Starvation mode, my most hated nutritional myth

I may sound like I'm frothing at the mouth through most of this post, but that's mostly because, of all the nutrition myths, this one is the one that frustrates me to no end.

You've probably heard of the hypothesis that if you skip breakfast your body will go into "starvation mode", or that if you eat Splenda your body will go into the same mode, or if click click bloody click pancakes your body will start eating itself.

NO. Bad. Wrong. You will not go into starvation mode if you skip a meal or eat artificial sweeteners. No, seriously, that won't happen. Do you know how long it really takes before your body begins to actually start to starve? About 72 hours. Three days. And that would be 72 hours of eating ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. And that 72 hours is flexible based on the fatness of the person involved. If you're rail thin and have no body fat, your body will start eating protein for energy quickly; if you have ample body fat, it will take longer because your body has ample fat to eat. And you know what? That's weaksauce starvation. Real starvation starts when your body is completely out of fat to burn and all that's left is muscle. Bear this in mind next time you say, "I'm starving." No you're not.

There's no scientific evidence anywhere near this conversation, but this myth really has legs, doesn't it? Everyone I've ever mentioned it to has at least heard of it. But why? Where does this myth come from? The truth is that there was a scientific test done that came up with lots of information on starving people: The Minnesota Starvation Experiment. You know how long they starved those poor bastards? Six months. They actually fed the guys 1560 calories a day, which doesn't sound that bad till you read the part where they made them walk 22 miles a goddamn day. These guys got to actually starve for six months, fighting off real starvation side effects like depression and hysteria which were so bad one dude chopped off three fingers with an axe and then didn't remember why the hell he did it.

That's what real starvation mode does to people. It eats your body and drives you insane.

So why in the hell do people think skipping breakfast will hurt their diet? The reality is that if you skip breakfast you are more likely to compensate for that hunger later if you're not carefully controlling your food intake. So if your willpower is weak, skipping breakfast will probably not help you. However, if your willpower is strong and you eat the same lunch and dinner with or without breakfast, then cutting out those calories can help you lose weight.

People have a million excuses (very few legitimate, like drugs with side effects), but the evidence is clearly on one side: losing weight is calories in vs. calories out. Everything else is just fads, scams, and noise.

How to interact with Steve, a guide by Steve. Part Three: What, is Steve a hermit now?

I may not be a hermit, but going out for much of anything has been a harder sell with me for a while. This comes back to my problem with introversion. Recharging is a thing I need to do, especially after a work day of being around people. I don't understand the idea of going directly from work to a happy hour because to me that's just like staying at work but with a beer, admittedly slightly better, but still draining on me. What I want, after work, is time to go home, be alone, and recharge. However, in an effort to not become a hermit, I often have plans, which is to say I always have plans, which lately is biting me in the ass.

If it really was up to me, I'd go home right now, jump on my couch, and do nothing remotely social or work related for probably weeks at a time. I don't have that luxury, so I work. I also want to stay in shape and see my friends at least once in a while, so I go to classes and see my friends. Also, my girlfriend would probably be upset if I didn't see her once in a while too.

So when do I recharge? That's a good question. I haven't been recharging much at all lately, and that's something I've realized I have to change. Sadly It's coming out of my Capoeira schedule, but I need that night off. I also managed to get into a work at home deal, which is all the work of work, with a tenth of the stress of work because I'm home, completely alone, and that is apparently good for my mental health. I am trying, I really am, but sometimes it's still just not enough.

It's important to note that I actually do still like going out and doing stuff. Bars, movies, dinners, parties, etc, I still like these things. I don't want anyone thinking I've gone off the deep end and don't enjoy stuff, I just need to factor in a couple of things, my introverted nature first. Second is my anxiety in groups. If I'm out with one person, I'm perfectly comfortable; two people, still ok; three people, mostly ok; once you hit four people, I start to get uncomfortable. If you factor in the "do I know this person" variable, that all changes. If I'm out with four people I know I'm far more comfortable than I am with even one person I don't know. This is an obnoxious but real factor in my scale of comfort for going out.

For all my protesting about liking going out, sometimes, I don't wanna. Sometimes that one more thing I'm not sure about just causes my anxiety to drop into overdrive. I don't like that, but it is a reality. If I say no to something that sounds reasonable to you, I've probably just hit that point where I can't take any more social. So please don't take it personally if I turn you down for a social gathering, or even just dinner. Even if I can't take going out, I do appreciate the thought. When my mental health is on track, you will see me again.

Ultimately, I want to be invited out. I may not bite often, it may seem pointless, but I'm not trying to be a hermit, I promise. I will come out sometimes, and I will be happy to see you.

How to interact with Steve, a guide by Steve. Part Two: I haven't heard from Steve in a while...

When it comes to keeping up with people, I am about as bad as it gets. Being something other than a social butterfly, when I get home at night I don't think about people I need to keep up with, I collapse on my couch and try to recharge from a long day of pretending I'm a competent social person. It's kind of ironic that my current job is all about maintaining lines of communication between myself, others, and between those other people.

