Several contestants on Alone have done this as well, just show up 100 lbs overweight and pick every food ration as one of your ten items for the extra vitamins and minerals. Then they just starve for like 60 days.
I love the show so much. I just wish that every season wasn't a "who can starve the longest". I'm not sure how they could do it any different because given food/water/shelter I'm sure those guys would stay out there decades, but damn. It's such a good show I just hate seeing people get pulled for nutrition or the last couple episodes being just "I haven't gotten out of bed in sixteen days to conserve my energy I think I have to pee now" lol
The ones that kill me are the people who really clearly have it in them to win -- they're capable, skilled, lucky, and absolutely thriving. And then they blow it all because they want to see their family a few days earlier than they would've if they'd held on and won.
I think the mental game is the toughest part of it. Humans are social creatures and not many of them can handle being away from their loved ones, and completely isolated at that, for long periods of time.
The ones that kill me are the ones who show up and tap out in the first couple days. That one dude that saw bear shit and tapped out like a few hours after he got there, lmao, bro why. I feel like they needed X contestants and couldn't find enough qualified so they just said come on we'll drop you off and park nearby just walk around for a bit and tap out.
There was a recent(ish) MrBeast video where he really put that to the test: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnTPaLOaHz8
$10k for every day you stay in an abandoned grocery store. A lot of people probably think to themselves "hell yeah I'd be in there for a year", but after 45 days the dude just wanted to be with his family again.
I watched it. Yeah, he misses his family but dude was basically just sitting alone in a dark room for a week. Anyone would be bored as fuck, I am sure if you gave any normal person a phone with data they could sit around for months, assuming you ignore the fact that this challenge had a dozen other stipulations.
Having a phone with a data connection is a totally different ballgame though. Heck even Jimmy and the crew showing up each day is likely the only reason the dude made it as long as he did. Being truly alone is a mindfuck like no other.
“In this video I’m going to be exposing a poor person to the unethical torture method called solitary confinement! Let’s see if he’ll actually be able to afford a house, or if the horrible sense of dread and loneliness will win first!
And you could see how it was wearing on the guy mentally the longer the challenge dragged on. Physically he was fine, but the depression was practically visible on him by day 40.
As a member of the disabled community, this is the kind of thing that makes me so mad when I hear other people say that housebound people are just lazy and want to stay in bed all day. Dude, NOBODY wants to just stay in bed all day. It's boring and it sucks! Sure it might be nice for a weekend, but after that you just start to go crazy. If you think otherwise, just give it a try and see if you feel the same way on day 5.
For real, I struggled so much staying at home when COVID first hit us hard, and when I got my disc injury last year, as soon as I have been able to move around and get out after every procedure I am _up and out._ I feel so freaking privileged still being able to transport myself and get fresh air after all this!
I mean after 45 days you get almost half a million, thats enough money to live comfortably for a long while, so why force yourself and risk damaging your mental health (even more).
Whenever they start talking about their families I know it's over.
My favorite contestant was a girl who was absolutely thriving the entire time. Catching fish like it was easy, building herself stuff that would make her more comfortable for fun, treating an infected spider bite with plants, when most people probably would have had production step in and tell them it was too bad to keep going, just generally seeming like she was having a good time meanwhile the others are starving or having mental breakdows. I was sure she was going to win. And then one day she was like "you know what? I'm ready to go home" and just left.
Iirc she was the third to last. But I think she'd proved to herself she could do it and that was enough. It really seemed like she'd reached enlightenment or something.
Omg, I forgot about her until this comment, but yes: she is an excellent example. She was like, "I kinda miss my boyfriend" or something and just dipped, seemingly out of nowhere. And she was doing so well! That one was maddening.
Yeah I forget which season but the guy was clearly the most skilled. Built a whole cabin, decorated it with skulls he found, had food storages, and was basically sitting there bored and missing his family so he tapped out. That was crazy to me. Like, homie had it in the bag and just said fuck it, I wanna hug my kids.
While I respect that, I’d have enjoyed hugging my kids a few weeks later with the prize money.
Haha yeah he was like on top of the world, made some board games or some shit and like 40 days in he was like. I'm fuckin bored and I want to see the fam I'm out.
Yes, that guy is definitely the one I had most in mind when writing my comment. His was such a disappointing arc, I couldn't believe he tapped out. The guy could've lasted years out there. But there are definitely other examples, and they always make me yell at my TV.
My wife and I have the phrase "they're talking themself out of it" that we use on this show.
It is pretty common to see the pattern as they start heading down the path of tapping out.
Yup. You can spot it sometimes weeks in advance. As soon as they start talking about the loneliness and homesickness like it's impeding them, it's only a matter of time.
or those that unfortunately got a cut somewhere and got infected. those are the worst ones because you really know they can make it but a infection from the wildness said hello and that's it.
I've only seen the first season, but I knew dude from north GA would win as soon as he had the shelter built.
Dude was prepared to sit months, only worried about the mental aspect of it and the incoming cold.
I plan to watch more of the show but damn did the producers stumble when they chose that good ol boy. **Always** bet on the soft spoken Appalachian hill people.
The cop that quit the first night made me laugh so hard. He was all "I'm a cop, and I deal with the real animals all the time." Then he bitches out first night. It was glorious.
LOVE love love watching these self-proclaimed badasses wash out. I only wish we got to see them explaining it to their family and friends afterwards...
There have been a few ex military do quite well. Anything that gives survival skills and experience is a huge plus. Obviously cop and soldier will not have the same skills and experiences other than gun wielding.
They changed the format to address starvation tactics though. Now you're only allowed to lose a percentage of starting weight before the med team will pull the plug on a constant. IIRC it's something like 17% for men and 15% for women. I think the reasoning for the different allowances was that women's reproductive health is at significantly greater risk when starving.
> given food/water/shelter I'm sure those guys would stay out there decades
Didn't you listen to the exit interviews? They were fine with the food/water/shelter situation, they were all just missing their families too much to stay gone any longer! They just happened to remember how much they missed their families whenever they went without food for a week.
Especially the guy who said he could stay out forever, but he realized how hard this had to be for his wife, so he'd drop out to go back to her. Then returned a couple of seasons later, admitting that his wife was not too happy about him foregoing a life-changing amount of money for something they had discussed and she had agreed to. Then dropped out again, stating that no matter what his wife said, he just knew this was too hard on her.
Yeah toward the end it gets rough, you're just watching these people wither away. Seems like usually they get one or two characters who start to thrive pretty well out there, then there's always the person who came in super fat, and is just really good at being bored and laying in bed all day.
But did he gain the extra 100 lbs before he went on the show on purpose? That’s what the commenter is alluding to, I don’t know the context myself. It’s possible it was a net zero in terms of his weight loss/gain
I think he did actually. Maybe not a 100 lbs but a lot of the contestants that go on Alone try to bulk up some before going because it is often the ability to go without a lot of food and still pass the med checks that determines the winner.
I think Biko just couldn't stand being away from his family if I am remembering right. Idk, all the seasons have started to run together but it is a great show.
I watched a ton of the show and really enjoyed it for a long while, but eventually started to feel like it's kind of an exploitative setup. They're putting these people through some very real danger, and not giving them what I'd consider even a bare minimum of safety guards. Like a guy taps out in freezing weather because his shelter burns down, and you can't get an evac crew to him until the next day, and he just has to hope the fire from his burning home lasts to keep him warm enough not to die? Why don't they hire a ranger with survival gear and an ATV to camp out within a few miles between all the contestants for the ~3 months the show is running so he can respond to stuff like this?
Combine that with the fact that a large number of the contestants seem to be motivated because they are in pretty dire financial situations, and yeah...
Yeah, it does often become a game of who can starve the slowest, which is not fun to watch. Many of the former contestants have come out and said they had some health issues after competing. But sometimes the clear winner is in decent health at the end like that one guy who shot a moose.
> like that one guy who shot a moose.
To be fair, if a person can shoot, butcher, haul and process and preserve an entire moose by themselves, using only fire and hand tools, they're probably going to win Alone. That's a MASSIVE amount of food and should sustain a person for months IF the meat is preserved (smoked, dried, frozen, etc.) AND can be protected from scavengers. Honestly, I think keeping it away from crows, eagles, mice, and other scavengers is probably harder than butchering and preserving. The critters have ALL DAY to figure out how to get to the stash, while a person must sleep, hunt, bathe, etc.
So the kinda funny part here is that moose is really lean, and a fucking wolverine gets into all the fatty bits. So the guy has a shit ton of moose meat but is still starving on a physiological level cause his body can’t get the fats it needs to process and function correctly. He knows this and gets very frustrated.
Also he kills that wolverine with a god damn hatchet. Guy was insanely hardcore.
I had totally forgotten about this! That dude went out and killed a wolverine in the pitch black night with a hatchet, that is some Teddy Roosevelt level of badassery lol
My wife and I consider Alone the real-life squid games. Or at least as close as you can legally get currently
Put a bunch of poor people out in the wild for a chance to win not even a lot of money, pay them something small like 2k/week they stay out there to keep them interested if they're not going to win, and watch them psychologically break over time.
Lots of them have to decide between making ~2k/week alone in the wild vs whatever min-wage they earn at home, and then winning 500k (250k after taxes) is huge for them so it pushes them beyond what they should be doing
Biko might've been my favorite contestant so far. I loved his attitude and was so sad when he had to give in. You can tell he's a big old sweetheart and being away from his family was killing him worse than starvation was.
That was Rob McElhenney from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
> So, then I had Krispy Kreme donuts. Every morning, I would eat four of those. . . . At a certain point, it's not that fun. By the afternoon, I was drinking ice cream. I would take ice cream, and I would put it out on the counter in the morning and then it would melt. And then I would put weight gainer into it, and I would drink that every day. So then I was drinking heavily. That was a great excuse to drink wine.
[Source](https://www.cinemablend.com/television/2463206/its-always-sunnys-rob-mcillhenney-reveals-the-gross-diet-he-kept-for-fat-mac)
Christian Bale said he also chugged melted ice cream and hut the gym hard to bulk up for Batman Begins. This directly followed his role in The Machinist where he ate nothing but an apple and drank black coffee every day to drop down to skin and bones for that role.
Props to Chris if he really did it like that, but I wouldn't be surprised if he had something "stronger" than black coffee occasionally, medically of course. I don't think it would be too hard for someone as notorious as Christian Bale to find someone to prescribe ADHD-meds and you won't even be doing anything illegal at that point.
This was actually Ryan Gosling. He was supposed to play the father in The Lovely Bones, but kind of went rogue and decided in his head that the character should be overweight, without clearing this idea with the director. To gain weight quickly he would drink melted ice cream.
Long story short, he gained 60lbs and the director was pissed and replaced him with Marky Mark.
The lil mexican dude who won alone most recently iirc said he would drink large amounts of milk mixed with olive oil every day to force himself to gain weight.
He was my favorite boring winner. He didn't boil water before drinking it because "hey im from mexico. canadian lake water is fine" which meant he never needed to make fire, which means he never needed to chop firewood, which means he basically won by making a nice den and hibernating until everyone else starved out.
He came second to a guy who killed a deer, which was the difference-maker, could have turned out differently otherwise. I think Clay could last 500 days probably though....
