@JD77 wrote:
Thanks for the help/info on this. I'm glad I haven't just thrown in the towel already. I'm sure I'll get there with some little tweaks.
My wife does WW and she was told that you can run into issues losing weight if you don't eat all your "points" as your body thinks it's starving and holds onto fat as reserve. Something along those lines. Any truth to this train of thought?
Well, starving, as in not eating at all, and starvation mode, undereating by too much for the body, are 2 different things with 2 different sets of effects.
Many people apply the effects from starving to starvation mode, aka adaptive thermogenesis, metabolic efficiency, ect.
When starving, eventually yes your body will decide it needs to hold on to the fat and use other resources to produce energy, like muscle. So the whole equation changes on fat burning being 90% of energy source when at rest. People have been found to have damaged heart muscle while caring enough fat for energy - sometimes the way the body works doesn't help. Like hypothermia, sure the core is warm for a tad, but the brain is dead and extremities are frozen and won't survive even if warmed up. Good job core, you held for another 30 min perhaps.
The other myth is you'll gain weight, which doesn't happen in starving either.
The other myth is it happens merely by skipping a meal - you'll find some commercials actually say that.
But what has been shown in studies for 20 plus years is the body is great at adapting, both getting stronger from the right kind of stress - and slowing down due to the wrong kind of deficit eating.
Genetics plays a part, how much stress the body is under generally (health, lack of sleep, life, food sensitivities, ect), how abused the body is from past experiences, and how big the deficit is, which is in relation to amount to lose and amount of daily burn.
So someone small and not doing much could cause it with what appears to be a small deficit for their little to lose.
And some morbidly obese could see no effect with huge deficit for awhile. But even there, case studies show Dr's count on the effect - but the deficit is so huge anyway, they still lose, and by the time they've lost some - they can exercise, so now they have made the deficit bigger again. Not always great though.
Study for BMI range overweight folks merely taking a 25% deficit from lab measured daily burn - slowed their daily burn down by an additional 500 calories in 3 months below what it needed to be at. So they had to eat less because they weighed less. They had to eat less because they lost some muscle mass and metabolism slowed down. And in addition to that they had to eat about 20% less because their body just became more metabolically efficient.
And a body that has slowed down due to undereating, is not interesting in spending more precious energy building and improving things from exercise that will require even more energy. So the benefits of exercise turn in to merely burning more calories, not getting the improvements you could from it.
That's really the only effect of starvation mode - the body slows down upwards of 20% what it could burn. But what it burns, % of carbs and fat, ect, all stay the same - just slower.
And not as much benefit from exercise.
Oh, and more injury prone and weaker immune system, less resources to fight things off.
And if underlying medical issues - they'll usually show up from the stress. This is when women start losing their hair, nails brittle, skin dry, can't stay warm, loss of period, ect.
So I guess there are other side effects actually.
You can keep losing weight - just gotta eat a whole lot less.
So the kicker is - who is going to have more success - the person that must eat 20% less than potential...
or the person that can eat more and get body transform from exercise, and less stress on body.
Who will reach goal easier, and have better success with maintenance.
Not to speak of better relationship with food.
When in steep deficit and glucose stores with attached water are very depleted (first thing body does to slow down), having a lot of carbs but even within goal, or binging and going over by some small amount, perhaps not even over maintenance - causes big fast water weight gain, which causes discouragement and negative thinking.
While there could be a lot to be said about getting the weight off as fast as possible, I think more could be said about taking it slow and steady, unless the extra fat is just causing it's own health issues, then a middle ground could be found.
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