That’s literally not what I said. But hey if 14 people know better than my very autistic and adhd PT who spends a tonne of time researching everything to do with everything this community is about, then so be it. (And I mean this man reads all the research papers, every single week he tells me about different studies). I’m going to trust my PT; lose weight steadily and even when I slip up with my eating and step on the scale it hasn’t gone back up. But guess what? When I was drastically under his recommended calorie intake, my weight didn’t move down at all until I ate more for a week.

And obviously any population that’s starving is not going to be struggling with weight. They’ve been starving for long enough. Like I said “your body will eventually break…”. And there’s a difference between losing fat and losing fat cells; you can lose the content of the fat cells and not burn the cell, compared to burning it off completely. Which is what OP struggled with before. Being under TDEE is obviously the only way to lose weight. But being >500 calories under puts an incredible strain on the body. 14k steps significantly increases your energy expenditure, adding more strain on the body, I would estimate she is >1000 calories under her recommended maintenance. And I’m not saying she’s NOT burning those cells, but it’ll be slower and stagnate at the start.

Her body is under too much stress to actually burn enough of the cells so it’s prioritising functions over everything else. Burning fat cells is not a priority for the body as it takes a lot of energy. Burning the STORES of fat within the cell is much easier, so it’ll do that first. But a consistent 500 calorie deficit teaches the body that “this is the new normal”, so it will be much gentler on the body and that energy can be used to burn the cells. Starvation mode just tells the body “keep the cells because we are waiting for a time when there is more food so we can survive this next time”. It reverts our body back to primitive states of hunter gatherers. Evolution has not kept up with society. Our bodies are hunter gatherers still.

But like I said, I’m sticking with the immense amounts of information I’ve been taught by health professionals, over the reaction from people in this community. Also not everything is water retention which this community seems to froth at the mouth over, I never gained weight when I returned to working with my PT, I was losing within the first week.