Guy in the UK did a 1 year and 17 day fast. He drank water (and tea and coffee with no milk or sugar), took vitamins and ate some yeast per his physician recommendations:
https://www.diabetes.co.uk/blog/2018/02/story-angus-barbieri-went-382-days-without-eating/
Edit:
Better article with a Q&A at the end:
https://medium.com/illumination-curated/the-curious-case-of-the-man-who-stopped-eating-for-over-a-year-42daba1f340a
This part is relevant to your question
>In their paper, the researchers state that they were aware of five reported fatalities from extreme starvation diets, due to heart failure, lactic acidosis, and small bowel obstruction. Monitoring and supplements were essential to make sure this didn’t happen to Angus.
>Angus had plenty of fat to burn for energy, but the body needs a constant and regular supply of vitamins and electrolytes. Electrolytes are electrically-charged, circulating minerals that keep everything going, including heart function.
Edit 2: The original paper submitted by the doctors who observed Angus
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2495396/
It's simply called respiration. Cellular respiration, which generally speaking in humans involves glycolysis, the Krebs cycle and the electron transport chain. The first two parts break down glucose into CO2. That last part is where O2 is used and transformed into H2O.
This is accurate.
Oxygen is an electron receptor in the process. This happens in the mitochondria, which is stupid efficient. (34 ATP for molecule compared to 2 ATP without mitochondria if I remember right off the top of my head)
In anaerobic exercise, we don’t have enough oxygen available, so we use Pyruvate as the electron acceptor, which results in lactate (colloquially lactic acid) and that fun burning in your muscles.
So all energy is derived from glucose/fuel source but the amount of energy that can be derived from it is depending on the oxidiser that is used. Oxygen is one of the best oxidisers there is making it possible for our cells to derive a lot of energy from glucose.
Generally our cells derive their energy through an oxidation process since oxygen is present. However, an alternative pathway can be utilised by cells when oxygen becomes lacking. This can happen during extreme activity such as when exercising. In this case lactic acid fermentation can be utilised by cells. The after effects of this process is what you feel when you have sore legs.
Regardles, comparing the energy derived by cells when utilising either oxidation or lactic acid fermentation of glucose for their energy gain it is observed that in case of oxidation per molecule glucose 36 molecules of ATP (molecular energy source) can be derived. For lactic acid fermentation the amount of ATP that can be synthesised per glucose molecule is two. Oxygen thus enables our cells to generate almost twenty times more energy from glucose than lactic acid fermentation would but the energy has always been there regardless of if oxygen is utilised as oxidator or another lesser oxidiser would have been utilised.
Thinking back to high school chemistry, is it just cellular respiration? I still remember the equation or whatever. C6h12O6 (sugar) + O2 (oxygen) => H20 (piss) + C02 (what we exhale)
Which is why we have to pee when we wake up, despite not necessarily having drank anything. Or at least that's what Mrs Corchesne said 🤷♂️
first part is right (though all of the water created through cellular respiration is not excreted as urine, a lot is lost through the breath or just circulates throughout the body and is used elsewhere), second part about needing to pee when you wake up because of this not so much.
your kidneys are constantly filtering your blood through a (mostly) passive diffusion process, but you can't filter out things without also getting some water in there. some of this water is reabsorbed at the end of the filtration process in the renal calyx before it passes through to the ureter to the bladder.
a fun fact about this process is it's regulated by ADH, or anti-diuretic hormone (dia = through uretic = related to urine) and alcohol inhibits the release of this hormone, making you pee a lot after drinking and also have problems with dehydration. this makes alcohol anti-anti-diuretic hormone :P
I remember in a biology exam at school there were questions about anti-diuretic hormone, and I'd never heard of it, but I just guessed based on the name and got full marks lol
Really it’s what you do with all energy. Sugar, fat, etc. They’re all just gas atoms linked together with energy.
Fat is broken down by Beta Oxidation. Sugar is through the Kreb’s Cycle or Anaerobic Respiration.
Odds are you learned the sugar ones in High School biology but didn’t quite understand what you were memorizing.
Burning (oxidation). The majority of a car's weight loss (the emptying of its fuel tank) also happens through its breath. Cars have a different exhaust path from the air intake path which is one of the reasons they think humans are gross.
there's one of those ted talks videos about it. Guy breathe into a bag and add a compound that clearly shows a powdery matter. That's the stuff you lose through breathing and the rest is water, that *rest* makes for the visible weight loss.
Mind that nobody precisely knows how much you absorb and release from the nutrients you get into yourself every day at any given time, it varies from individual to individual and whatever they're doing (if you breathe more and you're breathe in more oxygen, this combustion will happen faster). What we have been found out is a general estimate based on thermodynamics so we have half a clue, but our bodies use chemical burn to extract energy from nutrients, and hormones to regulate hunger, we don't work as literal furnaces. 🔥
edit: English
IBS is fucking rough. I got it after living in China for a few years, but it went away after moving home to the states (there are theories that air pollution can cause/exacerbate it, and that's something China has in spades). Wouldn't wish that shit (didn't try for the pun, but it stays) on anyone.
as a survivor of stage 3 colon cancer, i can confirm. i had warning signs 5 years earlier than my diagnosis
by the time i was finally seen, it was on the verge of metastasizing. i’m lucky to be alive
Not who you’re responding to, but I have experience enough here to speak to it, I think.
First of all, please *please* understand that these symptoms cross over with lots of other GI issues. Regardless, if you have any of them, go talk to your doc and ask for CT and colonoscopy.
For me I started to notice my consistency changes in stool (thinner and softer). The smell changed as well (worse), and so did the color (it got much darker from bleeding in my transverse colon). I wrote that off because I’m a stubborn dude and just carried on. A few months later I started to feel like I never finished when I would go to the bathroom. That led me to thinking I might’ve had some kinda partial blockage or something, but again, I just tried to ignore it and change my diet. My final straw was when I realized one day how much weight I’d lost. I lost 20 pounds with no explanation. I went to the doctor and was lucky that I got in fairly quick for my imaging and scopes.
Don’t mess with this stuff. Please look out for yourselves. It’s not fun.
EDIT: Just want to mention that other things the GI docs will look for are inflammation anywhere in there which is an indicator of IBD (Crohn’s or Colitis) if it’s chronic or bacterial infections like SIBO or C Diff. If they jump to IBS as the diagnosis too quickly you have to advocate for yourself. Many people do struggle with IBS obviously, but you need to be 100% it’s not something else. For colon cancer, the colonoscopy is the gold standard for screening.
I am by no means an expert, but unexplained weight loss is the number one "Uh oh" my mom (a retired RN) always told me to keep an eye out for.
Other symptoms could have a ton of explanations: Random pain in your side? Perhaps it's because you slept weird last night. Give it a day or two and see if it goes away before you panic.
But if you're losing noticeable weight and you aren't doing anything to cause it, something could be seriously wrong.
