Features of a successful therapeutic fast of 382 days' duration (1973) [pdf]

The pleasure you get is also different in that it doesn't create much of a crave feeling. And you rarely binge on salad or carrots.. your brain will naturally give up and say enough. When anything is sweetened you see yourself in a never ending loop.

Plus vegetables help digestion.

Anyways, raw is actually finer than it appears.

For me, food is first and foremost a social experience and something you share : everyday lunch with coworkers, dinners with my family, having two hours lunch with my extended family on the weekends. It would be kind of sad to eat bland food together while we could be enjoying something pleasant.

10kg in 9 days is likely about 3-4kg fat/protein and 6-7kg water roughly speaking.

First off, people with hyperthyroidism generally have increased appetite because of an accelerated metabolism, not reduced appetite. So half his symptoms already don't match.

Secondly, don't try to diagnose people over the internet based on half a symptom and today's weather. Suggest them to see a doctor and leave it at that.

Just because you happened recently read of one random disease out of millions doesn't mean everyone has that now. You'll cause more harm than anything.

and https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258276062_English_B...

Highly active is something you can be when you're at or approaching a healthy weight; the causality is IMO almost backwards from what you've described.

My wife and I are long distance hikers. That means carrying 10-15kg up and down mountains for 10-14 hours per day every day for 3-6 months.

It also means literally counting every calorie--because you have to plan it in week-long intervals and also optimize it for minimal weight and sufficient nutrients.

Sounds like a perfect recipe for weight loss right? Enter 'hiker hunger.'

Appetite is completely elastic. Your ability to perform depends on your brain's ability to produce happy endorphins and satisfaction signals etc.

That's where intermittent fasting is crucial. You exercise your body's regulatory functions. It's not just some belief or willpower or placebo I mean: at a chemical level you transform the function of your neurochemistry to improve your metabolic process.

Although there are other benefits to IF, the weight loss is principally from calories in, calories out, because it’s much harder to cram an excess of calories into a small time window unless you purposefully eat beyond satiation.

Fasting, to me, begins when all previous meals are digested

I've fasted for up to 5 days before, and I felt just fine - especially on days 4 and 5, I actually feel like I have more mental clarity and drive than usual.

I guess this is always my question of anyone who has a positive experience with fasts. Personally, I have been at the mid-upper range of healthy bf%/weight for years and exercise frequently (running 30+ minutes 7 days a week for a few years, cycling 60+ minutes 2-3 a week this year) and find much shorter fasts (say, 20h) excruciating and completely draining mentally and physically. And I'm not at 7% body fat like that other guy. Lowest I got was maybe 14% while I was running daily; while I'm up to 18%ish now, fasting hasn't gotten any easier.

(Even if I skipped exercising, just the mental effects made my mood significantly worse by the end of the day, which makes it harder to work effectively in a collaborative environment.)

"Not only are we deeply wired to function for long periods of time without food"

So the body doesn't collapse after x number of hours without fuel. Your body also has the ability to generate its own heat when it's cold. Does that mean that it's desirable or ideal that we deliberately use these abilities? Does it mean that there is no harm or risk in doing so? I'm not saying that there is or isn't; I don't know.

"but when you haven't eaten in a while your mind becomes focused and alert"

This is sort of like the focus that you get when you're being chased by a wild animal or falling out of a tree. I don't know that seeking focus from sources like this is a great idea, but YMMV.

"since your body thinks it needs to find or hunt food."

So maybe your body is telling you that fasting isn't such a good idea?

"I'm sure Dorsey isn't the only high profile/ functioning CEO who does multi day fasts each week."

I don't do multi-day fasts and I've lived for years longer than Dorsey.

Fasting for 382 days as a medical intervention isn't learning how to actually live with a stable healthy relationship to your food environment. The behavioral patterns leading to the intervention initially will very likely resume afterwards.

This reminds of a personal experience, story time:

<anecdata>

An obese friend of mine visited the ER for a persistent respiratory issue. Through negligence of the hospital staff, he found himself in an emergency abdominal surgery with a perforated colon.

