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Interesting bias on the bias: the author of this article seems not to have experienced a prolonged fast themselves, otherwise they'd know this is not true at al
by franciscop 4y ago
Interesting bias on the bias: the author of this article seems not to have experienced a prolonged fast themselves, otherwise they'd know this is not true at all:
> "longer fasts – and thus, presumably, greater hunger"
As anyone who has fasted for probably any reason can tell you, the longer the fast the less hungry you are overall AFTER an initial peak. Meaning, miss a meal and you are hungry, miss two and you become very hungry, but miss X* amount of meals and your hunger actually decreases. At some point you can go for days without any hunger at all.
Similar things happen with OMAD (one meal a day) fasting, which is arguably very similar to the mentioned Ramadan, the body gets used really fast* to the new regime and you stop being hungry outside the normal meal hour(s).
* the time specifics depend on many things, mainly on the type of meals you eat before the fast (e.g. sugars/carbs = worse withdrawals) and multiple other factors, but overall seems to be true this peak hunger happens and then hunger decreases.
- jraby3 4y agoI’ve gone on multiple 3-5 day fasts and disagree (or at least haven’t gotten to this point). My hunger seems to stabilize at very hungry after about two days.
- arunix 4y agoSame here. My hunger plateaued after two days, but didn't go away, just became a bit more bearable. 12 days was the longest fast I've done.
- chaosbolt 4y ago12 days with no food? Like just water and electrolytes etc.? This is some spartan discipline.
- fhackenberger 4y agoDefinitely doable and very common in many old cultures, have a look at the film "The science of fasting" (original German), might be eye opening: https://youtu.be/WgLJ_dfKy1E https://youtu.be/WgLJ_dfKy1E
- glogla 4y ago> Video unavailable. This video contains content from LDS, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds I hope LDS burns in hell, whoever they are.
- cactusplant7374 4y agoSame here. Guess they don’t like Ecuador.
- bmacho 4y agoApparently the only whitelisted regions are DE and FR, so they don't like a lots of people.
- foobarbecue 4y agoLatter Day Saints??? The Mormons? (I get the copyright block message here in the USA)
- glogla 4y agoI looked it up, and it's "content management company" Little Dot Studios, who seem to make money by claiming things on youtube to steal ad money and extort people.
- foobarbecue 4y agoUgh. I hope the Mormons hit them with a trademark violation!
- bmacho 4y agohttps://invidious.fdn.fr/watch?v=WgLJ_dfKy1E https://invidious.fdn.fr/watch?v=WgLJ_dfKy1E
- Yajirobe 4y agoWhy would you do this to yourself?
- hannes0 4y agoLast week I fasted for 5 days. Today I ate sugar again. I cannot speak for OP but my primary reasons were curiosity and becoming more aware of my body and energy levels. The last days I was super active, productive and in a crazy good mood. Today I feel like a slump. I probably will do it again and 5 days was much easier than expected. You probably need some experience to do it for 12 days, but I am very confident that it is manageable after the second or third time. It‘s like sport. People say „why would you do it“, but when you experience it by yourself you know intrinsically that it isn’t actually that bad.
- seattle_spring 4y agoIs it discipline? Or a medical condition? For example, I wouldn’t say someone with anorexia has impressive discipline. I can’t think of any reason rooted in reality why someone would fast for almost 2 weeks straight.
- thelittleone 4y agoSame. 12 days. Was training like a machine I felt almost high. Very clear mentally. Lots of extra time. Wasn't particularly hungry.
- throwaway290 4y agoI'm confused. You say "same", so you agree with arunix and jraby3? For them their level of hunger increased the longer they fasted. But then you wrote "wasn't particularly hungry", so you agree with franciscop? Impressive if you did training while fasting btw!
- thelittleone 4y agoI should have been more clear. For me at least, the peak hunger point was approximately 48hrs. It subsided substantially from there. I am fit and train often. But I've had a life long unhealthy relationship with sugar, which I managed to solve some months after I started fasting.
- maest 4y agoThis reminds me of how some people argue they actually drive better when drunk. Many studies have proven that: 1. Driving ability is impaired by alcohol consumption (or lack of sleep, incidentally) 2. People are very bad at estimating how severely impaired they are (wrt being drunk or kust tired) Are there any similar studies around ability to mentally focus / perform physical activities while fasting?
- amelius 4y agoPerhaps it depends on the intellectual load, and only doable if watching TV.
- throwaway290 4y agoHaven't gone 3-5 days but done more than 1 day, hunger paradoxically goes from high to low/none in 24 hours. I can feel weaker but not hungry the way I feel at first. After adjusting to rare meals I 100% feel better after 8 hours of not eating than when I eat often. Do you spend physical effort during that time? Eg. exercise, move heavy stuff, intensely walk. (I don't) Also what do you eat/drink before you fast. If I stop eating without preparing and changing my diet (eg. low carbs) I can get shaky and lightheaded.
