I’m really fat, so as long as I have water, electrolytes, and a multivitamin I could probably go for several months without food before really bad stuff started happening
As it stands, a day or two barely registers
Yes, yes you could.
The trick is to have an undiagnosed illness that constantly upsets your stomach and threatens to regurgitate any food you eat. Once I realized it hurts less to not eat at all, I started regularly skipping on meals. What’s really annoying is that I still have a pudgy tummy, even though I’m stuck on a diet some people would dream of being able to commit to.
“pudgy” as in bloated? I never even knew what “bloating” was before I actually got properly rid of it.
I too skipped meals and still do (because it kinds stayed as a habit) but i don’t need to anymore. I went on an exclusion diet to see if it was some undiagnosed food allergy. Rice/potatos and fish/meats basically, with some basic veggies. Even at one point I avoided all allium plants, meaning all onions, leeks, garlic, etc. It’s kinda basic, but if it works, then you can start adding things back and see what you react to.
I still haven’t got a diagnosis, but I’ve lost the bloating and stomach pain and about like 20% of bodyweight even though I was never even overweight. I’m still kinda wondering what it exactly is which triggers that sort of horrible inflammation in me, but I can very clearly feel a difference. Like night and day. I couldn’t even enjoy red wines before, stomach just didn’t fucking handle them. I even had heart palpitations most days. Them and burping and eveything; gone (I’m not on a not too restrictive but gluten and casein free diet, meaning no gluten and no dairy.)
I used to think I was the same way but started omad to lose weight and you do get used to it. As long as there’s enough protein and fiber and the meal is big enough then I’m completely fine for 24 hours at a time.
If this resonates with you, please check for sugar related health issues. (I am not saying you have them, but it is time to check.)
Most of my family has this problem, but at least diabetes appears not to be the cause.
That is great! Could be no big deal.
Could be nondiabetic hypoglycemia (controversial if it exists). Could be another thing.
One thing that gets me about TV and movies is when people dramatically storm away from the dinner table. I don’t think I’ve EVER seen anybody IRL stop eating and leave just because they were mad. But forgetting to eat is on a whole other level.
Mental illness is a bitch
I grew up glued to my PS1/PS2 playing until I was dehydrated with a headache and my eyes burning.
Worse yet, there are people who don’t eat breakfast. Do they photosynthesize their food instead?
I don’t. I feel it takes a few hours (4-5) for my body to wake up enough to feel hunger, and if I force myself to eat breakfast I feel queasy. So I just eat black coffee and move on.
Same, a large breakfast makes me feel queasy too. I never met another person like this. I usually don’t eat until noon.
But, 10AM and later, I’m not queasy.
This. I really only eat a small breakfast because I have to for meds, but if it weren’t for that I’d totally be fine with one big meal a day (turns out to be dinner most of the time) and perhaps one apple or sth. late at night.
This forced 3-meal system is so weird and inconvenient.
It all revolves around work… eat before work, at your please-take-the-smallest-amount-of-time-mandated-so-we-don’t-get-sued mid-day or mid-shift break, and after work.
That’s just because we made it like that though for some weird cultural reason (as well as propaganda), there’s zero reason why an office worker or train conductor couldn’t eat multiple small amounts of fruits and veggies over the day, or just none at all until home. Even the idea of the “importance of breakfast” literally came from Kelloggs trying to convince everyone to eat cereal in the morning 60(?) years ago to build themselves somewhat of a ‘cultural anchor’. I mean, we could’ve also gone the way to chop each workday in 2-hour chunks and eat a bite between all of them. Good thing nobody told Nestle they could’ve made people buy more food that way.
So I just eat black coffee and move on.
Great, now I have this mental image of you waking up late, going “NO TIME TO WAIT FOR THE KETTLE!” and just eating spoonfuls of instant coffee straight from the jar before running out of the house.
Have tried it, wouldn’t recommend it.
It’s a very handy routine when you’re a bit short on time in the morning
There’s no rhyme or reason to it, but some mornings a black coffee is all I seem to want/need which is kinda negative calories
Other mornings I’ll polish the plate of a large full English and will perish if I don’t
I literally feel sick if I eat breakfast. Only after a couple hours do I get hungry. I only really eat breakfast if I know I am going to be physically active and will need the energy like if I went cycling or hiking.
Used to abstain from eating breakfast sometimes when I was younger. Now I’ll likely feel nauseous if I do.
What’s even worse is people who don’t understand that we are a hunter-gatherers. Our ancestor’s first meal came much later in the day and we have evolved as such. Not eating a lot for breakfast is extremely comon and burned in our DNA. Don’t know where you are going with this.
Most of the days I just have one meal, at like 4 or 5 pm. While being up since like 3-5am cause of work.
And I still maintain 80-82kg weight.
Without your height your weight doesn’t mean much
177cm
Which is two and a half oompaloompas for all us Muricans.
Can you convert to football fields?
Or large boulders (around the size of a small boulder) ?
Stadium? Covered, or open air? Grass or astroturf?
Im just extremely depressed :3
Yeah, and then I remember to eat something when the shaking starts
It’s usually the lightheadedness for me
No one wants to hear it, I suspect, but eating very low carb is how this is done.
