Today we look at the hunger metabolism in humans and discuss when this can occur and what it actually means for your body.
Since we are primarily concerned with the metabolism of humans and animals this month, we would like to devote this article to the metabolism of hunger. Because a good metabolism is not brought about by a fast, radical diet. Often this even has the exact opposite effect and messes up the energy metabolism. As you are already used to, we will first take a look at the definition of the term in order to find out together what the starvation metabolism means for the human body. Then we would like to take a look at what hunger metabolism can lead to in humans and what other effects and restrictions can be expected with you.
What does the hunger metabolism mean?
The starvation metabolism means the reactions in your body that are triggered when you have not consumed or not enough food (i.e. calories, i.e. energy) for a long time. You can view the hunger metabolism as an emergency brake that is given to the human body by nature so that it can survive longer. If your normal energy requirements are no longer covered by your food, your body’s reserves will be reduced. This means that your body uses already stored energy (this means, among other things, your fat in the body, but primarily the muscle mass) in order to keep you healthy and alive. Only in this way can vital processes continue to take place in the human body. In addition, the normal metabolism usually slows down if too little energy has been consumed over a longer period of time, which means that your daily energy requirements are minimized.
Often we humans try to lose weight with a diet that is way too strong. Many of us are probably not aware that we usually do exactly the opposite. Because if you consume too few calories per day, your body will ultimately access the reserves that are already there, as we have already explained above. In this case the emergency brake takes effect and helps you to continue to carry out the processes in your body. As a rule, with a radical diet you will probably lose a lot of weight very quickly, but this will change radically again within a very short time. The reason for this is the above-mentioned hunger metabolism in humans.
What happens to my body on a radical diet?
If we now look at the hunger metabolism in humans, we will find that this is part of evolution. Thanks to this emergency brake, this hunger metabolism, people have been able to survive for centuries, although they have had to starve – sometimes even for a very long time. So we can see the hunger metabolism as a natural aid to survival. Even if you only consume around 500 kilocalories less per day than you actually need, your body will put itself in a „state of emergency“ and fall back on its reserves. Most diets have an eating plan that is often more than 500 kilocalories less than the normal daily requirement of an adult.
Now it is relevant that we look at what reserves the human body falls back on when we are starving. Because primarily your muscle mass is used and thus also reduced. This reduces the normal energy requirement. You can assume that a little fat will certainly also be broken down, but this is only a small amount, a small fraction. This small amount even decreases as the diet progresses, so that less and less fat is burned. This is because the total energy expenditure is minimized and the body burns fewer calories overall. (Even if you just rest, you will burn much less on a radical diet than you would otherwise.)
Summary: If you ingest at least 500 kilocalories (per day) less than required over a long period of time, your body goes into hunger metabolism and primarily burns your muscle mass. This usually cannot be remedied or counteracted through exercise and the increased intake of proteins.
Boost your metabolism
A quick tip at this point: if you have lost a lot of weight in a very short time while on a radical diet, it is usually because your body has excreted more water. This means that you haven’t actually lost weight, just lost water. When you come out of a radical diet, your body builds up fat reserves much faster in order to prepare for the next emergency situation. Through the radical diet, you showed your body that it is currently starving, which is why it now wants to be even better prepared for another period of hunger. This in turn means that increased radical diets can also contribute to your body building larger fat reserves faster. As you can imagine, this in turn ensures that you gain weight faster.
Therefore, you shouldn’t resort to radical diets, but rather exercise more and take in fewer carbohydrates through your food. Nevertheless, you should always provide your body with the required kilocalories, i.e. the energy, so that it does not have to fall back on your existing reserves. In the best case scenario, with a healthy and balanced diet, you ensure that your body loses weight in an equally healthy and natural way, if this is your goal. You should enjoy a balanced diet anyway so that your body can carry out all the relevant processes and functions every day.
If you are not quite sure at this point whether you are consuming enough vitamins, you can carry out our vitamin self-test at home with a hair sample . Based on this, you can have personalized food supplements created by our laboratory . These are explicitly designed for your needs.
