"You Are Gaining Weight Because You Are Not Eating Enough". The TRUTH about Starvation Mode

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"You are gaining weight because you aren’t eating enough food".
I will be honest, I thought the “starvation mode” myth died a long time ago.
But, the comments section on this post tells me otherwise. Many people disagreed with the original video, which was a jokey post and actually not controversial at all lol.
So here is the deal.
If you are dieting, there ARE physiological mechanisms that can make prolonged weight loss more difficult, like metabolic rate reductions and an increase in appetite.
There ARE reasons that eating more food can be a smart idea. Not just for health (duh) but maybe it could help with restoring hormonal function, appetite levels, energy levels etc.
However, none of this means you will gain body fat because you are in a calorie deficit. For example, if you look at the most brutally extreme instances of calorie restriction, like the famous 'Minnesota Starvation Experiment', participants dieted down until you could literally see their ribcages.
Were there other side effects? Absolutely.
Were they more susceptible to post dieting weight gain? Yes, their appetites were through the roof.
But they did not gain weight in a calorie deficit. Saying that is an exaggeration of what actually happens, and it’s not helpful.
Makes sense?
P.S. My best-selling book, ‘Everything Fat Loss’ is currently on sale as a brand-new audiobook, plus digital/print versions from Barnes and Noble, Apple, Kobo, Google, and Amazon with an extra 7% off in the UK. Feel free to grab it before the price goes up.
geni.us/EverythingFatLoss
References:
- The biology of human starvation
- Metabolic adaptation to caloric restriction and subsequent refeeding: the Minnesota Starvation Experiment revisited
- How Strongly Does Appetite Counter Weight Loss? Quantification of the Feedback Control of Human Energy Intake
- Metabolic adaptation to weight loss: implications for the athlete

Опубликовано:

2 апр 2024

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Комментарии : 37

@peakf1300 2 месяца назад

Love your channel mate. Incredibly informative, no name calling, straight facts

@BenCarpenter 2 месяца назад

Thanks mate, I appreciate that. I do a little gentle name calling sometimes, but I normally reserve it for people I think are deliberately scamming or deliberately sharing misinformation rather than honest mistakes 🙂

@lokoflipz5344 2 месяца назад

When I was 300 lbs I tried dropping my calories to 1200-1500 and it worked wonders, at first. I was losing weight very quickly but legit over the time of a week it slowed down A LOT. Then the hunger caught up. So I upped my calories to 2000-2200 and started working out. Much more efficient way, do it right everyone is my point.

@BenCarpenter 2 месяца назад

Yeah, this is an example of how there is probably a delicate balance for people to find something that works for them. It’s not always as straightforward as just eating as little as possible, because there are compensatory mechanisms that can pull you back if you push too hard 🙂

@AlessAbreu 2 месяца назад

At the begining, you were losing a lot of water too, so once the extra retention is gone, the scale will go down slower. This inial week is great to dump motivation and get people going, but it is also a double edge sword

@Frank_Jones314 2 месяца назад

I believe that's a great way to accomplish your goals. "Eat more, burn more" is better than "eat less burn less. "

@justaname999 23 дня назад

This is a very valuable comment and more people should read it. So much sanity and nuance. Thanks!

@justaname999 23 дня назад

@@AlessAbreu It's partially water loss for a few days but not a few weeks. At 300 pounds, if the person is male, they probably burn so much just by existing and doing the normal amount of walking to go to work and shop and all that that they easily will lose 1-2 pounds of actual fat. 1200 calories is easily a reduction by 1000 calories a day. At 300 pounds, the BMR must be around 2,200.

@Frank_Jones314 2 месяца назад

Excellent video. You're one of the top content provides on youTube. I think most people intuitively understand all this. Nobody thinks people come out of prison camps months or years later heavier than when they entered. In the short term though, I do think people get a little confused for various reasons. You've thoroughly covered all the reasons in your other videos. Unfortunately, I do believe there are some people (some, not all) who just aren't legitimately trying to make the effort or are not willing to make the effort, and want an excuse to stop trying to get healthier. It's easy and satisfying to say, "I have no control over it, nothing I do works". This is not limited to health and fitness and weight loss. Impatient people will say, "I'm just not a patient person; I can't help getting irritable when my time is wasted." People who are not great at math will sometimes refuse to perform basic calculations, using the excuse of "I'm just not any good at math". We all probably do it, and often are not even aware we are doing it. Anecdotally, I have noticed that the people I know who are trying to lose weight tend to do less and less activity as they increase their time at the gym or decrease their calories. Their NEAT drops to near zero. I'm the opposite. I need to continue bumping up my calories on my bulking phase because the more I eat, the more I seem to move around. My friends and family say I am always in motion, pacing, stretching, fidgeting, etc. My NEAT calories must be some crazy high number, because my weight gain can stagnate at 4100 calories a day and 175 pounds bodyweight. So, I do understand and sympathize with people trying to lose weight and finding periods of stagnation. It's a delicate balancing act, and different people will have different responses to calorie deficits.

@joshdaymusiced 2 месяца назад

See, what I always heard in regard to “starvation mode” wasn’t that you gain weight by not eating, but that your body will store more whenever it does get food. So if you starve yourself enough to loose 20 pounds, when you start eating regularly again, you will gain it back quicker than it went on originally. No idea of there’s any truth to that whatsoever, as it could easily just be people gorging themselves after a diet. 🤷

@BenCarpenter 2 месяца назад

I can do a follow up video, if you would like? 🙂

@joshdaymusiced 2 месяца назад

@@BenCarpenter That would be awesome! Always love seeing your take on these things, especially because of how much misinformation there is regarding dietary and fitness health.