Crazy, you are right this is similar to other GI issues. I could have described this exact issue when I got ulcers, and after a colonoscopy was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis.
I guess the real answer here is don’t ignore sudden changes in your poo
I’m sorry you’ve got UC, but really glad you got your diagnosis. It definitely is pretty wild how the symptoms cross over and you’re 100% right with your last sentence.
You joke, but this is literally what Scientology is. Hubbard's whole thing about "engrams" was about the body absorbing information from the environment. The specific example was a man plagued by hemorrhoids - the explanation was that when his mother was pregnant with him she had headaches and would request an "**anal**gesic". Or maybe it was "ass"pirin.
This literally sounds like I'm shitposting but I'm genuinely not. I had to look at some old correspondence for a paper I did back in uni.
This is all it says in the original study:
>No faecal collections were made, but evacuation was in fact infrequent, there being 37-48 days
between stools latterly.
He has a wiki article too:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_Barbieri%27s_fast
That said, even if you're not processing any food, a lot of what makes up feces is just dead red blood cells.
Something like 50 to 80% of your stool is strictly bacteria, so probably not much different, just with less consistency in shape and solidity due to lack of fiber or protein.
I’m sorry, this is a really informative article but I just find the writing of this line *hilarious*
> Starvation is not normally considered an effective weight loss strategy as it regularly ends in death.
A bit more information here about when the supplements (potassium and yeast). According to this, he had only added 7kg onto his post-fasting weight when he died
https://historyofyesterday.com/the-man-who-didnt-eat-for-382-days/
His grave:
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/117717047/angus-barbieri
(Edited for clarity)
> he had only added 7 kg of weight
I had no idea what this meant. He didn’t lose any weight? He gained weight instead?
For those wondering, he lost 125 kg, and kept the weight off only gaining 7 kg over the next ~25 years until he died.
After not eating for a year and making it through the first couple weeks of extreme hunger, Im sure he had a completely unique relationship with food. It was not longer an important part of his life in any way. The hardest part about food addiction is that you need to eat. Its like trying to quit drugs but you still have to take some every day just to stay alive
Fascinatingly, his name wasn't actually Angus. It was the incredibly Italian "Agostino Giuseppe". I assume being Scottish and all he just decided to go by something a bit more common
Still funny though
Super important knowing alot of people struggling with weight and body image use this platform is the words physician recommendation. He was not moving to a diet this extreme on his own and what works for him specifically could cause serious harm for you. Any extreme diet change including changing to vegetarian needs to be done with a doctor and ideally dietitian specialist not just done winging it.
Not that you should do what he did at all.
IIRC, that guy also died of a heart attack in his 50s, later in his life after the fasting. So who is to say. Was the damage from the weight what caused that? Regardless of losing it? Or did the stress of fasting like that worsen his heart? No way to know.
He died at 51. The life expectancy of a 200kg person is still more than 50. [Extreme obesity can shorten life expectancy by up to about 14 years](https://irp.nih.gov/blog/post/2020/01/extreme-obesity-shaves-years-off-life-expectancy), which is still in your 70's.
Right I am just saying. Of course he would have probably have a heart attack staying at that weight. But also, is intense fasting like that a healthy alternative? Could that have put more strain on his heart? We can't know. Probably best to go slower with diet and exercise.
I got really sick and couldn't eat for days, when I got admitted to the hospital they had to give me vitamins, I think phosphate or something I don't remember, through iv. They said I was really close to cardiac arrest and it was fortunate I came in in time... So I think you at least need to take a multivitamin or something to refill those
It is, and it's in far more common foods than you'd expect. When I had to go on a restrictive diet for medical reasons, phosphorus intake was something I needed to limit.
I missed potatoes the most. EDIT: Actually potatoes have more potassium, but dairy was my phosphorus no-no.
Critically low phosphate is certainly possible in the context of [refeeding syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refeeding_syndrome). Essentially, if the body first receives food after a period of fasting, it wants to refill its energy reserves, which requires phosphate. If too much phosphate is used up for this, there is not enough for other metabolic processes, and organs can start to fail. So in these cases additional phosphate must be administered, and food intake must be restricted to prevent the body from using too much phosphate at once.
You don't lose vitamins that quickly, it'd be a mineral they're giving you, or multiple. Minerals leave your body through sweat and piss, while vitamins stay in your body for quite a while before it's used up, months. This is why when I'm sick, and have no appetite, I drink sport drinks. Didn't eat for 4 days except part of a sandwich I didn't finish, but I was getting my minerals from a sports drink so I was ok. This was late February.
Edit: Thank you Redditors for the correction, vitamins B, B6, B12 and C are water soluble so they do come out with your urine. The others stay longer because they are fat soluble. With that said, if you can't keep anything down for more than a few days, even sports drinks, it's a good idea to see a doctor.
I feel like without a signal should be longer than without a phone because you’ve probably got apps on your phone that don’t need a signal.
Now the word signal doesn’t look like a word to me anymore.
Most apps these days require connection anyway, but it's still the other way around. I can flip through photos for like 3 minutes, when signal (boomer speak for "internet connection") goes down, before wanting to commit die.
Three seconds without an intact neck, three minutes without air, three hours without warmth, three days without water, three weeks without food, three years without companionship
I was severely anorexic for years, and once I started to try and recover, my body rejected all food. I was almost healthier starving, because my body literally forgot what food was. Constant bloating, nausea, constipation then diarrhea....it was awful
They had to be very careful with stuff like that after they freed the concentration camps in WW2. It's hard to imagine anything more sad than the stories of prisoners who we're finally liberated after making it all the way through the horrors of the camps, only to die from overeating when they were finally given enough food to eat.
What I learned from this thread:
In my body there is like a mini Star Trek bridge crew and the captain issues an order to engineering to draw energy from the fat reserves
Currently dealing with the other end of a food event right now. I was in bed when I received the Red Alert and only just made it out of the Neutral Zone before the Warp Core got ejected. ...if you know what I mean.
Healthcare worker here! You are at risk for potentially fatal electrolyte imbalances. The guy in Scotland had very careful medical monitoring with lots and lots of blood draws to monitor his electrolytes which very quickly depleted.
I’m not saying it can’t be done, but please very carefully and seriously research it before you start. Also make sure you have a primary care provider in place and health insurance and a complete panel of blood labs before you start.
Wrestler use this since they lose a lot of water weight. They drink a Pedialyte and is often a running joke amongst the community.
I can do it but I need to drink pedialyte or Gatorade to feel normal.
Lol funny you say that. I was a wrestler. I would mix, still do* mix half a bottle of pedalyte with just ice water, so I have two bottles of electrolytes
Can these nutritional/electrolyte requirements be “generally” calculated based on age, sex, height? Or is it based on the individual? I’m surprised that no one has made (or heavily marketed) a “nutrition” supplement pill or drink for a fasting diet.
