i agree that it's BS....for a few reasons...1) people on extreme weight loss plans, who cannot take in many calories, such as weight loss surgery patients or other supervised plans, WILL lose weight and 2) if starvation mode existed, all those starving people in third world countries wouldn't be nearly so skinny
I dont think Starvation Mode Exists...However..if you do not eat for said period of time..you are said to be undergoing "semi-starvation"
However, I do believe that your BMR rate can decrease..but that is likely to happen when you lose more and more weight. Your body doesnt need as much food to sustain it so why should you're resting BMR need to be high? It doesnt..
Not BS at all, it is a documented physiological adaptation and can indeed be induced with some commonly implemented diets and gastric surgeries.
That said, it is both more rare than often reported, and incredibly difficult to induce in a normal dieter. We have a cascade of metabolic protections that are initiated before the body heavily cannibalizes its own tissues - this includes ratcheting up hunger to almost unbearable levels and lessening energy expenditure (lethargy). It can and does happen - but not for long in a dieter who can still choose to eat more. Most begin to experience that symptom cascade and 'fail' their diet by eating more normal calorie levels again, or even bingeing. In a survival situation or surgically induced calorie restriction the 'starvation mode' metabolic down regulation is quite a different matter.
As far as I've researched the matter (which is quite a bit, because I write about this stuff), metabolic slowdown does occur with caloric restriction, but not to the point of being unable to lose weight. In other words, there is no caloric figure that's too low to enable weight loss.
How is starvation mode defined? Before I decide if it's nonsense, I just want to make sure I'm on the same page as the rest of you about what it actually is.
The myth of starvation mode is that the body will sense there is a famine and hold onto everything you ingest making it impossible to lose fat. This is a completely ridiculous notion. It baffles my mind how people think this can possibly be true but then again people believe some pretty foolish things and frankly accurate information is not always easy to come by.
The bottom line? The body can only do so much to slow down the use of energy it needs to survive and one's BMR can only slow down a fairly small amount. Typically this is somewhere around 15% of BMR and all dieters are going to see a reduction in BMR over time.
The reality of starvation mode is that if the energy needs of the body aren't being met bad things can and will happen over time but they don't include the cessation of fat loss. For example, in females amenorrhea is fairly common when body fat gets too low due to caloric restriction.
It is a myth, they proved it recently in a very large and long military study. If it existed no one would ever die of starvation. Your body 'can' slow it's metabolism down when calories are dropped very very low - 300 calories etc - you still continue to lose weight though as said previously above. Once the calorie intake is increased the metabolism also increases and goes back to normal.
The original starvation mode research was based on a very small and short dodgy study done many years ago.
Wait - people actually think that your metabolism completely shuts down in starvation mode, instead of just downregulation of energy expenditure? That's incredibly ill conceived; complete metabolic shutdown would equal death.
I'd be so thrilled if basic critical thinking and logic skills were taught to kids these days. Good question Rachel - I would just never assume that would be what someone meant by starvation mode.
My own brushes with it? Exhaustion; intense cravings even to the extent of pica; cold to the point of white extremities; massive hair shed; inducing shingles from physiological stress. This was after two years of dieting and waiting for my body to adapt to a new plan. It did, and then all was well, but not only was the scale not responding well, my body starting seriously acting up. I can always tell now when I am maintaining too steep a calorie deficit, as those symptoms creep back.
Starvation mode - the body cascades chemical and physical reactions to the bodily stress and nutritional deficiencies, negatively impacting health and (to a lesser extent) weight loss. You can definitely stalled from this sort of physiological stress, the same way the scale can appear stalled during a cold. It doesn't mean mass isn't still being reduced - no plateau can last forever without energy balance - but it can absolutely make you weak, sick, and compromise your muscles and bones.
I actually starved myself for a few weeks while I was at high school because the girls in my soccer team were snickering behind my back about my bouncing boobs and flab. Funny thing is, my parents never said anything even though I turned down eating dinner for a few weeks... Oh well...
Anyway. I know from experience that this is not the way to go about losing weight. I found that I would binge every so often when I became weak and I would eat potato chips and unhealthy things because they were quick an easy. It was a double-edged sword. I was harming my body not eating and harming it with eating to gain energy.
Thank goodness I had the sense to get over it quickly before it became and habit and a serious problem! So yes, starving is complete BS because it does wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy more harm than good.
Arctic Mama, what you are describing is vitamin deficiencies and possibly hormonal problems not starvation mode. The body does not start to eat into it's own tissues until for women bodyfat is 10% or less and for men 5% or less. This was scientifically proven in a 10yr military study. It is physically impossible for someone to go into this mode when they have more fat than this.
I won't argue that starvation mode is BS, especially since most of you are far more well read about these things. But when I was doing a fairly low calorie (yet well balanced and supervised) diet of about 1,000 calories, I was losing about 1-3 pounds weekly without exercise. I then started exercising regularly, and my weight loss completely stalled, for weeks. I dropped the exercise and started losing again.
I always called it starvation mode because that was my understanding of what happened (not enough calories to sustain the activity level). So if not that, then what?
Not that you should starve yourself in any way as that is unhealthy, but the concept of starvation mode is BS isn't it?
I seriously cannot accept that this exists.
Comments please. But it really is BS.
It's so completely overblown/over exaggerated that, yes, it is mostly BS. The starvation mode myth is mainly pushed with the idea/findings that people who skip meals (usually breakfast) tend to weigh more than people who don't. So most assume that it's because their body is in "starvation mode" and is then "holding onto" their lunch and dinner. But as we (should have) learned in math class, correlation does not necessarily mean causation. Instead, it's much more likely that a person who skips a meal is going to be ravenously hungry when they finally do decided to eat. This usually leads to overeating or craving foods high in fat or sugar. I know that happens to me when I skip meals. If I eat healthy and "on time" it is easier for me to stay on track because I'm not hungry. It's when I skip lunch or breakfast that the sugar monkey on my back starts screeching and beating me over the head.
I don't think that starvation mode is BS. My doctor says that it is a matter of genetics. There are some people whose metabolism will slow drastically when the caloric intake drops very low enabling them to live longer on small amounts of food. He said that is why some people could/can survive the extermination camps and famines in third world countries while others do not. Note that I said live longer, anyone can starve to death, the time will just vary from person to person.
We are all different. There can be a medication that will cure most people of a particular disease or condition but there will always be someone who the same medication does not help. Starvation mode is the same way. Some are affected while other aren't.
Starvation mode
