I try to eat two meals a day but it usually takes me about 24 hours to actually desire food. At least once a month I’ll go 36 hours just because I’m too lazy to eat, and I’m not particularly hungry. The usual pattern is that I have a big lunch on Sat and don’t eat again until midnight Sun/Mon.
Never tried to go farther as an experiment, though I guess I went >48 hours without solids after my gallbladder surgery. Not sure that really counts since the IV provided sugar and such.
I went two full days without eating just recently, which is probably my all-time record, and apparently, I’m rubbish at it. I felt like absolute shit, and at the end of the second day, I literally passed out, which I’ve never done before for any reason. It was rather scary. I then ate something right away, but I still spent the next day with a headache and feeling sick.
It sucked a whole lot more than I expected that it would. I guess I would be useless in a famine situation.
I voted for 4 - 7 days but it could’ve been longer* as I was, for the most part, unconscious. When conscious I never go more than 6 hours without food, but I was in hospital for brain surgery on a cranial abscess:eek: and got really sucky blood poisoning after the second bout of surgery. I was in and out (mostly out) of consciousness for quite a while and lost at least 10lbs in weight - this can be explained away by the lack of eating plus, according to the doctors, the body will throw everything it can at brain injuries.
*I’d have to ask the ex-wife for a better guesstimate of the timescale, but I doubt she’d remember either.
I don’t eat a lot, but never have. I remind myself to eat at least once a day and occasionally my body says ‘food! Now! You’re going to dieeeee!’ and I eat something (usually some protein and veg - I R auto-Atkins). I eat if somebody else cooks for me, too, so when I was in a relationship I was bigger.
So, over one day, sometimes more, but not two full days.
Even when I had amoebic dysentry for nine weeks, and lost a lot of weight (by the end I was about 7 stone 4 and 5’7") I still tried to eat and my body must have used some of it before it came out of of one end or the other.
Well, you weren’t well, so you might have just not remembered, but 4 weeks with no calories at all? I doubt it.
I voted for 4 to 7 days, as that is about as precise as I can get. In reality, the number may lay somewhere between 4 day to 2 weeks.
Back in 02, I was having severe stomach cramps, so bad that the pain would eventually cause me to pass out. I do remember vomiting a lot during these 2 days, but I don’t remember if I ate or not.
Near the end of the second day, I finally consented to going to the doctor, and not a moment to soon. My appendix had ruptured back when the cramps first happened, and the toxins had had nearly 48 hours to course through my body. The ER doc said if I had waited a couple of more hours to come in, I wouldn’t have made it.
It was 4 days after surgery before I was released, and only then because I ate 1 bite of chocolate cake. After I got home, I vomited that back up, so I don’t count that. If you do, that’s where it ends.
After that, my memory gets hazy again due to intense fevers brought on by secondary infections.
I don’t recall anything for awhile after that, but I may have. I do know that the first time I ate more than a bite here or there was 2 weeks later, when I ate half of a hamburger, and complained for hours about being stuffed.
Ended up losing close to 60lbs before I got my appetite back to where it should have been.
I voted 2-4 days. It might have been longer, but the details are a bit fuzzy.
It was when I was widowed after 6 months of marriage. I started having panic attacks and literally could not make myself swallow food. They were threatening to put a feeding tube in when I got to 92 pounds.
The right therapist got me back on track.
I routinely go 48+ hours without eating, maybe once a month if not more often. Usually weekends off after a week of juggling two jobs and school; I’ll spend two days doing homework and housework for an hour or two, then napping, then doing more work, then napping. My weekend starts on Friday morning at 7 am, and quite often I’ll not eat until Monday at 2 am.
The longest I went without was a little over two weeks in 1999. I lose my appetite when stressed or upset, so when my then-wife announced that she wanted a divorce, I lost all will to eat. I only broke that because we were still keeping up appearances as being a couple, and had to go to a family Easter brunch and pretend that nothing was wrong. Her grandmother was hosting the meal and was a complete sweetie, making a separate vegetarian meal for me since she knew I wouldn’t partake in the traditional ham. Forced the food down to keep the peace, and it pretty much reactivated my appetite.
8 days. It was a water fast.
I still do 3 day ones. Just for fun.
Stomach flu for three days, but I took chicken broth, so I guess that doesn’t count. Apart from that, religious fasts for 24-48 hours.
Regards,
Shodan
Over 4 weeks with gastrenteritis; for the first 12 days I was unable to accept anything but water.
And I didn’t lose any weight, damnit!
I voted 24-48 because I did a sponsered famine in high school, but after reading the responses I had forgotten about sickness. I guess it would be a bit over 48 hours. I had mono and strep throat and couldn’t swallow anything. I had to be on a saline drip and eveything.
If I have any hint of a gastric upset I just stop eating and stick to fluids until it passes. It always seems to work and eliminates much misery.
Oh no, I do remember not consuming anything because of TMI I was retching a lot and had to use the bathroom nearly all the time. My GP told me to drink lots of water and wait for the bactreia to clear my system. What happened was I left this sort of soya dessert with added good bacteria in the backseat of a car. For over eight hours. In the sunlight, and ate it without even thinking about the added bacteria multiplying into billions and billions and probably more billions then consequently making me quite ill.
don’t ask, this is sensible because then you can celebrate afterwards by stuffing your face with cheesecake and muffins and baguettes filled with delights!
Three days; I was out of the country and the food where I was just wasn’t cutting it…
Not even caloric liquids like juice???
Did you ever seek medical attention? Being sick for this long is very, very dangerous :(.
Me: longest would be about 24 hours, so I voted the 24-48 option. Fasted for Yom Kippur one year to prove I could (Typo Knig had tried and failed the year before).
It’s not at all unusual to go 16+ hours without food on weekends - if I sleep late, I’m not that hungry and sometimes can’t be bothered to go downstairs for food until late afternoon.
OK, on rereading, you did talk to your GP (for some reason I read that as “GF” i.e. girlfriend). That really sounds like bad advice, I have to assume you just saw him/her once early on; he should have told you “do this… but if it’s still happening in 5 days come back!”.
Probably around 36 hours, but I did it twice in a row. As many folks said before: food poisoning. Got a hold of some bad chicken, threw up everything but my toenails, and couldn’t stomach even the thought of food for a day and a half. Then, I ate a grilled chicken sandwich from the local healthy-food place, about 400 calories. A day and a half later, I ate another one from the same place. I finally started eating normally shortly after that. This happened in the week before my first semester law school finals, too. Fun week.
Over a week. IV only. Nothing allowed by mouth.
About 18 hours. I was asleep.
It’s just that no getting any calories at all or four weeks as well as constantly vomiting and crapping would have killed you or close to it. You must have had something like a high-calorie drink (I drank Lucozade when I had swine flu and couldn’t eat for three weeks) or tried to eat and got something out of the food before it came back out.
I suffered from Acute Stress Disorder recently and couldn’t eat for about a week. Might have been just over a week, but I chose 4-7 days.