Reply to Is starvation mode real or a myth?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]While a drastic cut in calories below what you are burning per day is going to make you lose weight (calories in less than calories out), and no one eating 1200 calories month after month is going to not eventually lose weight (and many people misreport how many calories they are consuming per day), starvation mode is a thing in that it effects a) your basal metabolic rate slightly b) your hormonal profile and tendency to release cortisol and retain fat, especially around your midsection and c) minor changes to thermoregulation, spontaneous movement (fidgeting, etc.), menstruation, muscle hypertrophy, and other physiological functions. Your body is intelligent and it will conserve calories if the deficit is too steep and shut down functions it considers unessential.

You can make your body more apt to store fat rather than lean tissue and cause your body to burn calories at a slightly lower rate meaning you need to eat less and less to continue to lose weight (beyond that once you lose weight, your BMR is lower).  Although basal metabolic rate is mostly determined by body size, there can be minor variations of 100-300 calories per day and your body can normalize to the lower end of this range.  Your body is going to shut down functions it considers unessential, and it's going to become more lethargic so you move and fidget less over the day.  The amount of calories/body weight will slow down if you restrict too much.  It can also cause your immune system to shut down, mess up your hormones, and it hinder how much fitness you are able to gain (e.g. gains in strength from strength training, or gains in cardiovascular conditioning from aerobic exercise) from working out.  It can also mess up your thyroid.

For this reason, typically when losing weight, deficits of ~300-500 calories/day (~1 lb/week) is considered more sustainable than going on a rapid 1200/day diet.  Certainly less potential for affecting your health in a negative way.[/quote]

this is all nonsense. i mean iif one doest eat a single thing for a month, maybe some of it is true, but to talk about this in respect to 1200 per day is a LOL. 1200 is more than what many women need to merely maintain their weight. 1200 is a lot of calories... it's just that people are fat and eat a lot and feel they are starving when they eat the amount their body actually needs.[/quote]

1200 calories per day is not more than most women need to maintain their weight.  Considering the amount you need if you are in a coma is typically close to 10-11 x your weight in lbs (back of an envelope estimate, of course depends on age, muscle composition, and can vary 100-200 calories per person of equal body weights), most women would need to be under 110 lbs to need 1200 to maintain their weight if all the did was lay in bed all day.  Then if you expend any calories going to work, chasing kids, doing chores, you are going to burn at a minimum a few hundred calories over that.  If you work out, even more.  If people think they need 1200 calories to maintain their weight, they are probably undercounting how many calories they actually consume 99% of the time.

While my familiarity with this is mostly with regard to active women, and I'm not sure how big of an issue it is for sedentary women, I have known several women work with sports registered dietician to dial this in.  One of my friends realized she was underconsuming by about 600 calories per day while marathon training and a) her body was absorbing her training as efficiently and b) she wasn't leaning down as much as she expected to and her body was holding on to the last bit of body fat.  When she started eating a smaller caloric deficit and then once she got to her desired body composition, not being in a deficit at all, her weight stabilized at 5 lbs lower than it was.

There is definitely all kinds of hormonal effects that come from big caloric deficits.  Obviously you will lose weight if your calorie intake is consistently low, but it can also stall out weight loss per calorie taken in/lb bodyweight.  Additionally, it can cause a lot of health issues.  Most people eat too much and overcount how many calories they are eating when they can't lose weight.  But we are Americans and we do everything in extremes--once people go on diets they want to go on a rapid weight loss diet.  That isn't the healthiest approach either.[/quote]

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