The Metabolic Slowdown Thread

[arv91]

Hi, so I made a thread about this but since this might have to do with my problem I'll go ahead and post it here.

I'm 21, 5'7 145 pounds, 17% bf (at least) and wondering if I'm this way due to my diet

Long story short, was 12 years old, obese (35% bf), 5'0, 170 lbs as a kid. Realized I didn't want to be like this so I put myself on a 1200-1300 calorie diet...since 12 years old. Through puberty I gained 7 inches in height and got down to 140 lbs (still looked really soft/fat). Haven't been able to get below 140 lbs since I reached this weight at about 16. Didn't really realize I had pretty much no muscle mass until I saw pictures of others on these forums. Been working out now for a few months and I'm not making any strength gains or visible gains

So my question is, 9 years of 1200-1300 calories per day, have I been in starvation mode this entire time? If so, how should I go about fixing this? I want to be able to build muscle and I understand in order to do that I have to lift heavy and eat but I'm concerned if I up my calories to the suggested ~1800-2200 calories per day depending on what calculator I use, I'll gain a huge amount of fat.


Cliffs
- Was 12 yo, 5'0, 170 lb, 35% bf
- 1200-1300 calorie diet, been eating this way ever since (Legit counting calories)
- Currently 21 yo, 5'7, 145 lbs, 17% bf and working out for a few months, not building muscle or losing fat
- Have I been in starvation mode for 9 years? Messed up my BMR? Messed up anything else?
- Want to build muscle, lose fat, look better, etc. How do i go about this as far as diet?

[lee__d]

Hi, so I made a thread about this but since this might have to do with my problem I'll go ahead and post it here.

I'm 21, 5'7 145 pounds, 17% bf (at least) and wondering if I'm this way due to my diet

Long story short, was 12 years old, obese (35% bf), 5'0, 170 lbs as a kid. Realized I didn't want to be like this so I put myself on a 1200-1300 calorie diet...since 12 years old. Through puberty I gained 7 inches in height and got down to 140 lbs (still looked really soft/fat). Haven't been able to get below 140 lbs since I reached this weight at about 16. Didn't really realize I had pretty much no muscle mass until I saw pictures of others on these forums. Been working out now for a few months and I'm not making any strength gains or visible gains

So my question is, 9 years of 1200-1300 calories per day, have I been in starvation mode this entire time? If so, how should I go about fixing this? I want to be able to build muscle and I understand in order to do that I have to lift heavy and eat but I'm concerned if I up my calories to the suggested ~1800-2200 calories per day depending on what calculator I use, I'll gain a huge amount of fat.


Cliffs
- Was 12 yo, 5'0, 170 lb, 35% bf
- 1200-1300 calorie diet, been eating this way ever since (Legit counting calories)
- Currently 21 yo, 5'7, 145 lbs, 17% bf and working out for a few months, not building muscle or losing fat
- Have I been in starvation mode for 9 years? Messed up my BMR? Messed up anything else?
- Want to build muscle, lose fat, look better, etc. How do i go about this as far as diet?

Firstly, i would honestly get blood work done and have your thyroid checked. I would tell your doctor that you think you mave have been under eating for a while and want to see if it has affected anything.

After that, i would slowly reverse diet and look to move into a slow bulk.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkxLLB1iVjY
^ watch all the videos in the description as well.

[euco09]

This is a good link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhTOXw1YYuo

[lee__d]

This is a good link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhTOXw1YYuo

Interesting stuff.

[lidorfc]

I've barely eaten for 3 days due to illness, 300 calories tops. Will this cause a metabolic slow down and if so will it be significant? It maybe a dumb question but I'd rather ask a dumb question than have it be playing on my mind.

[phoenixr2]

I've barely eaten for 3 days due to illness, 300 calories tops. Will this cause a metabolic slow down and if so will it be significant? It maybe a dumb question but I'd rather ask a dumb question than have it be playing on my mind.

