Man does not eat for 382 days

[madoka]

Holy crap! I didn't think it was possible to live past 2-3 weeks without food.

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/true-story-man-survived-without-203543245.html

Most people can survive without food for at least a few weeks, maybe a bit longer. Eventually, however, starvation kills.

Yet the limits on how long people can go without eating are complicated; without water people are unlikely to last a week, but the amount of time starvation takes can vary drastically.

Take the story of Angus Barbieri. For 382 days, ending July 11, 1966, the then-27-year-old Scotsman ate nothing.

There's limited documentation of Barbieri's fast: there are a few old newspaper stories recounting his ordeal and more convincingly, there's a case report describing the experience that his doctors published in the Postgraduate Medical Journal in 1973.

According to that report, Barbieri had walked into the University Department of Medicine at the Royal Infirmary of Dundee, Scotland, more than a year before, looking for help. He was "grossly obese" at the time, according to his doctors, weighing 456 pounds. The doctors put him on a short fast, thinking it would help him lose some weight, though they didn't expect him to keep it off.

But as days without food turned into weeks, Barbieri felt eager to continue the program. Absurd and risky as his goal sounded — fasts over 40 days were and still are considered dangerous — he wanted to reach his "ideal weight," 180 pounds. So he kept going.

In what was a surprise to his doctors, he lived his daily life mostly from home during the fast, coming into the hospital for frequent checkups and overnight stays. Regular blood-sugar tests — intended to demonstrate that he was somehow able to function while very hypoglycemic — assured doctors that he really wasn't eating. Weeks turned into months.

Barbieri took vitamins on various occasions throughout the fast, including potassium and sodium supplements. He was allowed to drink coffee, tea, and sparkling water, all of which are naturally calorie-free. He said there was the occasional time that he'd have a touch of sugar or milk in tea, especially in his final few weeks of fasting.

At the end of his ordeal, Barbieri tipped the scales at 180. Five years later, he'd still kept almost all the weight he'd lost off, weighing in at 196.

 

[DaveSimmons]

> He said there was the occasional time that he'd have a touch of sugar or milk in tea

... and maybe scarf down a cheeseburger or two ....

Not monitored 24x7? Not credible. Or it's not even that and it's another silly viral hoax to promote something or other like a new TV show or FastFastNow! bioneutrical supplements.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Damn I wonder if he has some kind of weird condition that lets him do that. He's heavier than me despite not eating and I don't exactly eat the healthiest. Large poutine? Make it so.

 

[GagHalfrunt]

> He said there was the occasional time that he'd have a touch of sugar or milk in tea

... and maybe scarf down a cheeseburger or two ....

Not monitored 24x7? Not credible..

That. /thread

 

[purbeast0]

Anyone who believes a human went for 382 days without food is an idiot.

 

[madoka]

Anyone who believes a human went for 382 days without food is an idiot.

You should let the medical journal that published the results of his 382 day fast know this:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2495396/pdf/postmedj00315-0056.pdf

 

[Perknose]

You should let the medical journal that published the results of his 382 day fast know this:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2495396/pdf/postmedj00315-0056.pdf

I read through your PDF. It's just really, really, really hard to believe this patient didn't eat at all for 382 days. I am as far from a medical professional as one can get, so the fact that I could not conclusively determine from that PDF that his overseers could conclusively determine that this patient had never eaten anything may be my failing, but there it is.

Can YOU (or any other poster) lay out how what tests and oversight they did do that could lead them to aver with such complete confidence that he didn't eat anything ever while out of their sight, which was the overwhelming majority of the time?

Cliffs: No food at all for more than a year? Fat chance!

 

[purbeast0]

You should let the medical journal that published the results of his 382 day fast know this:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2495396/pdf/postmedj00315-0056.pdf

Sure maybe we should also tell the people who burned witches back in the day that witches are pretend.

 

[DaveSimmons]

You should let the medical journal that published the results of his 382 day fast know this:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2495396/pdf/postmedj00315-0056.pdf

Interesting, I think I'm going to have to eat my words

This "Case Report" of a patient in 1966 is 50 years old now(!) but in what Wikipedia claims is a reputable journal, and from skimming it it looks like they monitored the patient fairly closely and would have caught any more than minimal cheating because it would show up in the urine samples.

