eeyan's Journal, 30 May 2017

When you say "starvation mode," what do you mean exactly? 

As I understand it, as a response to eating a lot less than the body consumes for some duration it will lower the metabolism to conserve energy and whilst in that mode the body is more focused on building fat than normal. A couple weeks back I went from 139 to 133 pounds then gained it right back in days and I was taking it super easy on food intake. Trying to avoid that.  

I see. From what I've read, day-to-day fluctuations of less than ten pounds are the temporary result of water retention or slow digestion, since the human body doesn't turn nutrients into fat that quickly. 

How long does it take the body to store fat after a meal? Would water retention make fat expand at all and show more fat on my body fat caliper? 

Your body doesn't convert 100% of the food you eat into fat. Food contains a lot of water; of the remainder, most of it passes undigested, and a lot of it gets converted into energy. The exact figures will vary based in your size and activity level, but you have to store (not just consume, but extract and fail to burn) about 3500 extra Calories to make a pound of fat. Body fat is light and dry. It is much less dense than muscle, and it repels water. People with a lot of excess body fat get pockets of watery fluid trapped among their fat. In extreme cases, this leads to lipedema. In less extreme cases, it leads to heavy, squishy flesh that we tend to think of as fat, when most of that weight and squishiness comes from water. Body calipers don't distinguish between fat and water.