- christophilus 4y agoSame. I’m over 24 hours into a fast right now. Zero hunger. I guess it’s different for person to person, kind of like just about everything seems to be.
- wincy 4y agoAt day three I was fine until I told myself I was going to get some food. Then I felt like I got hit by a truck in my stomach and nearly threw up I was shaking and so hungry. So I ended up breaking a three day fast at a Taco Bell instead of the grass fed steak I had waiting at home. Best Chalupa I’ve ever eaten in my life.
- throwaway290 4y agoThe body is a mystery! I guess biology is influenced by thought as much as the other way round...
- cm2187 4y agoYou mean no food for two days? Agree you grow very hungry. But 1 meal a day, after a week or two it becomes a habit and you don't feel hunger, even though you are losing weight. However make one exception, and hunger comes back immediately. Hard to get on those diets (hunger only goes away after a week) and stay on those diets (one exception, a loving mum who thinks it's not healthy, christmas, etc, and the diet is dead).
- reitanqild 4y agoMaybe I am lucky, but for me it works like this: If I skip food after (early) dinner and don't think about it more I can easily skip breakfast the next day and then I can easily skip lunch, dinner and supper the following day. If I start to think about or expect food however I think I can easily get in trouble. Disclaimer: I have only done this for 4 or so days.
- ilyt 4y agoWhat is mentioned in article (ramadan fasting) is essentially half day of fasting, not multiple day endeavour.
- reitanqild 4y agoThe longer north you come however, the longer the fast can become I understand as many (most?) Muslims looks at the local sunrise and sunset.
- astura 4y agoAgreed, I am an experienced faster. My longest fast was 5 days (no food mon-friday) I've never felt "not hungry" during a fast. I think "I don't even feel hungry" is something people just say to cope. More like a mindset than an actual feeling.
- user3939382 4y agoYep. Actually I feel myself turning into a wild animal. I can smell food from distances and food becomes my only thought.
- m463 4y agoBut the SMELL of food! I think my normal sense of smell is not great, but when hungry... It's just glorious.
- franciscop 4y agoIt does depend on different people, but yeah peak hunger is around 2-5 days in (again depending on multiple things) so doing multiple 3-5 day fasts just seems torture to me when you could've done a longer one and not be so hungry in the process. I have done three 10+ days fasts (trying not to get stuffed just before) and usually at 2-3 days is the peak. Days 4-5 are also hard, and you might get a punctual "hunger pang" much later on depending on what's going on (e.g. walk by a pizzeria), but overall nothing at all compared to day 2-3. This is based on the experiences that I've seen (as my comment before) derived from reading 10s-100s of people's experiences about fasting on Reddit groups over the years. Not scientific, but also not taken from thin air.
- Silverback_VII 4y agoCorrecting science with even worse science seems to be fashionable these days. Science at work.
- vishnugupta 4y ago+1. And I’ve noticed about myself that the amplitude or my “peak” hunger drops significantly as I sustain more days of intermittent fasting. So the hunger becomes more tolerable, so to speak.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- spion 4y agoIf you look at the replies you'll see the huge variety of responses people have to this, which is absolutely fascinating. I think this might actually be different for different people.
- throwaway290 4y agoI suspect it has to do not with being different people but with gut biome (so it can be different for the same person at different points in time, maybe even something we can change by changing our diet or surroundings).
- PragmaticPulp 4y agoIt’s definitely different for different people. It will vary by age, health status, body composition, and fitness level as well. I’m kind of perplexed at all of these anecdotes from people who tried fasting and assume their experience to be definitive for everyone.
- franciscop 4y agoSure there might be different experiences, but that's what I'm critizising from the article, since it says it IS the same experience for everyone (hunger increases the longer the fast). I do agree I should probably have added an extra "for some/many" or two on my comment though.
- ilyt 4y agoCoz 90% of them missed the point in article that said they just "fasted" by not eating during day (Ramadan), and not some multiple day endeavour.
- dota_fanatic 4y agoIf you hook a hose up to someone’s mouth and nose and measure the ratio of O2 absorbed vs Co2 they expel, the so-called respiratory quotient (RQ), you have a measure of the types of metabolic processing they’re doing, anaerobic vs aerobic. If someone is in a state of metabolic dysfunction, commonly due to unfit mitochondria, they’ll be unable to utilize energy from fat as well as a young, fit person. Their body is adapted to having access to carbs at all times. Some people call the opposite being “fat adapted”. During a fast, after they’ve burned through all their glycogen, fit mitochondria can still dependably access stores of energy from fat, of which we normally have plenty. I would bet the people who never stop being hungry during a long fast are experiencing the effects of metabolic dysfunction due to a phenotype acquired from living in the high carbohydrate, frequent access to food environment that is modern living in a first world country, especially if America. I would bet money on measuring a different RQ for the two groups, both normally and during a fast.
