What happens when you don’t eat anything for about 2 days? Does the body switch to reserve fuels or something? Is there any permanent damage done?
I have know people who follow this routine (going out from Friday night to Sunday without eating, sometimes longer) almost every week. I have often asked myself how they are still functioning, why don’t they drop into a coma?
There is no denying that this behaviour leaves them feeling pretty bad on Monday but not as bad as I would have thought considering we are advised to eat three meals a day.
Yeah, beers a fairly good food source and fat reserves make up the remainder with a minor amount of muscle breakdown depending how ill you make yourself. If they’re drinking Jack and Coke the Coke’s got huge amounts of sugar in addition to the food value of the alcohol, as have a lot of other mixers.
Permanant damage: probably slightly higher than if you did eat. the body needs food at least in part to regulate water balance. No food combined with vomiting and alcohol (which is a duiretic) could lead to fairly serious electrolyte deficiency which isn’t good for any organ but particularly the kidneys and an alcohol bathed liver.
Two days without food on its own wouldn’t do any good at all, and weekend fasts are common in a lot of religions. You just switch over to burning fat which is probably a good thing.
Yeah, I always thought that lots of beer would have to have something in it to keep you going, but what about weekends without beer. Stay awake/happy pills and the like.
Alcohol tends to make people want to eat after a while (which explains the number of salmonela/kebab shops around pubs) but these things make people NOT want to eat, Both during and afterwards. nothing but water.
ketoning. My doctor asked me once cause my ketones were so high in my test. I explained to him that I haven’t ate for a bit. Shows up in your pee test.
I saw a show about this, but it was actually about starving yourself to lose weight. Here’s basically what they said (how I remember it at least):
Note that I could be totally wrong here, so please correct me.
The first thing that happens is that your body starts using up its backup fuel - sugar (I think glucose to be exact), and at the same time tells you that you need real food. When you use up the sugar, this releases water that was used to store the sugar, which means you’ll pee more often, and it gives the appearance of actually losing a few pounds of weight.
Now if you’re not eating, but drinking stuff (especially stuff with a lot of sugar) this will give you enough energy to keep going for a little while (for a few days I think).
When the sugar supply gets low, your body goes into famine mode, where everything slows down so you use less energy. You’ll feel more tired and weak than normal. By this time you’re craving anything sweet like a madman (to restore your sugar reserves), and all you can think about is food. This is the point where your body starts using up your body fat as fuel. This is a last resort effort by your body, and now your entire meaning of life is to get food. You’ll have a hard time concentrating on anything else. Most people can’t handle it and eat here, which is why many people aren’t successful with starvation diets (the show was about losing weight). You also become very emotional and easily angered.
That was as far as they went, but I imagine after that your body just deteriorates like normal, but has nothing to replace those things with, so eventually you’ll die.
So these people that don’t eat all weekend probably stuff their face on Monday to make up for it. They’re probably extremely tired come Sunday, when their sugar reserves gets low.
Ketones are actually a by-product of the fat burning process your body is in when it doesn’t get enough food. (Or more specifically, not enough carbohydrates)… rather than a process in itself.