fasting

[ppf]

Hey, why don't people fast to lose weight?

They say it's unhealthy to not eat, but there's people that go days, weeks, or even months without eating, like this:


YouTube - 1st Day of 40 Day Fast - (Water Only Fast - 1st of 3 Forty Day Fasts)

YouTube - Water Fasting day 10

Guillermo Fariñas - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

And I read in a book called "Fasting and Sunbathing" (1950) that Jesus, Ghandi, Buddha, and other religious leaders fasted for 40 days for religious purposes.


It's a lot quicker than excercise/dieting too.

For example, running on the treadmill for 1 hour at 6 mph and 6% incline uses up about 1100 kcal. While fasting for one day uses up 1800 kcal (depends on your body though). That means with fasting you lose half a pound per day (1 lb = 3500 kcal).

I hear that it will cause muscle loss, but I don't have any extra muscle to begin with and I don't care if I lose SOME muscle because it's not like I won't be able to walk or something. And once any excess muscle IS gone, my body will have no choice but use the fat, right? I don't want any muscle anyway because I don't want to build up my body. I just want to be skinny. Actually, I think this isn't right, though. I don't think fasting causes you to lose muscle (or non-excess muscle, anyway) unless you get below a certain percentage of body fat composition which is like 1-3% for men and 10-13% for women (according Body fat percentage - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia), because there is some fat in different parts of the body that cannot be used up and your body will start using up essential tissues at that point to keep you alive. If you have extra muscle from working out/strength training, then you will lose it/atrophate if you don't continually keep up your training to maintain it, so I'm not worried about losing that.

The only thing I worry about is fainting. The first time I ate very little for a few days I had the problem of light-headedness and near-fainting whenever I got up and started moving around. The most days I've fasted is 7 (twice) and fainting wasn't TOO much of a problem as long as I was careful once I got up and started moving around... it would probably be dangerous though if I was crossing the street though or was alone for days without anybody to call for help if I faint and hit my head or something.

Is this what happened to Terry Schiavo? It says on wikipedia that "The cause of her cardiac arrest has never been determined but her lack of balanced nourishment was suspected, because she was not ovulating. Cardiac arrest can be caused by an imbalance of electrolytes in the blood. On admission to the hospital, her serum potassium level was noted to be very low, at 2.0 mEq/L; the normal range for adults is 3.5–5.0 mEq/L. The low potassium could have been a spurious result caused by the intravascular administration of fluids during the attempt to resuscitate her. Her sodium and calcium levels were normal." And, "she apparently has been trying to keep her weight down with dieting by herself, drinking liquids most of the time during the day and drinking about 10–15 glasses of iced tea." (Terri Schiavo case - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

As long as you eat vitamins/minerals supplements, you should be okay though, right?

And fainting isn't even a problem for excercise because I think I could have ran on the treadmill if I started up gently enough.

If I wanted to lose 65 lbs I would have to lose 227,500 kcal.

Running for 1 hour at 6 mph at 6% incline each day, it would take me 206.8 days.

By restricting daily calorie consumption by another 600 kcal, this could be reduced to 133.8 days.

With fasting it would only take 126.4 days.


Some other things I read about fasting from the book "Fasting and Sunbathing":

"Old mistakes are repeated year after year in reference works, so that the public is at all times misinformed. The New Standard Encyclopedia (1931) says: "Generally death occurs after eight days of deprivation of food." This encyclopedia mentions the fifteen men survivors of the frigate Medusa (1876), who were thirteen days on an open raft without food, and also a case instanced by Bernard which was "sustained on water alone for 63 days." Succi's forty days fast is also mentioned. No mention is made of fasting as a hygienic or remedial measure, and not a single scientific and up-to-date book on fasting is included in the bibliography.
Until the 1921 revisions of that work were made, the Encyclopedia Britannica and similar works, carried articles on inanition and fasting, stating, over the signatures of eminent medical authorities, that from ten to fourteen days marked the extreme limit to which the human body could endure without food."