Let me explain this with an example. I play Pathfinder with a group of people that I like. One of my best friends is a part of this group and I enjoy conversing with him a great deal. Outside of that game, how often do you think I talk to him? If you answered "basically never", then you're catching on. One of my best friends, basically don't talk to him outside of the game. So if you haven't heard from me in a while, it's almost certainly not you.

If I'm going to contact someone, typically I am doing so for a specific purpose: dinner, movie, Capoeira, etc. Contacting someone for the purpose of saying, "what's up?" just isn't something I do like ever. It's not because I don't care, it's because I just don't do that sort of thing. If you're sitting there waiting for me to contact you, you are like to be disappointed. Unfortunately, this is a problem because when I do think I should contact someone I haven't heard from, I have no idea what to say; thanks to the anxiety of saying something wrong, I will not immediately contact that person and then I will be stuck trying to think up something to say which makes me anxious, and I will eventually either give up or more likely forget. Sometimes you haven't heard from me because I'm so anxious about what to say I can't say anything.

Just because I am not contacting you does not mean that I am not thinking of you. I have friends I rarely talk to that I still consider to be dear friends. There are people I haven't talked to in at this point years that I consider to be my friends still. Even if it is only when the winds of fate blow you and me in a coincidentally similar direction that I talk to you, if I do spend time talking to you, I probably wouldn't mind talking to you more.

There's one snag, of course, that being I hate phones. I did many years of tech support for an ISP, and that soured me on the idea of phones. I don't like talking on phones, I don't like being called, and I almost never call people on my own initiative. If I want an appointment, say a dental appointment, I am far more likely to show up in person to set up an appointment than to call, because I hate phones that much. I use phones to set up in person meetings. Beyond that, I don't call people. Text messages, emails, other forms of electronic interaction, that's fine and I have no problem with them, so they are my preferred communication methods outside of just actually talking face to face.

So what does this mean for you interacting with me? Don't wait for me to call you, just call me or, preferably, text or email me. I won't screen your call unless I cannot take your call, and if you call I will call you back as promptly as time allows. I'm not chatty on phones, but if you want to call me I will talk to you. I work, I have extra-workular activities, but I can make time for you. So call me, maybe? (Take that pop culture!)

How to interact with Steve, a guide by Steve. Part One: Background.

There are two major pieces of background you need to know about.


1) I am an introvert. 


As a majority of the people in this part of the world are extroverts and have no idea what is up with introverts, I will start here as a place to get to common ground. While this wikipedia article is a much more in depth explanation, I'll give a TL;DR here. 


Introversion/extroversion is on a sliding scale, but I am heavily on the introversion side. An introvert, to quote that article, is "the state of or tendency toward being wholly or predominantly concerned with and interested in one's own mental life." That means introverts are people who find it more rewarding to read a book than go out to a bar. If you go to a wild party and you come out of the party energized and happy, you're almost certainly an extrovert. If you go to a wild party and come out exhausted and ready to go home and recharge, the inverse is almost certain. Extroverts gain energy when with other people while introverts lose energy. Don't take this to mean that introverts can't like wild parties, far from it, it's just that being around people is harder for extroverts. 


An introvert can sit alone and read a book for hours and hours and be fully engaged where an extrovert may find being alone for that long boring. An introvert may have a boring desk at work that doesn't encourage conversation where an extrovert may have candies at their desk specifically to try to get people to come by and talk. An introvert may find it difficult to go try an activity that they have no experience with and know no one at, where an extrovert might jump at the opportunity.


I have to stress here that there is nothing wrong with being an introvert. Western societies tend to reward extroversion, and are generally biased against introverts (see the wikipedia article for more details), but that doesn't mean introversion is bad. It's just different. 


2) I have an anxiety disorder.


This other wikipedia article will give you more information, but I have this disorder, a generalized anxiety disorder to be more specific. To quote the article, "Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is an anxiety disorder that is characterized by excessive, uncontrollable and often irrational worry about everyday things that is disproportionate to the actual source of worry." What does this mean? As an example, before drugs and therapy the thought that I might not have locked my front door either at night or after I left for work might have driven me crazy. Or if I forgot to shave in the morning, it could bug me intensely all day, enough to distract me from almost anything I was doing including my job.


Basically, with GAD, fear and anxiety ruled my life. Worrying about anything and everything all day long is exhausting, yet that same worrying could keep me from sleeping which would make me irritable. If you knew me before the drugs and therapy, you knew I was basically permanently irritable. One of the reasons I was much more of a drinker when I was younger, I realize now, was because the only time I wasn't anxious was when I was too drunk to care. In retrospect I am very lucky I didn't end up an alcoholic.


Though drugs and therapy I learned how not to let anxiety rule my life. Even when off my drugs, I can usually control the anxiety of daily life to a much better degree than I did before. However, I will always have to be aware of anxiety and fight against it. I hope someday to be able decrease or even completely stop my drugs, but that's a long slow process if it is even possible.


So there you go. This is the necessary background for the context of the rest of these posts to make sense. If you have any other questions you'd like to ask me, feel free, I'm happy to explain.