Coincidence that Cecil should use these words on his March 14 column? I think not. Obviously, Cecil is as much of a fan of Pi Day (3/14) as the rest of us… 
I submit this shows that the U.S. practice of listing dates as month/day is superior to the European practice of day/month. There is no fourteen month, so when you list the day first there is no date to match pi’s first three digits of 3.14, while on March 14th celebrations break out throughout the U.S in its honor, or so I’ve been told.
Also please note that Cecil truncates people who forget to include the column link: Can I donate blood to lose weight?
Well, you could approximate it to 22/7 … 
It just mean that Slug came back… and brought pie.
Slug rocks.
And it’s only twelve years until 3/14/15 9:27. I’m not sure if I’ll be around to celebrate 3:14:15 9/26/54
Weeell, I for one am extremely disappointed that Cecil didn’t do the math for us to figure out have many blow jobs (assuming you swallow) can be offset if one is also noble enough to donate blood.
If ejaculate is 2 calories per shot (heh), and there are 600 calories in a pint of blood, I think the prudent weight watcher has here sufficient justification for 300 bjs.
Please correct me if I’m wrong.
(Of course the mind boggles at artistic vision this might rouse in Slug’s brain.)
I’m a little dissapointed about the PC answer. Sure, if you only donated when they let you, every eight weeks, you’d only lose 1 lb/year. But what if you did stuff at home, a cup every week or 1/2 cup a day… Wouldn’t the body have to ‘work’ to handle the stress of the blood loss.
Let’s say you start off by donating a pint of blood. Then a week later you, at home, bleed out a 1/2 a pint. Then a week later you bleed out another 1/2 pint, etc.
What’s the answer to that?
Oooh, you could use leeches…and who knows what extra pop you might get from the anti-coagulants?
lol, I didn’t even think of pi day, that is awesome. I think that donating blood to loose weight is one of the funniest things I have ever heard, I nearly burst out laughing on the train reading my weekly dope. I have always thought that Slug was a good artist, I enjoy seeing his take on the column.
Heck, SandWriter, why not go all the way? If you drain six pints in a single day, you’ll start losing a lot of weight, very quickly.
SandWriter, while not being a medical expert, I suspect the problem with your method is that the body just cannot replace blood at that rate. Actually, I think the real drain is red blood cell production. IIRC you can donate plasma a lot more frequently.
But you can’t kick your red blood cell replacement into “high gear” just by donating more often. Doesn’t work that way. The body can only go so fast. So donating more often will drive you into anemia. That means fatigue, which means inability to do your job or recreate.
The eight week cycle is based upon the healthy amount of time for your body to regenerate the red blood cells. If you could safely do it faster, then the blood donation cycle would be faster.
If being unhealthy doesn’t bother you, then I’m reminded of a response to another unhealthy weight loss plan. When dieting on some plans (like starvation diets), a person doesn’t just lose fat, they lose muscle mass. Someone responded that they wouldn’t mind losing muscle mass if they lost weight. The rebuttal was to take the quickest way to lose weight - amputate a leg.
Chronos - I’d think you’d die after losing 6 pints in a single day. I guess you wouldn’t be worried about the weight problem anymore though.
Irishman - I’m not trying to kick red blood cell replacement into “high gear,” I’m trying to find out if there is a way to boost the BMR by keeping the red blood cell replacement mechanism working. Do you know if there is a ‘level’ of red blood cell replacement that varies, or is it bang-bang, i.e. full on or full off. If it is bang-bang, then what conditions turn it on, and could you create those conditions?
If it is not bang-bang, always on at some percentage level, is there any caloric benifit to keeping it at 100%?
Maybe there is a new flavor of eating disorder, anerexia - not eating, bulimic - eating then vomiting, and now…bleeding.
If it catches on, you’ll be able to buy designer leeches in the fish & sea food section!
p.s. I’ve heard of people cutting themselves to releive tension. I’ve never heard of anyone chopping of their leg to lose weight.
Right, and after you die, you lose a lot of weight. That was my point. The healthy limit on how often you can donate is 8 weeks (approximately: This will, of course, vary from person to person). My point is, if you’re willing to go faster than what’s healthy, where do you draw the line? I was just taking the idea to the logical extreme.
Exactly. If you’re serious about weight loss, maggots are a mere slip on the slope after leeches.
Next up: “Tape worms: a viable alternative?”
Then, we’ll do: “Consumption: Some Unexpected Benefits.”
SandWriter, that’s exactly what I mean by “high gear”. You posit an on/off mechanism of replacement, one that can be triggered on by more frequent use.
I am by no means a medical expert. Red blood cell generation occurs in the bone marrow, a slow, ongoing process. Meanwhile, dying red blood cells are removed via the spleen (not sure how that works). Red blood cell count can vary for different reasons. That’s why they check you with the blood drop when you go to donate. They take a drop of blood (either from your fingertip or ear lobe) and drop it into a blue solution, and watch it drop. If there’s enough iron (red blood cells), it falls all the way to the bottom. Not enough, it floats somewhere in the middle, or toward the top.
Women expend blood with their monthly cycles, and so if anyone has their system “in high gear” and set to lose weight via blood loss, it would be women. You can see how effective that is for them.
Here is a link discussing blood, what it’s made of and how it’s made.
Unfortunately, it does not address the metabolic effects of blood formation, which is the direct question you’re asking about.
All - Darn. I’ll just have to wait for the liposuction and muscle twitcher nanites.
Decapitation is also a way of losing weight fast. For many people, that would be the loss of a great hunk of ugly fat.
After you…