"Thousands of fasts of much longer duration, even up to 70 and 90 days, had been recorded; but the medical profession and scientists gave no attention to them. The "authorities" gave up their false notions only after the McSwiney hunger strike forced them to do so."

"That "common sense" may still be arrayed against the demonstrated facts of experiment and experience, and that men who pose as scientists, may deny what may be known about the body because it does not seem to them to harmonize with what they think they now know about the body is amazing proof that there have been ignorant bigots and that they are not all dead."

"Sinclair says he talked with a well-known and successful physician, "who refused point-blank to believe that a human being could live for more than five days without any sort of nutriment." "There was no use talking to him about it--it was a physiological impossibility." He refused to investigate the evidence offered that it could be done. Bigotry we have with us always. Men who form their opinions in advance of investigation and, who, then refuse to investigate, lest they have their opinions swept away, are all too common."

"The American People's Encyclopedia says that the survival time of acute "starvation" (complete abstinence from all food save water) is forty days in man. It says that in individual men the survival time (as determined in laboratory "starvation" experiments) ranges from 17 to 76 days. It is not likely that any such laboratory experiments have ever been made. One thing we may be certain of; namely, the survival times given are not accurate. A baby may survive more than seventeen days of fasting. Numerous fasters have not only survived but benefitted by fasts lasting longer than 76 days."

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[ppf]

And people say it's "not healthy" to lose too quickly, but I want to know exactly why... because I don't believe that it is.

 

[Jericho]

[No message]

 

[aesir22]

Good grief.

Is this a joke post?

Your body is about balance. It doesn't have time to balance itself if you drop weight too quick.

Fasting is rarely good for you. No nutrition going into your body. 50,000 cells die and are replaced every second in your body, and they are made from what you eat, so nutrition is important.

Lose weight too fast and you will likely put it back on or be left with fat deposits and sagging skin.

You do want muscle. It burns fat. You don't want your body to burn muscle away or its gonna start eating its own heart. You'll end up weak and gaunt.

Fasting can lead to anorexia and other eating conditions.

If you are female, your periods will stop and your fertility will be threatened.

Your skin will dry out. Your hair may start to fall out.

Your organs will function at a low level.

Your hormones will be completely out of whack.

When you do start eating again your digestive system will struggle.

You won't burn 1800 calories every day that you fast. Your body will dip into 'starvation mode' and will burn practically nothing, leaving you feeling faint, tired and depressed.

Do yourself a favour and READ UP ON WEIGHT LOSS before you do yourself an injury.

 

[ppf]

I was hoping to hear from people who had positive things to say about fasting

 

[ppf]

Well, somebody should go out and do something about these people that are saying fasting is good if it's so bad.

 

[ppf]

But maybe that's why obesity is so prevalent in North America today, because people don't know about fasting?

File:BRFSS obesity 1985-2006.gif - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Jeanette401]

I recommend going to to hear more on Intermittant Fasting - which uses some of the same ideas as fasting, but you eat every day.

It is also true that if you lose SOME muscle, that can be some cardiac muscle as well as your legs.

 

[ppf]

It is also true that if you lose SOME muscle, that can be some cardiac muscle as well as your legs.

Sources! Don't just post your opinion.

 

[ppf]

"HISTORY OF FASTING
The history of fasting goes back into antiquity. Modern day Christians have been deceived into thinking that somehow Christ, in his physical human body, along with prophets of old were simply given supernatural powers to accomplish the feat of going forty days without food. Not so. Today in my practice people do this routinely, believers and nonbelievers alike.

...

ANCIENT GREECE AND EGYPT
Because you, the reader, probably know little or nothing about the history of fasting, let me take you briefly to a wealth of knowledge brought to us by the most brilliant of both ancient and modern scholars. I won't take you to holy writ, because Dr. Bright has done that far more competently than I could.

