, it's because they already have the infrastructure, the fat cells, to store fat much more easily.

Many years ago, I basically starved myself. I can tell you first-hand, it doesn't take THAT long for the damage to show depending on how much fat you have in the beginning. Obviously, an obese person has a lot of fat stores to go on. Skipping a meal here and there and higher calorie deficits used sparingly is not likely going to do this. It is the person who is already smallish to begin with. I was about 140-145 when it started and within 6 weeks I was down to 112 lbs! Yes, it was drastic, yes I was stupid. You live and learn. The most noticeable signs to me were lethargy/fatigue.

Here is an excerpt from Tom Venuto's website (Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle):

Tom, thank you for a very informative e-mail. I have a question about leptin. if leptin regulates the appetite, and it's secreted by fat cells, then does it follow that as you lose fat, your body secretes less leptin and therefore your appetite goes up? or asking the question another way, how does leptin secretion and appetite regulation work in someone with very low body fat?

Thanks
Lisa

Posted by: lisa | November 5, 2007 2:07 PM

lisa, you got it! Body fat goes down, leptin goes down appetite goes up... this is why "starvation mode" is a much bigger deal when you are already lean and working on getting leaner -- because leptin responds to signals from fat stores AND quantity of food intake. the leaner you get, the harder it gets to get leaner. Think about it - if someone is obese, are they really in danger of starving, with all that fuel in reserve. Well, if food intake plummets, then certainly the hunger mechanism will kick in, but its the lean person, like the fitness competitor or bodybuilder who really needs to be much more aware of being conservative with calorie cutting: Starvation mode is affeced by the severity of the calorie deficit in all individuals of all body weights, but Obese people can use larger calorie deficits than lean people without detrimental effects. For more info on the size of the calorie deficit see our previous post here: CALORIE DEFICITS

Posted by: tom venuto | November 5, 2007 2:08 PM

Hope this helps a little. I underlined what I hope you are alluding to. Tom does state in another article that some people get all crazy over it and sending messages of impending doom to people who are on restricted calorie diets with A LOT of body fat to lose and there is no need to panic just yet. Starvation mode or whatever people want to call it is not a myth. If you don't feed yourself regularly, your body will eventually begin to make use of anything and everything it has to keep you alive. Using the extreme here, but this is why anorexics are nothing short of death. Their bodies have ultimately sacrificed, in order of importance, vital organs and tissue until there is no more.

Just wanted to add one more thing: This has a lot to do with why people with the last 10 lbs feel like they are going in circles, reached a hard, long stall or slowed down weight loss. It's a lot more in-depth than a plateau. Plateau's IMO are nothing more than your body saying I've gotten smaller, you're still taking in the same amount of calories and burning the same amount of calories that you were 20 lbs ago...time for some adjustments, either decrease the calories or increase the burn. A reset for the smaller you, basically.

Thank you for all the information! I read through everything and it makes a lot of sense, not to mentioned it drastically calmed my anxiety. I'm really grateful you took the time to write it all out and explain, and I hope it helps many more besides myself.

This makes me feel tons better too, thanks everyone!

Yeah...that was GREAT INFO everybody..thanks!:D BTW, I LOVE Tom Venuto!!!

Sorry to tell you this but you're wrong. Your body stops producing fat cells after puberty. The volume of those fat cells will be affected by weight loss and weight gain but the actual number of fat cells remains constant. o.O

here are a few links:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7378349.stm
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/107043.php
http://www.nature.com/news/2008/0505....2008.800.html

One of my professors in college told me this and said that she was going to be sure to raise skinny babies so that they would never have a lot of fat cells. This is yet one of the many ways that being fat as a child leads you to having more problems as an adult.

People say that once you become an adult, it's "your choice", but if your parents fed you in a way that made you fat as a child, you will operate at a disadvantage for the rest of your life relative to skinny children because more fat cells make you more inclined to store fat more rapidly and affect insulin interactions.

I'm fairly certain women add fat cells during gestation. I'll edit when I find the elusive article I just read on the topic...

I agree that starvation mode is mostly a myth. I do not buy into it. HOWEVER, the body does become more efficient with what you give it to work with. I have stalled frequently throughout this journey on very low calories and dropping them lower did not work. My body became very efficient. Once I started adding a couple days of higher calories, finally my body started working faster again.

I don't know if heart rate has to do with it. I've read some things that indicate it might. But during my plateau and steady low calories, my resting HR was about 46. (I'm also very fit, so it's ok.) Now that I've added higher calorie days, my HR is around 55. I'm just throwing that out there. I don't know if it has anything to do with it or not, but I think it might.