Meal Timing, Thermic Effect of Food, CICO, and ‘Starvation Mode’ – Real or BS?

“If you don’t eat enough calories, your body will go into ‘starvation mode’ and it will hang onto fat, and you will gain weight.” “You should eat six small meals instead of three to lose weight.” I’m sure you have heard these before.  The girl from accounting says them.  I used to say it myself. Though I had no proof, it sounded like it made sense.  I mean, our bodies do respond to stress in times of crisis – so surely it is designed to literally ‘stall’ metabolic processing so that we don’t die? This blog post is all about popular things people say to justify why losing weight is complicated and futile. Spoiler alert: It’s not. But let’s look at the first item on our list: Thermic Effect of Food First, let’s look at TEF – the thermic effect of food or the amount of energy expenditure above the basal metabolic rate due to the cost of processing food for use and storage. (Whew – that was a mouthful!) The TEF averages at about 10% of a person’s caloric intake and varies based on macro groups – i.e. dietary fat is easier to process than protein. For example, when you… View Post