First of all therapeutic fasting means not only zero calorie intake, but it also means no food at all -- in any form. Only pure water intake is used.

Apart from scripture, the earliest records of therapeutic fasting date back to the ancient civilizations of Greece and the Near East. Plato and Socrates fasted for physical and mental efficiency. Pythagoras required his students to fast before entering his classes.
Ancient Egyptians resolved syphilis with therapeutic fasting. The renowned Greek physician Hippocrates recognized therapeutic fasting as of primary importance in disease.

EUROPE AND RUSSIA
In the 16th century a famous Swiss physician Paracelsus said, "Fasting is the greatest remedy". In the 17th century Dr. Hoffman wrote a book "Description of the Magnificent Results Obtained Through Fasting In All Diseases".
A century later Dr. Von Seeland, of Russia wrote that "fasting is a therapeutic of the highest degree possible". Likewise Dr. Adolph Mayer of Germany wrote, "Fasting is the most efficient means of correcting any disease". Also Dr. Moeller wrote that "fasting is the only natural evolutionary method whereby through a systemic cleansing you can restore yourself by degrees to physiological normality".

MODERN FASTING RESEARCH
Literally hundreds of brilliant scholars have contributed to the modern day scientific research into the exact physiological characteristics of fasting.
Many hundreds of scientific papers have been published on the subject. The archives of most famous universities are bulging with research data on fasting. The most famous personalities in scientific research are Professors Child, of the University of Chicago, Langfield of Harvard, Allen of Rockefeller Institute, Benedict and Ritzman of Carnegie Institute, Morgulis of the University of Nebraska, along with numbers of European physiologists as well.

MILLIONS OF SUPERVISED FASTS
Over the last two centuries well known physicians have used and prescribed therapeutic fasting here in America. It could be reasonably estimated that collectively a million or more such fasts have been conducted under supervision. This therapy has been used in almost every disease known. The modern day physician periodically doing sophisticated biochemical blood profiles during the fast attempts to clearly track quantitatively and therefore physiologically almost every organ, system, and disease process -- "The life is in the blood". The great advantage of this evaluation is that it defines safety during the fast. Early on, evidence of developing physiological deficiency becomes visible should the organism begin to weaken vitally. This possibility of course indicates a resuming of selectively corrective feeding within individual tolerances. Astute study of the patient's physiology as measured biochemically during the near basal state of fasting contributes immensely to diagnostic precision rarely observed except during the acute stages of disease."

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[Jeff91]

I was hoping to hear from people who had positive things to say about fasting

well nobody here is going to. it's just a bad idea plain and simple, so if you kill yourself it's your own damn fault

 

[aesir22]

Good Lord, original poster please just go and fast for a couple of years.

You want proof? How about BIOLOGY. Perhaps you should be looking for your own proof before you start ranting how Jesus and Bhudda were fine doing it. I think i would like you to offer some proof that Jesus fasted...

Yes you can fast for 40 days and not die. The question is should you fast to lose weight? No. You should not. Good bye and goodnight.

 

[ConcealedPearl]

I fast for religious reasons one month during the year...the fast is usually from sundown to sunset so for this time of the year its around (4am-9pm)...It usually changes every year by +/- 1hour. I have to eat in the morning, I usually have a fiber dense meal no proteins...imagine eating a steak at 4am. We are not allowed to eat or drink the whole day till sunset and usually that's when people go all out. Sometimes it hard to lose weight while doing this type of fast because of what you eat when you break your fast. I try to drink lot's of water, then eat a small meal(usually a sandwich with protein or rice with chicken). People usually eat a lot of fried foods and carbonated foods so at the end they end up gaining weight.
I find that this type of fasting-done the right way of course is good for you. It gives you discipline and because you eat in the morning and night you don't feel that hungry, in the beginning of course you will. It's hard to get exercise in though, unless exercising at 10pm works for you, it doesn't for me.

 

[MAR1984]

fasting isn't a diet plan. Its starvation.

