Man does not eat for 382 days

[JTsyo]

I don't know why you guys find it hard to believe. This is the whole point of fat, to save for lean times. From what I remember he had to take vitamins and yeast for protein since they were worried his body would breakdown his heart for protein.

 

[SearchMaster]

Some former pro running back (I want to say Herschel Walker) claims that he lives off 1000 calories per day, while maintaining his fitness level and weight (like 200lbs with very low body fat)

He's a good bit more than 200 pounds. He also has multiple personality disorder so maybe each one of them only eats 1000 cal/day.

 

[cbrunny]

so much hipster in this thread. you sound like creationists.... "were YOU there?!"

 

[zinfamous]

Making the (assuredly incorrect) assumption that the 275 pounds lost was all fat:

275 lb x 3500 cal / 1 lb / 382 days = 2520 calories per day.

Assuming part of it was muscle and other tissue it would seem he would have had a steady supply of around 2000 calories per day anyway. Throw in some vitamins and minerals and you certainly wouldn't die. I bet you would feel like crap the entire time, though.

Theoretically, the body would initiate calorie retrieval from fat stores. There is some assumed legitimacy to this because it isn't simply "dude went without eating for 368 days!" It should actually be advertised as "Obese man with 275 lbs of stored calories lived for a year without eating while his body harvested necessary calories from well-stored energy reserves."

It is how many mammals hibernate through long winter seasons, after all.

That being said, I'd like to dig up any follow up studies to this, if they do indeed exist. It's difficult to take a single study like this on its own merit without other reviews or actual investigators following up with this patient. I don't think this is outside the realm of possibility--it should be achievable with a patient that is carefully monitored and receiving proper fluids--probably needs saline as well.

 

[DaveSimmons]

From the case study PDF they were monitoring him closely, enough that they felt they could detect any feeding through the urine samples.

 

[OverVolt]

1kg of fat is 9,000 calories. 1kg is 2.2 lbs.

You burn 2,000 calories/day. So figure it out.

He should have lost 186.76 lbs.

 

[DigDog]

im currently carrying 137-83 ... 54Kg of fat i do not need. 415800 calories, give or take. more than 1100 calories per day for a year. if your metabolism slows down (which it will, since you dont do anything and digestion is actually a pretty intense activity) you will have no issue. There is a reason why we store fat ..

Also, a scot who does not drink beer for a year? LOL, im not buying it.

 

[zinfamous]

1kg of fat is 9,000 calories. 1kg is 2.2 lbs.

You burn 2,000 calories/day. So figure it out.

He should have lost 186.76 lbs.

I doubt it would ever work out to be such a direct relationship like this. For one thing, efficiency in converting ATP from fat stores is very different from creating ATP from glycogen derived through normal "ingestion-based" metabolism. In training the body to take stores from fat, you've already subjected yourself to a substantial amount of biochemical trauma. You literally have to go through a minor starving process before this starts to happen.

And I don't know if this is true, but I wonder if muscle tissue would inadvertently be harvested from time to time (real starvation). The on thing I know about biology after doing this for nearly twenty years: Biology is a goddamn motherfucker. It rarely does what it is supposed to do.

 

[DaveSimmons]

I doubt it would ever work out to be such a direct relationship like this. For one thing, efficiency in converting ATP from fat stores is very different from creating ATP from glycogen derived through normal "ingestion-based" metabolism. In training the body to take stores from fat, you've already subjected yourself to a substantial amount of biochemical trauma. You literally have to go through a minor starving process before this starts to happen.

And I don't know if this is true, but I wonder if muscle tissue would inadvertently be harvested from time to time (real starvation). The on thing I know about biology after doing this for nearly twenty years: Biology is a goddamn motherfucker. It rarely does what it is supposed to do.

Which makes losing 90 lbs. more than the theoretical amount more believable. I have no medical training but the PDF seemed to show that the doctors monitoring him knew their stuff and would have caught any significant cheating.

They also were researching fasting, not pushing some miracle cure or diet scheme. From a Google search it doesn't look like they tried to profit from it like most quack science health scammers do.