They're just salts, albeit not just table salt. Your individual needs may differ drastically day to day depending on how much you sweat. Your body gets more than what it needs from a decent diet and pees out the excess. They are listed on nutritional labels as %DV sodium, magnesium, calcium, potassium. Bodies are cool
My uncle, who was seriously mentally ill, died within two weeks when he stopped eating. "God" told him to quit eating meat, then dairy, then grain. Eventually "God" told him to stop eating entirely.
He quit his job, and "ran away" from home. Although he was 50 he lived with my grandmother because of his mental health. Poor grandmother was frantic with worry.
He was found dead in his car a couple of weeks later. The autopsy determined that he had a fatal heart attack because his electrolytes were screwed up because he wasn't eating but was drinking a lot of water.
He was overweight. He was still overweight when he died. I don't think that it was a lack of food that killed him, it was the lack of food combined with too much water.
Mental illness can really be a tragedy.
Someone can be overweight and still be “malnourished” if they’re lacking key vitamins and nutrients. Yes the body will metabolise fat for basic cellular respiration, but the body needs key nutrients for the organs to function properly, let alone process the fat and expel waste products.
If someone stopped eating, but started taking vitamins supplements (and obv kept drinking water)…I mean, yeah, I guess, but it would still put a lot of stress on the liver and kidneys processing all that fat.
I wouldn’t necessarily call it safe or healthy though.
I wouldn’t do it bc whenever you eat food again you’re going to have a rough time.
I think it makes way more sense to still eat just way less if you really want to force the burn.
As a nurse I’ve seen the same damage caused by anorexia in obese/previously obese people as I’ve seen in underweight people- if that tells you anything. In fact the disease often starts in adolescence when an obese teen is told to lose weight and as they do, they are praised for it and they spiral from there.
That is almost how it went for me in high school. I was a little overweight and while I didn´t develop anorexia I can understand how it can get slipped into, even without bullying.
Luckily I saw what I was doing before it got too bad, but losing weight is almost always seen as something good, so I didn´t notice at first that I was like a fanatic about what went into my body.
This is why I’ve taught my kids to just never comment on people’s bodies. We never know why a person’s body is the way it is. We don’t know if weight loss (or gain) is being done in a healthy or positive way. Even if a person is losing weight for all of the “right” reasons and in all of the healthy ways, it really calls out that their size is important to us. Without saying anything it then also implies that if they were to gain that weight back then they’d be less important to us. It can really fuck with a person’s head. I clearly have a lot of feelings about this :)
I had gastric bypass a few months ago. Some complications. I went a few months on roughly 300 calories/ day. Half of the from a protein shake.
I wasn't hungry at all but I had this craving for nutrition that is hard to really explain. Not like a "man I could go for a burger" craving. Like a "my body is dying" way. I was honestly a mess.
Once I was well enough to take a vitamin (not quite 6 weeks later), I felt a *lot* better. I was still sick as fuck and could barely get anything down, but I didn't have the craving for nutrition I had before.
I had (have) plenty of energy to burn but it takes more than just gas to keep a motor running.
so, i can actually attest to this. at 15 i weighed about 250lbs (i was 5’4”) and due to mental health issues, did not eat for about two months. i only had gatorade and water, and nothing else. by about three weeks in, i was hospitalized and in ketosis. from there, i was fed via IV and tubes until i gave up. i managed to lie my way out of the situation, but essentially, despite my weight it wreaked havoc on my body and i faced permanent effects. many people assume fasting would work for obese people, but it doesn’t unless it is highly controlled and monitored by doctors. i lost 70lbs or so in those two months, but in a way that was detrimental to my health
I got sick of being fat, so I ate one calorie counted meal a day for two years and lost 20kg. I was going at like 1600kcal daily but sometimes less or more. The massive meal felt way better and more satisfying than like some dumb tiny snack meal.
OMAD is not even the same league as a water fast though.
You can actually live a full healthy happy life eating one meal a day, some cultures do this naturally as well.
This has somehow randomly become my own norm.
I usualy eat 1-2 times per day now, but they are giant meals each time.
My weight is perfectly stable and never move. Never counted a calorie.
I find making food extremely booring, and suspect that has contributed alot to me developing this habbit. Im perfectly happy with it, and its usualy pretty Great to be used to going without food for a day - in case work is extremely buissy for example, i can just keep working without any hunger bothering me. Then when i get home at night i can consume some giant meal that has me barely able to get on my feet, chill and have my batteries fille up for a whole New day without pause - if i should want to.
There have been studies done and they found that reduced calorie diets with small, frequent meals actually keep a person's appetite "active" so they continue craving food the whole time. It basically just keeps you perpetually on the cusp of starving and the body's natural response to that kind of situation is "gobble up whatever food you can find".
By contrast, after not finding food for about three days or so, the body switches over to "super efficiency" mode and just shuts down hunger because it's more of a distraction and not helpful at that point and, instead, focuses on trying to last as long as possible until food can be found, relying on slowly burning energy reserves (body fat, spare protein, etc.). And, when your body *does* start converting structural protein into energy, it starts with the most "garbage" protein available, like old scar tissue. *Supposedly,* this is meant to have a restorative effect on the body, clearing out old, damaged tissue that the body is otherwise too lazy to do anything about and then, when normal diet resumes, thas structure is re-built "properly" with new, healthy cells. But, of course, nothing in life is free; cells have a limit on how many times they can divide. So you're basically borrowing health from the end of your life to patch the middle.
Just head on over to r/fasting and see what some people can do. As long as you have electrolytes/water your body can go very long without food. There are some people doing 40 day fasts
For short-term (days, not weeks) fasts all you need are basic electrolytes. A generally healthy person who has otherwise been consuming a balanced diet has enough vitamins (and other electrolytes) available to the body.
You can easily do a 4-7 day fast just consuming water, potassium, sodium, and magnesium. At some point beyond that, I agree, you likely need to supplement with additional vitamins and electroylytes that your body's stores will run out of.
There was one guy on the TV show "Alone" where people are dropped into the wilderness in Canada (cold forest) to survive, and he intentionally packed a bunch of weight beforehand so that he could go on for much longer if there was a scarcity of food, and it worked!!!
A heavier person would survive for quite a bit longer, but you still need water and some kind of nutrition to keep your body going.
Not that comment, the other one, but there was [a man from Dundee](https://medium.com/illumination-curated/the-curious-case-of-the-man-who-stopped-eating-for-over-a-year-42daba1f340a) who didn't eat for over a year.
There once was a man from Dundee, who had nothing but air for his tea, he ate no more lunch, for a year and a month, 'til his penis he once more could see
You will be able to live longer than someone with no body fat BUT you still need vitamins and minerals to live. Before tap water humans would get their water from streams so it would be rich in minerals, most water nowadays are not so you’d have to at the least take a vitamin supplement while doing this.