If you starve yourself to lose weight, how do you maintain once you start eating again?

Obesity is not prevelant due to lack of fasting, its prevelant due to a mcdonalds on every corner. how do you explain fit or skinny people in north america who don't fast?

Why do you feel the need to lose weight so quickly? Did you gain it that quickly? Its going to take a lifetime to maintain, whats the big deal about a year to lose it?

Not a single one of your "sources" mention anything about any health benefits of fasting, or fasting for weight loss. Mostly they talk about religious reasons, survival times without food, and maybe something about controlled fasts in hospital settings for monitering disease or something.

Do you question the sources of your wikipedia entires and books?

Do you really want to look like christian bale in "the machinist"?

 

[ppf]

I think i would like you to offer some proof that Jesus fasted...

Okay, well, Jesus was just a person and there was nothing magic about him. Everybody knows that he fasted for 40 days (google "jesus fast 40").

fasting isn't a diet plan. Its starvation.

"So long as the body's food reserves last, the individual abstaining from food is fasting. When this reserve has been consumed to the point where it is no longer able to sustain the functions of life, further abstinence becomes dangerous; starvation begins. It is only after this point is reached that any real damage is sustained by the vital organs and their functions. As a general rule, under proper conditions of environment, one may fast for weeks, and even months, before the starvation point is reached. "It is perfectly true," says Sinclair, "that men have died of starvation in three or four days; but the starvation existed in their minds--it was fright that killed them."

I don't understand the last sentence there though.

"This fear of fasting is kept alive by the press, which, ever so often carries the story of somebody dying while fasting, and invariably death is attributed to starvation. These deaths are presented as "horrible examples" of the "evils of fasting." How rare are these deaths! But it would be enlightening if we could have all the details of each of these deaths. No doubt, we would find that most of them are not due to abstinence from food at all. Most of these deaths have been due to irreparable damage to some vital organ (organic disease), an occasional one may have been due to pushing the period of abstinence beyond the fasting period, a few have been due to injudicious breaking of the fast, some of them have been due to drugs. But every day people die from unnecessary and "unsuccessful" operations and the press keeps quiet. Everyday people die from drugging and the editors and newsmen ignore such deaths. Fasting is their target."


"There is no sense in the panicky fear of missing a few meals that is so prevalent in both lay and professional circles today. The fear of starving, expressed on every hand, is a foolish fear. "I am not going to starve to death," says Mr. Average Man, when advised to fast. They warn others who are fasting that they will starve to death. Although we oppose letting people "starve to death," we make no decided stand against them stuffing themselves to death; instead, we rather encourage it."


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"A fast of a hundred days or more can be survived even under the most favorable conditions, only by the individual who possesses sufficient food reserves to sustain his vital organs and vital functions for this period of time. The smaller the amount of food stores one has in reserve, all things else being equal, the earlier is the starvation period reached.

...

Thousands of fasts, ranging from a few days to three months in duration, in men, old and young and both sexes, in all conditions of life, have demonstrated not only that man can go for long periods without food and not be harmed thereby, but also, that he will receive great benefit from a rationally conducted fast. To starve is to die; to fast is to live."

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"Tribal fasts, as seen among the American Indians, to avert some threatened calamity, or fasting, as by Ghandi to purify India, is the use of fasting as magic. Fasting was widely observed, both in private and in public ceremonials by the American Indians. Fathers of newborn children are required to fast among the Melanesians. Fasting was often part of the rite of initiation into manhood and womanhood or for sacred and ritual acts among many tribes of people. David's twelve days' fast, as recorded in the Bible, while his son was ill, was a magic fast. Ceremonial fasting carried out in several religions may properly be classed as magic fasting. If we carefully distinguish between magic fasting and protest fasting, as in hunger strikes, we may say that magic fasting is fasting undergone to achieve some desired end outside the person of the faster."