- ShamelessC 4y agoAll these sibling comments suggest it is 100% you that has the bias. Is it really not conceivable to you that this varies by person?
- leroy-is-here 4y agoModern humans have modern inventions like zero calorie foods. I’ve talked to many who have fasted where their body probably disagreed with that statement.
- beebeepka 4y agoZero calorie food is the very definition of an oxymoron. Emphasis on moron. This is on same level of single use clothes
- leroy-is-here 4y agoI don’t know if you are disagreeing with me but see: zero calorie sodas and sugars.
- oblak 4y agoZero calorie sodas are food?
- leroy-is-here 4y agoI'm sure you can find much research about how the body reacts to it as such.
- oblak 4y agoAh, now I see your point. Still should not be called food, though. Unless I've been misusing the word my entire life
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- zeroonetwothree 4y agoThat hasn’t been my experience. Recently I didn’t eat for a week (for medical reasons) and I felt awful the whole time.
- ren_engineer 4y agobest option is to just assume every psychology/social sciences article is bullshit, pretty much all of the most famous studies have failed to replicate. And many of those studies were used to justify trillions of dollars in federal spending over the past few decades
- boppo1 4y agoExamples of 'failed-to-replicate-but-used-to-justify'?
- satvikpendem 4y agoRead the book The Quick Fix, which has many examples.
- satvikpendem 4y agoIndeed, the book The Quick Fix goes over exactly this point. For example, did you know that the Superman pose had no scientific evidence whatsoever? The researcher simply pushed for it because it made her feel good. The grit study by Angela Duckworth is similarly faulty, the cadet training camp she went to had a pass rate of over 90% so the ones who didn't pass weren't in a statistically significant group to show whether their grittiness actually meant anything to them failing or passing.
- sdenton4 4y agoHere's some incontrovertible evidence of the effectiveness of the Superman position. https://youtu.be/99K4gpJZWdw https://youtu.be/99K4gpJZWdw
- stametseater 4y agoI heard this is so effective, they had to ban it to keep the sport safe and fair.
- 4y ago
- wpietri 4y agoYeah, as somebody who has experimented with fasting, I think it's a huge mistake to think that Ramadan fasters would respond like hungry non-fasters. Fasting is a common religious practice because it is both a challenge and a discipline. To get good at fasting, you have to work to unlearn habits of instant gratification and learn to consciously lean against the urgings of the body. A fasting practice develops real skills. It's perfectly plausible to me that Ramadan-observing judges would better at judging while hungry while non-fasters would get worse. So this article's author is doing exactly what he criticizes: assuming his naive model is the only explanation.
- nashashmi 4y agoThere is intermittent fasting research that has shown that fasting after a few days can end up decreasing sleep time and increase all-day energy. My own fasting experience shows this increase in energy and reduction in sleep as getting better and showing more energy in arguments. Some say this would be making me angrier but it isn't. It is making me more forceful at the argument.
- jdkoeck 4y agoOr, you’re getting cranky because you’re hungry.
- zvmaz 4y ago> It's perfectly plausible to me that Ramadan-observing judges would better at judging while hungry while non-fasters would get worse. I don't know for judges, but I live in a dominantly religious society and I haven't noticed the virtues promised by observing strict religious fasting. In fact, people have been jailed by (probably fasting) judges for eating out of sight [1]. [1] https://www-lepoint-fr.translate.goog/monde/algerie-2-ans-de-prison-ferme-pour-un-non-jeuneur-lors-du-ramadan-21-10-2010-1252584_24.php?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://www-lepoint-fr.translate.goog/monde/algerie-2-ans-de...
- reitanqild 4y ago
- ycombinete 4y agoThis doesn’t ring true for me. It seems more likely to me that, like with alcohol, we merely become less aware of how impaired we actually are. In Middle Eastern countries road rage incidents and reckless driving skyrocket during Ramadan. And many countries acknowledge this by all but shutting down after 1500 in the afternoon.
- testfoobar 4y agoAgreed - this person may not have experienced ketosis and how it feels.
- sva_ 4y agoI've done a waterfast before and for me this point was somewhere around the beginning of the third day. I could've kept going really, but I noticed my body had started to break down muscle (day 8.)
- otikik 4y agoDoing something on purpose is completely different than not having a choice at all, psychologically. I have been working remotely for 15 years, that’s how I like it. But the two years of pandemic with forceful social distancing were really hard.