How to Lose Weight

What is Starvation Mode?

Your fat reserves are nature's way of storing energy for times of trouble. Your body does not want to lose those emergency supplies too easily. When your body is deprived of food it starts dipping into its fat reserves. If it starts using its fat reserves faster than it likes, it enters a state known as starvation mode.

Millions of years of evolution have developed the physical process of starvation mode. It is a process that has helped animal life survive times of hardship. It has allowed life to survive droughts, ice ages, mega volcanoes and meteor strikes. It is a process that has worked and has eventually led to the evolution of our own species. The process of starvation mode is hard-coded into our genes.

Our bodies cannot just forget about all those millions of years of evolution because the last fifty have been a bit different. Your body does not know you can dial-a-pizza whenever you want. Your body does not understand that it would be great to have a six-pack when you go to the beach. If your food intake suddenly drops your body assumes that it is in a time of famine. There must be a food shortage because you wouldn't deliberately deprive yourself of food. It starts trying to preserve your fat reserves.

The last thing your body wants is to lose all its emergency energy stores before the crisis has passed. Therefore, it resists your target of losing fat.

Your body will slow down its metabolism to save energy. Particularly, it will start feeding off its own muscle tissue as well as its fat reserves. As we have previously mentioned, this is a disaster for dieting. The reason you put on weight in the first place is that you were eating more calories than your body was using. Now you have lost muscle tissue so your metabolic rate is lower than before and when you go back to your normal eating habits, you will put on weight even quicker than before.

The exact point your body will go into starvation mode varies from person to person but most research agrees that if you are losing more than 2 pounds a week, you will go into starvation mode.

Starvation mode is a dieter's enemy. You must try to avoid entering starvation mode and that is why I will emphasise again and again, the need to lose weight slowly. Losing no more than two pounds a week should be your target for healthy and long-term weight loss.

There are some other things you can do to avoid starvation mode that we will come to in later chapters.

Next: Calories