Starvation mode?

People like to believe that weight gain and loss is very simple: eat less and exercise more, and you lose. When you tell doctors, fitness advisers or other people you’ve been doing just that and failing to lose pounds or size, they tend to assume you’re lying. Secretly, at 3 am, you’re eating entire pints of ice cream or something.

Guess what? Human bodies are not cars. We don’t all burn fuel consistently, and there’s a simple explanation for it, and there are simple (if longterm) ways to fix the problem. If you really are carefully logging calories, keeping a journal of what you eat, doing your cardio and all that, and the weight is staying right on, you may be in starvation mode.

Starvation mode happens when we consistently take in too few calories and/or too little nutrition to keep our bodies functioning. Bodies respond like they would in a desert without food – they start shutting down non-essential functions like the ability to think clearly or feel happy, and start conserving fuel. It’s amazing how long a body can scrape by on 600 calories a day, when it thinks it’s being starved. You won’t have any energy, but you’ll be alive. Well… unless your body starts cannibalizing lean muscle in the heart. Fortunately that’s a rare side effect. More likely, you just end up losing muscle and regaining weight in the form of fat – which makes you metabolism slower, because fat burns less calories than muscle.

If this is your case, you need to get your metabolism up to spec before you even think about trying to lose weight. (You might lose weight while you’re at it, but you cannot get frustrated if you don’t!). To boost your metabolism, you need to eat throughout the day. Since individuals vary, it’s hard to say what calorie level you should be at – try to talk to a nutritionist. Recommendations range from an across-the-board 1500 calories a day to a formula that says you need 100 calories for every 10 pounds you weigh, even if you weigh 300 pounds. Mostly, you should stop counting calories. You should eat healthy foods in small portions throughout the day.

You should also build muscle. Muscle mass raises your metabolism. Cardio exercise is helpful, but strength training is essential. Take stairs every chance you get. Walk down to the corner store instead of driving. Choose protein, brown carbs and unsaturated/polyunsaturated fats over bad fats and sugars.

I can’t find this anywhere on line, so take it for what it’s worth: but in my experience, stressing out over losing weight seems to signal my body to start hoarding. It seems logical, because in the past stress was caused by real problems like not having enough to eat. So try to stay relaxed about everything. Not so much that you don’t do what’s required, but enough that you don’t burst into tears every time you check the scales and see no loss or even a slight gain.

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Posted in Health and Beauty on June 14, 2007