You will be fine, but I would not continue this intake or you will get issues. Get back to eating and it will be ok

[bballchump11]

damn I think this may be going on with me. I've been dieting since the summer and I'm already a very lean guy. I already have an 8 pack, but I'm just trying to get down in weight for boxing. I'm going to try dieting for one more week and do some fasting and if I don't see any results, then I'll give it a break

[lee__d]

I've barely eaten for 3 days due to illness, 300 calories tops. Will this cause a metabolic slow down and if so will it be significant? It maybe a dumb question but I'd rather ask a dumb question than have it be playing on my mind.

You will be fine, but I would not continue this intake or you will get issues. Get back to eating and it will be ok

This^. This isn't an overnight process, but the more chronically extreme you are (with your deficit through low calories and/or extreme activity), the more quickly it could happen.

damn I think this may be going on with me. I've been dieting since the summer and I'm already a very lean guy. I already have an 8 pack, but I'm just trying to get down in weight for boxing. I'm going to try dieting for one more week and do some fasting and if I don't see any results, then I'll give it a break

Do you track your macros? What was your starting weight and what have your macros been? Daily activity? etc?

[bballchump11]

Do you track your macros? What was your starting weight and what have your macros been? Daily activity? etc?

tbh, I don't track them as much as I should. I usually get around the right amount of fats each day, but not enough protein despite me not losing much strength. I'm currently 145, but I got as low as 142 while cutting. Because of the holidays and getting my wisdom teeth taken around New Years, I've gone up some.
Starting weight was 154 pounds and I do some type of workout 6 days a week.

I thought maybe I should change something up, but I've been cutting for so long, I was afraid I was going to mess something up especially since I'm already below 10% bf

[lee__d]

tbh, I don't track them as much as I should. I usually get around the right amount of fats each day, but not enough protein despite me not losing much strength. I'm currently 145, but I got as low as 142 while cutting. Because of the holidays and getting my wisdom teeth taken around New Years, I've gone up some.
Starting weight was 154 pounds and I do some type of workout 6 days a week.

I thought maybe I should change something up, but I've been cutting for so long, I was afraid I was going to mess something up especially since I'm already below 10% bf

Can you provide more info? Cutting since summer (assuming your summer is jun-sept) is a decently long cut. However, you seem to have done it slowly (losing 12 lb), which usually delays metabolic slowdown (or at least the degree to which it happens)

Pics? Age? Height? Training? Cardio? Sucks that you didn't track, do you track now?

[bballchump11]

Can you provide more info? Cutting since summer (assuming your summer is jun-sept) is a decently long cut. However, you seem to have done it slowly (losing 12 lb), which usually delays metabolic slowdown (or at least the degree to which it happens)

Pics? Age? Height? Training? Cardio? Sucks that you didn't track, do you track now?

I'n 20 years old, 5'7. I've gotten down pretty lean as you can see in this first pic which was around 141-142. It's just almost impossible for me to stay there on a normal diet. I even got as high as 148 eating normally which could be from water since my weight fluctuates a lot. The second pic is from today

Also I started off eating 1860 calories a day at first which helped, and then after some stalling, I went to 1700. I was thinking if I gave it a try one more week with some IF combined with just tracking my macros a lot closer, I should be fine, but then I saw this thread and wondered if maybe I should just give it a break.

[lee__d]

I'n 20 years old, 5'7. I've gotten down pretty lean as you can see in this first pic which was around 141-142. It's just almost impossible for me to stay there on a normal diet. I even got as high as 148 eating normally which could be from water since my weight fluctuates a lot. The second pic is from today

Also I started off eating 1860 calories a day at first which helped, and then after some stalling, I went to 1700. I was thinking if I gave it a try one more week with some IF combined with just tracking my macros a lot closer, I should be fine, but then I saw this thread and wondered if maybe I should just give it a break.

You're likely single digits (or extremely) close already, so i'd question your reasons to get leaner (unless you're competing).

This is the PERFECT opportunity for you to SLOWLY reverse diet into a slow bulk. Not only will you get your metabolic rate back to normal, but you will add lbm.

[bballchump11]

You're likely single digits (or extremely) close already, so i'd question your reasons to get leaner (unless you're competing).

