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The amount of carbohydrates you need in your diet to survive is exactly zero. They’re a non-essential macronutrient. The amount of glucose you need in your blo
by TimSchumann 7y ago
The amount of carbohydrates you need in your diet to survive is exactly zero. They’re a non-essential macronutrient.
The amount of glucose you need in your blood stream to keep everything running smoothly is a very small amount easily produced by your body through a process called gluconeogenesis.
I went 60 days sans any calories and my body self regulated glucose just fine.
- omarchowdhury 7y agoYou went 60 days without eating?
- selectodude 7y agoMaybe he ate nothing but protein? I don’t even know...
- kylebenzle 7y agoOne guy saying he set a world record for longest time not eating and another person saying they think protein has no calories? What has happened to HN, have you all gone full retard?
- robotbikes 7y agoI looked at his comment history and found 37 weeks ago that he says he only drank water and salt the first 30 days and added supplements the last 30 so I'm pretty sure he meant no calories. I also don't think that is a world record by any means. I found this site where someone they cite a 1972 NIH study of someone who fasted for 382 days but evidently I can't paste in this android client. Hunger strikes have definitely gone on for longer than 60 days. Water is essential but the body can subsist for a lot longer without food.
- norswap 7y agoI think it was a typo and he meant 60 days without carbohydrates.
- eigenspace 7y agoA 60 day fast with no calories is far from impossible. I see no reason to think he made a typo.
- TimSchumann 7y agoNo, 60 days, first 30 water/salt only, second 30 I added in a few supplements, nothing that could really count as calorie intake though. I also adhered to a strict no coffee/tea policy.
- guiambros 7y agoIn the other thread you mentioned strict "no flavored anything". Can you elaborate why not? In my case I tend to feel less hungry after drinking lots of flavored water (e.g., lemon juice or flavored electrolyte powder [1]), but I haven't yet done long fasting. I want to try soon. Also, have you noticed any cognitive decline when you were fasting for weeks? Difficulty concentrating, memory loss, lightheadedness, mood, ability to interact with people? [1] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01IIGVUQA https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01IIGVUQA
- LegitShady 7y agonot that dude but if you drink sweetened or flavoured waters it produces an insulin response so your body really doesn't enter 'fasting' the same way. water, black coffee, and salt do not produce this reaction.
- TimSchumann 7y agoSome unflavored sweeteners have been shown to produce mild insulin responses. For me it was more of a psychological thing, especially on a fast that long. And no, no cognitive decline whatsoever. If anything I had more energy. Also, I was supplementing electrolytes, and I ended my fast at like 25% bodyfat though, so keep that in mind.
- Diederich 7y agoApparently yes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18928489 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18928489
- iikoolpp 7y agoPeople with eating disorders do that sometimes, yes.
- TimSchumann 7y agoYep. Lost 80 lbs in 2 months. Got a few e-mails about this comment already so I'm throwing together a quick summary of what I did, results, and logs I took during the fast. Learned a lot since that fast though, it was over two years ago at this point. Eating is definitely optional if you have the body fat.
- johnvanommen 7y agoFor a second there, I thought you were this body builder: http://contests.npcnewsonline.com/contests/2018/npc_teen_collegiate__masters_national_championships/tim_schumann/ http://contests.npcnewsonline.com/contests/2018/npc_teen_col...
- stephenSinniah 7y agoHi could you post the summary here too
- ggregoire 7y agoI just found out that the record is 382 days. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_Barbieri%27s_fast https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_Barbieri%27s_fast
- Fnoord 7y agoBreatharianism, however, is a fraud. Example being Jasmuheen [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jasmuheen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jasmuheen
- rorykoehler 7y agoWhat was fasting for 60 days like? Any negative experiences?
- ereyes01 7y agoDoes hunger count as a negative experience?
- TimSchumann 7y agoAfter the first two weeks, it was a mild background noise. I never even felt ravenous or anything, just 'Eh, it'd be nice to eat again'. Even at the end I felt like I could have gone another 30 days easily. Which, given that I ended my fast at around 25% bodyfat, I probably could have.
- dev_dull 7y agoWhat did you finally eat to beak your fast?
- TimSchumann 7y agoUhh, I have a log of that somewhere one second... This is day 61, I'd estimate like 4k-ish calories. 07:51 - Woke to Alarm 08:34 - Weight 199.8 - Bodyfat 26.1 08:41 - Start First Meal - Handful of Spinach Wilted in 2 tbsp Butter - 5 Olives - 1 Dill Pickle Spear - 6 oz Pickle Juice 08:45 - End First Meal 08:50 - Drank 1/2 Liter Water 08:57 - Start Sauna 165.0 F 09:00 - Drank 1 Liter Water 09:12 - End Sauna 182.5 F 09:15 - Shower 10:23 - Finished 2nd Breakfast - Single Egg omelette, cheese, olive oil, more spinach wilted in butter and 3 pickle spears. 11:35 - Lunch /w Dave - Bunless Burger, Bacon, Cheese, Fried mushrooms, Onions, Pickles and a Fried Egg on top. Salad with blue cheese dressing. 12:18 - 16 oz nitro cold brew 13:25 - 32 oz San Peligrino Unflavored Zero-Cal 16:23 - 5 Guys Bacon Cheeseburger - 2 Patties - Bacon - Mushroom - Lettuce Wrap - Mayo - Side of Mayo 18:09 - 9 olives - 3 Servings 19:23 - 9 Jimmy Dean Sausage Links dipped in 6oz Chunky Blue Cheese dressing.