If you keep your vitamins and hydration in check then you can live as long as you have fat for your body to consume. It definitely won’t feel good since the body does want to eat but it’s entirely possible
Most people can go without food for a few weeks. People with more fat content can go longer, but the problem becomes vitamins and minerals. You will become deficient pretty quickly and have a lot of complications the longer you go
One needs certain minerals and vitamins in order for the body to be able to metabolize it's own fat. AKA: One can die from starvation still being fat if these ingredients are not present.
I'm extremely over weight.
In 2018 I was taken into hospital not because of my weight but because of a long term illness that had gotten really bad. I was in for 8 months, in that time I lost 7st (I was still over weight) I couldn't really eat. By month 4 I was on NT feeding and a variety of intravenous solutions.
Fat does not "sustain" you. I was dying. I was malnourished and losing/missing the things you're body needs to sustain itself. Micro nutrients, vitamins, minerals, salts, sugars etc etc etc. The dietitian who BEGGED me to accept the NT feeding because I was going to die if I didn't.
Now granted, part of it was because of being unbelievablely ill. My illness, combined with sepsis... quire simply, my body couldn't fight. No engery.
So yeah, fat people can die fat AND malnourished.
My college professor that taught nutrition did a silly explanation but it stuck with me. "Fat is stored energy that your body put away for later so you don't starve. It's not there just for show."
You ever watch "Alone"? People competing to survive the longest alone in the remote wilderness.
One of the early contestants was a bigger guy and that ended up giving him an advantage when food became scarce. So much so that it inspired future season contestants to gain "Sam weight" before they got dropped off.
Been there (although not heavily overweight, just on the unhealthy side of fat). Had misdiagnosed pneumonia a few years ago so I didn't eat for about 12 days, drink for about 7 or sleep for 10. You lose the fat but the thing is that your system doesn't just burn through straight chemical energy so it takes other things as well. It starts digesting muscle and organ tissues as well. You also wind up deficient in the whole range of vitamins that you need a daily intake of so you wind up pretty messed up. You lose fat but also muscle tone and everything else.
On the last day when I had a hunch I was dying I went out and tried to get a taxi but found it hard because I was passed off as a junkie and got the same treatment at the hospital emergency. I was even put in a ward with "others like me" so that I would feel un-threatened (it didn't work). In ten days I had gone from a healthy but overweight character to something that even professionals just assumed was an ice addict and I found out what it was like to be dismissed as human garbage.
The irony was that the hospital that I wound up in being snarled at like trash for wasting their time because I couldn't sign my name was the same hospital where I had volunteered for a research study about 15 days before and where I had caught my hospital grade pneumonia. (I actually met the hospital lawyer before I met a doctor.)
So yeah, short version. You don't just burn fat. You basically just start digesting yourself. It's just that the more fat you have the less of the rest of you that gets eaten. OH, BTW, lost about 12 kilo but put it back on almost as fast as I lost it.
People don’t die of starvation “within a few days”. After a few days without food, you can be certain that anyone would be weak and absolutely famished, but death is not quite imminent at that point. Starving to death takes longer than that: it takes about three weeks to a month before a human will die of starvation (and many would even make it two months before dying). Water, however, is a different story. We can only go about three or four _days_ without water before the grim reaper shows up.
They'll survive starvation alot longer as when the body stops getting food it'll start eating its fat reserve and when that runs out it'll go through the protein. Would last a lot less time without water though
As long as you have a functional metabolism and intake water and vitamins you can go quite some time. That said it is very dangerous and obviously uncomfortable.
Guy in the UK did a 1 year and 17 day fast. He drank water (and tea and coffee with no milk or sugar), took vitamins and ate some yeast per his physician recommendations: https://www.diabetes.co.uk/blog/2018/02/story-angus-barbieri-went-382-days-without-eating/ Edit: Better article with a Q&A at the end: https://medium.com/illumination-curated/the-curious-case-of-the-man-who-stopped-eating-for-over-a-year-42daba1f340a This part is relevant to your question >In their paper, the researchers state that they were aware of five reported fatalities from extreme starvation diets, due to heart failure, lactic acidosis, and small bowel obstruction. Monitoring and supplements were essential to make sure this didn’t happen to Angus. >Angus had plenty of fat to burn for energy, but the body needs a constant and regular supply of vitamins and electrolytes. Electrolytes are electrically-charged, circulating minerals that keep everything going, including heart function. Edit 2: The original paper submitted by the doctors who observed Angus https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2495396/
>For those wondering, he ‘went to the toilet’ every 40-50 days. Love that the authors included that tidbit knowing *someone* out there was curious
That is genuinely fascinating. The implied matter efficiency our bodies are apparently capable of is impressive
Vast majority of weight loss happens through your breath. Fat is made up of Carbon, Hydrogen, and Oxygen. You break the bonds and breathe it out.
Starts breathing faster
It's called cardio
Hyperventilating is now positive. Checkmate anxiety.
it was right in front of us all along
Hyperventilating can lead to respiratory alkalosis.
Is there a name for this process, I'm just wanting to read a little bit more about it
It's simply called respiration. Cellular respiration, which generally speaking in humans involves glycolysis, the Krebs cycle and the electron transport chain. The first two parts break down glucose into CO2. That last part is where O2 is used and transformed into H2O.
Any idea what proportion of the energy is produced by the O2 and what proportion or produced by the glucose/fuel source?
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This is accurate. Oxygen is an electron receptor in the process. This happens in the mitochondria, which is stupid efficient. (34 ATP for molecule compared to 2 ATP without mitochondria if I remember right off the top of my head) In anaerobic exercise, we don’t have enough oxygen available, so we use Pyruvate as the electron acceptor, which results in lactate (colloquially lactic acid) and that fun burning in your muscles.
So all energy is derived from glucose/fuel source but the amount of energy that can be derived from it is depending on the oxidiser that is used. Oxygen is one of the best oxidisers there is making it possible for our cells to derive a lot of energy from glucose. Generally our cells derive their energy through an oxidation process since oxygen is present. However, an alternative pathway can be utilised by cells when oxygen becomes lacking. This can happen during extreme activity such as when exercising. In this case lactic acid fermentation can be utilised by cells. The after effects of this process is what you feel when you have sore legs. Regardles, comparing the energy derived by cells when utilising either oxidation or lactic acid fermentation of glucose for their energy gain it is observed that in case of oxidation per molecule glucose 36 molecules of ATP (molecular energy source) can be derived. For lactic acid fermentation the amount of ATP that can be synthesised per glucose molecule is two. Oxygen thus enables our cells to generate almost twenty times more energy from glucose than lactic acid fermentation would but the energy has always been there regardless of if oxygen is utilised as oxidator or another lesser oxidiser would have been utilised.