The key is that the patient was 455 pounds, and lost 275 of that over a little more than a year. The paper does mention some serious side effects from other cases of long-term fasting so it was somewhat risky even with the constant monitoring.

 

[OverVolt]

Anyone who believes a human went for 382 days without food is an idiot.

Going by the weight loss it was a 400lb fat man taking vitamins.

Seems legit.

 

[Hail The Brain Slug]

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.

 

[purbeast0]

Going by the weight loss it was a 400lb fat man taking vitamins.

Seems legit.

Yeah just like the people who posted pictures of big foot from the 70's are legit.

 

[Perknose]

I bet you would feel like crap the entire time, though.

You might feel like crap, but you wouldn't be actually doing it all that much.

 

[madoka]

Yeah just like the people who posted pictures of big foot from the 70's are legit.

Angus Barbieri did make it into the Guiness Book of World Records for longest fast, and was written about by legitimate news organizations such as the Chicago Tribune, CNN, etc.

Here's CNN explaining why illusionist David Blaine wouldn't get into their book for fasting because of Angus:

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/europe/09/04/uk.blaine/

You might feel like crap, but you wouldn't be actually doing it all that much.

According to the article, he pooped every 37-48 days. I believe there's a reddit thread on what it was he was pooping:

https://www.reddit.com/r/fatlogic/comments/3rhoye/sanity_longest_medically_supervised_waterfast_on/

Here's the before/after pic:

 

[MongGrel]

I thought it was going to be about this Indian Mystic who claims to have not eaten or drank in 70 years.

Had seen that one in a few places lately.

http://www.livescience.com/8224-indian-mystic-claims-eat-70-years.html

 

[Perknose]

According to the article, he pooped every 37-48 days.

So the REAL story here is, "Man saves a fortune on toilet paper, helps save the environment in the process."

 

[John Connor]

Stranger things have happened on this planet. I was just reading about the Roanoke colony mystery. I think Indians ate them. LOL

 

[Printer Bandit]

In the end, he ate himself.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I guess that is one hell of a weight loss program.

"Man loses 200 lbs and saves 100's per month in groceries, with this one weird trick! Weight loss companies HATE him!"

 

[master_shake_]

i find it ironic that both an iceberg and a fat person are both withered away by water.

 

[darkswordsman17]

At first I was pretty incredulous but seems believable since he was living off his abundance of fat. Still can't imagine it'd be terribly healthy to do that, but then it might would beat the health issues of being that heavy.

There's been plenty of hard to believe claims like this. 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), which I'm doubtful of and would love if there was actual study of it. I wonder if he might not have a similar gene as those animals (I've seen greyhounds and bulls) where they have huge muscles.

I thought it was going to be about this Indian Mystic who claims to have not eaten or drank in 70 years.

Had seen that one in a few places lately.

http://www.livescience.com/8224-indian-mystic-claims-eat-70-years.html

I thought it'd be some of this as well. There was a thread about it on here before.

Stranger things have happened on this planet. I was just reading about the Roanoke colony mystery. I think Indians ate them. LOL

That's not at all anywhere near as strange actually and there's little mystery to that. They almost certainly joined the locals (which was a very common thing for colonists).

 

[ImpulsE69]

Guys, they just said he didn't eat. They didn't say he wasn't getting things introveniously (well..probably not, but I don't buy this story).

 

[John Connor]

I don't buy this story).

Wasn't for sale.

 

[darkswordsman17]

Guys, they just said he didn't eat. They didn't say he wasn't getting things introveniously (well..probably not, but I don't buy this story).

Wasn't for sale.

Uh-oh, you just ended up on John Connor's shitlist. You better hope he doesn't "chew your ass" out!

 

[ImpulsE69]

Uh-oh, you just ended up on John Connor's shitlist. You better hope he doesn't "chew your ass" out!

He won't crap for months!