This is the PERFECT opportunity for you to SLOWLY reverse diet into a slow bulk. Not only will you get your metabolic rate back to normal, but you will add lbm.

well I'm in no rush or anything. I just didn't know whether I wasn't being strict enough or maybe I just needed to take a break. And the reason I was trying to get leaner was for boxing. I'm a little short for the weight class I'd be competing in

[lee__d]

well I'm in no rush or anything. I just didn't know whether I wasn't being strict enough or maybe I just needed to take a break. And the reason I was trying to get leaner was for boxing. I'm a little short for the weight class I'd be competing in

Well if its for a sport I understand. However, I think you definitely should reverse diet or at least incorporate multiple refeeds per week. Personally, dieting for so long and being so lean, I'd recommend reverse dieting into maintenance. You may even get a tad leaner reverse dieting.

[Zipty636]

Glad I found this thread I'm 29 6'1 and reduced my intake to around 1800 but after reading all this i think I'll raise it to about 2500 considering my tdee is about 3300

[lee__d]

Glad I found this thread I'm 29 6'1 and reduced my intake to around 1800 but after reading all this i think I'll raise it to about 2500 considering my tdee is about 3300

1800 seems a little low for your stats.

-Make sure you're being accurate
-If you've been at 1800 for a while, you can increase, but I would increase slowly.


Remember, metabolic slowdown is gunna take some time. It's always likelier that one has been inaccurate with the tracking of their intake.

[Electricheadd]

Great thread man!

[bballchump11]

Well if its for a sport I understand. However, I think you definitely should reverse diet or at least incorporate multiple refeeds per week. Personally, dieting for so long and being so lean, I'd recommend reverse dieting into maintenance. You may even get a tad leaner reverse dieting.

Thanks a lot for the advice. What I've noticed too is whenever I get done real low in weight, I'll do so at a 500 calorie deficit a day cutting. But if one day, I eat close to maintenance, I'll shoot up a couple of pounds. And I know my weight does fluctuate a lot it seems, but this got me thinking.
Is it possible to to maintain a 6-8% body fat year round eating at maintenance?

[lee__d]

Thanks a lot for the advice. What I've noticed too is whenever I get done real low in weight, I'll do so at a 500 calorie deficit a day cutting. But if one day, I eat close to maintenance, I'll shoot up a couple of pounds. And I know my weight does fluctuate a lot it seems, but this got me thinking.
Is it possible to to maintain a 6-8% body fat year round eating at maintenance?

Weight fluctuations are totally normal. If you up your carb intake alot one day, you're weight will likely shoot up because of water being held.

Possible to maintain 6-8%? Yes. The difficulty of doing so will vary from person to person based on genetics. You have guys like Martin Berkhan who maintain sub 8% year round , allegedly easily. Some guys, their bodies may fight harder.

8-10% should be easily maintainable for the vast majority of people, though.

Reverse diet slowly, 100 average daily calories per week, and see what happens.

[Zipty636]

1800 seems a little low for your stats.

-Make sure you're being accurate
-If you've been at 1800 for a while, you can increase, but I would increase slowly.


Remember, metabolic slowdown is gunna take some time. It's always likelier that one has been inaccurate with the tracking of their intake.

Thanks I forgot to add that I started my dieting the beginning of December at 218 now I'm down to 205
Another question how slow should I raise them say 100 a week ?

[moneymango]

**** I almost certainly have this. I'm 5'9 170lbs at ~15% bf. I've eaten 1500 cals a day for the past 3 weeks and havent lost a single pound. I really dont want to drop any more cals...

[lee__d]

Thanks I forgot to add that I started my dieting the beginning of December at 218 now I'm down to 205
Another question how slow should I raise them say 100 a week ?

Right. If you average 1900 cals per day week one, bump it up to an average of 2000 calories for week two. And so on and so forth. Started in December means it hasn't been too long, but I think you're right to start adding in calories now. Always better to lose at a higher intake so you have more leeway to adjust.

