Calorie conundrum

Didn’t see too many fat people in Belsen or in Africa when there were famines did we

Unfortunately phrased PamelaJI

I don't think it means you actually gain weight - it just means that your body thinks it's in a famine so it uses every calorie that it can to keep you going. You don't lose as much weight as you want to - but you don't gain either. People often say they lose weight for a while and then hit a plateau - that is when the "famine" mode starts. This is why it's better to use more calories through exercise, than it is to drop your calorie count below the 1,000cal mark.

I believe that this stems from the idea that the body tries to conserve energy if it is in “starvation” mode.
I think that this contributes to the slowing down of weight loss for a while until the body starts to use up the stored fat.
At the end of the day too many calories will put on weight, too few will lose weight.
Didn’t see too many fat people in Belsen or in Africa when there were famines did we?

Certainly when I was young and a subscriber to a slimming magazine for many years, the theory was explained as MawBroon says - hence they advised never to go below 1,000 calories per day.

Of course you said ‘eating too few’

Think about it. By “eating too little”, do you mean…

Eating less than normal?
Eating less than you’ve been told to eat?
Eating less than feels right?
Eating less than you need to be healthy?
Eating less than your estimated metabolic rate?
Eating less than your actual metabolic rate?

And how often does that apply? Are you…
Eating too little at one meal?
Eating too little on one day?
Eating too little every day?
Eating too little almost every day but too much on some days?

Without clarity on some of these questions, you can see how easy it is to assume you’re “eating too little” but still not eating less than your actual energy expenditure, even if you did some test to estimate your metabolic rate and it seems like you’re eating less than that number.

Most times, the problem is perception.
As human beings, we’re bad at correctly judging how much we’re eating and expending. We tend to think we eat less and burn more than we do — sometimes by as much as 50 percent.

Baggs no I can’t explain it because I don’t believe it’s true either. There is too much pseudo science out there.

I believe the body goes into famine panic mode and starts clinging on to every possible calorie, hoarding it as fat. Thus upsetting the metabolism. But when that stops and phenylketonuria kicks in I don't know.
My mum always used to attribute her weight problems, after she came to the U.K. and married, to years of an extremely inadequate diet sometimes near starvation in wartime Germany. It certainly contributed to her total inability to waste food or leave an uncleared plate.