Or what if I ate like 200 calories a day.... I don't think I'd starve to death but at what point do you start causing irreparable damage to your self?
Posted May 25, 2015, 9:27 PM UTC
If you supplemented this with vitamins, you would burn away all fat stores you have with no ill effects until you have none left. One chap did it for a year.
Then you would start to digest yourself.
Incorrect. Without glucose carbohydrate intake and stores, fat gets transformed into unusable energy by the Ketonic Pathway which changes your blood pH. This makes your body try to dilute the blood to keep it at a good pH. The dilution leads to high blood pressure and your kidneys get a beating.
edit: fucking autocorrect
Interesting. I didn't read too much into it, I just know that one chap managed it, went a year without eating anything. So I guess he drank sugar water with his vitamins.
Instead of glucose, I meant carbohydrates which the body can break down to glucose. The body can store somewhere around 1.25 - 1.75 lbs of glucose in the liver and muscles. Once that's gone and you have no intake, you're hitting that Ketonic Pathway.
If you've ever been in an endurance event without eating for a while (for me, about 40 mins on an empty tank) and feel like all of a sudden you've hit a wall or every minute gets exponentially longer, then you've ran out of glucose. Athletes typically referred to this as "hitting the wall" or "bonking".
Is this the "starvation mode" fatties talk about between breakfasts?
If I remember correctly, he had almost constant supervision from doctors.
The only ill effect I could imagine is that any muscle you would have built up would almost entirely be gone. That is if you did it for a year.
So long as you keep hydrated, you'd use up your fat stores until you're left with very little. It'd be unbearable for the first few days, but afterwards it becomes surprisingly easier.
Source: did a six-day fast once.
It's not uncommon for people to go on week-long fasts (or juice fasts). As long as you weren't trying to work out a lot, you'd be fine.
How much weight could I expect to lose if I did this for a week, only drink water and maybe 500 calories? I'm a bit overweight and want to lose 10kg fast.
Don't fast to lose weight, but do you want to lose weight and keep it off, or lose it for an event, then don't care about putting it back on after?
If your looking to lose weight and keep it off, start with a reduced-calorie, healthy & balanced diet, around 1250-1500 kCals daily, and split it between 4-5 meals eaten every 3-4 hours. Take a daily multivitamin and drink plenty of water, no cokes, coffee or sugary drinks or snacks, and you'll start noticing a difference.
If your just trying to crash diet for an event coming up soon, which isn't healthy but can be done, drink lots of water, daily vitamins and necessary minerals, cardio while wearing heavy clothing, like a full sweat suit, and get you some diuretics pills. This is what boxers and body/physique models do before their match or competition to lose extra pounds and tone up their skin a bit. It's good for about 6-12 lbs., 2.75-5.5 kgs. depending on your body type, could be more too depending on how far your willing to push your body.
I highly recommend not doing the second part unless you feel like you absolutely have too, if you've got a few weeks, the 1st suggestion will do wonders for you.
It's probably not a good idea. You need something sustainable - if you're overweight and staying there at the moment, that means what you are eating every day is more than you need. The simplest way to lose weight is to eat 500 calories per day less than you are doing at the moment. You will lose about half a kilo a week.
Fasting might get you there quicker but it's very likely you will put it all back on at the end.
Watch fat sick and nearly dead 1&2 on Netflix, buy a juicer, profit.
3500 calories = 1lb
It's not entirely accurate but, for short periods of time (like your 1wk) it'd still work. The problem is that you'll probably just bounce right back.
You would have to pee more often.
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r/eatingdisorders has lots of resources for getting help and reaching out to others.
I think you go for about 20 days without food before you start causing irreparable damage to your organs (if you're an otherwise healthy person). A week shouldn't be a problem.
There have been cases where people have been starving themselves for over two months and survived.
It's still not smart.
Yeah, definitely not smart. Extreme fasting is reserved for prisoners, protesters and weirdos. A normal person shouldn't put their body through so much stress for no reason.