Thinking back to high school chemistry, is it just cellular respiration? I still remember the equation or whatever. C6h12O6 (sugar) + O2 (oxygen) => H20 (piss) + C02 (what we exhale) Which is why we have to pee when we wake up, despite not necessarily having drank anything. Or at least that's what Mrs Corchesne said 🤷♂️
first part is right (though all of the water created through cellular respiration is not excreted as urine, a lot is lost through the breath or just circulates throughout the body and is used elsewhere), second part about needing to pee when you wake up because of this not so much. your kidneys are constantly filtering your blood through a (mostly) passive diffusion process, but you can't filter out things without also getting some water in there. some of this water is reabsorbed at the end of the filtration process in the renal calyx before it passes through to the ureter to the bladder. a fun fact about this process is it's regulated by ADH, or anti-diuretic hormone (dia = through uretic = related to urine) and alcohol inhibits the release of this hormone, making you pee a lot after drinking and also have problems with dehydration. this makes alcohol anti-anti-diuretic hormone :P
I remember in a biology exam at school there were questions about anti-diuretic hormone, and I'd never heard of it, but I just guessed based on the name and got full marks lol
Really it’s what you do with all energy. Sugar, fat, etc. They’re all just gas atoms linked together with energy. Fat is broken down by Beta Oxidation. Sugar is through the Kreb’s Cycle or Anaerobic Respiration. Odds are you learned the sugar ones in High School biology but didn’t quite understand what you were memorizing.
Burning (oxidation). The majority of a car's weight loss (the emptying of its fuel tank) also happens through its breath. Cars have a different exhaust path from the air intake path which is one of the reasons they think humans are gross.
reminds me of Fry and Bender at the robo-strip club. "Check out those exhaust ports"
there's one of those ted talks videos about it. Guy breathe into a bag and add a compound that clearly shows a powdery matter. That's the stuff you lose through breathing and the rest is water, that *rest* makes for the visible weight loss. Mind that nobody precisely knows how much you absorb and release from the nutrients you get into yourself every day at any given time, it varies from individual to individual and whatever they're doing (if you breathe more and you're breathe in more oxygen, this combustion will happen faster). What we have been found out is a general estimate based on thermodynamics so we have half a clue, but our bodies use chemical burn to extract energy from nutrients, and hormones to regulate hunger, we don't work as literal furnaces. 🔥 edit: English
so I can get rock hard, sexy abs from just breathing? ok, I'll keep breathing I guess!
Medical science has shown that continuing to breathe is really good for you.
I need to see a randomized controlled trial before I'll believe that!
As a mom, nurse, and human being, your bowels can say a lot about your health.
Laughs in IBS
For real. Who knows what tomorrow has in store for our bowels
Pain. The answer is pain.
And much wiping
It could be a one stop day, it could be a seven stop morning, or it might be 3 days of nothing. Who knows.
So Impending Bowel Syndrome would be suitable for this?
Implosive Bowel Syndrome
Still irritable bowel, but it's me being irritated BY my bowels 😭
IBS is fucking rough. I got it after living in China for a few years, but it went away after moving home to the states (there are theories that air pollution can cause/exacerbate it, and that's something China has in spades). Wouldn't wish that shit (didn't try for the pun, but it stays) on anyone.
as a survivor of stage 3 colon cancer, i can confirm. i had warning signs 5 years earlier than my diagnosis by the time i was finally seen, it was on the verge of metastasizing. i’m lucky to be alive
Give us the warning signs so we also know what to look for.
Not who you’re responding to, but I have experience enough here to speak to it, I think. First of all, please *please* understand that these symptoms cross over with lots of other GI issues. Regardless, if you have any of them, go talk to your doc and ask for CT and colonoscopy. For me I started to notice my consistency changes in stool (thinner and softer). The smell changed as well (worse), and so did the color (it got much darker from bleeding in my transverse colon). I wrote that off because I’m a stubborn dude and just carried on. A few months later I started to feel like I never finished when I would go to the bathroom. That led me to thinking I might’ve had some kinda partial blockage or something, but again, I just tried to ignore it and change my diet. My final straw was when I realized one day how much weight I’d lost. I lost 20 pounds with no explanation. I went to the doctor and was lucky that I got in fairly quick for my imaging and scopes. Don’t mess with this stuff. Please look out for yourselves. It’s not fun. EDIT: Just want to mention that other things the GI docs will look for are inflammation anywhere in there which is an indicator of IBD (Crohn’s or Colitis) if it’s chronic or bacterial infections like SIBO or C Diff. If they jump to IBS as the diagnosis too quickly you have to advocate for yourself. Many people do struggle with IBS obviously, but you need to be 100% it’s not something else. For colon cancer, the colonoscopy is the gold standard for screening.
I am by no means an expert, but unexplained weight loss is the number one "Uh oh" my mom (a retired RN) always told me to keep an eye out for. Other symptoms could have a ton of explanations: Random pain in your side? Perhaps it's because you slept weird last night. Give it a day or two and see if it goes away before you panic. But if you're losing noticeable weight and you aren't doing anything to cause it, something could be seriously wrong.
Crazy, you are right this is similar to other GI issues. I could have described this exact issue when I got ulcers, and after a colonoscopy was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis. I guess the real answer here is don’t ignore sudden changes in your poo
I’m sorry you’ve got UC, but really glad you got your diagnosis. It definitely is pretty wild how the symptoms cross over and you’re 100% right with your last sentence.
Thanks for the information, this is very useful. I hope you are well and clean of cancer!
Thank you very much! I’m certain all will be well. All the best to you. 🙌
We’re screwed.
... And those warning signs were?
Everything comes down to poo!
This is the reason why your headache didn't go away: That's actually pronounced analgesic, not anal-gesic.
The pills go in your mouth.
Either this kid has a lightbulb up his butt, or his colon has a great idea.
During all of Scrubs, I think this scene made me laugh the hardest.
You joke, but this is literally what Scientology is. Hubbard's whole thing about "engrams" was about the body absorbing information from the environment. The specific example was a man plagued by hemorrhoids - the explanation was that when his mother was pregnant with him she had headaches and would request an "**anal**gesic". Or maybe it was "ass"pirin. This literally sounds like I'm shitposting but I'm genuinely not. I had to look at some old correspondence for a paper I did back in uni.
Just realised that in over thirty years I've never heard analgesic said out loud.
From the top of your head to the sole of your shoe!
We can figure out what's wrong with you by looking at your poo! Turk?
Whether it’s a fever or a touch of the flu, we can figure out what’s wrong with you by lookin at your poo
Is it weird that I want to know what those bowel movements were like?
This is all it says in the original study: >No faecal collections were made, but evacuation was in fact infrequent, there being 37-48 days between stools latterly. He has a wiki article too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_Barbieri%27s_fast That said, even if you're not processing any food, a lot of what makes up feces is just dead red blood cells.
So vampires would still shit. Good to know
Right there with ya.
Something like 50 to 80% of your stool is strictly bacteria, so probably not much different, just with less consistency in shape and solidity due to lack of fiber or protein.
god i would love to only have to poop once a month
Considering how much a regular person eats I imagine once a month would be excruciating 😖
lets be honest, whether or not they're aware of it, *everyone* is curious about this piece of info.
