Originally Posted by
zx12y
So many criticisms, I will try to address each worthy objection.
First of all, your body stores glycogen (energy) for three days before running out completley. The weight lost from a short fast is mostly weight used to replenish glycogen during that time.
This isn't true. At all. First of all, glycogen is stored differently for different parts of your body. For example, glycogen stored in muscle tissues can't be shared with other parts of the body. So if you sat perfectly still for three days while fasting you wouldn't deplete the glycogen present in your muscle tissue.
The liver, however, does share it's glycogen with other organs, mostly the brain, and when it is depleted and you aren't consuming glucose to burn... well, in rare you can end up with hypoglycemia which is way bad. Way way bad. How quickly you lose this glycogen is dependent on what you do while you're not eating. Also, glycogen isn't a bad thing. Just another form of energy reserve for our body when we find ourselves in situations that we can't eat.
It is hard to qualify the psychological benefits, but it is rewarding and there is a high associated with breaking a good fast. I never said anyone had an eating disorder or that someone with an ED should learn how to fast, nice really valid point and i'm impressed by your thinking.. See how stigmatized everyone is to fasting? It makes it harder for people to get help; I think learning about fasting for an ED'd person would force them to analyze their habits. I basically believe ED can be avoided in certain cases, had the person learned to express themselves first through fasting.
I don't understand what you mean by this. You think that maybe a person with eating disorders should have tried fasting instead? If this is the case I don't think you understand well the relationship between food and control when it comes to eating disorders. An eating disorder isn't about not having a desire to eat.
A person wanting to fast is not indicative at all of an ED. That's like saying being a ghost hunter means you are schizophrenic. In fact, I think it shows a very healthy relationship with food, or at least embodies my own.
What I don't understand is what evidence you have to support that occasional fasting for up to three days has any health benefits outside of a feeling of accomplishment.
If you can't somewhat easily go a day without food, no offense, you aren't a well-adapted organism. We all have flaws, though. Just because something is new and hard doesn't mean its negative, learning something positive can often be difficult. You might have greater sucess with the proper mindset and planning leading into a fast. Regardless, if you much suffer that much beyond hunger pains, an evaluation of sorts might be in line.
Well adapted can mean a lot of things. In this instance I think you're saying "If you can't go a day without food you ain't tough." To which I would reply: "So what?" or "I don't really care what you think." I can go a day without eating and be grumpy and ill or I can continue to fuel my body when it requires fuel and be happy. I pick happy.
Your body is always purifying itself, but I think fasting helps it along. Most organs in the body catch a break often, like the brain and lungs slowing down for sleep. The heart doesn't really get a rest and neither does our digestive system with our habits. IMO, when you eat too often, you don't give the digestive system a good environment to repair itself. Fasting means non-digestive organs get more blood flow, an adaptation occurs. It certainly helps with acne and other blemishes.
Evidence to support any of this, outside of your own anecdotal experience, would be nice. I mean yeah, when you don't eat your body produces less sebum which means your face is less oily which means less likely to trap dirt in your pores but that isn't because you're getting rid of toxins in your body. It's probably because Western people eat a whole bunch of sugar which can cause hyperinsulinemia which might be linked to acne. You could reduce the sugar in your diet without fasting and probably have the same effect.
Why wouldn't fasting cause your body to catabolize the weakest links? The body is not going to catabolize the healthiest cells, the ones it just put an effort into creating. If a cell is not getting enough energy to live and eventually divide, it will eventually be catabolized by the body. When the fast is broken, those cells are replaced by new cells. This type of thing is happening 24/7 in your body.
Right, it's happening without fasting. Fasting doesn't speed up cellular respiration, it slows it down and creates a stress response in your other cells. It also lowers your sex hormones, body temperature, glucose and insulin levels and your blood pressure.
Originally Posted by
zx12y
Originally Posted by
Mirage
How would it catabolize your weakest cells if you store glycogen for 3 days anyway? Why wouldn't it just use that?
Your body at first uses mostly glycogen in combination with lipids and proteins, before being forced to use only lipids and proteins to convert into glycogen.
No. Lipids aren't converted to glycogen. Glycogen is synthesized from glucose that originates either 1) from food consumption or 2) during the Cori process in which lactic acid from the muscles is transported to the liver, turned into glycogen, then returned to the muscles. Where it does nothing until the muscles need it.
I don't understand how it wouldn't help in cleansing processes. If you have mild acne or skin blemishes, I don't think they will survive a good fast. The whole environment inside your digestive system changes in a way that puts less stress on it. In the very least, your momentarily not injesting as many new toxins into your body.
In what way. How does it change? How does not eating kill acne?
Scientific research into nutrition can be dubious at times. There is a huge marketplace for food, and every educational and research insitution has an agenda. It's very defeatist to believe what we think we know will never change. Simply put, there is only money to be lost if people eat less.
Oh, lots and lots of money is gained all the time trying to convince people to eat less. It's a multi-billion dollar industry foisting shyster-y products on people to convince them they should eat less.
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