- GiorgioG 7y agoI went 21 days with just water and electrolytes. My son is a type 1 diabetic so I had access to a glucose meter to test myself with. My blood glucose level at about the halfway mark was 59mg/dL (for reference, most non-diabetics should be between 70-130.) I won't say fasting for 21 days was the most pleasant experience, but it is entirely doable by the average healthy person. Nice job going 60 days. The hardest part for me was the social aspect, family/friends' repeated concerns because I'm 'starving myself', sitting at the dinner table while everyone else eats, etc.
- TimSchumann 7y agoI only got glucose/ketone strips around day 35 of the 60. Lowest I recorded was around 50mg/dL, highest was 110mg/dL, with the average being around 75mg/dL or so. Ketones were always at or near the limit the meter is designed to test for. I think anything over 8.0 mmol/L and it would yell at me to see a doctor. Lowest I recorded was 7.0, and almost every reading was over 8.0. Felt fine the whole time. Echo what you said about the hardest part being social though.
- thoughtpalette 7y agoDo you mind sharing some of the side-effects you experienced as well as your goal overall for the 21 day fast? Mostly curious about weight/mass loss numbers but also any adverse bodily reactions.
- GiorgioG 7y agoFor the first 2-3 days I was hungry - after that I was fine. For the remainder: I felt tired, cranky, cold (especially at night), and on occasion I would have trouble getting to sleep. My inflammation was markedly decreased. I have dermatographia (skin writing) where I can use my fingernail to draw a line on my arm (for example) and within a couple of minutes it will swell up like an allergic reaction. After about 5 minutes it goes away. I tried doing this halfway into my fast and while the inflammation was still there, it was much much much less noticeable (and not puffed up.) As far as overall goal, aside from losing some weight was trying to reset my immune system which has been out of sorts for the past couple of years. I've been through a battery of tests to figure out why I've been feeling less than normal (brain fog, neuropathy, etc.) for the past 2-3 years and I was hoping it would help. Alas it did not. I lost 31lb and gained about half of it back after a couple of months. I wasn't following any particular diet after the fast, particularly because when I experience these bouts of brain fog/malaise, I don't feel motivated to stay on track. I've started walking 5-7 miles a day and exercising over the past couple of months and have noticed some improvement. I did a 3 day water fast a few weeks ago, who knows if that was a factor. I'm maybe 85% of the old me, which is a massive improvement from where I was coming from. Hopefully things continue to improve (or simply doesn't get worse.)
- baked_ziti 7y agoEliminating carbohydrates from your diet means eliminating vegetables from your diet. I'm highly skeptical of the claim that any such diet can ever be healthy in the medium to long term. I fail to see how malnourishment isn't a certainty under such circumstances. The fact that humans can fast for weeks or months isn't evidence in favor of: > The amount of carbohydrates you need in your diet to survive is exactly zero.
- hnick 7y agoVitamin and other supplements could probably close the gap? Vegans do this when they lack certain vitamins largely/only present in animal products and I don't see why the opposite can't be true.
- baked_ziti 7y agoIt's not a gap, it's an absence, and the deficiencies incurred by eating zero fruits and vegetables are not analogous to a b-12 deficiency (which most meat eaters also suffer, just to a lesser extent than vegans). These deficiencies aren't going to be made up for in pill form. Not to mention consuming no fruits and vegetables means you are essentially on a very low fiber diet, which has huge health implications on its own and is probably a bad idea. This is a lot of work to go to in order to hang on to a pet diet that is shown to cause arterial injury and doesn't lead to greater weight loss than less harmful diets.
- barry-cotter 7y agoYou can go from a normal Western diet to eating nothing but lean and fatty meat for a year with no ill effects. http://www.jbc.org/content/87/3/651.full.pdf http://www.jbc.org/content/87/3/651.full.pdf > Two normal men volunteered to live solely on meat for one year, which gave us an unusual opportunity of studying the effects of this diet. The term “meat,” as used by us, included both the lean and the fat portions of animals. The subjects derived most of their calories from fat and the diet was quite different from what one, who uses the term “meat” as including chiefly lean muscle, would expect. ... > 11. In these trained subjects, the clinical observations and laboratory studies gave no evidence that any ill effects had occurred from the prolonged use of the exclusive meat diet. People in the Arctic circle like the Inuit always lived almost entirely off of meat and Mongolians and other steppe pastoralists come very close, adding dairy.
- fouc 7y agoHow did you kickstart the fast? I find the first 4-5 days are pretty tough. At what point did it become easy? Were you working during this period or off work? Sometimes starting the fast is troublesome when one knows there's going to be energy level issues. I like the idea of avoiding coffee/tea, that's something I think could help in the long run.