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brazil84 comments on Ketogenic Soylent - Less Wrong Discussion
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I think you are probably right, but what would you be trying to achieve in doing so?
Well it depends on how you define the phrase "starvation mode." I regularly hear people assert that their weight loss efforts (and other peoples') have stalled or plateaued because of "starvation mode." From the context, it seems that they are referring to the "running cool" which I have described and not something extreme like breaking down organ and muscle for energy.
The more food you eat, the more micronutrients you take in. If you have a higher metabolism, you'll get more micronutrients and still maintain weight. Plus, you get to eat more ice cream. If you previously damaged your metabolism (and I'd call a 1200cal maintenance 'damaged'), then raising your metabolism will be good for you.
I mean, if you're using it wrong, sure. "Starvation mode" is largely another bullshit meme propagated by the fitness/nutrition crowd, like 'toning' and 'heavy weights make you bulky'. Fact is, you'll downregulate your metabolism by eating less, so eventually, you have to eat even less to break the plateau. This isn't starvation mode.
This doesn't seem like the ideal way of optimizing your micronutrient consumption.
I'm not sure that makes much of a difference. To illustrate, consider a strapping young man who can eat a pint of ice cream a day and stay in energy balance. Compare him with a petite girl who can only eat half a pint a day of ice cream and stay in balance. Does the man derive significantly more pleasure in life from ice cream eating than the girl? I doubt it.
Well how would you define "damaged" and what does it mean?
No need for a semantic debate, what's commonly referred to as "starvation mode," which I have referred to as "running cool," is perfectly normal and healthy in my non-professional opinion.
Perhaps not. Supplementation seems like an easy solution, but it's been shown multiple times that you get more benefit from micronutrients from food vs micronutrients from supplementation.
If you don't care about more ice cream, then FINE. More for me.
Layne Norton has a few good videos on the subject. "Damage" refers to the metabolism being downregulated to the point that a person can eat very low calories, do tons of exercise, and still not lose weight/fat.
I know it's a pointless crusade, but I really dislike terms being misused. Starvation is a very real thing, and when the word is misused, it conflates "Starvation causing muscle/organ loss" with "Metabolism is downregulated," You absolutely need to avoid going into starvation, but downregulating metabolism is an inevitable effect of losing weight.
The more obvious solution is to tweak your consumption of foods which contain lots of micronutrients compared to their calorie content. i.e. eat your vegetables.
What I care about is eating satisfaction. It's not obvious to me that more ice cream necessarily means more eating satisfaction.
I would call that "running cool" and in my non-professional opinion, it's perfectly normal and healthy. And if such a person wants to lose further fat, they need only reduce their calorie intake further. By the way, I started listening to the video, and I simply don't believe that a person can do 2-3 hours a day of cardio, eat 800 to 1000 calories a day, and not lose weight. I think any person who makes such a claim is lying about his food intake.
Fine, but if you have a semantic nitpick I think it's good practice to label it as such. Here's what I said at the beginning:
Layne is a PhD in nutrition science, record holding powerlifter/bodybuilder, and renowned coach. So he has academic credentials, personal success, and has successfully helped others. There are very few people in nutrition that you can generally trust, and he's one of them. So when he says something, it's generally OK to accept it on face value.
Fair point. I'll do that from now on. "Starvation mode" is just one of those phrases that trigger an immediate "No, you're using that word wrong, stop it!!" reactions (and yes, I know about prescriptivism vs descriptivism, but I'm not a linguist, and I have an interest in phrasing having consistent meanings!)
It's a bit of a cliche, but extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. The claim that someone can do 2-3 hours of cardio a day; eat only 800 to 1000 calories, and not lose weight is extraordinary. To back up a claim like that, you would need to do a study where the subject was carefully monitored with doubly labeled water or confined to a live-in laboratory.
Did he personally monitor these people he is describing?