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" Matthew 17:21 asserts the need for “prayer and fasting.” From a limitless number of round clergymen and equally pudgy church members this verse has never stirred much response. Both the Old and New Testaments proclaim the importance of fasting. Fasting played a key role in the spiritual journeys of Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad and Moses. Plato and Socrates recommended fasting for increasing mental and physical effectiveness. Such ancient physicians as Avicenna, Paracelsus and Hippocrates advocated fasting for treating a varied range of illnesses.


For thousands of years surprisingly diverse groups have fasted. Some fasted for spiritual initiation. The Zulus have a saying: “The continually stuffed body cannot see secret things.” Pythagoras fasted 40 days for enlightenment. The Cure of Ars fasted continually and demonstrated remarkable sanctity.


Yoga texts single out fasting as an important discipline for spiritual growth. Twenty-four-hour fasts on new-moon and full-moon days are usually suggested. Fasting is used as a means to develop detachment. Historically, Yoga philosophy views the body as the vehicle a person occupies on the journey through life. The individual is the traveler using the body to live out necessary experience, but is not the same as the body. This is a fundamental and crucial difference. Yoga texts say that we have forgotten our true identity. We have lost ourselves in a maze of desire destined to bring us only ignorance and misery. Yoga offers breathing exercises, meditation and such physical disciplines as postures and fasting. These build a road to higher levels of consciousness that rip away the blinding shrouds of ignorance."


--

If you starve yourself to lose weight, how do you maintain once you start eating again?

Well isn't that the problem in the first place? Temptation? But if you get skinny you'll be much happier and will be able to get into life and do the things you've always wanted to do and so avoiding over-eating won't be a problem.

I've always been able to maintain my weight. Why should it be so hard to do it after I get skinny? I imagine I might binge for a day after I finish fasting but that won't matter. With each day those extra calories I ate will spread out over more and more days where I ate normally.

And whenever you eat, that is a DECISION you made. There is no force making you eat against your will. There is no "animal nature" that is pulling your hand toward the food.

Plus excercising will be a joy after I get skinny. I will be able to run outside and play DDR and dance and work on my sports skills because I won't be afraid of how my body works/looks anymore.

Why do you feel the need to lose weight so quickly? Did you gain it that quickly? Its going to take a lifetime to maintain, whats the big deal about a year to lose it?

Yeah I can do that. Just wondering when I diet/excercise if there isn't something easier/faster because I'm hating every moment of excercise (and perhaps dieting). Actually, I like the moment after a good run. Feels really good and I feel a lot more free. But I think that's something separate - getting your heart working and feeling good and doing it to lose weight.

Do you really want to look like christian bale in "the machinist"?

I would love it if it was easy to get so skinny. Then I could just eat again until I'm at a healthy weight.

But I can stop at any time if I get too skinny or if I'm feeling any health problems. And then if I decide it's okay I can just continue fasting again and go beyond that point.


I bet fasting is what they do in Japan:

 

[ppf]

Not a single one of your "sources" mention anything about any health benefits of fasting

"Research suggests there are major health benefits to caloric restriction. Benefits include reduced risks of cancer, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, insulin resistance, immune disorders, and more generally, the slowing of the aging process, and the potential to increase maximum life span.[2] According to Dr. Mark P. Mattson, chief of the laboratory of neurosciences at the US National Institute on Aging, fasting every other day (intermittent fasting) shows beneficial effects as strong as those of caloric-restriction diets[3] in mice, and a small study conducted on humans at the University of Illinois indicates the same results [4]

According to the US National Academy of Sciences, other health benefits include stress resistance, increased insulin sensitivity, reduced morbidity, and increased life span.[7][8] Long-term studies in humans have not been conducted. However, short-term human trials showed benefits in weight loss. The side effect was that the participants felt cranky during the three week trial. According to the study conducted by Dr. Eric Ravussin, "Alternate-day fasting may be an alternative to prolonged diet restriction for increasing the life span".[9]

Adherence to Greek Orthodox fasting periods contributes to an improvement in the blood lipid profile, including a decrease in total and LDL cholesterol, and a decrease in the LDL to HDL cholesterol ratio. A statistically insignificant reduction in HDL cholesterol was also observed. These results suggest a possible positive impact on the obesity levels of individuals who adhere to these fasting periods.[10]

...

