peeperjj's Journal, 09 Oct 18

Can't see the article, but it's all about the annoying stall. I ate at maintenance calories for a week to make it stop. Some people go down in calories or start exercising to make their deficit even larger, but I think that's just making your metabolism decline even more. Besides, if I'm not going to lose weight, I'd rather do so while eating more, not less. 

U are not reading the second part of the definition 

It also entails that you in-fact gain weight even on a deficit. Which makes this false 

Well you can unless adjust your intake under the new lowered maintenance level, because you're no longer in deficit. So until you 'fix it', you'll have to keep eating less and less and less to stay in deficit and see any results. 

What it's saying is the level at which you are in deficit moves so you think you're in deficit but you're not because the game has changed. 

So.... recovered 20 year professional anorexic here gonna weigh in... Too few calories will in fact signal to your body “STORE” fat especially, think wintering squirrels or bears🤪 It signifies hardship to your body, which triggers an archaic response that kept the human race alive for centuries. It’s survival mode. You then go through a period of either death by starvation or B) REFEEDING. You will experience your body holding onto food/nutrients meaning weight gain will be rapid and real, not just water weight. Eating at a starvation mode level would have to be at a fraction of you RDI-%, and of course would be different for each person. Not BS, just not summarized well in this short explanation. 👌🏻🥕❤️ 

Further more, you would require a metabolism “healing” period, where you actually have to eat the RDI or close amount, as your body literally TRUSTS your intake again. You’re an amazing design! You can’t starve yourself to death on purpose as easily as one might imagine, so don’t necessarily fear this starvation mode, but at the same time, certainly don’t undereat or go long periods of time without “sufficient calories “ so you don’t damage your metabolism. 

Thanks you Kay! Survival mode is what my oncologist called it and I couldn’t remember her term. I was on a very low dose steroid through part of my treatment. She said that accounted for about 25% of my gain. Another 25% was because I wasn’t eating healthy and was choosing comfort food when I felt like eating (again during this period I alternated forging a couple times a month and the rest was very little food). The last 50% was my body in survival mode trying to counteract all that I was doing to it. One thing it did was make me gain. Also made me more tired and many other things.  

LZ that’s one thing I didn’t think about at first. My calorie needs went down as my weight went down. I became more economical like those little hybrid cars haha. Really stinks now to have a BMR/rmr around 1300 calories.  

By posting this I in no way mean to say that ‘starvation mode’ is an actual thing persay. It’s more survival mode as Kay said or metabolic adaptation as LZ said. Our bodies are complex machines and can adjust to meet its needs. I also believe it’s really hard to actually starve yourself to the point of death. I’ve seen this done in person. I’m talking over a month with NO food and NO water. Drs said it shouldn’t have been possible but cancer can’t really be predicted I guess. The only water he got was from wetting his lips as that’s all he would allow and he fought that. So technically that’s all that could be forced. I want to say it was over 6 weeks but know for a fact that it was over a month.