"We never repent of having eaten too little.”
Thomas Jefferson (1743 -1826)

When Jefferson was the principal author of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, he was around 33 years old, and he lived until age 83 during a time when food was not as easily obtainable. Even though he did not experience our modern readily-available-highly-processed-food world he seemed to understand the value of eating less.

How little is "too little"?

I’ve noticed that people who eat far too much, seem to spend a lot of time worrying about eating too little. Why do people who are obese, or even merely overweight, fear eating too little, and just how little is too little anyway?

Many overweight and obese people appear to have an irrational fear of starvation mode.
However, one really can't eat too little for weight loss - Starvation Mode (the way most dieters define it) is a Myth.

"Starvation mode" is a phrase that gets thrown about loosely. Many people think that eating below 1000 to 1200 calories a day, will cause their metabolism to slow down so much that their body will stop losing weight. The reality is that until a male has only 5% excess body fat, or a female has only 10% excess body fat, it is very unusual for a person to go into “starvation mode”.

When it seems impossible for a dieter nearing goal to lose weight, they assume their metabolic process is slowing down, and think that they are “in starvation mode”. However, people with extra weight obtainable to oxidize, can oxidize extra body fat per second. The less human body fat one has, the less fat oxidized for each moment. So as one gets closer to the body’s individual reduction limit of human body weight, the slower one will burn up what body fat one has. This is why taking off the final 10 pounds happens very slowly, NOT because one is wrecking one’s metabolic process with an aggressive diet regimen.

By the way, I’m using the term…”excess fat”… to define the entire genetic make-up of an individual body, not “troublesome” fat on specific body areas that one wishes were leaner… like stomach or thighs, etc. It is not uncommon for someone who is “normal weight” or even “underweight” to be unhappy with the way their own body’s necessary fat is genetically distributed.

The article quoted below makes a number of good points:

Are You In The Starvation Mode or Starving For Truth?

Recently we discussed the myth that dieting can lead to an eating disorder and saw this common dieting myth was inaccurate.  Another common dieting myth held by people is that they may not be losing weight because they are in the "starvation m...

 




It’s easy to make faulty inferences about causation.
Correlation is not Causation.
Let's be careful not to make the same mistake this woman did:

Weight-loss and maintaining weight loss requires that we change our Way-of-Eating, Forever, BUT..
While the change FROM our Way of Eating while we were fat must be permanent,
our change TO any other specific Way of Eating can be temporary.

There are many different Ways of Eating to choose from.
We can choose one for awhile, and then make a different choice.
We can hop between these choices as much as we like.
  Every Way of Eating is acceptable, as long as it fulfills the following requirement,
which is:

During weight-loss:
The amount of food intake must provide less energy than one's individual body burns.

During maintenance:
The amount of food intake must provide the same energy as one's individual body burns.

During my lifetime of learning about, and sampling different Ways of Eating ... (Diets)
here's a statement of objection I commonly see made by somebody, to almost every Diet I've encountered.

The '"X Diet", or "Dieting", will not result in permanent weight-loss because it is NOT SUSTAINABLE.

Everyone tends to nod their head in agreement with this principle, and then people in favor of the specific diet or in dieting, say that after achieving success, one should return to their "normal" Way of Eating... eating a bit less, AND then continue to use that same diet occasionally in order to lose any weight regained.

There is an Alternative way of looking at this,
and it is the one I use here in my own Dieting Hobby.

It's okay for the PERMANENT change to consist of many TEMPORARY changes.

Just pick any diet or way-of-eating that meets the above-stated energy requirements which attracts you. Stay on it as long as you can. When you want to eat differently, choose another diet or way-of-eating that meets the above-stated energy requirements which attracts you. Keep doing this process until you find a diet or way-of-eating that you find personally sustainable long-term, or until you die ... whichever comes first.

This Alternative provides great deal of flexibility within one's eating choices.
I've found that by choosing this Alternative, I am exposed to many desirable possibilities that are new to me. Some of these possibilities are transient experiences, and some of these possibilities become enjoyable Habits that I am able to incorporate into my life on a rather permanent basis.

Some of you may be interested in my new Grandma video:
which is located in DietHobby, at GRANDMA'S HOUSE, under Ask Grandma.
You can also get there by clicking the link: