By ensuring that you eat fewer calories than you burn, any successful diet puts your body into a starvation mode. During starvation the body burns its own stored glucose and fat to stay alive. During extended starvation, the body metabolizes muscles, connective tissue and vital organs. However, you can induce starvation mode without starving or cutting calories significantly. Low-carb diets mimic starvation by inducing a similar kind of metabolism without a significant reduction of calories.
Starvation Mode
There is no generally-agreed-upon definition of a starvation mode. According to one common viewpoint, all successful diets induce a starvation mode by voluntarily or involuntarily restricting the intake of calories. The Minnesota starvation experiment, which was conducted right after World War II to investigate how best to re-feed millions of starving people, used calorie restriction and starchy foods to imitate the starvation conditions during the war. The altruistic subjects who participated in the experiment lost extreme amounts of weight during the diet phase of the experiment.
Low-Carb Dieting
Significant calorie restriction is not the only way of mimicking involuntary starvation. Low-carb diets restrict the food intake of carbohydrates. The Atkins diet, which is aimed at weight loss, allows high levels of proteins and fat. When glucose is restricted, the body has difficulties producing glucose. This is not a problem for most body tissues, because fatty acids can be used as an energy source instead of glucose. But the brain cannot use fatty acids from food intake because fatty acids are too large to transfer from the blood to the brain. The brain can, however, use a different energy source, called ketone bodies. This shift in brain metabolism is exactly what happens during involuntary starvation. Ketone bodies are produced in the liver when the liver metabolizes fat. So, the idea is that by restricting carbohydrates, the lack of glucose forces the body into a fat burning mode.
Calorie Restriction
As the American Medical Association points out, however, unless there is some restriction of calories, the Atkins diet will not lead to a weight loss. This is because protein can be turned into glucose. So, if the protein intake is high and the calories are not restricted, the diet may result in weight gain. Fat metabolism also leads to some glucose production. Fat is broken down into fatty acids and glycerol, and glycerol can be converted into glucose.
The Ketogenic Diet
There is a diet much older than the Atkins diet that mimics starvation, but not for weight loss purposes. This diet, which is also known as the ketogenic diet, was developed in the 1920s as a way of reducing seizures in epileptic children. Temporary starvation has been used to reduce seizures since ancient times. The ketogenic diet avoided weight loss but mirrored the metabolism of starvation. The diet calls for extremely high amounts of fat, adequate amounts of protein and very low levels of carbohydrates. Even though this diet does not result in weight loss, it forces the brain to use ketone bodies as an energy source because fat only converts into small amounts of glucose.
References
- Atkins: Thoughtful Approach. Powerful Science
- "Journal of the American Medical Association"; A Critique of Low-Carbohydrate Ketogenic Weight Reduction Regimens: A Review of Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution; 1974
- MayoClinic.com: Atkins Diet: What's Behind the Claims?
- "The Journal of Nutrition"; They Starved So That Others Be Better Fed: Remembering Ancel Keys and the Minnesota Experiment; L. M. Kalm, et al.; June 2005
Member Comments