Eric Roberts explains why his client Allison stopped losing weight despite eating less. She was eating 1,500 calories on weekdays but 2,500-3,000 on weekends, raising her weekly average. When she switched to a consistent 1,700 calories daily, the deficit returned and weight loss resumed. Starvation mode is a myth.
If you so much as look at a carbohydrate, these beautiful carbohydrates, and you gain weight, this video is for you. I get it. You're frustrated. You're pissed off. And you're about to just say fuck it and go ham on the chips and guac at your favorite Mexican restaurant tonight, which I wouldn't even blame you. God, those things are good. But before you do, please take a deep breath. Listen to this story I'm about to tell you with one of my clients, Allison, in something that we call. Starvation mode. Allison came in one morning just like you because she just couldn't lose the weight despite the fact that she was working out 3 to 4 times a week consistently. She was eating less calories, and yet the scale wouldn't budge. So me being the 21-year-old trainer that I was offered up the only solution that I thought of at that moment in time, starvation mode. Starvation mode is when you are eating too few calories so that your body then needs to hold on and store its body fat because it's like, we're not getting enough calories to survive. We got to make sure we keep this body fat on and go into starvation mode. To me, that was the only logical option at this point. I knew Allison was working out. I saw her. I knew Allison was eating less calories. She was telling me that she was. I knew it had to be starvation mode. I told her as confidently as ever, sending her off on her way at 7:00 AM after she was done working out, Allison, you gotta start eating more calories. Go do it. And so she did. Allison started to eat more calories than she was eating before, and just like a Christmas miracle, she started to lose weight. She was happy. I was happy, and all was well in the world until— It wasn't. A few weeks went by, Allison was seeing great progress, and one night I was scrolling my phone on Instagram. I came across somebody I followed and a good buddy of mine now, Jordan Syatt's Instagram post. He was making a post about starvation mode. I thought, perfect, I know all about starvation mode, I just helped Allison with it. I'm gonna see this post, he's gonna confirm everything that I thought, and the world's gonna go on and everything's gonna be great. And that is not what happened. Jordan dedicated an entire 60-minute video solely to why starvation mode was bullshit. What? Starvation mode being bullshit? Oh great heavens, starvation mode was bullshit? How? I just told Allison that she was in starvation mode, she increased her calories, and she was seeing great progress. I trusted Jordan, but I was skeptic because I just saw it work. So I went to go do some more research. The next couple of days I spent at least 8 hours a day researching, studying calories in versus calories out, laws of thermodynamics, metabolism. Because remind you, at this point in my career, I was a very young and somewhat dumb trainer. I hadn't really dove fully into the nutrition side of things yet. It was mainly just training. And so after a few rigorous days of researching, I came to the conclusion that Starvation mode was fucking bullshit. Eating too little and not losing weight is not a real thing. This scientific study right here, it is called the Minnesota Starvation Experiment. They actually starved people, like you can see from my buddy right here. So from actually starving people, what happened? Did these people store and keep all of their body fat, or did my boy end up like This guy could really use some Fruity Pebbles right about now. He was actually starving and lost all of his weight. I don't recommend you doing that, but that does prove to us that starvation mode, or eating too little and not losing weight, is not a real thing. And now you might be thinking, well, Eric, what the fuck? You said you told your client Allison to eat more calories because she was in starvation mode and she lost weight. So what the hell happened? Worry, I'm gonna explain it for you right now. All right, Allison actually was in fact eating less calories, except she was only eating less calories a couple of days out of the week. You see, Allison was falling into the trap a lot of people fall into, which is, yes, she was eating less calories Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, maybe Friday during the day, but then when Friday, Saturday, Sunday rolled around, she was not eating those fewer calories. So what was happening was over the course of the week, if yeah, she ate 1,500 calories Monday through Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday was more like 2,500 to 3,000 calories, which was bringing her weekly calorie average up, which was having her not see progress. And one of the main reasons she was eating more calories on the weekend was she was going so low in calories during the week, she just wasn't able to stick with it. It wasn't sustainable. And by the time the weekend rolled around, she had over-restricted herself so much during the week that when the weekend came around, it was game on. And so what we did was we took her calories from 1,500 to 1,700 per day. And you might hear that and think, well, she's eating more calories. She's actually not, because if she ate 1,500 calories Monday through Thursday and then 2,500 to 3,000 calories Friday through Sunday, Sunday, her weekly overall calorie average would say be around 2,000 calories. Whereas opposed to if she went from 1,500 to 1,700 and then just ate 1,700 all 7 days of the week, her weekly calorie average would actually be 1,700 calories, which would be less weekly calories. So she was eating more calories to actually eat less calories, which comes back to the point of the video. Eating too few calories and not losing weight, starvation mode, whatever you want to call it, is not a real thing. Because as long as you're in a calorie deficit, you, my friend, will be losing body fat. I hope this video helped, and if it did, please feel free to check out this video above as well for some more help.
