It seems kinda counterintuitive to eat more than you normally would while simultaneously trying to lose weight
Not really? It's fairly rare eating less actually does that much for weight loss, particularly with any degree of lasting effect or without pretty seriously unhealthy consequences. It's activity and whatnot that does it, not eating less, and that usually means eating more, or at least eating better. How you're eating can make a pretty substantial difference, too.
Personally, I'd almost certainly lose some weight if I started eating more, but in smaller amounts per meal and more often. Even if you're not eating much, only eating once or twice a day can make your body basically go into starvation mode and start going out of its way to store fat, et al. Easy way to gain weight, unfortunately.
Not to put too fine a point to it, this is bullshit. Eating once or twice a day will certifiably
not trigger starvation mode, not unless you a) undereat severely and b) keep that up for months. How
often you eat is the least important factor here, caloric intake being equal. And how that works is a whole different story too.
Activity? No. Activity is just a mean to increase the minus side of the equation on calories in/out. Regardless of whether you eat 2000 calories and spend 1600 on sitting on the couch all day, or eat 2400 calories a day and spend 2000, with the additional 400 going to exercise and muscle maintenance,
you will gain fat. Approx. 1 kg per ten days, as a matter of fact. Don't get me wrong, physical activity is good for other reasons, from fitness to nudging you to eat better, but on its own, it can actively make things
worse, because your body's response to needing more energy will be to eat even more.
If you feel hungry, your body is doing the opposite of doing everything it can to store fat. It actively sends signals to burn it, while also kicking your brain to eat something - that's why you feel hungry (why-ish; it's more complicated but I ELI5).
The 'starvation mode' thing is a different animal. It's an adaptation of the body, along the lines of 'well, you're gonna eat 1500 kcal a day? OK, I'm gonna switch to needing 1500, not 2000 by cutting the heating bill'. Effectively, that means diminishing returns. But where that kicks in is a very variable trait, and that point isn't 'I haven't eaten for a couple of hours'.
This is all equal parts scientific evidence and personal experience. I lost at least 10 kg of fat (eyeballing; I lost more but I leave some margin for the muscle) over the last year at a more or less steady rate with no physical activity worth mentioning in that period. If the starvation mode as people imagine it worked, I would be prime candidate for it to have kicked in.
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Topic: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O (Read 14845725 times)