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Anonymous
I made a post here yesterday about calorie deficits, but need some more answers. I understand that if you go over a 500cal deficit per day, your body metabolism can slow down to a halt called the starvation response. I am a little bit confused by this, and how this ‘starvation response’ ties into metabolisms and the law of calories. I know there are ticks to keep your metabolism up like eating 6 meals a day, calorie and carb tapering, working out, and so on. In theory, according to the 'law of calories' I could eat chocolate bars all day with a 400 calorie deficit, and lose the same amount of fat as if I ate healthy foods 6 times a day. I know this is not how it works, but why not? Is it because if I ate chocolate, my metabolism would slow down (despite being at the right ~400 cal deficit) so much that in reality I’m consuming more calories than burning? if I eat healthy foods the right way while working out, with the same calorie ~400cal deficit (including cals burned working out, BMR, and all of that), will I lose more weight because my metabolism is fast, and therefore i actually burn MORE than the 400 calorie deficit because i sped up my metabolism? if this is true, will this educe the 'starvation response', because technically, if my metabolism is faster, I will burn more than the 400 difference. I need help clearing this up! Sorry for the long, confusing, unedited post.
>> Anonymous
bump
>> Anonymous
No. If you only ate chocolate all the only substance you'd be putting into your body would be fat and sugar. how can you expecc to lose any fat if all that you consume is fat. I dont think what you eat will change the speed of your metabolism, more the amount and time between meals, but I'm not really sure about that.
>> Anonymous
>>189924

ITT: fundamental misunderstandings of nutrition
>> Anonymous
>>189924
OP here, yeah, your dead wrong. can anyone else help me out? its been bugging me to no end the last few days :(
>> Anonymous
>>189886
Basically, there's a thing called the 'thermal effect of food' which stipulates that say, foods high in lean protein and fiber, will burn a lot more energy being digested than foods high in sugars and fat.

In other words, if you eat a grilled chicken breast with vegetables, within a few hours you'll have burned up 20-30% of the calories in that food JUST DIGESTING IT.

Try a big mac, for example, and you'll only burn off around 2%.

Therefore, you can take in the same amount of calories from chicken and salad that you will in a happy meal, and you'll still lose more weight from the former.

tl;dr not all calories are equal!
>> Anonymous
>>189931
i was already aware of this science, as i read tom venuto's book, but could not grasp it fully, and thank you for explaining this to me, i feel almost enlightened. to reiterate to make sure i get this (because for some reason i can not grasp this concept for the life of me): in theory, if i ate a big mac but kept a 400 deficit, compared to eating good stuff and kept the same deficit, the healthy one would be better because of the thermal effect, automatically getting rid of a chunk of the calories without changing my calorie expenderature from metabolism and exercise, making adding what is burned by the thermal effect ON TOP of my 400 calorie deficit. is this right?
>> Anonymous
i think this is what you were asking:
consider the calories burned exercising into the total calorie count for the day. That is, if you are burning 400 calories per day, do not restrict an extra 400 calories from your target if you expect to lose fat without also losing muscle. hope this helps.
>> Anonymous
anyone else? am i just being really confusing about how i am typing? or does no one know the answer
>> Anonymous
>>189943
I think im just going to eat sensibly (healthy), as much as I want, and go to the gym twice a day
>> Anonymous
>>189961
first, no one really cares. you keep bumping this because you don't seem to want to understand the first thing about basic nutrition. did you sleep through your health classes in school?

if you eat shitty food, how does your body maintain itself? daily cell activity means millions of cells die daily in your body and need to be replaced. if you're eating chocolate, you're attempting to replace mass (new cells) with energy (calories from high energy, low mass sources; i.e. carbohydrates). outside of high energy physics, the whole e=mc^2 doesn't work in nutrition.

now add to that the metabolic activity of exercising (which damages cells and requires that the body heals the damage, making the cell stronger). what food in take are you going to repair that damage with?

so, go ahead and eat chocolate to your heart's content. yes, you will lose weight to a certain point but because natural body processes continue to occur, in time, the body will start to fail like a poorly maintained house because it can no longer "afford" to repair itself.

so yeah, your body's "starvation response" here not in the interest of saving calories, but saving cellular building blocks in case there is a major injury that needs to be repaired. so it's like a cheap landlord that will let the roof leak, the paint fade, the windows break etc. because he's saving up in case the roof caves in. well, if he maintained the house in the first place, the roof is much less likely to cave in.

if you eat food rich in the body's building blocks (proteins, foods rich in naturally occurring amino acids and fats) you the body repairs itself on all levels (cell replacement, muscle growth, regular metabolic activity) without triggering self-preservation mode.
>> Anonymous
Yup! That's exactly how it works.

That's why some foods literally contain "negative calories":

In a stick of a celery, you'll find 20 cals. Bite into one. Now, by the time you digest that very same stick of celery, your body will have expanded so much energy as heat to fuel your metabolism, that in order to digest it you'll have used up >20 cals!

Also, kudos for reading Venuto's book. I swear I love that man.
>> Anonymous
I eat 300-600 cal a day (not starving myself, had a lot of stomach surgery, eating is difficult, etc) and my body refuses to let go. I'm still overweight but my body clings to whatever I eat.
There's a healthy medium between eating too little and eating too much.