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nesquikchocolate t1_iya6s9v wrote

You need to realise that being overweight/obese is almost certainly closer related to mental health concerns than just purely consumption vs usage.

Eating is a coping mechanism, helps you deal with stress! Whether that stress is brought on by being overweight is irrelevant.

So when you try to lose weight without first addressing the mental health aspect, the entire exercise is fruitless.

So now, because you rob the brain of important endorphins released during eating, you're placing yourself under additional stress, which leads to further mental issues, which makes it even harder to be honest with yourself!

We don't understand all the ins and outs of mental health yet. We don't even know what depression really is yet! But we do see it manifest with eating disorders, one of which is excessive fasting like you're proposing here.

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bingobangomonk t1_iya8kuy wrote

I mean, there are a whole buttload of reasons people are overweight other than mental health issues - I'd wager that the majority aren't caused by stress eating.

Poor food literacy, poor understanding of health, poor access to fresh food and an over abundance of processed/sugary etc foods in the modern Western diet are probably a much larger cause than stress eating.

I do agree with your underlying point, however, that without identifying which of these points is the persons issue and addressing it there is no way they are going to lose weight healthily and consistently

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nesquikchocolate t1_iyaa58d wrote

In a "mentally healthy" human, the desire to eat goes away almost immediately after you start eating, and it doesn't come back for another 4-8 hours, so it's really difficult to consume more than you'd need without purposefully choosing to eat more. This is why I list it as a "mental health concern", specifically avoiding the word "issue".

I'm trying to distance the thought train away from the "practicality of just eating less", because it doesn't work that way anyway.

Poor food literacy and understanding of health usually relates to an unstructured upbringing or trouble at home, also raising a mental health concern.

There are also significant cultural considerations. In my country, for example, male obesity is highly regarded as a sign of success and abundance, and these men prefer "curvy" women - our per capita obesity is worse than USA, even though we don't have access to high fructose corn syrup at all, and we have a massive government imposed sugar tax, so almost nothing has sugar in it anymore!

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Ok_Ad_9188 OP t1_iyapvm9 wrote

Sure, but I'm not asking about it as a plan or practice exactly, I'm more curious about the...I dunno, mathematics? Like as I understand it, a human being consumes a certain amount of energies in the form of calories, they use that energy to function physically in a variety of ways, and any surplus they have is converted into fat and stored in the body, any deficit is covered by using those fat stores. I'm assuming I must be misinformed about that, because it seems like consuming zero calories would mean that all energy requirements would be drawn from fat stores, so as long as you still had fat stores and consumed the vitamins and minerals needed to fuel the numerous chemical reactions that a human does, you shouldn't be in any danger, but everywhere I look says that simply not eating is inherently bad for you and doesn't explain how Angus Barbieri was able to accomplish it

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nesquikchocolate t1_iybr9zv wrote

Your body weight is mostly water.

You drink a liter of water, you gain 1 kilogram of weight.

You urinate 1 liter, you lost 1 kilogram.

When you're starving, your body functions slow down significantly, meaning you start to retain the water that you drink, so you don't lose weight like that..

But you still need to drink water and urinate, else your blood becomes toxic!

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Ok_Ad_9188 OP t1_iybt120 wrote

Of course, but once again, you're talking about weight loss, I'm just asking about the human body storing and using calories. Ignore weight in this scenario, it's not a factor. What I'm trying to figure out is why you'd go into starvation mode at all. In this scenario, the subject is taking supplements, a wide array of vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and basic proteins, and they're drinking plenty of water. So they're not suffering from malnutrition or dehydration. They're also obese and have many pounds of fat storage (Barbieri weighed in at 207 kgs at the start of his fast) so they aren't deprived of caloric fuel; why would they go into starvation? Why would any bodily function slow down when it has all the water, nutritional needs and calories it has to perform them as well as it needs? And even if they did go into starvation, they still have to consume calories, and the calories they consume have to come from somewhere. Would the human body really just die of starvation while being completely dietary supplied and with an ample supply of calories still available to it?

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nesquikchocolate t1_iybtwbk wrote

Starvation is triggered by hormones, which are released because your stomach is telling your brain it's empty and ready for more. This starts 4-8 hours after your last meal, always. If you interrupt these hormones, like some diet pills did, then you get "magic" weight loss without feeling bad.

But now you're damaging the brain, telling it to ignore basic survival signals - and the brain doesn't run on glucose, so it cannot get fuel from body fat - it needs your liver to create ketones from fatty acids, and when you consume fatty acids, you're adding calories again, which will allow you to survive indefinitely.

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Ok_Ad_9188 OP t1_iydttg1 wrote

That makes sense. But it still doesn't explain the mysterious case of Mr. Barbieri lol I'm beginning to feel a certain amount of skepticism over the case now. Thanks for the input man

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nesquikchocolate t1_iye8025 wrote

Doctors can keep people alive in comas for decades, we've got plenty of proof for that.

If your goal is to be "alive", then sure, it can be done using supplements and your body fat reserves - we've also seen a few cases of this.

The amount of permanent damage you do to your organs and brain, however, is unknown. How the extreme starvation feelings will rewire your brain is unknown. How your body will react when you start eating again is largely unknown.

Unknown is scary for doctors, they avoid anything and everything that isn't in their handbooks - for good reason! People sue people on a whim.

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