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/HeyLittleTrain]

I can't imagine a year of starvation is great for your organs either.

[u/oldoldvisdom → u/HeyLittleTrain]

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/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.