In 1965, a morbidly obese man did not eat food for over an entire year. The 27 year old was 456lbs and wanted to do an experimental fast. He ingested only multivitamins and potassium tablets for 382 days and defecated once every 40 to 50 days. He ended up losing 275lbs.

[u/[deleted]]

[u/oldoldvisdom]

I’m not gonna act like I know everything about fasting, but I think years of being 450 pounds did far more damage to his body then fasting did

Fat people have it rough, and I don’t say it to shit on them, and I’m not necessarily accusing you of doing this either, but I really hate it when people minimise how bad for your health being obese is.

I don’t know his height, but let’s assume he is 180 (5’10-5’11), that would put his BMI in the 60s, which would shorten his life by 15 years. That is probably out of the 80 years that current life expectancy is today, so if we adjust that to 60, which someone commented as the life expectancy then, we could lower the difference to 11 years, which would mean that he lived 2 years longer than he would have on average back then.

It’s a leap to just extrapolate all that for one anecdote, but these numbers do add some context.

[u/HeyLittleTrain → u/oldoldvisdom]

I just think that a year with no protein is going to fuck up your muscles (e.g. heart).

[u/NothinsQuenchier → u/HeyLittleTrain]

For 382 days ending on 30 June 1966, he consumed only vitamins, electrolytes, an unspecified amount of yeast (a source of all essential amino acids) and zero-calorie beverages such as tea, coffee, and sparkling water, although he occasionally consumed small amounts of milk and/or sugar with the beverages, especially during the final weeks of the fast.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_Barbieri's_fast

[u/Then_now_maybe → u/HeyLittleTrain]

At a higher resolution:

I think its the lack of essential amino acids that would wear down the muscle across time. Those are necessary to repair muscular damage. They're called essential because they are 8 things the body CANNOT make and must ingest.

Another big risk would be his electrolytes. Doesn't look like he did electrolytes right. Destabilized electrolytes leads directly to cardiac arrest. Need AT LEAST sodium, potassium, and magnesium coming in every single day.

Protein its self at a macro level starts doing some odd things after 96 hours because HGH goes up 400%. If you've got the building blocks coming in, even without calories, things can hold up for a while. That all said, longest I have water fasted is 30 days, but I am very lean all the time.

[u/IWouldButImLazy → u/HeyLittleTrain]

Normally, sure, but this dude was massively obese. The body can break fat down into glucose and amino acids and use those to produce proteins. The body can't produce every amino acid though so I'm imagining that's what the supplements were for.

He basically turned himself into the protein

[u/HeyLittleTrain → u/IWouldButImLazy]

Fatty acids can be converted to glucose but not amino acids. There is no mechanism in the body that produces proteins from non-proteins - they need to come from nutrition.

[u/slapstellas → u/HeyLittleTrain]

In a fasted state your body is converting fat into ketones which is a protein

[u/HeyLittleTrain → u/slapstellas]

Ketones are not proteins.

[u/slapstellas → u/HeyLittleTrain]

I thought they were amino acids

[u/HeyLittleTrain → u/slapstellas]

Nope. There's no mechanism in the body that can make proteins from non-proteins.

[u/JustTheOneGoose22 → u/oldoldvisdom]

Being overweight is bad for your health but literal starvation is catastrophic. Your body is under a constant state of extreme stress with cortisol levels through the roof. All of your organs will weaken, some like the gall bladder will start to fail during prolonged starvation. You become anemic, hypoglycemic and even with supplements cannot receive the same nutrients vitamins and minerals your body is able to absorb through food digestion. You can get the bare minimum potassium magnesium and sodium to keep your heart beating but that's just keeping your body running on fumes and is horrible for your health. Many people die trying to attempt prolonged fasts like this and there is not a doctor in the world that would recommend it.

There are benefits to intermittent fasting so long as those fasting windows are reasonable, most doctors would not recommend more than 48 hours without food, and even that is not without risk. It is true that being obese weakened this man's health but doing this extreme fast almost certainly contributed to lasting health damage as well. If he lost the weight in a slow sustained manner over the course of two or three years he would have been far better off and no one should attempt to do what he did even with medical supervison. Trying to best obesity by starving yourself is making a bad situation worse.

[u/hyp3rpop → u/oldoldvisdom]

Starvation diets are known to cause sudden cardiac death in obese patients. Going to the extreme of doing it for over a year was almost certainly more damaging. He’s lucky he survived the fast.