We know some crazy guy who’s idea of a diet is going without food for 40 days. He does drink distilled water and herbal tea. Aside from the obvious problems with this insane diet, how long can one go without eating? He is not morbidly obese, our best guess is around 80 pounds overweight.
Is he Irish? The Irish are great ones for hunger strikes and fasting. I remember an IRA member in the early '80s who held a hunger strike while in prison. He died, of course. Tends to happen when you don’t eat. For some reason the memory sticks in my mind that he survived 53 days (or something like that; I could be wrong). I can’t imagine why I’d remember a thing like that. It wasn’t a record, though.
“In 1920, Terence McSwiney, the Lord Mayor of Cork, died after 74 days of fasting during the Anglo-Irish War.”
"The longest hunger strike ever also took place during the Irish War of Independence, and four men from Co. Limerick were involved in it. They were John and Peter Crowley and Christopher Upton, all from Ballylanders, and Michael O’Reilly from Ballyfauskeen, outside Ballylanders. Their hunger strike, which began on August 11, 1920 and continued until November 12, an amazing total of ninety-four days. Their achievement is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as “the longest fast”. Their mothers must have been so proud.
A 43-day hunger strike by a man in California endedrecently, but he botched it and survived. There’s something to be said for Irish persistence.
Depending on your initial excess body weight you could probably survive (not necessarily in the best of health) at least 2-3 months without solid food. As a gainer/loser myself I would say that the odds of this man sticking with a deprivation diet if he tends to like to eat, as evidenced by the fact he is 80 lbs overweight, are slim to none.
Skinny people tend to make much better fasters than more husky folks insofar as they have a different psychological relationship to food and eating.
Well, bibilo, I don’t know if he’s Irish but since his survival seems to depend on it, I’ll check it out and let him know! 