Most of the people that get to that level are bodybuilding competitors. If the population weren't specified, I'd agree with your suspicion, since it is pretty well demonstrated that most weight loss issues are related to inaccurate food reporting/consumption. However, folks that are serious about bodybuilding are pretty meticulous about following diet plans, and aren't strangers to hard work, denying physical urges, and doing really uncomfortable stuff for their sport. I'd agree that a typical obese person is almost certainly just underreporting their calorie intake.
There is no metabolic ward evidence for this, if that's the standard you're after. Layne hasn't had anyone do this sort of routine because he thinks its incredibly harmful for long term success in bodybuilding, so he hasn't personally seen this. However, he has coached those whose prior coaches did this, and he worked to repair the metabolism.
Bodybuilding competitors generally don't do much cardio (aka long-duration low-intensity workouts), as far as I know, not 2-3 hours a day.
That's not much evidence, it's basically "my old coach starved me and my BF% didn't go down enough" kinda thing...
Respectfully, that's not even strong evidence, let alone extraordinary evidence. It's just hearsay.
I would be willing to bet serious money that any healthy adult, carefully monitored, who did 2-3 hours of cardio a day and ate only 800 to 1000 calories would either lose weight or (far more likely) end the experiment because because he literally felt like he was starving to death.
By the way, I was reading the other day about a study where professional nutritionists were assessed to see how well they reported their calories. And they under-reported significantly.
shrug Metabolic damage is a real problem in the bodybuilding community. I don't have any stock in the exact numbers being there; 800 calories and 3 hours of cardio per day is not much worse than 1200 calories and 1 hour of cardio per day. Both indicate a depressed metabolism and an inefficient (if not counterproductive) weight management strategy.
I'd agree that 800 calories and 3 hours of cardio per day and constant weight is extremely unlikely hypothesis vs. misrepresenting food intake or activity level. I don't think it's impossible that a person can adapt themselves to that. Some coaches prescribe this caloric intake and activity level.
To see how plausible it was, I hypothesized a 25 year old 5'2" 120lb female aspiring bodybuilder at around 11%BF. This RMR calculator puts the basic metabolism at 1,200-1,500 calories per day. 2-3 hours of low impact aerobics gives 662-993 calories according to this calculator. Assuming cardio is done 5 times per week, this is an average of either 1,670-1,972(2 hours cardio) or 1,900-2,200 (3 hours cardio) calories calculated to maintain weight.
The most extreme situation (2,200 calorie maintenance and 800 calories eaten = 1,400 calorie deficit) seems obviously impossible. The other bound (1,670 calorie - 800 calories eating = 870 calorie deficit) seems more possible to me. I've personally had my maintenance calorie intake down to about 1,500 (and i was meticulously measuring everything), which is ~700 calories less than calculators would have predicted given my activity level.
Not surprised. Virtually everyone underreports (unless they're chronically underweight, and then they overreport). That's why I included the bit about Layne's personal success (ie what he does really works for himself) and coaching success (ie what he says works for his clients). He practices what he preaches, and his results speak for his methods.
I don't think micronutrients fall under the "the more the better" category.
For all nutrients, micro and macro, there is an optimal range with a minimum and a maximum.
It depends on the nutrient in question. Vitamin D has significant benefits when you take 5,000IU, which is 8.3 times the US RDA for adults (600IU). Creatine has benefits with 5g of supplementation; to get that from food would require 2lbs of red meat every day.
If I were to wager, I'd say that most people are consuming too few micronutrients, and would benefit from supplementation. or eating higher quality real food. Very few people are maxing out their nutrition.
No, not really. Vitamin D in particular (like all fat-soluble vitamins) is not hard to overdose on.
I'd probably phrase it like this: almost every person will benefit from increased consumption of some set of micronutrients. But the issue is that this set is different for different people.
Take iron as an example. Some people need more iron in their diets. But some people need less. Can you recommend more iron to some person X not knowing anything about him or her? No, you can't.
Vitamin D is actually pretty difficult to overconsume (at least, accidentally -- if you wanted to suicide by Vitamin D, it'd be a long and annoying process). According to mayoclinic, you'd need to consume around 50,000IU daily for several months to start getting into Vitamin D toxicity.
I completely agree with the rest of your post.