What started as a relatively casual ER visit turned into an extended many-month ordeal under hospital care, mostly bedridden. As the months ticked by his weight dropped to fairly close to normal. He was still a bit overweight, but easily over a hundred pounds lighter with only hospital food in controlled portions to live off of.

I clearly recall visiting him in the hospital in the days approaching his release, and how proud he was for the weight loss. He was so ignorant about his relationship with food and how significant a factor it was for the hospital's control being responsible for his weight loss vs. his own chosen lifestyle. I didn't say anything at the time, but was already a bit nervous about what would happen when he left the hospital's care, with a severely compromised abdomen still recovering.

Fast-forward to a year later, and he had become more obese than before starting this ordeal. No doubt his eating problems were exacerbated by the depression of his life situation. The last I heard he needed abdominal reconstructive surgery, and had developed an intestinal hernia from the substantial size increase while still recovering. Apparently he couldn't have the procedure done until he lost the weight again.

</anecdata>

Carbs are not bad for you in moderation, but if your body is drowned in them you can easily develop blood sugar problems, especially if you're predisposed to it. Otherwise, if you're highly active and aren't constantly eating more calories than you burn then of course you will have a healthy weight.

I'm not being anti carb or anything. It's just waaaaaay easier to cut them out, lose a bunch of weight, then reintroduce them in moderation, than to try and burn off an excess of calories each day via intense exercise.

Good points. When you're on a high carb diet you can feel like you're starving when you're not, because of the speed at which the energy is dumped after eating. Actual starvation is when you don't get enough calories over long enough time so that your body starts to feed on its own fat, and then muscle, and then you die. But that takes a while to kick in.

> Given the multiple vectors that compose the general term "nutrition", we can be sure that less intake is more effective for losing weight.

Firstly, nutrition: Like the article says, the guy kept up his nutrition by taking vitamins, yeast, and electrolytes. A food can be highly energy dense and have little nutritional value. Nutrition is important. One can have good nutrition and be overweight, and one can be overweight and have bad nutrition. Nutrition is a very broad subject that has little to do with straight up calories, energy, and fat burning/storage.

Secondly, let's say you're a regular sedentary American. The amount of calories your body needs will be surprisingly little. It may even feel disturbingly little.

So lets say you eat just enough to meet your body's requirements (which is different for everyone, depending on genes and activity). If you don't exercise and still eat lots of carbs and sugar, this will seem like a shockingly small amount and you will feel like you are periodically starving after your body has burned the carbs into energy, but you won't actually be starving, because it takes a decent amount of time for your body to flick over to fat burning mode. So you go through this bumpy starvation feeling diet, where you only feel satiated a short while after eating.

And still you body won't burn fat, because it's still sporadically getting enough calories from carbs, but your energy levels will be all fucked up because carbs are so easily turned into energy. You will feel high when you eat, and fucking exhausted when all that energy is burned up.

Actual starvation is when you don't get enough calories for long enough that your body is forced burn its own fat.

This feels fucking awful. It's hard. It sucks.

However, by eliminating carbs but keeping fat in your diet you can get your body to switch into fat burning mode without feeling like you're starving. So now, lets say you have a good meal, and you feel full. Maybe you've had too much. Whatever. What happens when you've burned all that energy? Instead of your body panicking and feeling like its starving, it's already in fat burning mode, so it simply goes to its own reserves without panicking. You won't get that 2pm sleepy feeling of lacking energy because your body will be happily start burning its own fat.

Over time your weight will come down. Combined with modest fasting (skipping breakfast for example) you will lose weight even quicker, and you won't feel like you're starving because your body will not have to wait for you to stop feeding in carbs before it switches over to fat.

> Then going on to say "pretty damn easy" is insulting. Most people aren't informed enough to make measured political decisions (many state initiative cycles in the US have shocking consequences), choosing what to eat and how much is an impracticable behavior.

Which is why we are having this dialogue I guess.