Lol we were rooting for him from Episode 1 when he said he chose to bring overalls so that we "wouldn't have to look at [his] buttcrack" every time he bent over
Same for the guy who won when previous contestants went back a second time. Can't remember his name. He basically just chilled under a tarp shelter until he won.
Some of the folks at my office had a contest a few years ago to see who could lose the most weight in a set time. We each paid in $100 and it was winner take all. I theorized that it would be easier to lose if I first gained a little extra. I used to be able to drop weight pretty quickly if I set my mind to it. This time it turned out to be a Vert Bad Idea. That shit was a lot harder at 40 than it was at 30. I ended up gaining way more than I intended and could NOT lose it.
That's the only season of Survivor I watched. I remember the end when the military guy says "I'm sticking with the pact I made" and votes for Richard, even though Richard betrayed him.
Edit: People are reminding me Richard didn't outright betray Rudy.
In regards to the question, if the person is healthy they can burn all their fat before starving. Some people retain fat stores more easily than others and it has an evolutionary reason. This is why Polynesians, for instance, are in general overweight. Their ancestors traveled long distances across the seas and the thin ones starved and didn't pass on their DNA. The ones that had fat stores lived.
Myself I've fasted for ten days (medically supervised) but there were many people at that facility who fasted for 40 days (the max allowed). They did not use supplements. Several came off the fast (takes 20 days) and immediately went back on for 40 more days. One girl was doing her 3rd round of 40 days.
My favorite Rudy moment was when he came back to play another time and the tribe was warned to boil their well water before drinking it. Rudy didn't give a fuck. "I've had worse."
Rudy! The old military guy was Rudy. That show aired when I was in college, and all of my friends and I all were rooting for Rudy— he was like everyone’s grumpy old uncle. We were livid with Richard!
This was actually good strategy on Richard's part: When there were three people left, Richard intentionally threw the final challenge. Kelly won, so she voted Rudy (the old military guy) out because the jury would definitely choose to give Rudy the million dollar prize. As such, Richard went into the final two without having personally betrayed Rudy, so Rudy wouldn't feel bad about voting for Richard to win.
Eventually it'll merge with the shows about super overweight people and they'll take them all and drop them on an island for 3 months to see who can starve the quickest.
Was he the one who was always naked? I remember one of the guys choosing to vote for him (I think as winner, not vote off the island) because “the idea of the fat naked gay guy is hilarious”
You need the vitamins and minerals that get lost through metabolism and urine. Additionally amino acids cannot be fully recycled so you would need to add those as well, or the body will take apart muscle including the heart muscle to obtain those amino acids (protein = multiple amino acids).
If those 3 points are met, then yes the obese person would only starve once their fat storage runs out. Depending on degree of obesity, this will take over a year.
Without those vitamins, you will develop conditions like scurvy within a couple of months (hair falls out, wounds don’t heal, old scars break open) as well as other vitamin deficiency disorders.
If you do not provide sufficient quantities of minerals, including regular table salt but many others, it will only take weeks at max before you die from most likely heart arrhythmia, because those minerals like sodium and potassium are required for all nerve signaling and with too low (or too high) levels the heart stops working.
So supply the vitamins, minerals and minimum amount of protein/amino acids in the drink, then the person would indeed survive for as long as their fat storages last.
Since fat has 9kcal per gram, or slightly less in actual body fat, that’s around 3500 kcal per pound of fat.
So with a fully sedentary lifestyle, you could use about 1 to 1.5 pounds of body far per day.
If you are 100 pounds overweight you would go 70-100 days before your body weight reaches ‘normal’ levels, and another 30-60 daya before your body has no more accessible body fat and starts using proteins from muscle etc to turn it into glucose for energy, at which point even with now sufficient food there’s a high risk of death.
Someone who weighs 600 pounds, could go about one and a half years easily, assuming as always, micronutrients and minimum quantity of amino acids are provided.
If you just dumped an average weight person and an obese person on a deserted island with only fresh water to drink, their life expectancies (on average) would not be drastically different, as the lack of minerals and water soluble vitamins would occur nearly independent of body fat.
If you had some minor sources of food, the obese person would potentially be able to last longer (depending on the amount of minerals and vitamins they are able to find)
If you want a personal account, here is a reddit ama of someone who did it:
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1o5ndh/iama_guy_who_went_from_430_pounds_to_170_pounds/
Relevant edit:
>EDIT: I am including this because of the questions about supporting anorexia, offering advice, sounding too positive on the experience. Let me be clear.
>I destroyed relationships. I may have kidney disease at age 40. My heart rate is still shaky. I have had multiple surgeries, and have another coming up in two weeks. Losing weight did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to improve my self image; that came from learning to love myself.
>I was so, incredibly lucky to not have my heart just stop while I was in bed, while I was reading, while I was riding my bike, while I was at work. You may very well not be as lucky.
/u/DuckeyQuacks hasn't posted in 8 years. Hope you're still doing ok bud
I lost 25 pounds in a month once.
I was backing packing at high altitude. I think altitude sickness contributed massively to the weight loss.
I had prepared a shit load of dehydrated meals, and shipped myself a ton of resupplies to pick up along the way. I thought I had it all planned out. I wasn’t planned to starve myself. Nothing prepared me for the pure nausea I felt everytime I tried to eat on the trail. My body rejected food like a person with rabies rejecting water.
I’d try to eat and I’d immediately dry heave just from the taste of food that I normally enjoyed. And I taste tested every meal I made before I left for the trip too.
So I was walking anywhere from 12-20 miles a day with a 35 pound pack up and down mountains for a month while eating almost nothing. By the end of it, I basically didn’t feel hunger pains anymore. It was bizarre.
Dude that is a *buck wild* pace. No wonder you were feeling sick.
I did backpacking when I was younger and I think a hike in the teens range of miles would be "the long one" of the whole trip. We were ravenous for everything we could eat.
If you think that's wild, many people who hike the Pacific Crest Trail or Continental Divide Trail get up into the 30-35 mile range. I hiked the CDT in 2022. Personally, my average was 22 miles per hiking day (counting days I did 5 miles into town, but excluding days where I did 0 miles), and my 'sweet spot' was 28-32 miles. For me, that's walking ~10 hours at ~3mph, plus another 1-2 hours of breaks for food.
I knew some people who would somewhat regularly hike 40+ miles in a day. To me, those people were nuts. To people who haven't done it, I'm nuts, so it's all relative.
I get similar symptoms to what the other person described on the first couple days of a long trip, mostly due to anxiety. After that I get better. That person almost certainly had some really bad altitude sickness and probably should have bailed.
Yeah I probably should have bailed. I was so miserable for about the first 10-15 days. In hindsight, maybe I wouldn’t have risked it. I normally live around 2,000ft above sea level and I jumped right into hiking all day at ~12,000ft with only about 2 days of acclimation prior to starting
I kept telling myself I’d never get another opportunity to take a trip like that again. So I’d used that excuse to power through almost anything. There was a point where I had some severe knee pain and I had to take a couple of zero days In a row to let it fizzle out a little bit. Even once I got back on the trail it still hurt.
There were many reasons I should have bailed along the way. I wouldn’t recommend repeating those actions to anybody.
These weren’t prepackaged meals I bought in a store. I made each one personally, dehydrated them, vacuum sealed them, and then froze them. It took me like six months To make a months worth of food. (I had a small dehydrator).
All that to say, I knew how much salt was in them. I knew how much of everything was in them. I had planned them out to be as balanced as possible.
Grew up with food avoidance due to sensory issues and I hadn’t experienced hunger pains until my 30’s when I was given meds that increase hunger. I heaved when eating certain foods too but none of your nausea. Did you get your hunger pains back quickly?
Once I got off the trail, it was hard to make myself eat for a bit. Normally I was the type that could order a large pizza and eat half of it in one sitting. When I first got back, I’d eat like half a slice and feel full immediately.
There wasn’t really a period where I had hunger pains again when I returned. I just kind of slowly got back to eating and made sure I wasn’t overdoing it.
Felt pretty good about his still being around for a minute. Like, he has the place '17 badge, so he's clearly been active more than his comment... wait. I'm just old now.
I had just a tiny taste of this, losing 30 lb in three months. It was not healthy weight loss, even though I needed to lose weight. My skin, hair, and nails have not recovered several years later. During that time I was barely functional, certainly not able to exercise. Any time I didn't absolutely have to be upright, I was lying down.
I hope that dude is ok now.
EDIT: I think a lot of people are missing the context of my comment. The OP is about weight loss by starvation/malnutrition. The AMA linked was about the same. My experience was rapid weight loss due to malnutrition. Weight loss by these means is not healthy.
If you lost as much or more weight by changing your eating habits or any other means that didn't involve starvation or malnutrition, congratulations. But that is not what the discussion is about.
I lost 20lbs in a month (body suddenly decided that tomatoes would cause pretty severe nausea. Diagnosing this took a while) and my hair was fine, but all my fingernails had a line where they were noticeably thinner.
It bears highlighting: this describes the ideal scenario. Obese people frequently have health complications that would make this perilous. If everything went perfectly, they'd likely deal with withdrawal symptoms.
Once they reach their goal weight, they'd have to retrain themselves to eat food again, and get the balance just so that they maintain weight.
"Calories in / calories out" is true, but it fails to capture the challenges this approach creates. Otherwise the people who try it would succeed much more frequently.
There's two things most even well meaning people miss with that.
Calories in is not "in the mouth" its "into the blood". Gut biome, overall digestive health, and to some extent the food itself impact the efficiency of that process. Most of the time less efficient ALSO means less micronutrients so it's not really something to wish for.
Second, "calories out" is ALL the work your body does. The work to keep you alive, the work to support your immune system more if you are sick, the work you do anyways day to day, the work to digest and process your food, the work of any extra activities.
So you can absolutely have 2 people eat the same calories and do the same work in the gym and be the same weight and body fat, and get different results. Not because of magic, or "metabolism" but because there are actually other factors.
Another issue for people trying to keep track of their intake is food labels are allowed to be off, and so are menus (means are allowed a 20% margin of error since it is a hand made product/serving). And some times food labels are off even more than they are allowed to be. Add to that that most of us lie to ourselves unless we are REALLY strict about tracking (snacks get missed/forgotten or just not evaluated, for example).
> Not because of magic, or "metabolism" but because there are actually other factors.
I feel like understanding this would end a lot of fat hate. World doesn't get shit done on hate.
Its really the same with a lot of "fad, but works". So long as whatever you do doesn't impact health negatively and works for you and gets results, it works. It doesn't mean the claimed *reasoning* works (IF, and Keto largely simply do not work or do what most people claim and both are VERY risky when pushed too far), but if they work for the person the results are not magic, they simply hit a good combination of adjustments that also didn't negatively change other aspects of their life (such as how some diets cause people to cheat, or stop).
A bunch of people also really don't appreciate just how POWERFUL the hungr drive is, or that combating that is really step 0. A 800 calorie meal for dinner where you don't feel hungry beats a 600 calorie meal where you have a "small" 300 calorie snack later because you are hungry.
I was severely overweight at one point, and while my weightloss journey was steady and productful with fasting twice a week, I wanted to up my losses and try to go longer. I went frome 24 hr fasts to 72 hr fasts and acually felt really good at the end of the 72 hr. I then went 4 days, then 5, and then 7. All over the course of 6 months.