Fasting is often indicated prior to surgery or other procedures that require anesthetics. Because the presence of food in a person's system can cause complications during anesthesia, medical personnel strongly suggest that their patients fast for several hours (or overnight) before the procedure.[31][32][33]. Additionally, certain medical tests, such as cholesterol testing (lipid panel) or certain blood glucose measurements require fasting for several hours so that a baseline can be established. In the case of cholesterol, the failure to fast for a full 12 hours (including vitamins) will guarantee an elevated triglyceride measurement.[34]

...

Prolonged fasting also has a long, albeit controversial, history as a form of medical treatment. Since the 1900s, hundreds of thousands of human fasts have been supervised and recorded. There are also recent studies on mice that show that fasting every other day while eating double the normal amount of food on non-fasting days can lead to improved insulin and blood sugar control, neuronal resistance to injury, and general health indicators. Punctuated fasting diets produced superior improvements compared with mice on 40% calorie restricted diets.[35][36] Alternate-day calorie restriction may prolong lifespan[37] and attenuate diseases associated with inflammation, oxidative stress and aging.[38]

Many fasting protocols are used by integrative medicine practitioners as part of detoxification or cleansing diets. Environmental toxins have been implicated in many diseases.[citation needed]

Fasting can be dangerous when the body is not able to perform gluconeogenesis. If the body is not in ketosis, then the brain and vital organs (which can burn either glucose or ketones) need 800 calories a day to have ample glucose. If less than 800 calories a day are consumed, the brain and vital organs are deprived of necessary glucose, causing damage and in some cases, death. Ideally these diets should be supervised by health care practitioners with who are experienced with therapeutic fasts.[39] Thus, fasting is only safe when the body enters and remains in ketosis during the fast."

-- Fasting - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Is it any wonder that Asian countries have the highest lifespans and lowest obesity rates? Must be because of fasting, seafood, and/or vegetarianism.

List of countries by life expectancy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Or maybe it's just Japan...

[EDIT]

Your body is using the glucose in your bloodstream. When you eat food, glucose is released into the bloodstream from breaking down the food. Excess glucose is stored in the liver (and converted into fat?). When you fast the body use the blood glucose and start releasing glucose from the liver when it gets low. Ketosis is when the body has used up the liver's glycogen and must start using up body fat. Once there is no more useable fat left (below 4% body fat or something) it can't perform gluconeogenesis. And that is when you will need 800 kcal per day to stay alive.

 

[ppf]

No nutrition going into your body. 50,000 cells die and are replaced every second in your body, and they are made from what you eat, so nutrition is important.

No, I think they just need ATP energy from fat. And you can take vitamins/minerals. Anything else the body can make/already has enough of.

I'm too lazy to remember how cells work to try to confirm this.

And plus I think we have too much amino acids in our body from our protein-rich diets... I don't remember where I read this, but I think I read something along those lines sometime...

Lose weight too fast and you will likely put it back on

It's really your decision how much you eat afterwards.

If you decide to eat something - STOP! What are you doing? It's you who's deciding to eat it.

or be left with fat deposits and sagging skin.

I don't think losing weight too quickly will influence if you get loose skin or not... I think someone just felt that it had to be so.

Maybe just wait a few months after fasting to see if your skin tightens.

And I don't think I'm losing weight too quickly while fasting. I checked the scale when I was fasting and it didn't seem like I was losing 1/2 a pound per day. I wished it would go faster, actually.