@zephyrsky__ Месяц назад

That was my understanding, too. Also, in that sense can one 'fuck up' their metabolism?

@CursedWheelieBin 2 месяца назад

Thanks Ben. Would you ever consider sharing what rehab exercises you did to address any lingering bicep tendonitis from that time you ruptured your tendon at the elbow? I had the same injury a few years ago, and it’s still slowing me down. Is it just a case of using bands light enough to accrue volume without any pain? The NHS physio stopped responding to my emails because I was unable to make an appointment one time due to a scheduling issue. Thanks mate 🙏🏻

@justaname999 23 дня назад

thank you for this! I have seen videos on youtube where people claim they had restricted calories to some crazy number like 800 per day for several weeks and kept gaining weight. When I commented that that just cannot be, they answered something about pcos and that I just cannot know... And I absolutely understand that pcos makes weight loss more difficult but at the same time, that does not take away from the very simple fact that *the laws of physics exist* and that you just cannot create fat tissue from air! But it's useless to tell people that, since any such comment results in an outcry of "you just don't get it, this really happened. I gained 20 pounds while eating 800 calories a day"

@naomijones3521 13 дней назад

I've been watching a lot of your videos. I've done a lot of yo-yo dieting in the past. I like that you show the truth but now I just feel doomed. I don't know how to reduce my fat because it seems like the only message out there is calorie counting or low carb.

@barts6386 2 месяца назад

Thank you for another excellent video.

@BenCarpenter 2 месяца назад

My pleasure. Thank you 🙂

@EchoFreckle123 2 месяца назад

Are you able to talk about the after effects of this type of extreme calorie restriction? Does metabolism ACTUALLY slow down for the long term?

@user-ii7xc1ry3x 2 месяца назад

0:59 my man lifts

@00HoODBoy 2 месяца назад

glad this channel been wit me for all these years

@BenCarpenter 2 месяца назад

Thank you. I am pleased you are here 🙂

@LeagueOfJacoub 2 месяца назад

what about short term, does it have any affect on water weight?

@BenCarpenter 2 месяца назад

Possibly, yeah. For example in this study they noted that participants suffered with swelling from edema. I don’t know how much it matters in terms of scale fluctuations (they still lost weight despite the visible swelling) but it’s worth being aware of. Also it’s worth noting that in this instance, it might not be the calorie deficit causing issues as much as the fact the participants were at a body fat level barely above a skeleton haha 😁

@lowbarbillcraig3689 2 месяца назад

ssshhhhhhhh .. speak quietly or Jason Fung may hear you & try to get you fired

@BenCarpenter 2 месяца назад

😂😂😂 If you know, you know 😂😂

@EmiLovesShakespeare 2 месяца назад

How does this play into this new notion of “reverse dieting”? Ie, continuing in a caloric deficit once you reach your goal weight (knowing that you’ll continue to lose if you’re below your maintenance cals), but increasing your intake by a hundred or so every couple of weeks until you work back up to your maintenance calories, theoretically allowing your metabolism to adjust rather than YO-YOing (esp cited as a common problem as people experience mindset shift from scarcity to abundance with food and can overeat again)

@CursedWheelieBin 2 месяца назад

I don’t see the correlation. Reverse dieting is for people who’ve slowly, consistently and carefully lost weight by tracking their food intake, not people who’ve impulsively starved themselves

@AlessAbreu 2 месяца назад

Reverse dieting was an attempt at not putting too much body fat after a BB prep, it was never aimed at standard people getting down to 12% BF. And it didn't work for BBs, so no point in doing it really

@EmiLovesShakespeare 2 месяца назад

@@CursedWheelieBin not when people began their diets moving from severe overeating to a severe caloric deficit

@EmiLovesShakespeare 2 месяца назад

@@AlessAbreu I’m not sure this is true, and at any rate, it’s being promoted nowadays as the best way to taper off a caloric deficit, and I’d like Ben’s take on this since he knows the science

@AlessAbreu 2 месяца назад

@@EmiLovesShakespeare Ben has a video that's almost 10 years old. It would be good to get an update since there are more up to date studies

@anabellaparis1 Месяц назад

OMG please listen good, it's not starving but not eating enough that's making one gain weight. It's happening to me whenever I don't eat enough.

@discordantduck1808 2 месяца назад

the last 30 seconds or so of this video encapsulates what is probably the single most important factor in sustainable weight loss. people just dont understand the extent of the compensatory measures at play. there are plenty of tricks to "lose 5 lbs for that summer bod" but very few means of achieving a sustainable, long term weight loss plan. millions of people fail at it every year because the same bad advice gets dished out: "just eat less, just move more". the balance is in actuality a very fine one and easily put out if whack with results that can put you in a worse place than where you began. people will hear this advice and immediately cut their calories to 1200 a day while trying to up their cardio or weight lifting and we all know how that ends up. you won't stick to it. you physically can't (at least not for long), and then you'll compensate for it by overeating and under-exercising. people would in general benefit far more overall from "eating more" as in 1800 calories long term than they would eating 1200, I feel like the entire industry sustains itself on misleading people into fad diet loops instead of just telling people to eat *slightly* less and accept it's going to take quite a long time to bear fruit.

@Frank_Jones314 2 месяца назад

Exactly, and an additional benefit of eating more and thus enabling themselves to move around more, is that the more calories consumed, the more protein they can easily consume, which is important for muscle retention. On a 1200-calories near-starvation diet, how much protein do people realistically get?

@johnmole9958 2 месяца назад

Just don't be a silly goose!

@jmh8510 2 месяца назад

I’ve had a very different experience. I starved myself in 11th grade. Got skinny for sure. Started eating again and gained. Then went low calorie and gained …and gained and gained. Recently upped my calories a lot a lot very healthily…and stabilized then started losing.