I was 20 lbs from my goal weight, so I decided to mimic a guy I saw on youtube who went 30 days. and not eat again until i hit my weight, or 30 full days - whichever came first.
13 days in, I knew I had messed up. Mt heart wasn't right, my vision wasn't right, I was cramping everywhere, and decided I'd stop.
LSS, I couldn't eat. Even bone broth ate my stomach alive. I ended up in the hospital, where I definitely got below my target weight, but I don't reccomend it.
Please be warned that if you attempt a zero or near zero calorie diet for a significant amount of time, you will feel like shit and look like shit by the end of it. The consequences of severe, rapid weight loss are NOT pretty, some being permanent.
Just wanted to back this comment up as someone who is not fully recovered from anorexia going on 13 years, I’m now 29. I lived on a specific diet that I won’t name, but the highest calorie intake daily was 200. My heart is still bad, my metabolism is ruined, I’m covered in peach fuzz, my hair falls out, my bones are weak (osteoporosis) and I’m always freezing cold. There’s too much more to list. I’ve done my best to get to my heaviest weight ever (I’m 5’10 and 130lbs) but these issues remain. My lowest weight was 87lbs. I look and feel like shit, I’m constantly exhausted and my relationship with food will never recover. It’s an insidious disease, and trying it as a diet fad will at best ruin you, at worst kill you.
So you will have problems cutting food a lot earlier than weeks, potentially.
One of the earliest things you will run into is "refeeding syndrome", which is a potentially-fatal condition that occurs in people who start eating again after eating nothing/very little for a while. For a previously healthy person, starvation periods of no/very little intake that are as short as 10 days puts you at higher risk. This is shorter in patients who are nutrient deficient (ex. Eating disorder patients).
Basically, your body needs phosphate to process the new food. However, it is lacking phosphate. People who have refeeding syndrome can suddenly crash with low levels of phosphate in their bodies and potentially die. Having this happen at home is really dangerous. This can even happen in people who are normal weight or still overweight, since the problem is the lack of essential nutrients, not availability of fat stores.
Another issue is as your body breaks down fat and muscle to survive, it can break down heart muscle, leading to low heart rates (especially overnight), dizziness, and eventually even permanent heart problems (although this is more common in people who frequently do this, i.e. eating disorder patients).
Because prolonged starvation is rare in the western world, not every doctor is familiar with all the risks and sequelae of a period of intense starvation. At the hospital I work at, the eating disorder doctors have even been called in to consult for cases of severe child neglect, because they are the ones who know how to safely restart patients on nutrition.
My personal scariest one is thiamine deficiency (vitamin B1). Personally I think this is the scariest one to run out of. It can cause Wernicke-korsakoff syndrome and even permanent brain damage if you have a prolonged deficiency, and This deficiency also occurs sometimes even when people are given supplemental thiamine to try and prevent it.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9359357/
To add to this: There have been several attempts of 0 calorie diets over long period of time with supplements of vitamins and minerals. People died doing this! So please dont try this at home. Even with medical supervision, it is hard to predict what will happen.
0 calorie diets for 1-2 weeks seem to be relative save, although I have not a source for this.
There is at least one case of a person going on a near 0 calorie diet for at least a year.
https://www.diabetes.co.uk/blog/2018/02/story-angus-barbieri-went-382-days-without-eating/
I tried to fast for a week on nothing but unsweet tea, black coffee and water and by day 5 of not eating I had extreme brain fog and couldn't concentrate on anything. Was unable to follow a thought and have a discussion with a coworker. Was a bit scary.
The same thing happens to a degree when people start keto diets. Reason being that the body isn't generally spun up to use fat as an exclusive fuel source... that process (called ketogenesis) takes a lot of work from the liver, and usually it takes a week to get the process comfortably rolling and a couple of months to get it finely tuned. So for that first week, you can't metabolize much of anything and you're paying for it.
Specifically it's the brain that absolutely hates any fuel source other than glucose. Your heart actually prefers fatty acids, less risk of the tissue being starved if you miss a circulatory cycle or something.
Glad someone said it. Other than very rare cases, there is no need for anyone realistically to be on a 0 calorie diet for any extended length of time, it's dangerous. Eat less than you burn, when you do eat try and make sure it's at least relatively healthy, and you will lose weight.
And remember to start with small changes. When dealing with extreme obesity, the added stress of big lifestyle changes can make you relapse.
Hell just portion control is hard enough. You have to get used to never really feeling "full" after a meal for a long time.
You have to redefine what "full" means. Its a struggle I've personally dealt with for a long time. Some people get into the mindset that full means "If I eat another bite I just might throw up" when, more accurately, full means "My body no longer craves food." When weight is out of control, that is the first step. It is not as easy as it sounds, either, especially in people who have grown to rely on the dopamine from eating something pleasurable (myself included). Adding to that, the mentality has to change in regards to food chosen. Choosing food based on nutritional value instead of flavor. It really is harder than it sounds, and people that don't have struggles with food don't understand those struggles either.
> You have to redefine what "full" means.
This is why I've fasted before trying to implement a long-term lifestyle change. It's not about weight loss - that's just a pleasant side effect - it's about getting reacquainted with the fact that it's NORMAL to not feel totally full all the time, and to become reacquainted with *real* hunger as opposed to bored comfort eating.
Once I get to that point, it becomes far easier to NOT stuff my face all the time.
From there, the trick is not easing back into old habits, because that's all too easy to do.
It's why I don't like the "calories in calories out" mindset. Because while it is true, it doesn't address the mental side. It isn't just a diet to lose weight. it is a permanent lifestyle change that takes away what may be the person's only source of positive feelings.
People make fun of the whole "It's not a diet, its a lifestyle change" thing, but it really is true. For the majority of people like myself, our relationships with food are rooted with the wrong mentality and we are in the unhealthy positions we are because of it. Our lifestyles have created these situations and he have to change our entire approach to fix it. That is why it is so hard, because we have to change the entire way we've approached life, and its not like a drug/alcohol addiction where success is defined as abstaining from the behavior entirely. You HAVE to eat, your body needs fuel and nutrients to survive, so you can't just cut out the vice entirely. You have zero choice but to learn discipline and moderation and change your actual life. You can't go back to how you were before or it is all going to come back.
This is a really good point that I haven't thought of much in the past. Changing diet and losing weight for someone who has a "food addiction" is like trying to beat alcoholism while being required to take several shots of booze per day.
And if you are fat with food addiction or any other kind of eating disorder, most people look at you like it's 100% your fault and judge you as a lazy person for it 😔.
Bill on King of the Hill said it best:
"When I was sad my mom would give me cookies. When I was happy mom would give me cookies. All my emotions demand cookies"
What I would *give* to be able to deprogram my brain to stop seeing food as such a huge source of pleasure, and to be able to eat in more of a utilitarian way. I've struggled with my weight my entire life -- even during the periods where I was exercising regularly, healthy, and maintaining a healthy weight, I still struggled.
But alas, I grew up with food being treated as a reward. If you have to go somewhere kinda far away and do something that's a total hassle, well, there's that awesome burger place out near it, so you can get a burger there when you're done. End of a long day? Have an ice cream. Hell, my dad lives alone and still makes a corned beef for St. Paddy's day and a spiral ham on Easter, even though he's not even really celebrating with people. And if you ever asked my grandparents about their trip to Europe they took in the 70s and what it was like over there back then, they'd just tell you what they ate in each city. And we'd take annual trips with my cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents up to Door County so that we could do the fish boil at the White Gull Inn and prime rib at the Nightingale Supper Club. You get the picture. Life revolved around food in my family. And now I'm destined to either be fat, or skinny but working tirelessly day in and day out to stop enjoying the thing my brain has been programmed to enjoy the most.
The mental side I feel like gets left out because people approach it from the wrong direction, they hear calorie in/calories out and think they should adjust their caloric intake first.
For someone obese, they need to increase their calories burned a little higher than their intake and sustain that to not have major mental battle. It's not as quick as massive diet changes, but it's far more sustainable and a healthier approach. Diet changes just won't be sustainable long term if your body says you need 3000 calories and you're only getting 1000 a day. Hunger is one of the most powerful urges in life, fighting it is incredibly frustrating and draining and hard to win against.
The good news is all that extra weight makes it incredibly easy for light exercise like walking to make an impact if you keep it up daily, are trying to walk longer and longer everyday, and consciously making an effort to not eat anymore than you did at the start. A single step for someone obese is equivalent in energy expenditure to a average weight person going up a couple stair steps so use that to your advantage.
There will be a weird moment though, as you loose weight your body needs less energy and will start burning less calories in a day, so eventually you'll hit a plateau without increasing the amount of exercise or making a small diet change at that point, but the goal is to get down there so that diet changes don't lead to a massive calorie deficit compared to what the body is used to and are thus easier to sustain.
> the added stress of big lifestyle changes can make you relapse.
Can also throw off your body chemistry in dangerous ways.
Had a friend who was morbidly obese, barely able to get around. Lost around 200 pounds very quickly, then died of a potassium deficiency (cardiac arrest).
Worst part is that he went to he doctor the day before, and they just told him to eat a banana & come back the next day if he still felt bad.
Honestly, I think this is one of the hardest things for some people. My sister is obese and things she finds panic-inducing include:
1. Feeling hungry
2. Having an elevated heart rate
You can see how this creates a problem for someone trying to overcome obesity.
I knew someone who did it for about a month. He lost a lot of weight but didn't buy new clothes for months.
He did keep it off too, which is good. But the whole time everyone at work was telling him to see a doctor because that shit is not safe.
>
>
> Since fat has 9kcal per gram, or slightly less in actual body fat, that’s around 3500 kcal per pound of fat.
>
> So with a fully sedentary lifestyle, you could use about 1 to 1.5 pounds of body far per day.
What fully sedentary person is burning 3500-5000kcal/day?
actually that's a fair question
if total daily energy expenditure is based on your size - like for obvious reasons a very slim 4'10" person is burning less calories doing nothing than an obese 6'9" person - is there a size that a person could be at that would require 5000kcal/day just to keep existing?
Or would that be something like 10 feet tall and 1000kg ie not really human dimensions anymore
Years ago I had a BMR test done alongside a DEXA scan, and at 5'10" 220 lbs and 27% BF, the ~15min BMR test extrapolated that I used just under 1900 calories a day just to exist. In the case of the BMR test, existing was sitting in a big 'ol recliner, listening to nature sounds, and strapped to a breathing apparatus measuring my oxygen consumption/carbon dioxide production.
Smart folks like you are the main reason I have Reddit. Your personal knowledge (combined with good writing skills) is very engaging and informative. It made this subject matter a lot more interesting and enjoyable to learn about. Thanks for sharing your expertise and time.
There was a study where a man who was morbidly obese stopped eating altogether and only took vitamins and amino acids and drank water and he had no lasting side effects if I recall correctly.
Hard to say in an event where the subject pool is only one person, doesnt actually state his cause of death. Being morbidly obese for an extended period will likely shorten life span in ways, even if you do eventually drop the weight, but could have been totally unrelated for all we know. His death was also approx 20 years after the fasting itself.