This chart shows how heavier people will lose weight quicker at first and that this rate will decrease as they get skinnier:

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"It will be noted by a careful study of this chart that the rates of loss varied much in these ten cases. Several factors account for this. Fat patients lose much faster than do thin ones, nervous and emotional patients lose more rapidly than calm and poised individuals, patients that are relaxed and resting lose less weight than those that are tense or active. There is also a correlation between the condition of the patient's tissue and his loss of weight. Fat individuals who are soft and flabby fall away very rapidly. Those fat individuals who are hard and firm lose much slower. There is the added fact that much water drinking tends to keep the weight up by water-logging the tissues, without preventing the usual loss of solid substance. It is also true that the most rapid losses occur in the earliest part of the fast so that on the whole, short fasts show greater average daily losses than do long fasts. Losses are not as great in second, third or fourth fasts as in the first."


Plus, compare this woman before and after she had three 40-day fasts (with breaks in between).

Before:

After:

Her face skin seems really tight. She has some wrinkles, but you don't see a hanging chin or anything like she had in the first video.

And I wouldn't go as far as she had, but it just shows you how far you can go if you want, I guess.

You do want muscle. It burns fat. You don't want your body to burn muscle away or its gonna start eating its own heart. You'll end up weak and gaunt.

Muscle only burns about 6 kcal per lb. So unless you want to put on like 20 lbs and maintain it to increase metabolism by 160 kcal per day, I wouldn't recommend it. Plus, you'd have to eat to maintain your muscle. And worry about losing the muscle if you eat too little.

And I don't know how many calories you lose during strength excercise. Not that much though. And plus it's PAINFUL. Push-ups would be a lot easier if I was lighter. Plus running would be easier if I was lighter. Instead of exerting a lot of strength on certain muscles in a short period of time, why not use up more muscles, through a longer period of time. You'd still be using up the same amount of energy, thermodynamically speaking. So why make it painful?

Effort doesn't mean physical effort. You could excercise smarter and thus with less PHYSICAL effort.

You don't NEED to have pain to have gain.

"Bouchard points out that muscle actually has a very low metabolic rate when it is at rest, which is most of the time. And the metabolic rate of muscle pales in comparison to other parts of the body.
In fact, the heart and kidneys have the highest resting metabolic rate (200 calories per pound). The brain (109 calories per pound) and liver (91 calories per pound) also have high values [5]. In contrast, the resting metabolic rate of skeletal muscle clocks in at just 6 calories per pound, with fat burning just 2 calories per pound.
In other words, while skeletal muscle and fat are the two largest components, their contribution to resting energy expenditure is smaller than that of organs. The vast majority of the resting energy expenditure of your body comes from organs such as liver, kidneys, heart, and brain, which account for only 5% to 6% of your weight."

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Fasting can lead to anorexia and other eating conditions.

Anorexia is a decision you make, not an uncontrollable disease.

If you are female, your periods will stop and your fertility will be threatened.

I do not know about this...

 

[ppf]

Your skin will dry out. Your hair may start to fall out.

Now you're just making stuff up...

Your organs will function at a low level.

This guy also wrote about all the organs during fasting, so I'm just going to assume it's okay (I don't feel like reading all this right now):

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Maybe everybody already knows about fasting but are just too apathetic to do it... mmm...

Your hormones will be completely out of whack.

No they won't.

When you do start eating again your digestive system will struggle.

No, the woman in the youtube video ate STEAK after she finished her three 40-day fasts.

Although I understand the digestive bacteria in your stomach will die out when it runs out of things to digest. But I have to read more on that and it's not that bad obviously because of all these other people that fasted for such long periods.

You won't burn 1800 calories every day that you fast. Your body will dip into 'starvation mode' and will burn practically nothing, leaving you feeling faint, tired and depressed.

Well, the woman in the video went from 200 lbs to 100 lbs or something after 120 days of fasting (with breaks in between).

And it boggles my mind how I could be losing LESS weight if I ate 0 calories as opposed to only 1000 kcal.

