Getting out of starvation mode

Lets just say your body is in starvation mode from eating too little calories a week during a diet. How long would it take your body to come out of starvation mode and how could you do this without gaining alot of wieght.. Any ideas?

This coming from a lady, I can tell you that you can start by eating more protein. Keep your carbs still at a minimum. This is what I have done & I have not gained any weight just make sure you are doing cardio 30 mins a day 5 days a week & you should be fine.

thanx alot.. any other opinions..

Dlady27 is right. Just pound the protein, you'll see a change. I'm able to gain muscle and lose fat at the same time. Discovered it by accident, and it sure works. Go to 2.5g/lbm of body weight if you can!!!

I am new to this board, so I am not sure if you have been introduced to the hormone "leptin" yet, but it is what is primarily responsible for "starvation mode".

It is far too complicated to do an exhaustive presentation on but I will give some basics as well as some places to go to learn more.

Basically, leptin is an endocrine hormone, a cytokine, specifically, secreted by adipose cells that tells various other parts of your body whether you are in a "fed" or "starved" state. It mediates this both short and long-term -- the former primarily by calories in vs. calories out, and the latter primarily by the amount of adipose tissue you have.

Eat a lot, specifically, eat a lot of carbohydrates as it is glucose metabolism that is the signal for the adipose tissue to produce leptin (or get fat) and leptin levels are high (as are anabolic hormones such as insulin, IGF-1, GH, testosterone, and T3 as well basal metabolic rate). Diet, and the vice versa occurs.

So, just adding protein is not the answer. The answer is to start periodically overfeeding (high carb, low fat) for 12-48 hours. Basically, what people call a "cheat day" -- only now we know why they work, so we can refine them to maximize results.

Here is a link with a bit more info -- click on the Q&A link and go down the page about half-way:

http://www.avantlabs.com/big_mfr_issue_2.htm

The best source would be to do a deja search for the word "leptin" in the Misc.Fitness.Weights newsgroup with "Par Deus", "Elzi Volk", or "Lyle McDonald" as the author. We have discussed it in great detail there.

I agree with Par dues. By all means try the protein method if you want because it may work for you. But I'm a big fan of periodic overfeeding to boost metabolism with minimal fat gain. I never diet more than 5 days without having one or two high carb cheat meals, and this really keeps me losing fat without getting sluggish.

Try adding more carbs for about a week. It doesn't have to be a whole lot more, but enough to help the liver get glycogenated and help with thyroid conditions. You could add a SMALL amount of fructose each day to help with this (I'd stay less than 50 grams per day of fructose). Unless you want to get a thyroid test, the only other way to really assess yourself is by checking your thermometer every morning until you notice a rise in temps. This isn't the most accurate of tests, but it's better than nothing. Continue eating in the same manner that you would on a hypocaloric diet, except add more calories. Preferably, I would recommend the higher carb meals to be eaten mainly in the morning (especially high GI carbs...except for after a workout of course), and find lower GI's for later in the day. Also shift to a more vege type meal pattern later in the day along with the lower GI carbs. They will help somewhat in the lowering of the GI and help keep insulin/blood glucose levels more stable. I think just an overall addition of more calories for the day will help alone in raising your metabolism. I should note that although some people have low body temp's, there is some that still lose considerable amounts of fat. Some people just have less than average metabolisms.

You might also add some Tysosine to help matters somewhat.

MR. BMJ