**** I almost certainly have this. I'm 5'9 170lbs at ~15% bf. I've eaten 1500 cals a day for the past 3 weeks and havent lost a single pound. I really dont want to drop any more cals...

While 3 weeks isn't too long, 1500 is quite low, even if you're 170lb. How long has your total cut been? What were your macros when you started? What's your training like?

[Zipty636]

Thanks and one last question should I consume more calories on days I work out or try to keep it the same as my rest day

[lee__d]

Thanks and one last question should I consume more calories on days I work out or try to keep it the same as my rest day

When it comes right down to it, the long term state of energy balance (deficit or surplus) is going to be what matters. So it doesn't matter. However, tdee will fluctuate depending on activity, so if you do nothing but lay in bed all day, you wouldn't be doing any harm by lowering your intake.

Personally, I cycle calories because I find it easier to eat less on certain days.

[krissieboi]

I just found this problem myself well I think its the same problem, I was eating 1200kcals a day doing at least a hour of HIIT cardio 6 days a week and doing 2 hours of weights every other day and at 144kgs (318pounds) it dont take a master mind to work out that I lost no weight I guess my body was holding onto my fat thinking it was under attack I guess. But I find it hard to get my around the idea of eating more will make me lose weight.

[lee__d]

I just found this problem myself well I think its the same problem, I was eating 1200kcals a day doing at least a hour of HIIT cardio 6 days a week and doing 2 hours of weights every other day and at 144kgs (318pounds) it dont take a master mind to work out that I lost no weight I guess my body was holding onto my fat thinking it was under attack I guess. But I find it hard to get my around the idea of eating more will make me lose weight.

While you obviously shouldn't continue doing this, I'd suspect your very inaccurately tracking calories. There's no way you wouldn't have lost some weight doing this shirt term. Also, no one does an hour of hiit, you were probably doing interval training.

[moneymango]

While 3 weeks isn't too long, 1500 is quite low, even if you're 170lb. How long has your total cut been? What were your macros when you started? What's your training like?

I think I started at 2250-2500 cals. Dropped from 190lbs around August, to 170 at xmas. Havent budged since then. I'm doing 5/3/1 with assistance work 3 days a week and rock climb 2 days a week, otherwise I'm pretty sedentary.

[iabs]

From my personal experience, if your goal is to get below 9% bf you will suffer, there is no nice way of saying it, you will suffer physically and mentally, it is a constant battle to fight your basic instincts when your body is telling you "I need fuel, now" and you try to keep the training intensity high and productivity of your day up. This becomes an apparent reality the longer you try to maintain this low bf levels, in my experience longer than 4-5 months it becomes pretty challenging.

Psychologically speaking, it all boils down to how much you want it.

[lee__d]

I think I started at 2250-2500 cals. Dropped from 190lbs around August, to 170 at xmas. Havent budged since then. I'm doing 5/3/1 with assistance work 3 days a week and rock climb 2 days a week, otherwise I'm pretty sedentary.

Low calories since August, I think a reverse diet would benefit you.

From my personal experience, if your goal is to get below 9% bf you will suffer, there is no nice way of saying it, you will suffer physically and mentally, it is a constant battle to fight your basic instincts when your body is telling you "I need fuel, now" and you try to keep the training intensity high and productivity of your day up. This becomes an apparent reality the longer you try to maintain this low bf levels, in my experience longer than 4-5 months it becomes pretty challenging.

Psychologically speaking, it all boils down to how much you want it.

Partly, but there is some stuff going on that one could be unaware, like the lessening of spontaneous activity (i.e. less fidgeting).


http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat...on-part-1.html

Some research has found a similar effect in humans although the studies tend to be very mixed on this (I’ll address why in a later blog post): when you diet down a human being, often you see metabolic rate decreasing far more than you’d expect based on the loss of body weight alone. That is, based on the weight loss, say you expected metabolic rate to drop by 200 calories; but when you measure it it really drops by 300. That extra 100 calories is more than predicted and suggests that the body is ‘adapting’ to the weight loss in an attempt to not only slow further fat loss but also to get bodyweight/body fat back up when food becomes available again.

