@Jaykayl wrote:
apparently I've gained weight because my body has 'stored' fat because I skipped meals??? Not sure that makes sense, but that's what I'm told 😞
Sorry, that's a bunch of bull.
That effect, of your body storing fat instead of burning it, is the result of actual starving - which is NOT the same as starvation mode.
There are several effects of literal starving that are given to the starvation mode, which understandably then causes many people to say the whole mode is a myth, when it's just the misapplied effects assigned to it.
You would have to go over 3 days of NOT eating at ALL, to even start going down the route of starving, and then since you are moving much (trying moving much with no food intake), your muscles are unused, and since they are broken down and rebuilt daily, they just don't get rebuilt back up when starving.
Now, what happens in starvation mode, which is also called adaptive thermogenesis, is you stressed your body out from undereating so much, it slowed down several systems so that you burn upwards of 20-25% less calories.
But you do NOT gain weight from either effect, you will still lose weight if you keep eating less and less.
And NEITHER effect happens from skipping a meal.
In fact on studies of fasting, your metabolism goes up in the first 72 hrs. Then it takes a nose dive after that.
Now, what starvation mode will do since your daily burn is now less, is it means that any time you eat over that now lower maintenance figure, you are eating in surplus. Well, surplus calories are eventually stored as fat.
So every binge because eating so low is hard to adhere to, every sick day of doing less, every injury of no exercise, every cheat meal, vacation days, ect, all make it easier to eat in surplus, because you are burning less than you could have been.
So no, whoever told you it happens with one meal (like 1 commercial I've seen) is full of bull, and doesn't know what they are talking about.
It takes some time to even enter starvation mode where body starts adapting slower.
When you undereat too much for your level of activity, several things happen.
Body slows down your spontaneous daily activity, you just move less, fidget less, ect, in order to conserve some calories for the basic metabolism functions.
If that slow down isn't enough, it now slows down doing higher level metabolism functions, growing hair, nails, skin, ect.
If that doesn't conserve enough calories for the low level functions, you start becoming more metabolically efficient, just burning less in everything you do.
Finally, the base metabolic functions can be slowed down somewhat, cellular water management, carb storage, ect. But not much, that stuff has to happen.
That's why the gross effect has only ever been 20-25% slowdown. So if you used to burn 2000 calories, you'd be burning 1600.
The other negative to this is usually eating that little, you lose muscle mass, so smaller metabolism that way too.
But your body NEVER stopped burning fat as fuel during these process, because this is not starving, fat and carbs and fuel source, just like normal.
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