What happens if we don’t eat enough?
I’m going to start this video off by saying simply that “starvation mode” doesn’t exist
Your body will not stop burning body fat if you drop your calories too low
So what about people who swear that they are on low calories but they’re just not losing weight?
Well although starvation mode doesn’t exist, if we drop calories too low our bodies will try to conserve energy by slowing down certain processes
or by reducing our expenditure from one of the methods previously mentioned in the video on how our bodies use calories
For example we may stop fidgeting as much, or we may feel less inclined to take the stairs
But one of the more common ways is by making us feel lethargic
This makes us want to move less and reduces performance when we do exercise, and therefore drastically reduces the amount of calories we end up using
It also negatively affects our sleep, which has been proven to make us hungrier and negatively affect body composition by causing us to lose more muscle along with any fat we may be losing
Another way it can hamper our results is that over-restricting can make us much more likely to binge and undo the efforts we’ve made
It can also make us more likely to snack, which can bump our caloric intake up just enough to move us out of a deficit without us knowing
This is why it is important for us to work with a sensible deficit if fat loss is our goal
As it is by the methods I’ve just mentioned that chasing quicker results can actually end up biting us in the ass