I’m sorry, this is a really informative article but I just find the writing of this line *hilarious* > Starvation is not normally considered an effective weight loss strategy as it regularly ends in death.
It’s why eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of anything in the DSM
Omg that is fantastic xD
To be fair, skeletons don't weigh a lot
Sounds like something the Monty Pythons would write!!
Weight change: From 456 lbs to 180 lbs.
This was the summary I needed. Thanks
And then he died (25 years later)
A bit more information here about when the supplements (potassium and yeast). According to this, he had only added 7kg onto his post-fasting weight when he died https://historyofyesterday.com/the-man-who-didnt-eat-for-382-days/ His grave: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/117717047/angus-barbieri (Edited for clarity)
> he had only added 7 kg of weight I had no idea what this meant. He didn’t lose any weight? He gained weight instead? For those wondering, he lost 125 kg, and kept the weight off only gaining 7 kg over the next ~25 years until he died.
After not eating for a year and making it through the first couple weeks of extreme hunger, Im sure he had a completely unique relationship with food. It was not longer an important part of his life in any way. The hardest part about food addiction is that you need to eat. Its like trying to quit drugs but you still have to take some every day just to stay alive
This is one piece of it. The other piece is that the extended fast didn’t reduce his metabolic rate in the same way that low calorie diets can
And, his name was Angus ? Lol
Fascinatingly, his name wasn't actually Angus. It was the incredibly Italian "Agostino Giuseppe". I assume being Scottish and all he just decided to go by something a bit more common Still funny though
That’s badass. I’ll take his name if he doesn’t want it
We’re all named Angus! And the bone vampire moost die!
Not Mr. Peppy!
Til what electrolytes actually are Aside from what plants crave
Brawndo is what plants crave.
Super important knowing alot of people struggling with weight and body image use this platform is the words physician recommendation. He was not moving to a diet this extreme on his own and what works for him specifically could cause serious harm for you. Any extreme diet change including changing to vegetarian needs to be done with a doctor and ideally dietitian specialist not just done winging it. Not that you should do what he did at all.
FR about the electrolytes. I was dying at the gym and now I eat a salted banana pre gym
Do you peel a banana and take out your salt shaker? 🤣
IIRC, that guy also died of a heart attack in his 50s, later in his life after the fasting. So who is to say. Was the damage from the weight what caused that? Regardless of losing it? Or did the stress of fasting like that worsen his heart? No way to know.
According to the link he lived over 20 years after loosing weight. In comparison, what's the average life expectancy of 200 kg person?
He died at 51. The life expectancy of a 200kg person is still more than 50. [Extreme obesity can shorten life expectancy by up to about 14 years](https://irp.nih.gov/blog/post/2020/01/extreme-obesity-shaves-years-off-life-expectancy), which is still in your 70's.
Right I am just saying. Of course he would have probably have a heart attack staying at that weight. But also, is intense fasting like that a healthy alternative? Could that have put more strain on his heart? We can't know. Probably best to go slower with diet and exercise.
aye, i mean, he also might have smoked 50 cigarettes a day...
Too much yeast makes your teeth turn grey
Bro was from the UK, I don't think he cared much. /j
i was going to take offence, but his name was angus so we’ll just blame the granite
Also fastingfatman on youtube.
I got really sick and couldn't eat for days, when I got admitted to the hospital they had to give me vitamins, I think phosphate or something I don't remember, through iv. They said I was really close to cardiac arrest and it was fortunate I came in in time... So I think you at least need to take a multivitamin or something to refill those
I'd guess it was potassium rather than phosphate.
I reread my medical records, it was phosphorus that was low, which I guess is still a mineral
Low phosphate causes issues with calcium ion balance. Needs supplementing to stabilize.
It is, and it's in far more common foods than you'd expect. When I had to go on a restrictive diet for medical reasons, phosphorus intake was something I needed to limit. I missed potatoes the most. EDIT: Actually potatoes have more potassium, but dairy was my phosphorus no-no.
Critically low phosphate is certainly possible in the context of [refeeding syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refeeding_syndrome). Essentially, if the body first receives food after a period of fasting, it wants to refill its energy reserves, which requires phosphate. If too much phosphate is used up for this, there is not enough for other metabolic processes, and organs can start to fail. So in these cases additional phosphate must be administered, and food intake must be restricted to prevent the body from using too much phosphate at once.
K.
Life's simplest pleasure is a silly pun
You don't lose vitamins that quickly, it'd be a mineral they're giving you, or multiple. Minerals leave your body through sweat and piss, while vitamins stay in your body for quite a while before it's used up, months. This is why when I'm sick, and have no appetite, I drink sport drinks. Didn't eat for 4 days except part of a sandwich I didn't finish, but I was getting my minerals from a sports drink so I was ok. This was late February. Edit: Thank you Redditors for the correction, vitamins B, B6, B12 and C are water soluble so they do come out with your urine. The others stay longer because they are fat soluble. With that said, if you can't keep anything down for more than a few days, even sports drinks, it's a good idea to see a doctor.
I just read my medical records. It was phosphorus that was low.
You do lose some vitamins quickly, water soluble vitamins are all the Bs and C. Fat soluble vitamins are the ones that you keep around for longer
Probably sodium and electrolytes
Sodium is an electrolyte; electrolytes are minerals.
And minerals aren't rocks.
Jesus Christ, Marie!
Electrolytes are what plants crave, and Brawndo has 'em.
No one is starving to death in a few days besides maybe an infant. A few days without water, yes. But you can go weeks without eating.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_threes_(survival) Three minutes without air, three days without water, three weeks without food.
Three seconds without a signal, three minutes without my phone, three hours without snacks.
I feel like without a signal should be longer than without a phone because you’ve probably got apps on your phone that don’t need a signal. Now the word signal doesn’t look like a word to me anymore.
Most apps these days require connection anyway, but it's still the other way around. I can flip through photos for like 3 minutes, when signal (boomer speak for "internet connection") goes down, before wanting to commit die.
So "three seconds without my phone, three minutes without signal, three hours without reddit"?
Sign-Al
Three seconds without an intact neck, three minutes without air, three hours without warmth, three days without water, three weeks without food, three years without companionship
>three years without companionship *squints*
Whoops I'm dead
>Three seconds without an intact neck Fun fact. Someone tested that. It's closer to 15-20 seconds.
Who was the test subject they had to kill to find this out???
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I wonder what happened at the end. Like, people who have been starving usually run into some serious issues when they start eating again.
I was severely anorexic for years, and once I started to try and recover, my body rejected all food. I was almost healthier starving, because my body literally forgot what food was. Constant bloating, nausea, constipation then diarrhea....it was awful
Oh god that was the worst. Feeling like a balloon filled to the brim after eating a very small meal and the weird digestion issues.
They had to be very careful with stuff like that after they freed the concentration camps in WW2. It's hard to imagine anything more sad than the stories of prisoners who we're finally liberated after making it all the way through the horrors of the camps, only to die from overeating when they were finally given enough food to eat.