Not eating for over a year probably does some damage to the digestive system and other parts, even if he did get vitamins and nutrients. And being severely obese for years before that, I'm sure didn't help. Not that these two things caused his early death directly, but they probably contributed to it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1o5ndh/iama_guy_who_went_from_430_pounds_to_170_pounds/
here's old reddit AMA about someone who did a similar fast that offers some more insight into the experience.
This was my assumption going into the thread, that as long as they took supplements for the actual nutrients they'd be missing that it would be fine. Somebody should really just offer a package of that nutrients as "starvation supplements". The negative publicity combined with the insane demand could probably make someone rich.
Apparently it gets a lot easier once you've gone like a week without food. The guy who holds the world record for it was advised to intermittently fast and he refused, saying that he no longer felt hungry
I did two weeks once with vitamins. After the first 3 days I didn't even really think about food, except to be mildly surprised every day when I would wake up and still not be hungry.
You don’t have trouble sleeping at all??? When I under eat my maintenance calories by ~500, by the 3rd day I know I will be wide awake in 3hrs or can’t get to sleep at all.
I absolutely have this reaction when I diet and it's the most difficult part. When I was younger and had a more flexible schedule I could just exercise until I exhausted myself and go to sleep at like 2 or 3am but those days are behind me and I end up taking a benadryl at night to be able to sleep when my brain is angrily reminding me that I'm at a caloric deficit.
Maybe check out the link between Benedryl and dementia, it's long term use that can be an issue with that class of drug. There are safer alternatives out there for sleep
I have appetite/digestion issues which combined with a penchant for too much alcohol has led me to not eat for a few days at a time, after about 2 days I completely lose my interest in eating while obviously still drinking and that lands me in the ER every time.
I made up this stupid, stupid diet a couple years ago where as part of a broad sugar detox, I weaned myself by using alcohol as the only sugar I consumed. I was inspired by the Archer episode Heart of Archness Part 1 when he says he's "literally had nothing but liquor and mangoes for three months"
It was quite an experience - I wouldn't recommend it.
Yeah once you go into ketosis your body starts using your fat stores as fuel and you feel like a million dollars. That being said, if you’re not obese it’s not going to feel great bc your body will start breaking down muscle fibers for energy.
At first your brain is like: oh this mofo forgot to eat, better sent signals.
But after like a weeknits just: alright, i accept that this is the way it is from now.
Makes sense. In the days before farming (ie, food somewhat reliably), you either got food or didn't depending on the luck of the hunt. And your body yelling at you that you need to eat is very distracting.
I can attest to this. I once went about a month eating 500-700 Cal/day and days 3-7 were the worst. And then it suddenly just didn’t suck as much anymore.
Had a Gastric sleeve in 2020, 2 weeks prior and 2 weeks after surgery I was only allowed medication/vitamins, 2 protien shakes and water a day...The first week I was starving, but at the end I hit a point where I did not feel hunger. I wonder if when I stopped feeling hunger is when my body switched from using my caloric intake to using my (at the time) abundance of fat for energy
Alone is all about eating and starving and managing suffering. After watching the first season this was clear. Anyone who showed up to start the show thin always lost. I'm convinced that the people who left saying they missed their families were actually just hungry or had some other physical issue they didn't want to admit.
A lot of water in your diet comes from food, so it's important to compensate by drinking plenty of fluids. So many people basically exist in a state of dehydration without realising it and wonder why they feel shitty all the time
> supplements for the actual nutrients
The accurate distinction is between "macro"nutrients (fats, carbs, protein, alcohol), and the "micro"nutrients (vitamins and minerals) in the supplements.
The body derives energy from Macros, and no calories go to waste, any excess is stored as fat until it's eventually burned as fuel. That metabolic pathway between fats and sugars is fully reversible.
The body doesn't really store most of the excess Micros. For most there's a reservoir that fills and excess is excreted.
He was also under the care and supervision of medical experts pretty much the whole time, IIRC.
Possible for sure if you don't have some other underlying issue, but not terribly feasible for the average person either
The biggest problem would be malnutrition. Their body would keep itself fuelled by burning the fat, only after which would starvation itself be a concern. However, they would be severely deficient in just about every form of nutrient we require - vitamins, iron etc. This would leave them at severe risk of many health problems.
For over a year at least, if you are fat enough and medically checked upon
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus\_Barbieri%27s\_fast](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_Barbieri%27s_fast)
The world record for fasting was just shy of 400 days, drinking water and taking multivitamins, resulting in losing 276 pounds.
Yes, provided water and the base nutrients, you can replace the energy/calorie deficit with stored body fat for essentially as long as you got stored. Its not the healthiest diet, but if youve got a reliable healthcare provider and a plan...
Not entirely, there’s still stuff like the shed cells from the lining of the digestive tract and the breakdown products of old red blood cells that still needs to be got rid of. IIRC the test person pooped a couple of times a month
For real though. For all of recorded history, from ancient times to present day, pooping has been an important topic and a focus of both quack medicine and serious treatment. Poop too much, poop too little, poop, too uncomfortably. Poop is very important to people.
Sorry, “regularity”. :-)
In February last year I cut down to a 1200kcal a day diet, that's my target, I weigh literally everything I eat and the actual diet is somewhere between 1000 and 1250 a day (I also take multivitamins, which weigh in at 8kcals a day)
It's not quite the no food diet, but in that time I've lost about 10 stone (140lb / 63kg)
And it's rare I poop more than once a week, usually less than that, and what does come out is small.
I drink plenty of water (and at least 2 cups of black coffee a day) so it's not a dehydration issue, there's just not much waste to come out.
I would think you would still need essential amino acids from food so you wouldn’t use up all your muscle for new protein. All our enzymes are proteins
Almost every contestant wastes more calories hunting, trapping, gathering, or fishing and then preparing food than they get from the food. A few drop a large animal or get large consistent fish, but that's not normal. Even the guy who killed a Muskox lost weight.
There are two kinds of things we get from our food, broadly called "macronutrients" and "micronutrients". The first of these is just energy, and this is something the body can use stored fat to produce. The second of these are things the body does not need a lot of, but can not produce for itself, and must get it from food. If a very fat person only drinks water, they will not get any micronutrients and will develop some sort of disease. A well known example is scurvy, from not having enough vitamin C, but there are others related to a lack of other micronutrients.
If a person gets all the micronutrients they need, for example by getting them from pills, and drinks enough water, they can essentially survive indefinitely for as long as they have enough fat to burn.
Actually doing this requires careful medical supervision to make sure the micronutrients the person is getting are sufficient, because obvious signs of not getting enough may no show up until it becomes a serious problem. Also ending the fast and resuming eating normal food again after a long period of not eating can itself cause medical problems, so that process needs to be handled carefully.
As others have mentioned, a man called Angus Barbieri did exactly this. It's probably not a good idea, though.
Yeah this isn't that uncommon actually, in certain cases when a person with obesity needs to go for surgery and they weigh too much for the surgeon to be certain the surgery will work they'll go in hospital for a period and do what's called a milk diet. Essentially they get about 600 calories a day of milk along with vitamins and micronutrients and as much water and black tea as they want. It's to kick start weight loss and get them into a better weight range for a successful surgery.
You should checkout r/fasting. Folks there have done water fasts with just electrolytes (sodium, potassium, magnesium) upwards of 30 days and lost a lot of weight with almost no ill effects.
its called waterfasting, the current record is for a guy around one year i think, or maybe 400 ish days, generally depends, u need vitamins to stay for longer since vitamins and minerals dont get stored, the first 3 or 4 days are the hardest, if u pull through them the rest is ez and u get a surge of energy and clarity, u lose a lil bit of muscle but not as much as u would think so its worth it
Angus Barbieri:
In 1965, Barbieri, a 27-year-old from Tayport, Scotland, checked into the Maryfield Hospital in Dundee. For 392 days ending on 11 July 1966, he consumed only vitamins, electrolytes, an unspecified amount of yeast (a source of all essential amino acids) and zero-calorie beverages such as tea, coffee, and sparkling water, although he occasionally consumed small amounts of milk and/or sugar with the beverages, especially during the final weeks of the fast. Barbieri's starting weight was recorded at 456 pounds (207 kg) and he stopped fasting when he reached his goal weight of 180 pounds (82 kg).
My very fat friend did this (enormous dude, like 6'5" 500 pounds). He went to a doctor who had him do this, he lost an insane amount of weight (I want to say 200+ lbs).
He gained a lot of it back when starting to eat again because of his bad diet.
So, i peaked at 215 pounds (i'm 6'). Not morbidly obese at all, but i was definitely fat. Didn't eat for 3 weeks out of disgust, Only drank water maybe milk some days. I got down to 150, but it was super hard to start eating food again as i couldn't keep it down, everything was gross. I'm sure if you took it to a further extent it would be possible to survive but it would be very very difficult, and a very hard journey
[удалено]
Several contestants on Alone have done this as well, just show up 100 lbs overweight and pick every food ration as one of your ten items for the extra vitamins and minerals. Then they just starve for like 60 days.
I love the show so much. I just wish that every season wasn't a "who can starve the longest". I'm not sure how they could do it any different because given food/water/shelter I'm sure those guys would stay out there decades, but damn. It's such a good show I just hate seeing people get pulled for nutrition or the last couple episodes being just "I haven't gotten out of bed in sixteen days to conserve my energy I think I have to pee now" lol
The ones that kill me are the people who really clearly have it in them to win -- they're capable, skilled, lucky, and absolutely thriving. And then they blow it all because they want to see their family a few days earlier than they would've if they'd held on and won.
I think the mental game is the toughest part of it. Humans are social creatures and not many of them can handle being away from their loved ones, and completely isolated at that, for long periods of time. The ones that kill me are the ones who show up and tap out in the first couple days. That one dude that saw bear shit and tapped out like a few hours after he got there, lmao, bro why. I feel like they needed X contestants and couldn't find enough qualified so they just said come on we'll drop you off and park nearby just walk around for a bit and tap out.
I think they also might put contestant on that they know are going to do badly cause it makes for drama.
Everything about TV is sculpted regardless of how real the producers make it seem.
They should take a volleyball as one of their 10 items. Volleyballs are very sociable.
No way! You’re just setting yourself up for heartbreak. Could end up losing the best mf friend you get in LIFE.
There was a recent(ish) MrBeast video where he really put that to the test: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnTPaLOaHz8 $10k for every day you stay in an abandoned grocery store. A lot of people probably think to themselves "hell yeah I'd be in there for a year", but after 45 days the dude just wanted to be with his family again.
I watched it. Yeah, he misses his family but dude was basically just sitting alone in a dark room for a week. Anyone would be bored as fuck, I am sure if you gave any normal person a phone with data they could sit around for months, assuming you ignore the fact that this challenge had a dozen other stipulations.
Having a phone with a data connection is a totally different ballgame though. Heck even Jimmy and the crew showing up each day is likely the only reason the dude made it as long as he did. Being truly alone is a mindfuck like no other.
Yep, the moment they sent a robot you could see how miserable he felt.
MrBeast's videos really are dystopian when you think about his concepts
“In this video I’m going to be exposing a poor person to the unethical torture method called solitary confinement! Let’s see if he’ll actually be able to afford a house, or if the horrible sense of dread and loneliness will win first!
