I've been following this thread with much interest. It seems to me that the people who actually benefit from a brief carb binge may be those who have slipped into "starvation mode" without ever noticing. A brief (1-2 day) carb binge may be what your bodies need to convince them that it's actually "safe" to continue depleting your stored "reserves" (fat cells).

If that's true, there could be two possible reasons that some do not restart their metabolic engines: either you weren't really in survival/starvation mode to begin with (your body was simply "pausing" to adjust to past losses) or...you were in survival/starvation mode, but you didn't present your body with enough carbs to "convince" it that metabolizing your reserves (fat cells) was safe.

Is this all making sense?

The key would seem to be to find a way to be sure that you were actually in survival/starvation mode. Once you've identified the problem, you can work toward developing a solution.

Has anybody got any idea of how to know if you are in survival/starvation mode for sure?