Starvation mode – Your body will starve and you’ll lose all your muscle.

Starvation mode?

I feel like I harp to much on this subject, but when I get annoyed, I tend to rant. The inspiration for this post has come from yet another load of bullsh*t to hit the airwaves today. I promise this is the LAST time i’ll bring it up. Let’s put it to rest once and for all.

I can handle a point of view, an opinion and reams of drivel in small doses, but when the comments section of any given post supports the aforementioned meaningless drivel, you realise that “wow, there are still people out there believing this crap!” It f*cking irks me to the point of frustration.

Show me someone that hasn’t been eating every 2-3 hours who looks like a starving third-world child. Go on, I DARE YOU.

Show me someone that’s in starvation mode. Someone that is truly losing muscle every milli-second they don’t eat. They are probably losing muscle as I type these very words. That’s of course unless they are eating right now. Right?

Their body is saying “WTF! where’s my fricken PROTEIN hit mofo! That’s it… I’m gonna have to shrink your biceps. Soz.” Because everyone knows the human body’s inner-monologue sounds like a pre-pubescent ass-clown projecting snoop-dog.

Starvation mode? Use me as an example

Please do. Look, I haven’t eaten breakfast since January 1st this year (other than when I’m on vacation). According to Broscience® and a miriade of fitness magazines, I should either be dead, have the metabolism of an 80-year-old woman or at least resemble Pee-Wee Herman in the off-season. Sorry to burst a series of bubbles – it just isn’t true.

Lets dissect the article…

I’ll go through the ‘claims’ it’s making and let’s see if I can offer an alternate perspective (I bet I can).

Here are just a few of the negative consequences of skimping on calories (apparently):

Slowing metabolism. The last thing you want to do when you are trying to lose weight is to slow down your fat-burning mechanism, but eating too few calories does just that. You’re giving your body no choice but to protect its vital functions by conserving energy when you under-eat. This is why people who are undernourished tend to feel cold and lethargic.

Ok, so this may be true if referring to the study in the 1950’s on subjects with a 50% calorie deficit over a period of 6 months who dipped their metabolism by 40%. One caveat here, it was WITHOUT any weight training or exercise. Slight problem there. The ‘cold and lethargic’ bit is just absurd. I train in a fasted state 4-5 days a week. Am I lethargic? Hardly. Cold? If I don’t wear pants to the gym then yes.

Psychological deprivation. When you are calorically deprived, hunger becomes tough to ignore and cravings intensify. It’s next to impossible to stay in this state for long. Before we know it, we make up for under-eating with compulsive eating or bingeing followed by weight gain.

Oh, it’s next to impossible is it? With a bit of will power and restraint, anyone can put down the fork for a good 16 hours. Believe me – I do it every day. I get cravings sure. Cravings to kick the ass of the article’s author.

Fatigue and lack of energy. Not eating enough calories decreases our energy levels so we feel weak and unable to exercise, further slowing metabolism and weight loss.

Wow, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at this one. I train without eating every morning and seem to have more energy than when I eat. And the last bit after the comma about slowing metabolism. Again, I want to punch you in the face.

Breakdown of muscle. Muscle burns calories, but not eating enough calories can break down muscle mass. The more muscle we have, the more calories we can eat without storing fat. If we’re eating so few calories that the body has to break down muscle to function, we’re setting ourselves up again to gain rather than lose weight.

Sure muscle burns fat even when at rest. But do you know how little? VERY little. So little that it isn’t even worth worrying about. For each pound of lean muscle that you gain, you will burn an extra 12 calories per day. If you gained 10 pounds of lean muscle mass, you would burn an extra 120 calories throughout the day.

I’ll stop it there…

There isn’t much point in going any further, but as you can see, this kind of article still seems to be flooding mainstream media almost daily. Old information and myths that have been circulating for years are constantly being quoted as ‘fact’.

To sum it up

If someone ever bullsh*t’s you hard enough that you ALMOST believe the hype, flip them one of my gym douche-bag cards or at least the directions to this website and tell em I sent you.

References

Burgess NS. Effect of a very-low calorie diet on body composition and resting metabolic rate in obese men and women. J Am Diet Assoc. 1991 Apr;91(4):430-4.
Increased meal frequency does not promote greater weight loss in subjects who were prescribed an 8-week equi-energetic energy-restricted diet. Br J Nutr. 2010 Apr;103(8):1098-101. Epub 2009 Nov 30.
Enhanced thermogenic response to epinephrine after 48-h starvation in humans. Am J Physiol. 1990 Jan;258(1 Pt 2):R87-93.
A controlled trial of reduced meal frequency without caloric restriction in healthy, normal-weight, middle-aged adults. Am J Clin Nutr. 2007 Apr;85(4):981-8.