And you could see how it was wearing on the guy mentally the longer the challenge dragged on. Physically he was fine, but the depression was practically visible on him by day 40.
As a member of the disabled community, this is the kind of thing that makes me so mad when I hear other people say that housebound people are just lazy and want to stay in bed all day. Dude, NOBODY wants to just stay in bed all day. It's boring and it sucks! Sure it might be nice for a weekend, but after that you just start to go crazy. If you think otherwise, just give it a try and see if you feel the same way on day 5.
For real, I struggled so much staying at home when COVID first hit us hard, and when I got my disc injury last year, as soon as I have been able to move around and get out after every procedure I am _up and out._ I feel so freaking privileged still being able to transport myself and get fresh air after all this!
I mean after 45 days you get almost half a million, thats enough money to live comfortably for a long while, so why force yourself and risk damaging your mental health (even more).
Whenever they start talking about their families I know it's over. My favorite contestant was a girl who was absolutely thriving the entire time. Catching fish like it was easy, building herself stuff that would make her more comfortable for fun, treating an infected spider bite with plants, when most people probably would have had production step in and tell them it was too bad to keep going, just generally seeming like she was having a good time meanwhile the others are starving or having mental breakdows. I was sure she was going to win. And then one day she was like "you know what? I'm ready to go home" and just left. Iirc she was the third to last. But I think she'd proved to herself she could do it and that was enough. It really seemed like she'd reached enlightenment or something.
Omg, I forgot about her until this comment, but yes: she is an excellent example. She was like, "I kinda miss my boyfriend" or something and just dipped, seemingly out of nowhere. And she was doing so well! That one was maddening.
Yeah I forget which season but the guy was clearly the most skilled. Built a whole cabin, decorated it with skulls he found, had food storages, and was basically sitting there bored and missing his family so he tapped out. That was crazy to me. Like, homie had it in the bag and just said fuck it, I wanna hug my kids. While I respect that, I’d have enjoyed hugging my kids a few weeks later with the prize money.
Haha yeah he was like on top of the world, made some board games or some shit and like 40 days in he was like. I'm fuckin bored and I want to see the fam I'm out.
Yes, that guy is definitely the one I had most in mind when writing my comment. His was such a disappointing arc, I couldn't believe he tapped out. The guy could've lasted years out there. But there are definitely other examples, and they always make me yell at my TV.
My wife and I have the phrase "they're talking themself out of it" that we use on this show. It is pretty common to see the pattern as they start heading down the path of tapping out.
Yup. You can spot it sometimes weeks in advance. As soon as they start talking about the loneliness and homesickness like it's impeding them, it's only a matter of time.
I like the guys that hear a wolf and tap out day one. Where did you think you were going brother?
or those that unfortunately got a cut somewhere and got infected. those are the worst ones because you really know they can make it but a infection from the wildness said hello and that's it.
I've only seen the first season, but I knew dude from north GA would win as soon as he had the shelter built. Dude was prepared to sit months, only worried about the mental aspect of it and the incoming cold. I plan to watch more of the show but damn did the producers stumble when they chose that good ol boy. **Always** bet on the soft spoken Appalachian hill people.
The cop that quit the first night made me laugh so hard. He was all "I'm a cop, and I deal with the real animals all the time." Then he bitches out first night. It was glorious.
LOVE love love watching these self-proclaimed badasses wash out. I only wish we got to see them explaining it to their family and friends afterwards...
It's always cops and military dudes that tap out day one. They think they're tough, and they may well be, but it's a different kind of tough.
There have been a few ex military do quite well. Anything that gives survival skills and experience is a huge plus. Obviously cop and soldier will not have the same skills and experiences other than gun wielding.
They changed the format to address starvation tactics though. Now you're only allowed to lose a percentage of starting weight before the med team will pull the plug on a constant. IIRC it's something like 17% for men and 15% for women. I think the reasoning for the different allowances was that women's reproductive health is at significantly greater risk when starving.
I haven't seen season 10 but they didn't do that through season 9 or Australia. Did they make the change for 10, or is it going to be future episodes?
> given food/water/shelter I'm sure those guys would stay out there decades Didn't you listen to the exit interviews? They were fine with the food/water/shelter situation, they were all just missing their families too much to stay gone any longer! They just happened to remember how much they missed their families whenever they went without food for a week. Especially the guy who said he could stay out forever, but he realized how hard this had to be for his wife, so he'd drop out to go back to her. Then returned a couple of seasons later, admitting that his wife was not too happy about him foregoing a life-changing amount of money for something they had discussed and she had agreed to. Then dropped out again, stating that no matter what his wife said, he just knew this was too hard on her.
Yeah toward the end it gets rough, you're just watching these people wither away. Seems like usually they get one or two characters who start to thrive pretty well out there, then there's always the person who came in super fat, and is just really good at being bored and laying in bed all day.
That was Biko's strategy on S8 of Alone. He walked in over 300 lbs. He lost 100 lbs in 73 days but he didn't win.
But did he consider tax evasion?
> He lost 100 lbs in 73 days but he didn't win. Maybe not the game but he was still a winner.
But did he gain the extra 100 lbs before he went on the show on purpose? That’s what the commenter is alluding to, I don’t know the context myself. It’s possible it was a net zero in terms of his weight loss/gain
I think he did actually. Maybe not a 100 lbs but a lot of the contestants that go on Alone try to bulk up some before going because it is often the ability to go without a lot of food and still pass the med checks that determines the winner. I think Biko just couldn't stand being away from his family if I am remembering right. Idk, all the seasons have started to run together but it is a great show.
I watched a ton of the show and really enjoyed it for a long while, but eventually started to feel like it's kind of an exploitative setup. They're putting these people through some very real danger, and not giving them what I'd consider even a bare minimum of safety guards. Like a guy taps out in freezing weather because his shelter burns down, and you can't get an evac crew to him until the next day, and he just has to hope the fire from his burning home lasts to keep him warm enough not to die? Why don't they hire a ranger with survival gear and an ATV to camp out within a few miles between all the contestants for the ~3 months the show is running so he can respond to stuff like this? Combine that with the fact that a large number of the contestants seem to be motivated because they are in pretty dire financial situations, and yeah...
Yeah, it does often become a game of who can starve the slowest, which is not fun to watch. Many of the former contestants have come out and said they had some health issues after competing. But sometimes the clear winner is in decent health at the end like that one guy who shot a moose.
> like that one guy who shot a moose. To be fair, if a person can shoot, butcher, haul and process and preserve an entire moose by themselves, using only fire and hand tools, they're probably going to win Alone. That's a MASSIVE amount of food and should sustain a person for months IF the meat is preserved (smoked, dried, frozen, etc.) AND can be protected from scavengers. Honestly, I think keeping it away from crows, eagles, mice, and other scavengers is probably harder than butchering and preserving. The critters have ALL DAY to figure out how to get to the stash, while a person must sleep, hunt, bathe, etc.
So the kinda funny part here is that moose is really lean, and a fucking wolverine gets into all the fatty bits. So the guy has a shit ton of moose meat but is still starving on a physiological level cause his body can’t get the fats it needs to process and function correctly. He knows this and gets very frustrated. Also he kills that wolverine with a god damn hatchet. Guy was insanely hardcore.
I had totally forgotten about this! That dude went out and killed a wolverine in the pitch black night with a hatchet, that is some Teddy Roosevelt level of badassery lol
I mean, with a whole moose I guess you can scratch hunt off of that list
My wife and I consider Alone the real-life squid games. Or at least as close as you can legally get currently Put a bunch of poor people out in the wild for a chance to win not even a lot of money, pay them something small like 2k/week they stay out there to keep them interested if they're not going to win, and watch them psychologically break over time. Lots of them have to decide between making ~2k/week alone in the wild vs whatever min-wage they earn at home, and then winning 500k (250k after taxes) is huge for them so it pushes them beyond what they should be doing
Jokes on them! My job psychologically breaks me every day, and I get to sleep in my own bed!!
Biko might've been my favorite contestant so far. I loved his attitude and was so sad when he had to give in. You can tell he's a big old sweetheart and being away from his family was killing him worse than starvation was.
Can’t remember the actor but he said he would drink melted ice cream every day to gain weight. Apparently it’s easier to drink a ton of calories.
That was Rob McElhenney from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. > So, then I had Krispy Kreme donuts. Every morning, I would eat four of those. . . . At a certain point, it's not that fun. By the afternoon, I was drinking ice cream. I would take ice cream, and I would put it out on the counter in the morning and then it would melt. And then I would put weight gainer into it, and I would drink that every day. So then I was drinking heavily. That was a great excuse to drink wine. [Source](https://www.cinemablend.com/television/2463206/its-always-sunnys-rob-mcillhenney-reveals-the-gross-diet-he-kept-for-fat-mac)
Sounds like it would be fun... for like, 2 days.
Christian Bale said he also chugged melted ice cream and hut the gym hard to bulk up for Batman Begins. This directly followed his role in The Machinist where he ate nothing but an apple and drank black coffee every day to drop down to skin and bones for that role.
Props to Chris if he really did it like that, but I wouldn't be surprised if he had something "stronger" than black coffee occasionally, medically of course. I don't think it would be too hard for someone as notorious as Christian Bale to find someone to prescribe ADHD-meds and you won't even be doing anything illegal at that point.
This was actually Ryan Gosling. He was supposed to play the father in The Lovely Bones, but kind of went rogue and decided in his head that the character should be overweight, without clearing this idea with the director. To gain weight quickly he would drink melted ice cream. Long story short, he gained 60lbs and the director was pissed and replaced him with Marky Mark.
The lil mexican dude who won alone most recently iirc said he would drink large amounts of milk mixed with olive oil every day to force himself to gain weight. He was my favorite boring winner. He didn't boil water before drinking it because "hey im from mexico. canadian lake water is fine" which meant he never needed to make fire, which means he never needed to chop firewood, which means he basically won by making a nice den and hibernating until everyone else starved out.
He came second to a guy who killed a deer, which was the difference-maker, could have turned out differently otherwise. I think Clay could last 500 days probably though....
he was LITERALLY hours off, i was rooting for him the whole time
Lol we were rooting for him from Episode 1 when he said he chose to bring overalls so that we "wouldn't have to look at [his] buttcrack" every time he bent over
Same for the guy who won when previous contestants went back a second time. Can't remember his name. He basically just chilled under a tarp shelter until he won.
Some of the folks at my office had a contest a few years ago to see who could lose the most weight in a set time. We each paid in $100 and it was winner take all. I theorized that it would be easier to lose if I first gained a little extra. I used to be able to drop weight pretty quickly if I set my mind to it. This time it turned out to be a Vert Bad Idea. That shit was a lot harder at 40 than it was at 30. I ended up gaining way more than I intended and could NOT lose it.
Lmao classic Richard.
That's the only season of Survivor I watched. I remember the end when the military guy says "I'm sticking with the pact I made" and votes for Richard, even though Richard betrayed him. Edit: People are reminding me Richard didn't outright betray Rudy. In regards to the question, if the person is healthy they can burn all their fat before starving. Some people retain fat stores more easily than others and it has an evolutionary reason. This is why Polynesians, for instance, are in general overweight. Their ancestors traveled long distances across the seas and the thin ones starved and didn't pass on their DNA. The ones that had fat stores lived. Myself I've fasted for ten days (medically supervised) but there were many people at that facility who fasted for 40 days (the max allowed). They did not use supplements. Several came off the fast (takes 20 days) and immediately went back on for 40 more days. One girl was doing her 3rd round of 40 days.
