Not to get hopelessly boring about this I hope, but I recently posted this elsewhere, my own personal little theory on metabolism. Not scientific in any way, I have no medical background, just my ideas about what could be happening.

We keep having these debates as to whether there is a starvation mode for metabolism or not. Some pro, some against the theory. I've been thinking (especially after reading the article on basal metabolism posted here a few days ago contrasted with sharp weight losses experienced while fasting) and wondering if it isn't possible that they are both right.

Is it possible that if you lower calories drastically enough, to almost zero or well under 1000, then the body knows you are starving and will burn fat intensely to keep your energy up and health strong so that you will have the energy to go out and hunt or fish or whatever the cavemen needed to do to get more food? That would explain the quick weight losses experienced with true starvation levels of calories.

But on the other hand, if you merely lower your calories to a very low, but biologically sustainable level, like 1100-1300 say, your body loses quickly at first, thinking it needs to keep your energy up for that hunting and fishing, but that after you've been doing it a long while your body realizes it isn't getting any more food than that and it better learn to live in the long term on that amount? Your body knows it can get all the nutrients it needs from that level of calories so the need entice you to go out and eat more with quick weight loss and high energy isn't necessary and it goes into a conservation mode? So metabolism is sharply depressed so that the body can live on that little calories without losing much protection (i.e. bodyfat).

And I wonder if time has anything to do with it. Maybe it just takes alot of time before that metabolic conservation mode kicks in, maybe that's why some never seem to see it happen for them, they don't have to diet long enough to see it happen.


Valerie