Posted: 11/30/2005 3:51:52 PM EDT
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For some reason I have been wanting to test my personal physical limits a bit after watching the death and destructions in NO. I wanted to push myself without doing any real harm to myself (or anyone else for that matter). So I decided to see how long I could go without food to see if I could make it a day or two... To my surprise I was in pretty good shape after 7 days. I lost 10lbs, but felt OK and maybe a little bit energetic. I drank plenty of water and black coffee to keep hydrated. After 7 days I decided to eat since I wasn't sure what the permanent effects might be on me if I went any longer. As an experience I was hungry as hell by the end of the first day and well in to the next. By day 3 I wasn't really hungry but I had food on the brain and my sense of smell was heightened. I was pretty shaky on the 2nd and 3rd day but stabilized off after that. When I finally ate I found I could only eat a small portion (about half a normal meal) before I was full and that feeling lasted for a very long time. Anyone else have a similar experience? |
Well I highly recommend it. I never went with out eating purposely but had gone through some poor times where there was very little to eat and found very similar results. I lost more weight then you did though. |
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Yeah, I've had a similar experience, and I can tell you this. It's a hell of a lot easier to During a demanding program of physical activity, it's a whole different ball game, and becomes somewhat of a balancing act. Bottom line, it's harder to work off fat, than to simply starve it off. Fat is simply your body's 'insurance' against starvation. People haven't always been lucky enough to eat three square meals a day, every day. |
I'm getting hungry reading this.  I went without food for 3 ½ days in 1985 during Hurricane Elena. I was on duty and didn’t eat, sleep or bathe while working. I didn’t have a way to get anywhere. I didn't even think about eating. I was too busy keeping myself and my partners safe. I felt fine. |
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sq40, I've never gone without eating food for more than 24 hrs. My only advice to you should you try it again is to be careful that you consume at least some salt with the fluid you drink. You can really mess up your electrolytes if the liquids you drink do not contain any salt. This is the reason they issued (?issue) salt tablets in the military. If all you drink is water (and consume no food) then you can deplete your sodium and go into a coma. I've seen patients that drank ridiculous amounts of water or Coke and went into a coma and had seizures because their sodium would plummet. This can occur in as little as a day.  One girl was on a funky 'diet' and drank 4 litres of water on a hike during an afternoon. The others were schizophrenics who get some crazy ideas sometimes. Did you consume anything that had salt in it? Other than trace amounts, the coffee has none. |
Not that I can Recall, we usually put a couple of shakes of salt in the coffee pot for flavor. but that goes back to trace ammounts. I'm fairly heavy, maybe my body was able to get enough sodium out of the fat? Guess I got lucky.. |
They had a case of overhydration here in VA a couple of months ago--a police officer during training in August drank three GALLONS of water in about four hours--wound up dying from the complications. This is DEFINITELY a serious issue! |
| I did the same type experiment this summer. The hardest part was not eating for the first day or two. I reached a point where I wasn't really hungry like I normally was. After the second day it was much easier because I got less hungry instead of more hungry. I didn't have that craving for something like I usually do. I went for aboout 4 days and although I drank alot of liquids, I ate nothing. I figured that was long enough. When I did start eating again, I got full faster, just like you did, I just wanted to see what it would be like if I had to go without. The first thing I got to eat was a pint of Blue Bell. |
The same thing got me started once. Then I decided to see how far I could go. Except for one accidental sip of basil seed drink, I went 11 days with nothing but water. |
The risk increases with how quickly you lose the sodium. Since you were drinking a normal amount of water, your sodium dropped slowly. It would have been interesting to see how low your sodium fell. Other electrolytes are affected, but potassium has a large 'pool' in your cells and calcium, magnesium and phosphate have large stores in the bones so it is easier for the body to compensate with these electrolytes. When you go without food for even longer periods (2 weeks+) but still consume enough salt/vitamins, you can still run into trouble if you consume a large quantity of food if it contains little phosphate. Many concentration camp victims were actually killed this way by accident. When you go without any phosphate in your diet, you deplete it over time and with your next large meal you can't easily convert sugars/carbohydrates/starches into energy. They are first converted to lactic acid but can't easily go through the Krebbs cycle without adequate amounts of phosphate. You cause severe acidosis that in a weakened state will kill you. This is all basic Biochemistry 101 stuff that I learned in med school. I found it very interesting at the time. My plan is to have enough food to eat at all times.  |
Damn that's a lot! If he had taken the appropriate amount of salt tablets with the three gallons of water the only thing that would have happened to him is he would have pissed like a race horse for the next 12 hours. Doctors are guilty of killing patients by accident this way. I've read many stories including a surgeon who ordered dextrose 5% solution at 200cc per hour for a patient who wasn't eating anything. It doesn't seem like a lot. He had three or four long surgical cases for the day and went home. Over 24 hours after starting the fluid, the nurse called the doctor to say that she couldn't arouse the patient who by now had received over 5 litres of free water. The patient started having seizures and eventually died. This is one concern I have for de-regulating prescription drugs. Everyone thinks they are an expert but often don't have the most basic understanding of human physiology (including some doctors ). |