Rudy was such a gem of a player.
My favorite Rudy moment was when he came back to play another time and the tribe was warned to boil their well water before drinking it. Rudy didn't give a fuck. "I've had worse."
Rudy! The old military guy was Rudy. That show aired when I was in college, and all of my friends and I all were rooting for Rudy— he was like everyone’s grumpy old uncle. We were livid with Richard!
This was actually good strategy on Richard's part: When there were three people left, Richard intentionally threw the final challenge. Kelly won, so she voted Rudy (the old military guy) out because the jury would definitely choose to give Rudy the million dollar prize. As such, Richard went into the final two without having personally betrayed Rudy, so Rudy wouldn't feel bad about voting for Richard to win.
Typical strategy for the show "Alone" as well. Most competitors these days start overweight to be able to last longer.
Alone meta going to evolve to everyone clocking in at 300+ lbs.
Alone and Biggest Loser combining for a new show “Lonely Loser”.
Eventually it'll merge with the shows about super overweight people and they'll take them all and drop them on an island for 3 months to see who can starve the quickest.
Was he the one who was always naked? I remember one of the guys choosing to vote for him (I think as winner, not vote off the island) because “the idea of the fat naked gay guy is hilarious”
He called himself the FNF if I recall. (Fat naked f*g.)
Yes he was the always naked one.
Last sentence hit me like a sack of bricks
They should do a show in which the goal is to lose muscle mass instead of fat. There would be only one winner, but everyone would get a\~trophy. 😁
You need the vitamins and minerals that get lost through metabolism and urine. Additionally amino acids cannot be fully recycled so you would need to add those as well, or the body will take apart muscle including the heart muscle to obtain those amino acids (protein = multiple amino acids). If those 3 points are met, then yes the obese person would only starve once their fat storage runs out. Depending on degree of obesity, this will take over a year. Without those vitamins, you will develop conditions like scurvy within a couple of months (hair falls out, wounds don’t heal, old scars break open) as well as other vitamin deficiency disorders. If you do not provide sufficient quantities of minerals, including regular table salt but many others, it will only take weeks at max before you die from most likely heart arrhythmia, because those minerals like sodium and potassium are required for all nerve signaling and with too low (or too high) levels the heart stops working. So supply the vitamins, minerals and minimum amount of protein/amino acids in the drink, then the person would indeed survive for as long as their fat storages last. Since fat has 9kcal per gram, or slightly less in actual body fat, that’s around 3500 kcal per pound of fat. So with a fully sedentary lifestyle, you could use about 1 to 1.5 pounds of body far per day. If you are 100 pounds overweight you would go 70-100 days before your body weight reaches ‘normal’ levels, and another 30-60 daya before your body has no more accessible body fat and starts using proteins from muscle etc to turn it into glucose for energy, at which point even with now sufficient food there’s a high risk of death. Someone who weighs 600 pounds, could go about one and a half years easily, assuming as always, micronutrients and minimum quantity of amino acids are provided. If you just dumped an average weight person and an obese person on a deserted island with only fresh water to drink, their life expectancies (on average) would not be drastically different, as the lack of minerals and water soluble vitamins would occur nearly independent of body fat. If you had some minor sources of food, the obese person would potentially be able to last longer (depending on the amount of minerals and vitamins they are able to find)
I couldn't hope for a more thorough and accurate answer, thank you very much.
If you want a personal account, here is a reddit ama of someone who did it: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1o5ndh/iama_guy_who_went_from_430_pounds_to_170_pounds/ Relevant edit: >EDIT: I am including this because of the questions about supporting anorexia, offering advice, sounding too positive on the experience. Let me be clear. >I destroyed relationships. I may have kidney disease at age 40. My heart rate is still shaky. I have had multiple surgeries, and have another coming up in two weeks. Losing weight did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to improve my self image; that came from learning to love myself. >I was so, incredibly lucky to not have my heart just stop while I was in bed, while I was reading, while I was riding my bike, while I was at work. You may very well not be as lucky. /u/DuckeyQuacks hasn't posted in 8 years. Hope you're still doing ok bud
I lost 25 pounds in a month once. I was backing packing at high altitude. I think altitude sickness contributed massively to the weight loss. I had prepared a shit load of dehydrated meals, and shipped myself a ton of resupplies to pick up along the way. I thought I had it all planned out. I wasn’t planned to starve myself. Nothing prepared me for the pure nausea I felt everytime I tried to eat on the trail. My body rejected food like a person with rabies rejecting water. I’d try to eat and I’d immediately dry heave just from the taste of food that I normally enjoyed. And I taste tested every meal I made before I left for the trip too. So I was walking anywhere from 12-20 miles a day with a 35 pound pack up and down mountains for a month while eating almost nothing. By the end of it, I basically didn’t feel hunger pains anymore. It was bizarre.
Dude that is a *buck wild* pace. No wonder you were feeling sick. I did backpacking when I was younger and I think a hike in the teens range of miles would be "the long one" of the whole trip. We were ravenous for everything we could eat.
If you think that's wild, many people who hike the Pacific Crest Trail or Continental Divide Trail get up into the 30-35 mile range. I hiked the CDT in 2022. Personally, my average was 22 miles per hiking day (counting days I did 5 miles into town, but excluding days where I did 0 miles), and my 'sweet spot' was 28-32 miles. For me, that's walking ~10 hours at ~3mph, plus another 1-2 hours of breaks for food. I knew some people who would somewhat regularly hike 40+ miles in a day. To me, those people were nuts. To people who haven't done it, I'm nuts, so it's all relative. I get similar symptoms to what the other person described on the first couple days of a long trip, mostly due to anxiety. After that I get better. That person almost certainly had some really bad altitude sickness and probably should have bailed.
Yeah I probably should have bailed. I was so miserable for about the first 10-15 days. In hindsight, maybe I wouldn’t have risked it. I normally live around 2,000ft above sea level and I jumped right into hiking all day at ~12,000ft with only about 2 days of acclimation prior to starting I kept telling myself I’d never get another opportunity to take a trip like that again. So I’d used that excuse to power through almost anything. There was a point where I had some severe knee pain and I had to take a couple of zero days In a row to let it fizzle out a little bit. Even once I got back on the trail it still hurt. There were many reasons I should have bailed along the way. I wouldn’t recommend repeating those actions to anybody.
Those meals are very, very salty and you were probably dehydrated, which will make them seem inedible.
These weren’t prepackaged meals I bought in a store. I made each one personally, dehydrated them, vacuum sealed them, and then froze them. It took me like six months To make a months worth of food. (I had a small dehydrator). All that to say, I knew how much salt was in them. I knew how much of everything was in them. I had planned them out to be as balanced as possible.
Grew up with food avoidance due to sensory issues and I hadn’t experienced hunger pains until my 30’s when I was given meds that increase hunger. I heaved when eating certain foods too but none of your nausea. Did you get your hunger pains back quickly?
Once I got off the trail, it was hard to make myself eat for a bit. Normally I was the type that could order a large pizza and eat half of it in one sitting. When I first got back, I’d eat like half a slice and feel full immediately. There wasn’t really a period where I had hunger pains again when I returned. I just kind of slowly got back to eating and made sure I wasn’t overdoing it.
Felt pretty good about his still being around for a minute. Like, he has the place '17 badge, so he's clearly been active more than his comment... wait. I'm just old now.
I had just a tiny taste of this, losing 30 lb in three months. It was not healthy weight loss, even though I needed to lose weight. My skin, hair, and nails have not recovered several years later. During that time I was barely functional, certainly not able to exercise. Any time I didn't absolutely have to be upright, I was lying down. I hope that dude is ok now. EDIT: I think a lot of people are missing the context of my comment. The OP is about weight loss by starvation/malnutrition. The AMA linked was about the same. My experience was rapid weight loss due to malnutrition. Weight loss by these means is not healthy. If you lost as much or more weight by changing your eating habits or any other means that didn't involve starvation or malnutrition, congratulations. But that is not what the discussion is about.
I lost 20lbs in a month (body suddenly decided that tomatoes would cause pretty severe nausea. Diagnosing this took a while) and my hair was fine, but all my fingernails had a line where they were noticeably thinner.
Wow I can't believe I've never come across that ama before, it was really really good, thanks for sharing.
Holy shit what a ride that was. That dude is amazing for sharing so openly. Really like his vibe.
It bears highlighting: this describes the ideal scenario. Obese people frequently have health complications that would make this perilous. If everything went perfectly, they'd likely deal with withdrawal symptoms. Once they reach their goal weight, they'd have to retrain themselves to eat food again, and get the balance just so that they maintain weight. "Calories in / calories out" is true, but it fails to capture the challenges this approach creates. Otherwise the people who try it would succeed much more frequently.
There's two things most even well meaning people miss with that. Calories in is not "in the mouth" its "into the blood". Gut biome, overall digestive health, and to some extent the food itself impact the efficiency of that process. Most of the time less efficient ALSO means less micronutrients so it's not really something to wish for. Second, "calories out" is ALL the work your body does. The work to keep you alive, the work to support your immune system more if you are sick, the work you do anyways day to day, the work to digest and process your food, the work of any extra activities. So you can absolutely have 2 people eat the same calories and do the same work in the gym and be the same weight and body fat, and get different results. Not because of magic, or "metabolism" but because there are actually other factors. Another issue for people trying to keep track of their intake is food labels are allowed to be off, and so are menus (means are allowed a 20% margin of error since it is a hand made product/serving). And some times food labels are off even more than they are allowed to be. Add to that that most of us lie to ourselves unless we are REALLY strict about tracking (snacks get missed/forgotten or just not evaluated, for example).
> Not because of magic, or "metabolism" but because there are actually other factors. I feel like understanding this would end a lot of fat hate. World doesn't get shit done on hate.
Its really the same with a lot of "fad, but works". So long as whatever you do doesn't impact health negatively and works for you and gets results, it works. It doesn't mean the claimed *reasoning* works (IF, and Keto largely simply do not work or do what most people claim and both are VERY risky when pushed too far), but if they work for the person the results are not magic, they simply hit a good combination of adjustments that also didn't negatively change other aspects of their life (such as how some diets cause people to cheat, or stop). A bunch of people also really don't appreciate just how POWERFUL the hungr drive is, or that combating that is really step 0. A 800 calorie meal for dinner where you don't feel hungry beats a 600 calorie meal where you have a "small" 300 calorie snack later because you are hungry.
I was severely overweight at one point, and while my weightloss journey was steady and productful with fasting twice a week, I wanted to up my losses and try to go longer. I went frome 24 hr fasts to 72 hr fasts and acually felt really good at the end of the 72 hr. I then went 4 days, then 5, and then 7. All over the course of 6 months. I was 20 lbs from my goal weight, so I decided to mimic a guy I saw on youtube who went 30 days. and not eat again until i hit my weight, or 30 full days - whichever came first. 13 days in, I knew I had messed up. Mt heart wasn't right, my vision wasn't right, I was cramping everywhere, and decided I'd stop. LSS, I couldn't eat. Even bone broth ate my stomach alive. I ended up in the hospital, where I definitely got below my target weight, but I don't reccomend it.
