31–40 of 101 posts
Thanks for this article - I've often wondered how long one could live by fasting if they were quite overweight, and this helped answer it. I feel like a 2 year old asking this, but, "He defaecated infrequently, roughly every 40 to 50 days." How does that work if he wasn't eating any food?
Does this happen to anyone else?
Harpers Magazine published a much better written article that discusses this same Scotsman along with an American who achieved some slight fame for his fasting around the beginning of the 20th century. In addition, the author writes about his own fairly significant fasts. http://www.scribd.com/doc/95722979/Starving-Your-Way-to-Vigo... After reading that article and doing a little bit of further research online, I tri…
I fasted entirely for lent one year (40 days) and after the first week, the hardest part was indeed that I was missing the social aspect of eating meals with friends and family. I took vitamins, and drank more water than I normally would but was quite happy. I should also mention that I stopped running so hard during this period and took a multivitamin each day. I've fasted for shorter durations and it's amazing how…
I wonder if this has an under-explored psycho-therapeutic value, actually. When you can't mentally ruminate at all anxieties definitely dissipate. I'd recommend fasting as a way to clear one's head for sure. You can't get any work done, though. You really need a week off alone.
Something is suspicious here. He lost 125kg of which roughly a third might be fat and two thirds water. A gram of fat burns into 9 kcal. He fasted 382 days. This means that he burned about 980 kcal per day which sounds very low even for someone that is not doing any exercise
It's not unusual for people on low calorie diets to see a 30-40% drop in their basal metabolic rates. And those are diet where the person is getting some food.
I agree that 980 kcal/day is pretty low, especially for someone of his size, but it's not completely out of the question.
I fasted entirely for lent one year (40 days) and after the first week, the hardest part was indeed that I was missing the social aspect of eating meals with friends and family. I took vitamins, and drank more water than I normally would but was quite happy. I should also mention that I stopped running so hard during this period and took a multivitamin each day. I've fasted for shorter durations and it's amazing how…
The hardest part was social?! Really?! I've done a couple five day fasts and the hardest part is that after day three you have an effective IQ of 65. Your body shuts your brain down and you can't think clearly. I wonder if this has an under-explored psycho-therapeutic value, actually. When you can't mentally ruminate at all anxieties definitely dissipate. I'd recommend fasting as a way to clear one's head for sure. Y…
What really stuck out for me was just how much time I was spending each day either planning meals or eating them. Easily four hours a day, including cooking, cleaning, eating, and planning meals with friends.
The social part was not so big a deal for me, but only because there were four of us in our fraternity trying it all together. Plus, well, living in a fraternity and being in college. I didn't need the excuse of a meal to hang out with people.
This is why fasting is out of the question unless you have constant medical supervision. You need a prescription to get potassium supplements that actually meet the daily requirement.
Starving people die from lack of protein, not low body fat. Not having read all the details, I I don't buy the story that the guy didn't eat for a year. You can't survive without eating protein for an extended period. You die of starvation when your body runs out of amino acids to renew cardiac tissue. Calories and stored fat have little to do with it. A fat person will die of starvation before a muscular person.
>Starving people die from lack of protein, not low body fat. [...] Calories and stored fat have little to do with it. A fat person will die of starvation before a muscular person. Don't be ridiculous. If you use up your glycogen reserves, and then your fat reserves, you are dead. You need energy to live, and it has to come from somewhere. You can die of protein deficiency, but it's definitely not the sole cause of de…
I fasted entirely for lent one year (40 days) and after the first week, the hardest part was indeed that I was missing the social aspect of eating meals with friends and family. I took vitamins, and drank more water than I normally would but was quite happy. I should also mention that I stopped running so hard during this period and took a multivitamin each day. I've fasted for shorter durations and it's amazing how…
Does the feeling of hunger go away by itself or you repress it somehow?
The first is what I think people in modern society call hunger, because it's the only kind they've experienced. It's a craving for food, or even just a sensation of not being full. We call "not full" "hungry" when they aren't really necessarily the same.
The second kind comes after you've fasted for quite a while. It's difficult to describe if you haven't felt it, but it's sort of like... tightness maybe as if your body is buzzing or something.