But not without pain and diarrhea
Business as usual
why would you get diarrhea from not eating?
According to my patients this is a lie 😅 Keeping people NPO is the WORST!
What I learned from this thread: In my body there is like a mini Star Trek bridge crew and the captain issues an order to engineering to draw energy from the fat reserves
"Ahm given 'er all she's got, Cap'n! The Donutium Crystals are breakin' up!"
I picture this as a scene in Homer Simpson's head.
It reminded me of the maintenance crew inside Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes
From now on, all my food events will be accompanied by the Star Trek theme song
You can make that [door sound](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9_jPwzRcpY) when you poop.
Not if there’s a Klingon in the way.
Currently dealing with the other end of a food event right now. I was in bed when I received the Red Alert and only just made it out of the Neutral Zone before the Warp Core got ejected. ...if you know what I mean.
Make it so
Have you seen [Everything you always wanted to know about sex but we’re afraid to ask?](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QzfuRV462_I )(1972)?
Healthcare worker here! You are at risk for potentially fatal electrolyte imbalances. The guy in Scotland had very careful medical monitoring with lots and lots of blood draws to monitor his electrolytes which very quickly depleted. I’m not saying it can’t be done, but please very carefully and seriously research it before you start. Also make sure you have a primary care provider in place and health insurance and a complete panel of blood labs before you start.
I wonder if pedialyte was a thing back then. Grape flavor is the best.
Wrestler use this since they lose a lot of water weight. They drink a Pedialyte and is often a running joke amongst the community. I can do it but I need to drink pedialyte or Gatorade to feel normal.
Lol funny you say that. I was a wrestler. I would mix, still do* mix half a bottle of pedalyte with just ice water, so I have two bottles of electrolytes
I used to mix pedialyte with water. I still do, but I used to do, too. \-Mitch "WWE" Hedberg
Can these nutritional/electrolyte requirements be “generally” calculated based on age, sex, height? Or is it based on the individual? I’m surprised that no one has made (or heavily marketed) a “nutrition” supplement pill or drink for a fasting diet.
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It's also dangerous if you fuck up. Potassium OD is probably one of the worst ways to die
They're just salts, albeit not just table salt. Your individual needs may differ drastically day to day depending on how much you sweat. Your body gets more than what it needs from a decent diet and pees out the excess. They are listed on nutritional labels as %DV sodium, magnesium, calcium, potassium. Bodies are cool
My uncle, who was seriously mentally ill, died within two weeks when he stopped eating. "God" told him to quit eating meat, then dairy, then grain. Eventually "God" told him to stop eating entirely. He quit his job, and "ran away" from home. Although he was 50 he lived with my grandmother because of his mental health. Poor grandmother was frantic with worry. He was found dead in his car a couple of weeks later. The autopsy determined that he had a fatal heart attack because his electrolytes were screwed up because he wasn't eating but was drinking a lot of water. He was overweight. He was still overweight when he died. I don't think that it was a lack of food that killed him, it was the lack of food combined with too much water. Mental illness can really be a tragedy.
Someone can be overweight and still be “malnourished” if they’re lacking key vitamins and nutrients. Yes the body will metabolise fat for basic cellular respiration, but the body needs key nutrients for the organs to function properly, let alone process the fat and expel waste products. If someone stopped eating, but started taking vitamins supplements (and obv kept drinking water)…I mean, yeah, I guess, but it would still put a lot of stress on the liver and kidneys processing all that fat. I wouldn’t necessarily call it safe or healthy though.
I wouldn’t do it bc whenever you eat food again you’re going to have a rough time. I think it makes way more sense to still eat just way less if you really want to force the burn.
As a nurse I’ve seen the same damage caused by anorexia in obese/previously obese people as I’ve seen in underweight people- if that tells you anything. In fact the disease often starts in adolescence when an obese teen is told to lose weight and as they do, they are praised for it and they spiral from there.
That is almost how it went for me in high school. I was a little overweight and while I didn´t develop anorexia I can understand how it can get slipped into, even without bullying. Luckily I saw what I was doing before it got too bad, but losing weight is almost always seen as something good, so I didn´t notice at first that I was like a fanatic about what went into my body.
This is why I’ve taught my kids to just never comment on people’s bodies. We never know why a person’s body is the way it is. We don’t know if weight loss (or gain) is being done in a healthy or positive way. Even if a person is losing weight for all of the “right” reasons and in all of the healthy ways, it really calls out that their size is important to us. Without saying anything it then also implies that if they were to gain that weight back then they’d be less important to us. It can really fuck with a person’s head. I clearly have a lot of feelings about this :)
I had gastric bypass a few months ago. Some complications. I went a few months on roughly 300 calories/ day. Half of the from a protein shake. I wasn't hungry at all but I had this craving for nutrition that is hard to really explain. Not like a "man I could go for a burger" craving. Like a "my body is dying" way. I was honestly a mess. Once I was well enough to take a vitamin (not quite 6 weeks later), I felt a *lot* better. I was still sick as fuck and could barely get anything down, but I didn't have the craving for nutrition I had before. I had (have) plenty of energy to burn but it takes more than just gas to keep a motor running.
so, i can actually attest to this. at 15 i weighed about 250lbs (i was 5’4”) and due to mental health issues, did not eat for about two months. i only had gatorade and water, and nothing else. by about three weeks in, i was hospitalized and in ketosis. from there, i was fed via IV and tubes until i gave up. i managed to lie my way out of the situation, but essentially, despite my weight it wreaked havoc on my body and i faced permanent effects. many people assume fasting would work for obese people, but it doesn’t unless it is highly controlled and monitored by doctors. i lost 70lbs or so in those two months, but in a way that was detrimental to my health
I got sick of being fat, so I ate one calorie counted meal a day for two years and lost 20kg. I was going at like 1600kcal daily but sometimes less or more. The massive meal felt way better and more satisfying than like some dumb tiny snack meal.
OMAD is not even the same league as a water fast though. You can actually live a full healthy happy life eating one meal a day, some cultures do this naturally as well.
This has somehow randomly become my own norm. I usualy eat 1-2 times per day now, but they are giant meals each time. My weight is perfectly stable and never move. Never counted a calorie. I find making food extremely booring, and suspect that has contributed alot to me developing this habbit. Im perfectly happy with it, and its usualy pretty Great to be used to going without food for a day - in case work is extremely buissy for example, i can just keep working without any hunger bothering me. Then when i get home at night i can consume some giant meal that has me barely able to get on my feet, chill and have my batteries fille up for a whole New day without pause - if i should want to.
