i posted this in the club section but i wanted to have it here so i remember for myself to remember this very important info (&hopefully helps others as well):
how to prevent starvation mode...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
i read this article from webmd and it clarified some on starvation mode and how important it is to get in all your calories and eat throughout the day..
thought i'd share...
What's interesting with my clients is that a lot of them are on a low-carb diet originally before they work with me. They only may eat usually one meal a day -- dinner. Dinner is usually high protein, low-carb. They will skip breakfast, they skip snacks and they skip lunch. If they skip those meals, unfortunately the body goes into a starvation mode. That is the second most popular diet plan for a lot of people who are overweight -- starving, just not eating. They think they are fat and they don't want to eat. They think they can tough it out in the morning and they stop eating. When you stop eating for more than three hours and 15 to 20 minutes, from what the science shows, the body literally flips a switch on.
"So, by eating every three hours you lower belly fat, you burn two pounds a week and you prevent muscle loss, which keeps your metabolism active. Then you constantly reset the metabolism so you're constantly burning fat."
MODERATOR:
Is that the "starvation protection mechanism" that you talk about?
CRUISE:
That's it. When the switch gets flipped on, this is called the starvation protection mechanism (SPM). This SPM has been literally designed through thousands of years of being a human race. In the past, food wasn't readily available and so your body had to preserve the most precious caloric tissue on the body, which for good or for bad, is fat. Your body is designed to store fat and burn muscle when it goes into starvation mode, which is the opposite if you want to stay slim and trim.
So when that switch is flipped on, when you go more than approximately three hours and 20 minutes without eating, this alarm goes off and the body says "I'm not getting enough food. All right, what am I going to do?" What your body is going to do is precisely what the research shows -- it burns approximately 50 percent of the calories that it needs from muscle. So, actually it's worse than the Atkins plan.
MODERATOR:
How does eating every 3 hours help you lose weight?
CRUISE:
That's the magic -- eating every three hours does a few things:
First, it removes the starvation protection mechanism -- in better words; it turns it off . When the starvation protection mechanism is off, you don't burn muscle, you just burn fat. That's critical.
Second thing that happens -- you lower cortisol levels. Cortisol is the stress hormone that comes from not eating and putting your body in the stress mode with starvation. When you lower cortisol you burn belly fat first. That's brilliant for people that need to lose weight because belly fat is the most dangerous and the most unattractive fat you can have; it sits there and is bothersome.
That's another thing, when you eat every three hours it teaches your body to constantly reset its metabolism. It is almost like a workout for the body every time you eat these meals. There are no bad foods on my plan, just bad portions, I just teach the right portion at the right times. It literally gives your body an eating workout; where your body then is constantly consuming what you need it to consume -- fat. It's working out and revving the metabolism and that's a great thing -- most people aren't aware of that, they don't realize. Now obviously if you sit down and eat the whole house, that's going to stop it up. It's like putting too much gas in the car, it just breaks it down, it's not necessary. Unlike a car, it actually overspills. Your body will just expand and absorb it and try to work with it. You don't want to do that.