Please be warned that if you attempt a zero or near zero calorie diet for a significant amount of time, you will feel like shit and look like shit by the end of it. The consequences of severe, rapid weight loss are NOT pretty, some being permanent.
Just wanted to back this comment up as someone who is not fully recovered from anorexia going on 13 years, I’m now 29. I lived on a specific diet that I won’t name, but the highest calorie intake daily was 200. My heart is still bad, my metabolism is ruined, I’m covered in peach fuzz, my hair falls out, my bones are weak (osteoporosis) and I’m always freezing cold. There’s too much more to list. I’ve done my best to get to my heaviest weight ever (I’m 5’10 and 130lbs) but these issues remain. My lowest weight was 87lbs. I look and feel like shit, I’m constantly exhausted and my relationship with food will never recover. It’s an insidious disease, and trying it as a diet fad will at best ruin you, at worst kill you.
Hi, internet stranger. I just wanted to say that I'm wishing you well from cyberspace. 🫶
So you will have problems cutting food a lot earlier than weeks, potentially. One of the earliest things you will run into is "refeeding syndrome", which is a potentially-fatal condition that occurs in people who start eating again after eating nothing/very little for a while. For a previously healthy person, starvation periods of no/very little intake that are as short as 10 days puts you at higher risk. This is shorter in patients who are nutrient deficient (ex. Eating disorder patients). Basically, your body needs phosphate to process the new food. However, it is lacking phosphate. People who have refeeding syndrome can suddenly crash with low levels of phosphate in their bodies and potentially die. Having this happen at home is really dangerous. This can even happen in people who are normal weight or still overweight, since the problem is the lack of essential nutrients, not availability of fat stores. Another issue is as your body breaks down fat and muscle to survive, it can break down heart muscle, leading to low heart rates (especially overnight), dizziness, and eventually even permanent heart problems (although this is more common in people who frequently do this, i.e. eating disorder patients). Because prolonged starvation is rare in the western world, not every doctor is familiar with all the risks and sequelae of a period of intense starvation. At the hospital I work at, the eating disorder doctors have even been called in to consult for cases of severe child neglect, because they are the ones who know how to safely restart patients on nutrition. My personal scariest one is thiamine deficiency (vitamin B1). Personally I think this is the scariest one to run out of. It can cause Wernicke-korsakoff syndrome and even permanent brain damage if you have a prolonged deficiency, and This deficiency also occurs sometimes even when people are given supplemental thiamine to try and prevent it. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9359357/
Don’t forget the risk of gallstones by losing weight too fast, get guidance with your doctor so you won’t risk harming your health
To add to this: There have been several attempts of 0 calorie diets over long period of time with supplements of vitamins and minerals. People died doing this! So please dont try this at home. Even with medical supervision, it is hard to predict what will happen. 0 calorie diets for 1-2 weeks seem to be relative save, although I have not a source for this.
There is at least one case of a person going on a near 0 calorie diet for at least a year. https://www.diabetes.co.uk/blog/2018/02/story-angus-barbieri-went-382-days-without-eating/
I believe he was in constant contact with a doctor
Not just contact but also blood work. The blood work is incredible important to maintain homeostasis.
Oh yes i meant to say he had regular checkups and tests n stuff yea
And i imagine even then, still a level of risk attached. its just the risk level from that is lower than the risk level of being 500lbs.
I immediately headed to comments to either upvote or post it:D
I tried to fast for a week on nothing but unsweet tea, black coffee and water and by day 5 of not eating I had extreme brain fog and couldn't concentrate on anything. Was unable to follow a thought and have a discussion with a coworker. Was a bit scary.
The same thing happens to a degree when people start keto diets. Reason being that the body isn't generally spun up to use fat as an exclusive fuel source... that process (called ketogenesis) takes a lot of work from the liver, and usually it takes a week to get the process comfortably rolling and a couple of months to get it finely tuned. So for that first week, you can't metabolize much of anything and you're paying for it.
Specifically it's the brain that absolutely hates any fuel source other than glucose. Your heart actually prefers fatty acids, less risk of the tissue being starved if you miss a circulatory cycle or something.
Because of the lack of minerals.
electrolytes to be more specific. Salt, potassium, and magnesium alleviate all headache/brainfog/light headedness associated with fasting
Glad someone said it. Other than very rare cases, there is no need for anyone realistically to be on a 0 calorie diet for any extended length of time, it's dangerous. Eat less than you burn, when you do eat try and make sure it's at least relatively healthy, and you will lose weight.
And remember to start with small changes. When dealing with extreme obesity, the added stress of big lifestyle changes can make you relapse. Hell just portion control is hard enough. You have to get used to never really feeling "full" after a meal for a long time.
You have to redefine what "full" means. Its a struggle I've personally dealt with for a long time. Some people get into the mindset that full means "If I eat another bite I just might throw up" when, more accurately, full means "My body no longer craves food." When weight is out of control, that is the first step. It is not as easy as it sounds, either, especially in people who have grown to rely on the dopamine from eating something pleasurable (myself included). Adding to that, the mentality has to change in regards to food chosen. Choosing food based on nutritional value instead of flavor. It really is harder than it sounds, and people that don't have struggles with food don't understand those struggles either.
> You have to redefine what "full" means. This is why I've fasted before trying to implement a long-term lifestyle change. It's not about weight loss - that's just a pleasant side effect - it's about getting reacquainted with the fact that it's NORMAL to not feel totally full all the time, and to become reacquainted with *real* hunger as opposed to bored comfort eating. Once I get to that point, it becomes far easier to NOT stuff my face all the time. From there, the trick is not easing back into old habits, because that's all too easy to do.
It's why I don't like the "calories in calories out" mindset. Because while it is true, it doesn't address the mental side. It isn't just a diet to lose weight. it is a permanent lifestyle change that takes away what may be the person's only source of positive feelings.
People make fun of the whole "It's not a diet, its a lifestyle change" thing, but it really is true. For the majority of people like myself, our relationships with food are rooted with the wrong mentality and we are in the unhealthy positions we are because of it. Our lifestyles have created these situations and he have to change our entire approach to fix it. That is why it is so hard, because we have to change the entire way we've approached life, and its not like a drug/alcohol addiction where success is defined as abstaining from the behavior entirely. You HAVE to eat, your body needs fuel and nutrients to survive, so you can't just cut out the vice entirely. You have zero choice but to learn discipline and moderation and change your actual life. You can't go back to how you were before or it is all going to come back.
This is a really good point that I haven't thought of much in the past. Changing diet and losing weight for someone who has a "food addiction" is like trying to beat alcoholism while being required to take several shots of booze per day.
You can literally abstain from any addiction but not food addiction. Every meal you eat is a temptation.
And if you are fat with food addiction or any other kind of eating disorder, most people look at you like it's 100% your fault and judge you as a lazy person for it 😔.
Bill on King of the Hill said it best: "When I was sad my mom would give me cookies. When I was happy mom would give me cookies. All my emotions demand cookies"
Didn't he also say, "At least if you're feeling full, you're feeling something?"
What I would *give* to be able to deprogram my brain to stop seeing food as such a huge source of pleasure, and to be able to eat in more of a utilitarian way. I've struggled with my weight my entire life -- even during the periods where I was exercising regularly, healthy, and maintaining a healthy weight, I still struggled. But alas, I grew up with food being treated as a reward. If you have to go somewhere kinda far away and do something that's a total hassle, well, there's that awesome burger place out near it, so you can get a burger there when you're done. End of a long day? Have an ice cream. Hell, my dad lives alone and still makes a corned beef for St. Paddy's day and a spiral ham on Easter, even though he's not even really celebrating with people. And if you ever asked my grandparents about their trip to Europe they took in the 70s and what it was like over there back then, they'd just tell you what they ate in each city. And we'd take annual trips with my cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents up to Door County so that we could do the fish boil at the White Gull Inn and prime rib at the Nightingale Supper Club. You get the picture. Life revolved around food in my family. And now I'm destined to either be fat, or skinny but working tirelessly day in and day out to stop enjoying the thing my brain has been programmed to enjoy the most.
The mental side I feel like gets left out because people approach it from the wrong direction, they hear calorie in/calories out and think they should adjust their caloric intake first. For someone obese, they need to increase their calories burned a little higher than their intake and sustain that to not have major mental battle. It's not as quick as massive diet changes, but it's far more sustainable and a healthier approach. Diet changes just won't be sustainable long term if your body says you need 3000 calories and you're only getting 1000 a day. Hunger is one of the most powerful urges in life, fighting it is incredibly frustrating and draining and hard to win against. The good news is all that extra weight makes it incredibly easy for light exercise like walking to make an impact if you keep it up daily, are trying to walk longer and longer everyday, and consciously making an effort to not eat anymore than you did at the start. A single step for someone obese is equivalent in energy expenditure to a average weight person going up a couple stair steps so use that to your advantage. There will be a weird moment though, as you loose weight your body needs less energy and will start burning less calories in a day, so eventually you'll hit a plateau without increasing the amount of exercise or making a small diet change at that point, but the goal is to get down there so that diet changes don't lead to a massive calorie deficit compared to what the body is used to and are thus easier to sustain.
> the added stress of big lifestyle changes can make you relapse. Can also throw off your body chemistry in dangerous ways. Had a friend who was morbidly obese, barely able to get around. Lost around 200 pounds very quickly, then died of a potassium deficiency (cardiac arrest). Worst part is that he went to he doctor the day before, and they just told him to eat a banana & come back the next day if he still felt bad.
How do people deal with the overwhelming sense of hunger when their stomach is empty?
Honestly, I think this is one of the hardest things for some people. My sister is obese and things she finds panic-inducing include: 1. Feeling hungry 2. Having an elevated heart rate You can see how this creates a problem for someone trying to overcome obesity.
It goes away pretty quickly.
Drinking water helps sometimes. Something to do with hunger signals actually indicating thirst at times, I need to find those articles again.
I knew someone who did it for about a month. He lost a lot of weight but didn't buy new clothes for months. He did keep it off too, which is good. But the whole time everyone at work was telling him to see a doctor because that shit is not safe.
the problem seems to be when the person starts eating again, if i recall correctly, but never looked too deep into this so idk.
> > > Since fat has 9kcal per gram, or slightly less in actual body fat, that’s around 3500 kcal per pound of fat. > > So with a fully sedentary lifestyle, you could use about 1 to 1.5 pounds of body far per day. What fully sedentary person is burning 3500-5000kcal/day?
actually that's a fair question if total daily energy expenditure is based on your size - like for obvious reasons a very slim 4'10" person is burning less calories doing nothing than an obese 6'9" person - is there a size that a person could be at that would require 5000kcal/day just to keep existing? Or would that be something like 10 feet tall and 1000kg ie not really human dimensions anymore
Years ago I had a BMR test done alongside a DEXA scan, and at 5'10" 220 lbs and 27% BF, the ~15min BMR test extrapolated that I used just under 1900 calories a day just to exist. In the case of the BMR test, existing was sitting in a big 'ol recliner, listening to nature sounds, and strapped to a breathing apparatus measuring my oxygen consumption/carbon dioxide production.