If I was restricting my daily calories to 1700 kcal I would want to know if I can't make it a bit less than that. And if I restricted myself to 1000 kcal per day, I would want to know if I can't make it less than that. What is the lowest do you think? I don't like the ambiguous advice I get and having to worry each day if I'm doing enough so I ask this.

The book "Fasting and Sunbathing" says:

"Metabolism is lowered from one-fourth to two-fifths during the fast. This falls quite rapidly during the first part of the fast until the true physiological minimum for metabolism is reached. From this point on, until the return of hunger, metabolism is maintained at a fairly uniform level. If food is not consumed when hunger returns there follows, soon, a rapid dropping of metabolism to new low, but pathological levels."

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So 1/4th to 1/5th of normal metabolism sounds really bad (450 to 360 kcal per day).

But I'm too lazy to finish reading that right now... obviously it can't be THAT bad if that woman on youtube did it... :/

Another guy who fasted:

 

[ppf]

Do you really want to look like christian bale in "the machinist"?

Well, first of all, that looks horrible.

Second of all, this movie is just giving a bad image to Christianity and fasting.

Third, I looked at this on Wikipedia and it says:

"Christian Bale starved himself for over four months prior to filming, as his character needed to look drastically thin. Allegedly, his eating consisted of one cup of coffee and an apple (or a can of tuna) each day (approximately 275 calories, or 1.2 kilojoules).[2] According to the DVD commentary, he lost 28 kilograms (62 lb), reducing his body mass to 54 kilograms (120 lb). Bale wanted to go down to 45 kilograms (99 lb) but the filmmakers would not let him due to health concerns. He later regained the mass, plus an additional 18 kilograms (40 lb) through weightlifting and proper eating, in preparation for his role in Batman Begins."

-- The Machinist - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

See? He did fasting and he was fine. It worked GREAT for him.

[EDIT]

Actually, that second photo of him doesn't look too bad. He could be in a fashion magazine or something.

And the first one just looks bad because of the green lighting and crazy pose. They did it on purpose to really define his bones.

 

[ppf]

This article says:

The concern with fast weight loss is that it usually takes extraordinary efforts in diet and exercise — efforts that often aren't sustainable over the long term.

But why is fasting an EFFORT? Isn't NOT eating just the normal thing?

Eating is an ACTION you take. It is a positive DECISION you make.

And it doesn't need to be sustainable because you're only doing this once.

If it was sustainable you'd just be eating to maintain your weight.

Right? We agree in the first place that eating is your fault/a decision you make?

And you're not really 'hungry' unless your body is TELLING you you need to eat... what is true hunger? You have to decide if you're fooling yourself or not when you go to the fridge about being hungry.

Excercising IS an effort. I hate running on the treadmill. But playing soccer or something would be better I guess...

A slow and steady approach is easier to maintain and usually beats out fast weight loss for the long term.

This is really your decision. I'm dieting/exercising occasionally and was just wondering if I couldn't do it faster just to get it out of the way.

A weight loss of 1 to 2 pounds a week is the typical recommendation. Although it may seem slow, it's a pace that's more likely to help you maintain your weight loss.

Well, I don't have any experience with fasting longer than 7 days, but I imagine that it's your decision whether you continue or not.

The only problems I've had is my mom annoying me and people saying it's unhealthy.

If you lose a lot of weight very quickly, it may not be fat that you're losing. It's might be water weight or even lean tissue, since it's hard to burn that many fat calories in a short period.

Drinking water should balance out water you're losing.

And I don't think the body will use tissue it NEEDS when there is all this fat to use. Isn't that what the body is SUPPOSED to do? Why would the body do something harmful to itself. That's what fat is there FOR.

That's what I think, anyways.

In some situations, however, faster weight loss can be safe if it's done the right way. For example, doctors prescribe very low calorie diets for more rapid weight loss in obese individuals. This type of diet requires medical supervision.

I assume the supervision is there just in case?