I'm pretty confused. How many calories do I need to eat to lose weight but stay out of "starvation" mode??? I read one post that says "Watch calories," another that says" Too low and you will stall." I've read the book multiple times, and I think I'm just eating when I'm hungry - certainly not to the point of stuffing myself, but I am sooo hungry, I wonder if I should ignore my body's signals and just stick to a certain number of calories!!! I'm 5'6", run 35-40 miles a week, weigh 154, size 10, I've been low-carbing for years for health reasons, but now I just wanna lose 20 lbs. and be really svelte for the first time in my life.

You definitely don't want to be hungry. IMHO that is just setting yourself up for a binge. You might want to experiment eating different kinds of foods and see what is filling and what isn't. There's a thread here about that and its amazing the differences from one person to the next.

If I were you I'd try to eat enough calories that I'd lose about .5 to 1.0 pound a week, but I'd definitely work on not being hungry. BTW: I don't lose every week. Sometimes I get 2 pounds in one week, then I plateau for 3 weeks. It averages out to .5 pound a week.

Maybe up the carbs from veggies like broccoli and stuff with some nice butter melted on top. Make sure you're eating real food that's filling and not things like bars and shakes that aren't.

The starvation mode thing is probably less than 1200 calories for most people, if its even something other than dieters folklore.

2piecegal...if you're running 7-8 miles a day, I'd say you definitely need more calories (and probably have a higher level of carb intake that you can eat and still lose weight) than someone like myself who sits at a desk nearly all day and would be hard pressed to run a block, let alone a mile.
Dr. Atkins does stress in his book that if you are hungry, EAT.
There is such a thing as "starvation mode" but it takes more than a few low cal days to get there. You do, however, want to make sure that you are not depriving your body of needed fuel especially since you are so active and unless you are going through carb withdrawal (you don't state what level of carb intake you had before you decided to go into weight loss mode again), true hunger pangs are a sign from your body that you are not eating enough.

I've heard that you should times your weight by 10 to get how many calories you should have. Since I'm at 145, that would be 1450 and I find it hard to stay below this without getting really hungry! I mean, there's just so much salad you can eat, and the no-carb ranch dressing I use on it is 60 calories per TBSP. That adds up pretty fast. If I eat more meat and protien, the carb count is too low. It's a pretty difficult balancing act!

i am finding that i really can't eat all the hamburgers and steak i want. i eat a lot of fish, a lot of grilled chicken- these things help to keep my calories down. I also am getting in the habit of not eating whole eggs. I eat more egg whites in butter or oil instead. Veggie burgers instead of red meat also helps. And try to get the leanest red meat you can get.

Just some of the things I have been doing lately!

Does "starvation mode" mean eating so few calories that you cannot lose weight? How is that possible?

If such a condition existed, why do people ever starve to death? How do people afflicted with anorexia nervosa get so thin? I have to think it is a myth.

Starvation Mode doesn't mean you stop losing weight, it just means that your metabolism slows down in response to eating too little. For example, say my metabolism is about 3,000 kcal. If I eat 2,500 kcal...I SHOULD lose 1 pound a week. If I eat 2,000 kcal, I should lose 2 pounds a week...and so on. But, at a certain point my Metabolism would slow down. So, lets say I ate only 1,000 kcal a day, because of the slowed metabolism, I wouldn't burn 4 pounds a week, but some lesser amount. Plus, much of the weight lost would be muscle instead of fat. Say that my Metabolism slowed to 2,000 kcal when I got below 1,200 kcal. Then, if I ate 1,000 kcal, I would only lose 2 pounds a week, which is about the same as if I'd eaten 2,000 kcal. But, if I'd eaten 2,000 kcal, the weight would've been mostly fat. When you're in starvation mode, you lose alot of muscle as well as fat.

The only time your metabolism will slow to ZERO will be when you die. Your brain needs about 600 kcal to function if I remember correctly. So, figure that an Adult's metabolism should NEVER dip below that. You also need a certain amount to run other vital organs and processes. So, the actual lowest possible metabolism would be higher than 600. With a metabolism of 600 kcal, if you starved, you'd lose 1.2 pounds a week. I'm not sure how many Calories the Heart, Lungs, etc...all need. But, if any of them stopped, you'd be in trouble. So, even in starvation mode, your body will burn enough fat [and muscle] to keep the Brain, Heart, Lungs, and other vital organs running. When there's no more fuel for even those organs, you die. Of course, you'd probably die long before then from Protien Malnutrition or any number of Nutritional Deficiencies.

I think the idea is that your metabolism slows down to prolong your life, not that you actually fail to lose weight. And the idea is also that the more you deprive yourself of calories the better your body becomes at running efficiently, i.e. burning calories very conservatively.

I can't eat over 1200 calories or I will stall out. I have tested this over and over.

do 10's your weight and every so often "jump" your Calorie intake.

"Starvation mode" isn't totally a myth. I think sometimes it's a little hyped up, but you can totally screw up your metabolism. I know this from experience, unfortunately. As an early teen I had problems with eating. I was extremely thin (size 0) through my teens, and even during the beginning of college. When I started to actually eat (even though most of the time it was always very healthy, whole foods only amounting to 1600 calories a day at most) I gained weight. Now, I am about 20 lbs more than I'd like to be and I am afraid I've done irreparable damage to my metabolism. I think it took years of not eating very much at all to get there, though.