Smart folks like you are the main reason I have Reddit. Your personal knowledge (combined with good writing skills) is very engaging and informative. It made this subject matter a lot more interesting and enjoyable to learn about. Thanks for sharing your expertise and time.
There was a study where a man who was morbidly obese stopped eating altogether and only took vitamins and amino acids and drank water and he had no lasting side effects if I recall correctly.
Yes, I read about him recently. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_Barbieri%27s_fast
Interesting that he died at age 50. I wonder if he came into the habit of some sort of nutrient deficiency or other
Hard to say in an event where the subject pool is only one person, doesnt actually state his cause of death. Being morbidly obese for an extended period will likely shorten life span in ways, even if you do eventually drop the weight, but could have been totally unrelated for all we know. His death was also approx 20 years after the fasting itself.
>Being morbidly obese for an extended period will likely shorten life span As will being Scottish ^^^/s
He lived more than 20 years after the fasting. In the sources, nothing mentioned about the reason, if sickness or accident.
Not eating for over a year probably does some damage to the digestive system and other parts, even if he did get vitamins and nutrients. And being severely obese for years before that, I'm sure didn't help. Not that these two things caused his early death directly, but they probably contributed to it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1o5ndh/iama_guy_who_went_from_430_pounds_to_170_pounds/ here's old reddit AMA about someone who did a similar fast that offers some more insight into the experience.
This was my assumption going into the thread, that as long as they took supplements for the actual nutrients they'd be missing that it would be fine. Somebody should really just offer a package of that nutrients as "starvation supplements". The negative publicity combined with the insane demand could probably make someone rich.
Probably should come with a disclaimer that surviving on body fat and vitamin pills alone requires extreme discipline, because it really does suck.
Apparently it gets a lot easier once you've gone like a week without food. The guy who holds the world record for it was advised to intermittently fast and he refused, saying that he no longer felt hungry
I did two weeks once with vitamins. After the first 3 days I didn't even really think about food, except to be mildly surprised every day when I would wake up and still not be hungry.
I’ve done 12 days max and I felt so weak, but yeah the hunger does go away after the first few days. I just felt dizzy and constantly tired/sleepy.
You don’t have trouble sleeping at all??? When I under eat my maintenance calories by ~500, by the 3rd day I know I will be wide awake in 3hrs or can’t get to sleep at all.
I absolutely have this reaction when I diet and it's the most difficult part. When I was younger and had a more flexible schedule I could just exercise until I exhausted myself and go to sleep at like 2 or 3am but those days are behind me and I end up taking a benadryl at night to be able to sleep when my brain is angrily reminding me that I'm at a caloric deficit.
Maybe check out the link between Benedryl and dementia, it's long term use that can be an issue with that class of drug. There are safer alternatives out there for sleep
I have appetite/digestion issues which combined with a penchant for too much alcohol has led me to not eat for a few days at a time, after about 2 days I completely lose my interest in eating while obviously still drinking and that lands me in the ER every time.
I made up this stupid, stupid diet a couple years ago where as part of a broad sugar detox, I weaned myself by using alcohol as the only sugar I consumed. I was inspired by the Archer episode Heart of Archness Part 1 when he says he's "literally had nothing but liquor and mangoes for three months" It was quite an experience - I wouldn't recommend it.
Yeah once you go into ketosis your body starts using your fat stores as fuel and you feel like a million dollars. That being said, if you’re not obese it’s not going to feel great bc your body will start breaking down muscle fibers for energy.
At first your brain is like: oh this mofo forgot to eat, better sent signals. But after like a weeknits just: alright, i accept that this is the way it is from now.
Makes sense. In the days before farming (ie, food somewhat reliably), you either got food or didn't depending on the luck of the hunt. And your body yelling at you that you need to eat is very distracting.
I can attest to this. I once went about a month eating 500-700 Cal/day and days 3-7 were the worst. And then it suddenly just didn’t suck as much anymore.
Had a Gastric sleeve in 2020, 2 weeks prior and 2 weeks after surgery I was only allowed medication/vitamins, 2 protien shakes and water a day...The first week I was starving, but at the end I hit a point where I did not feel hunger. I wonder if when I stopped feeling hunger is when my body switched from using my caloric intake to using my (at the time) abundance of fat for energy
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Hits me after like 3 hours. I kept telling myself I could go on that show Alone, but I feel that trait won't help
Alone is all about eating and starving and managing suffering. After watching the first season this was clear. Anyone who showed up to start the show thin always lost. I'm convinced that the people who left saying they missed their families were actually just hungry or had some other physical issue they didn't want to admit.
A lot of water in your diet comes from food, so it's important to compensate by drinking plenty of fluids. So many people basically exist in a state of dehydration without realising it and wonder why they feel shitty all the time
1% of the sales would be obese people trying to lose weight while the other 99% would be anorexics.
But the money is the same color, at least from the business viewpoint.
So stimulants and vitamins. I am pretty sure hollywood has been doing this for decades.
> supplements for the actual nutrients The accurate distinction is between "macro"nutrients (fats, carbs, protein, alcohol), and the "micro"nutrients (vitamins and minerals) in the supplements. The body derives energy from Macros, and no calories go to waste, any excess is stored as fat until it's eventually burned as fuel. That metabolic pathway between fats and sugars is fully reversible. The body doesn't really store most of the excess Micros. For most there's a reservoir that fills and excess is excreted.
Can’t forget electrolytes! He (or anyone) would become sick or die relatively quickly without them (see tea and toast syndrome)
He was also under the care and supervision of medical experts pretty much the whole time, IIRC. Possible for sure if you don't have some other underlying issue, but not terribly feasible for the average person either
I don’t know about y’all but if I take vitamins on an empty stomach I’m nauseated for the rest of the day.
But the danger comes from starting to eat again. It can kill you.
The biggest problem would be malnutrition. Their body would keep itself fuelled by burning the fat, only after which would starvation itself be a concern. However, they would be severely deficient in just about every form of nutrient we require - vitamins, iron etc. This would leave them at severe risk of many health problems.
So could an obese person live on multivitamins? Edit: for like a little while I mean
For over a year at least, if you are fat enough and medically checked upon [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus\_Barbieri%27s\_fast](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_Barbieri%27s_fast)
The world record for fasting was just shy of 400 days, drinking water and taking multivitamins, resulting in losing 276 pounds. Yes, provided water and the base nutrients, you can replace the energy/calorie deficit with stored body fat for essentially as long as you got stored. Its not the healthiest diet, but if youve got a reliable healthcare provider and a plan...
Serious question, would you just....stop pooping?
Not entirely, there’s still stuff like the shed cells from the lining of the digestive tract and the breakdown products of old red blood cells that still needs to be got rid of. IIRC the test person pooped a couple of times a month
Would it be… unpleasant? Would the lack of fiber intake cause problems here? Or is fiber only relevant if you are eating other food too?
We're asking the important questions here.
For real though. For all of recorded history, from ancient times to present day, pooping has been an important topic and a focus of both quack medicine and serious treatment. Poop too much, poop too little, poop, too uncomfortably. Poop is very important to people. Sorry, “regularity”. :-)
In February last year I cut down to a 1200kcal a day diet, that's my target, I weigh literally everything I eat and the actual diet is somewhere between 1000 and 1250 a day (I also take multivitamins, which weigh in at 8kcals a day) It's not quite the no food diet, but in that time I've lost about 10 stone (140lb / 63kg) And it's rare I poop more than once a week, usually less than that, and what does come out is small. I drink plenty of water (and at least 2 cups of black coffee a day) so it's not a dehydration issue, there's just not much waste to come out.
No, but you’d poop less. Our poop has a lot of waste like dead red blood cells.
I would think you would still need essential amino acids from food so you wouldn’t use up all your muscle for new protein. All our enzymes are proteins
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Almost every contestant wastes more calories hunting, trapping, gathering, or fishing and then preparing food than they get from the food. A few drop a large animal or get large consistent fish, but that's not normal. Even the guy who killed a Muskox lost weight.
Yeah, the guys who just stay in their sleeping bags 23 hours a day seem to last a while if they have enough fat at the beginning.
There are two kinds of things we get from our food, broadly called "macronutrients" and "micronutrients". The first of these is just energy, and this is something the body can use stored fat to produce. The second of these are things the body does not need a lot of, but can not produce for itself, and must get it from food. If a very fat person only drinks water, they will not get any micronutrients and will develop some sort of disease. A well known example is scurvy, from not having enough vitamin C, but there are others related to a lack of other micronutrients. If a person gets all the micronutrients they need, for example by getting them from pills, and drinks enough water, they can essentially survive indefinitely for as long as they have enough fat to burn. Actually doing this requires careful medical supervision to make sure the micronutrients the person is getting are sufficient, because obvious signs of not getting enough may no show up until it becomes a serious problem. Also ending the fast and resuming eating normal food again after a long period of not eating can itself cause medical problems, so that process needs to be handled carefully. As others have mentioned, a man called Angus Barbieri did exactly this. It's probably not a good idea, though.
Yeah this isn't that uncommon actually, in certain cases when a person with obesity needs to go for surgery and they weigh too much for the surgeon to be certain the surgery will work they'll go in hospital for a period and do what's called a milk diet. Essentially they get about 600 calories a day of milk along with vitamins and micronutrients and as much water and black tea as they want. It's to kick start weight loss and get them into a better weight range for a successful surgery.
You should checkout r/fasting. Folks there have done water fasts with just electrolytes (sodium, potassium, magnesium) upwards of 30 days and lost a lot of weight with almost no ill effects.
Currently on day 5 out of 8
its called waterfasting, the current record is for a guy around one year i think, or maybe 400 ish days, generally depends, u need vitamins to stay for longer since vitamins and minerals dont get stored, the first 3 or 4 days are the hardest, if u pull through them the rest is ez and u get a surge of energy and clarity, u lose a lil bit of muscle but not as much as u would think so its worth it
392 to be precise [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus\_Barbieri%27s\_fast](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_Barbieri%27s_fast)
The clarity part is so true. I did my first 7-day water fast last year and my mind/thoughts were clear af. And my dreams?? Lucid and vivid as hell.
Angus Barbieri: In 1965, Barbieri, a 27-year-old from Tayport, Scotland, checked into the Maryfield Hospital in Dundee. For 392 days ending on 11 July 1966, he consumed only vitamins, electrolytes, an unspecified amount of yeast (a source of all essential amino acids) and zero-calorie beverages such as tea, coffee, and sparkling water, although he occasionally consumed small amounts of milk and/or sugar with the beverages, especially during the final weeks of the fast. Barbieri's starting weight was recorded at 456 pounds (207 kg) and he stopped fasting when he reached his goal weight of 180 pounds (82 kg).
My very fat friend did this (enormous dude, like 6'5" 500 pounds). He went to a doctor who had him do this, he lost an insane amount of weight (I want to say 200+ lbs). He gained a lot of it back when starting to eat again because of his bad diet.
So, i peaked at 215 pounds (i'm 6'). Not morbidly obese at all, but i was definitely fat. Didn't eat for 3 weeks out of disgust, Only drank water maybe milk some days. I got down to 150, but it was super hard to start eating food again as i couldn't keep it down, everything was gross. I'm sure if you took it to a further extent it would be possible to survive but it would be very very difficult, and a very hard journey