Starvation Mode

[palomayombe]

.....

[fkwan]

It wasn't just starvation. As I recall diseases like dysentery, typhoid and cholera were involved, which involve a hell of a lot of diarrhea and dehydration. I'm not a doctor, but I suspect that sheer terror and an extreme will to survive (if they survived) leads to that "fight or flight" adrenaline rush which boosts metabolism.

But I'm not a biologist, doctor or other health professional, so feel free to chime in.

f

[FarmerHal]

I think they just were not fed- bodies in starvation mode can store fat as long as ther's a little bit of food coming in. No food, no fat and you get emaciation.

[Mavilu]

Because starvation mode only kicks in when the body can't afford to lose any more weight before shutting down; it's an emergency system, your body will eat itself out and will only stop when it's time to start feeding on the brain (gross I know).

I have been very poor, one step short of homeless in my youth, eating about half a cup of food a day and wondering where on earth was my next meal going to come, if it was going to come at all.
In those times, my lowest weight was about 46 kilos (101Lbs) which is painfully low even for a 5'3", but never went below that, that's because my starvation mode finally kicked in, in order to keep me functioning, albeit badly; I was weak, dizzy, couldn't do much, really.
And I had started at 52 kilos (114lbs), so I definetely lost weight when I stopped eating.
Later on, my doctor told me that I stopped before going like those poor fellas during WWII, because I had been extremely healthy before and because when I ate, I did eat more calories than they did (usually white rice or spaghetti with oil).

I figured, the starvation mode thing strted as a precautionary tale for teens, to scare the from just not eating in order to lose weight and then, it ended up like a fantastic excuse for dieters "I'm not losing weight?, I know, it must be that I'm in starvation mode, I better eat more!, wee!!!".

[NoelFigart]

Well, there's an additional component, and this is why yo-yo diets is --ing hard on your metabolism.

In extreme calorie deficits, your body starts to work on your muscle before it starts to work on your fat. (That stops soon enough, because it won't consume enough that you can't walk until you're dying).

But what happens is you keep losing metabolically active tissue, which lowers your caloric need. It's why you feel flabbier than before when you gain weight back after losing very quickly. You are!

And we're not even talking about huge, Ahnuld amounts of muscle here. Two or three pounds of muscle tissues is a WHOLE BUNCH (on a woman) with a big effect on metabolism and caloric need.

I didn't believe this until I started weight training and lifting heavy. I'm 5'2" and have always been a notoriously SLOW loser when it comes to fat. (classic endomorph) After a year of weight training and muscle building, I can count on losing about a pound a week eating close to 1900 calories a day. I never did that well on a diet of a THOUSAND less calories a day.

Now, of course, this is ONE story, and pretty much anecdotal from a research point of view, so I'm sure everyone will be smart enough to take it with a grain of salt. But it's worth researching for better and more solid evidence, I think.

[Mavilu]

I wonder, NoelFigart: how much do you lift? and do you do free weights or machines?

[NoelFigart]

I likes me free weights, I does.

Do you mean how much WEIGHT do I lift, or how OFTEN do I lift?

The second is easy: I do a full body workout three days a week. Takes me 35-40 minutes.

The first? That varies according to the exercise and how I'm progressing. But as a general idea, I'm doing about 90lbs for squats (I'll be bumping that to 95 next week) and I'm benching 70 (that MAY go to 75 next week, but I may be reaching a plateau on upper body strength).

I don't even begin to compare to the pros. But that's okay.

[Mavilu]

You don't begin to compare with the pros, you say?
I don't begin to compare with you!, Jeez Louise, I'm impressed!.
I'm beginning to lift my puny 15lb dumbells for 2 sets of 10 reps after about 7 years of lifting and I was feeling quite proud.
You have made me confront the fact that I have been slacking with my weight-lifting program, hahaha!.
Thanks for answering, you have given me my inspiration.

[NoelFigart]

You SHOULD be proud of what you're doing.

I'm doing a book on exercise and one of the really frustrating things is finding a good metric for strength standards for a woman in terms of health.

If you check out Strong Women Stay Young, by Miriam Nelson, you'll find that in terms of health, you're just fine.

The way I'm lifting, it's less about health and more about the enjoyment of it as a sport. I just get a rush out of lifting heavy stuff, and I spent most of my youth doing manual labor pretty regularly.

[blueskighs]

Yes,
I wonder about these "theories" of starvation mode...
I tend to agree more with Noel, when we eat too low calorie our body will break down muscle because it's more metabolicaly active,
of couse the problem is that if you start EATING much again guess, what you don't get back that muscle .. your metabolism is lower and you gain back fat... there is also an idea that CARDIO is catabolic, I.e breaks down muscle ... thus the hours on the treadmills and ellipticals may be doing us more harm than good,
i.e we are tearing down muscle and keeping our weight numbers low but destroying our active muscle tissue and wrecking our metabolism.

I started working out conistently with weights last March. For 9 months I did a once a week 20-30 minute work out with very heavy very intense weights,
now I do 10 minutes 5-6 days a week one upper and one lower body to failure if I can ...
I really think in a year the results will be what I want. My body has already re-shaped to a great degree as I am not so much a pear shape..

So anyway ... yeah I think it is the destruction of muscle that is the prob ... age, low calorie diets and maybe even too much cardio ...
WHO KNEW!

Blueskighs

[kccc]

I think the "destruction" of muscle through calorie restriction and the "destruction" through exercise are very, very different.

I just finished reading "Younger Next Year," and one of the authors' theories is that you NEED to tear down your muscles (a little) through exercise and then give them time/rest/food to re-build. That that process actually keeps you strong and healthy, and sends "be strong!" signals to your body. Whereas dis-use sends "decay" signals.

Not sure of the science behind it - it seems a little over-stated and simplistic to me - but I buy the basic premise that we evolved to be active, and nature operates with a "use it or lose it" mentality...

And certainly there's a growing body of evidence that exercise is generally good for you, in more ways than we'd initially thought.

[HistoryTeacher]

"Starvation Mode" comes into play when your body has lacked the nutrients for a period of time that it feels that if it loses too much more fat/muscle mass then it will need to start to feed on its vital elements. As a result, if you are consuming calories, your body will convert those calories (energy) to fat because fat takes longer to burn through as an energy source.

The holocaust victims, along with several other groups of people throughout history, were not fed enough calories to meet the amount of energy they were buring on a daily basis (remember most people in labor and concentration camps were used as manual labor). As a result, the body burns more energy than it is receiving for a long enough period of time that the body has no choice but to feed on its muscle mass, and eventually it's internal organs.

The reason this comes up in dieting is that there are diets that cut the calorie intake to around 400-600 calories per day, by doing this the body begins to store all calories as fat, meaning that you may lose weight, but you will lose muscle mass as well. If you lose muscle mass, your body no longer burns as many calories. Eventually, your body will stop losing weight because you are taking in as many calories as you are using because of the lack of muscle mass. Hopefully this makes sense.

[reinhard]

Well, if you starve people enough, they "starvation mode" no longer cuts it, and they get very skinny (and die).

But don't worry, I don't think no-s will put anyone in danger of going into starvation mode (or dying). 3 meals a day is PLENTY by world historical standards.

In general, I get very suspicious when people starting talking about the importance of "metabolism" in dieting. Besides the obvious -- that you should not starve yourself and that you should exercise --, I think it's usually a dangerous distraction (and excuse, as Mavilu points out).

Reinhard