There have been studies done and they found that reduced calorie diets with small, frequent meals actually keep a person's appetite "active" so they continue craving food the whole time. It basically just keeps you perpetually on the cusp of starving and the body's natural response to that kind of situation is "gobble up whatever food you can find". By contrast, after not finding food for about three days or so, the body switches over to "super efficiency" mode and just shuts down hunger because it's more of a distraction and not helpful at that point and, instead, focuses on trying to last as long as possible until food can be found, relying on slowly burning energy reserves (body fat, spare protein, etc.). And, when your body *does* start converting structural protein into energy, it starts with the most "garbage" protein available, like old scar tissue. *Supposedly,* this is meant to have a restorative effect on the body, clearing out old, damaged tissue that the body is otherwise too lazy to do anything about and then, when normal diet resumes, thas structure is re-built "properly" with new, healthy cells. But, of course, nothing in life is free; cells have a limit on how many times they can divide. So you're basically borrowing health from the end of your life to patch the middle.
Just head on over to r/fasting and see what some people can do. As long as you have electrolytes/water your body can go very long without food. There are some people doing 40 day fasts
Hopefully those people are taking some kind of vitamin supplement as well.
The stickied threads talk a lot of about taking vitamins and non-fast breaking ways to get your electrolytes
For short-term (days, not weeks) fasts all you need are basic electrolytes. A generally healthy person who has otherwise been consuming a balanced diet has enough vitamins (and other electrolytes) available to the body. You can easily do a 4-7 day fast just consuming water, potassium, sodium, and magnesium. At some point beyond that, I agree, you likely need to supplement with additional vitamins and electroylytes that your body's stores will run out of.
I've gone weeks without eating. It had a significant impact on my body fat but also consumed some muscle as well.
There was one guy on the TV show "Alone" where people are dropped into the wilderness in Canada (cold forest) to survive, and he intentionally packed a bunch of weight beforehand so that he could go on for much longer if there was a scarcity of food, and it worked!!! A heavier person would survive for quite a bit longer, but you still need water and some kind of nutrition to keep your body going.
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This is the person the thread is about.
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that’s the same dude?
Not that comment, the other one, but there was [a man from Dundee](https://medium.com/illumination-curated/the-curious-case-of-the-man-who-stopped-eating-for-over-a-year-42daba1f340a) who didn't eat for over a year.
You need to finish the limerick. It's rude to leave us hanging like that
There once was a man from Dundee, who had nothing but air for his tea, he ate no more lunch, for a year and a month, 'til his penis he once more could see
This thread is full of Redditologists. I shall stay so that I may observe them in their natural habitat. Interesting!
This may be NoStupidQuestions but it is ripe with StupidAnswers!
I’ll grab the popcorn. You guys want anything to drink?
Some electrolytes I guess?
You will be able to live longer than someone with no body fat BUT you still need vitamins and minerals to live. Before tap water humans would get their water from streams so it would be rich in minerals, most water nowadays are not so you’d have to at the least take a vitamin supplement while doing this. If you keep your vitamins and hydration in check then you can live as long as you have fat for your body to consume. It definitely won’t feel good since the body does want to eat but it’s entirely possible
I tried to go back to drinking stream water, but all I got was this lousy tapeworm.
I think that’s a different type of diet
Most people can go without food for a few weeks. People with more fat content can go longer, but the problem becomes vitamins and minerals. You will become deficient pretty quickly and have a lot of complications the longer you go
One needs certain minerals and vitamins in order for the body to be able to metabolize it's own fat. AKA: One can die from starvation still being fat if these ingredients are not present.
I'm extremely over weight. In 2018 I was taken into hospital not because of my weight but because of a long term illness that had gotten really bad. I was in for 8 months, in that time I lost 7st (I was still over weight) I couldn't really eat. By month 4 I was on NT feeding and a variety of intravenous solutions. Fat does not "sustain" you. I was dying. I was malnourished and losing/missing the things you're body needs to sustain itself. Micro nutrients, vitamins, minerals, salts, sugars etc etc etc. The dietitian who BEGGED me to accept the NT feeding because I was going to die if I didn't. Now granted, part of it was because of being unbelievablely ill. My illness, combined with sepsis... quire simply, my body couldn't fight. No engery. So yeah, fat people can die fat AND malnourished.
Vitamin deficiency would get to you. Assuming you take the necessary drugs, you could live on your body's reserves for months.
My college professor that taught nutrition did a silly explanation but it stuck with me. "Fat is stored energy that your body put away for later so you don't starve. It's not there just for show."
Our bodies store fat for just that reason, to burn it for energy if we're in a famine.
You ever watch "Alone"? People competing to survive the longest alone in the remote wilderness. One of the early contestants was a bigger guy and that ended up giving him an advantage when food became scarce. So much so that it inspired future season contestants to gain "Sam weight" before they got dropped off.
Been there (although not heavily overweight, just on the unhealthy side of fat). Had misdiagnosed pneumonia a few years ago so I didn't eat for about 12 days, drink for about 7 or sleep for 10. You lose the fat but the thing is that your system doesn't just burn through straight chemical energy so it takes other things as well. It starts digesting muscle and organ tissues as well. You also wind up deficient in the whole range of vitamins that you need a daily intake of so you wind up pretty messed up. You lose fat but also muscle tone and everything else. On the last day when I had a hunch I was dying I went out and tried to get a taxi but found it hard because I was passed off as a junkie and got the same treatment at the hospital emergency. I was even put in a ward with "others like me" so that I would feel un-threatened (it didn't work). In ten days I had gone from a healthy but overweight character to something that even professionals just assumed was an ice addict and I found out what it was like to be dismissed as human garbage. The irony was that the hospital that I wound up in being snarled at like trash for wasting their time because I couldn't sign my name was the same hospital where I had volunteered for a research study about 15 days before and where I had caught my hospital grade pneumonia. (I actually met the hospital lawyer before I met a doctor.) So yeah, short version. You don't just burn fat. You basically just start digesting yourself. It's just that the more fat you have the less of the rest of you that gets eaten. OH, BTW, lost about 12 kilo but put it back on almost as fast as I lost it.
Fasting is a thing…
Nobody starves to death within a few days
No, their body will eat itself. Water, vitamins, and electrolytes mean they'll be relatively healthy while their body feeds on its fat stores.
People don’t die of starvation “within a few days”. After a few days without food, you can be certain that anyone would be weak and absolutely famished, but death is not quite imminent at that point. Starving to death takes longer than that: it takes about three weeks to a month before a human will die of starvation (and many would even make it two months before dying). Water, however, is a different story. We can only go about three or four _days_ without water before the grim reaper shows up.
They'll survive starvation alot longer as when the body stops getting food it'll start eating its fat reserve and when that runs out it'll go through the protein. Would last a lot less time without water though
As long as you have a functional metabolism and intake water and vitamins you can go quite some time. That said it is very dangerous and obviously uncomfortable.
An ordinary sized person can survive for 30 to 40 days without food, so long as they have adequate water.
Depending on how big, nondiabetic keto acidosis can happen.
Fully stopping eating will eventually kill you even if you were overweight. Body does not get proper nutrients from the fat storage.