Starvation mode, as it is popularly known, is the mysterious bogeyman always raised to scare us away from missing even a single meal. This is simply absurd. Breakdown of muscle tissue happens only at extremely low levels of body fat—approximately 4 percent—which is not something most people need to worry about. At this point, there is no further body fat to be mobilized for energy, and lean tissue is consumed. The human body has evolved to survive episodic periods of starvation. Fat is stored energy and muscle is functional tissue. Fat is burned first. This situation is akin to storing a huge
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