Thanks for your question, a very interesting one and a chance to clear up some confusion! Basically you are absolutely right - over most ranges of normal calorie intake, the fewer calories you eat the more weight you will lose. Whilst it's true that with calorie restriction the body becomes more efficient, the concept of weight loss halting altogether or even reversing is completely false. If this happened the sad fact of millions starving to death through famine wouldn't happen.

What does happen though is that beyond a certain level of calorie restriction - the EXTRA weight you lose becomes insignificant enough as to make the additional restraint and effort involved not worthwhile. As a hypothetical example, take someone who needed 2,200 calories per day to maintain weight. Reducing intake to 1,700 calories, assuming exercise stays the same, should provide a 1 pound per week weight loss (Note: 1 pound of weight is equivalent to about 3,500 calories). Furthermore, reducing to 1,200 calories should result in a weight loss of 2 pounds per week. However going down to 700 calories a day (of course this wouldn?t be recommended(!) but it's just for demonstration purposes) the weight loss would not likely be a steady 3 pound but would likely be around 21⁄4 to 21⁄2 pounds. This "lower than expected" rate of weight loss is a lot different than "no" weight loss as the "starvation mode" notion proposes.

Of course this doesn?t explain why people who restrict their calories severely do often fail. This is more usually because over-restriction of calorie intake, known as ?high dietary restraint?, is linked to periods of overeating, hindering successful weight loss.

For most sensible slimmers a temporary stop or even slight gain in body weight is due to a weight plateau which can occur for any number of reasons. These can include the body?s metabolism adjusting, the body becoming ?used to? a regular exercise regime, and possibly reduced levels of leptin, a hormone produced by fat cells that is involved in the regulation of appetite.

Despite all the above, it still pays to eat regularly and not to have days when you starve yourself as our body?s work best and most efficiently when regularly stoked with sensible fuel.