There are other adaptations, folks often decrease their activity levels (conserving energy), fat burning goes down and fat storage goes up, appetite often goes up so that people eat more when food is made available. In common parlance, this is often referred to as the ‘starvation response’ and, yes, there is something to it. Unfortunately, it’s basically the price that has to be paid for losing body fat to any significant level. People talk constantly about avoiding the starvation response and things of that nature but the only way to avoid it completely is to never lose fat.

The 'Lucky' Ones:

For completeness, I should note that there are exceptions, some people appear to show a pronounced response to overfeeding which is now being called NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis) or SPA (spontaneous physical activity); some folks ramp these up to high levels when subjected to increased caloric intakes, burning off the excess calories instead of storing them as fat.

These are the people for whom gaining weight is often difficult: invariably when they try to increase food intake, not only do they sub-conciously start moving around more (burning off the excess calories), their hunger shuts off. You probably had one of these guys in your high school, the one who was always fidgeting and bouncing his leg and all of that; it turns out that the caloric expenditure from that type of activity adds up significantly over a day.
Hunger also seems to shut off more rapidly in these folks as well. They are often the folks who also claim “I eat a ton and can’t gain weight” but when you look at their food intake, they either aren’t eating much at all or they eat a single big meal and get so full that they don’t eat much else for the rest of the day (or next day).

Unfortunately, NEAT seems to be quite genetic and researchers still haven’t really figured out the exact causes or if this can be applied to help in any practical way. It probably has to do with not only the various hormones involved in all of this (which I’ll discuss in a later blog post) but how the brain responds to them.

In any case, all of the above supports the basic idea of a set point in humans: human metabolic rate, etc. clearly adapts (and does so more than weight loss alone would predict) to caloric restriction and weight/fat loss.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear to adapt nearly as well to overfeeding and weight gain.

Even more unfortunately, this isn’t the end of the story and determining exactly what sets the setpoint or whether or not it can change in the long-term is an area of continuing debate. Most of what I’ve seen suggests that, if setpoint can change, it only goes up. I’ve seen nothing to suggest that it ever comes back down, even over years of maintaining a lowered body weight.

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat...on-part-2.html

[Retoaded]

I am in my first week of incorporating a reverse diet/diet break, and wanted to document it in this thread for others.

backstory: decided in August of 2011 I needed to lose weight, weighed myself at 267 when I started, had not weighed myself in a while so was probably more at one point, call my starting weight 270.

I am at 184 today, lost at a steady rate of around 6 pounds a month down to around 200...in the 220s (keep in mind this is already 50 pounds/8 months into the diet) when I got meticulous about counting, I was tracking TDEE at around 2900-3000 and was eating 2300, by 200 it was closer to 2800 and I was eating more like 2100...between then and now and especially once I got down to around 190 pounds it has slowed to around 2350-2400 and obviously that is pretty low for someone who lifts hard 3-4 days a week with a couple conditioning days thrown in. The drop from around 2,700 to 2,350 of TDEE happened pretty fast, within a few weeks......since about 225lbs I've been counting meticulously, and could predict expected weight loss/correlate it to TDEE very accurately. At around 190 pounds and TDEE of 2,700 nothing made sense for several weeks, weight loss slowed, I waited a few weeks for a "whoosh" that never came, and the numbers only clicked when I dropped my TDEE to a little below 2,400. Since then I have run a couple months and only lost 5 pounds over 2+ months using the lowered TDEE rate, and unfortunately everything matches up that its slowed dramatically.

THEREFORE: Diet break. I am gonna reverse this and I'll update this post and get a real account of reverse dieting and results here.

So, this week I've eaten at 2300, today being the last day of this first week. No weight gain whatsoever yet, was 184/185ish last week also.

Next week I'll eat at 2400, on up to 2700 in 100/day increases every week. At 2700/day I will hold a couple weeks, then most likely drop back to 2,000-2,100 per day or so and see if the metabolism is repaired any. I'll update this at least weekly and let everyone know what happens. I am hoping it will be successful and we can have a real lift example for other folks in the same boat.