Is "starvation mode" a myth or real??

Not sure exactly what you're referring to, but what it sounds like you're talking about is the process of the body holding onto stored fat and energy longer due to a lack of intake. That certainly happens.

 

I'm certainly no nutritional expert or in the medical profession, but I've always been under the assumption from what I've seen and read that the body uses available fat to exist on in hard times and once that is gone, it uses muscle mass.

As an example, look at fighters or bodybuilders that are ripped and cut at the time of competition. They are showing signs of very little body fat and water retention to make weight or to appear as cut as they can be for the competition, but still carry muscle mass and tone.

I'm siding with the fat is the first to go.

 

The Nutrition Course I'm about to complete supports this theory. It stores the fat first, but I think the muscles don't start to get broken down until the fat's gone too. Could be mistaken. It's just not good for you.

 

What's more important for your survival, large muscles or fat stores for energy?

 

Faaaaaaaaaaaaaat.

 

No. The body doesn't work like that. For most people the body will only enter catabolic states during intense periods of long exercise or possibly mal-nutrition where the body has to get it's energy source from elsewhere. The body optimally does not use muscle as fuel.

 

It is real, it's called the body maintaining homeostasis. If you don't give your body what it needs it finds other ways, it eats itself.

 

It's probably not something that many people will ever experience.

 

After four days of not eating the body starts trying to actually try and preserve muscle.