No sugar and no grains for one month and the cravings are gone. You can easily go 48 hours on water alone, if you need or want to.
What nearly everyone calls hunger is actually cravings for carbs. True hunger is painful and consumes every thought. Likely no one you’ve ever met has been truly hungry.
You probably think no one wants to hear it when they disagree, but more likely what works for you doesn’t work for everyone. As the person replying to you exemplified. There isn’t a one trick for everyone in these kinda of things, and anyone who claims there is is either ignorant or scamming.
Or most people haven’t tried it and are incredulous that it works and can’t imagine life without the food noise and cravings
Easy way to prove it; show us the peer reviewed scientific studies. There’s been times when almost everyone has been wrong, and what proved it was the scientific method.
I’m not familiar with much research on food noise as a topic by itself.
However you may find this paper on the power of sugar addiction in rats Intense Sweetness Surpasses Cocaine Reward - 2007
Our findings clearly demonstrate that intense sweetness can surpass cocaine reward, even in drug-sensitized and -addicted individuals. We speculate that the addictive potential of intense sweetness results from an inborn hypersensitivity to sweet tastants. In most mammals, including rats and humans, sweet receptors evolved in ancestral environments poor in sugars and are thus not adapted to high concentrations of sweet tastants. The supranormal stimulation of these receptors by sugar-rich diets, such as those now widely available in modern societies, would generate a supranormal reward signal in the brain, with the potential to override self-control mechanisms and thus to lead to addiction.
An interesting flaw with the sugar studies with rats is that it required limiting the amount of sugar available. They did act like addicts when the sugar was presented to them intermittently then taken away, but when they had full free access to it, they no longer binged on it and didn’t have addictive traits. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4361030/#%3A~%3Atext=Rats+with+ad+libitum+access%2Cand+by+avidity+for+alcohol.
Because of this, some suggest the studies are actually arguments against hyper limited diets, instead of in support. Part of an argument on that is that it’s harder for us keep up something we dislike for a long period of time, whereas making smaller changes we can adapt to keeps our enjoyment and can still change behavior over time.
Anecdotal: I stopped drinking soda, cut down on sweets and juice etc a while ago(10-15 years?). I still have sweets from time to time, but the general feeling is I feel many things are too sweet, and I prefer lighter sweetness. I still like it somewhat, but soda tastes like syrup, and I generally just feel like less, but I don’t exclude it completely or anything.
Its interesting you bring up the limitation, it seems that most of the “calorie reduced” food studies on animals are actually intermittent fasting studies
Glad to see you have had success giving up soda!
I don’t think there is a single fix for this. My diet is pretty carb heavy and I forget meals all the time. You just get focused on something and it’s…why am I lightheaded?…oh yeah. Food in the last 12 hours might have been nice.
Background…it’s not just me but our genetics are bonkers. There are four other people in my family 35-75 years old and 5.5-6ft tall. Not a single one of us is over 130 pounds. We all struggle to gain weight. Doesn’t matter what we eat…good food or absolute garbage. Absolute garbage has other consequences…like also feeling like garbage but weight gain isn’t one of them. Cravings for anything are rare…drove my college roommate nuts that I could have candy around for like 6+ months.
Those aren’t mutually exclusive (send help)
I work from home, IT, 8-10 hours sitting, programming. If I ate five meals a day I’d weight a ton in few months.
Fasting helps me keeping the callory intake down. First meal at 3-6pm then some snack in the evening, keeping sugar intake low. If I eat in the morning I feel bloated and sluggish + at around 2pm I feel tired.
Not eating keeps me fresh.
I also fast through the day and if I eat even something small I get mentally and physically sluggish. Could easily fall asleep.
5 meals is also excessive. I have the same schedule and I eat the normal 3 meals a day: breakfast, lunch, dinner. I can’t really miss any because then my tummy becomes very distracting. I really don’t understand how you can go till 3pm without feeling any adverse effects. If I skip breakfast I’ll be useless and dizzy till lunch.
I just don’t eat more than I need each meal.
It’s because they keep their sugar intake low. Most of the hunger urges are carbohydrate addiction manifesting
Depends on what is meant by a meal. You could simply eat smaller meals to get less calory intake.
I don’t get hungry often, at least not the way I think normal people do. I usually go from ‘fine’ to ‘more than mildly queasy’ in a couple minutes, then I have to rush to find something to throw in my stomach. It’s like flipping a light switch. This usually only happens when I have some project I’m focusing on.
don’t want to armchair diagnose, but i had the exact same thing and prozac gave me the ability to feel hungry again. I used to feel exactly how you would.
I’m actually on an SNRI (like SSRI but also inhibits dopamine reuptake) as part of my adhd treatment so sadly that won’t do it for me. I think my brain just ignores hunger when I’m too busy to think about food, then eventually it just yells YO FEED ME.
Yeah it felt like reading ADHD symptoms. I get it completely.
Not everybody is blessed with a super metabolism CATE. Check your privilege.
For real.
I did try not to eat for a week and nothing happened, yes I lost a bit weight but minimal.
You actually have to expend calories, too
Why, does the calorie economy depend in it? Who are you working for, Big Food?
Prolly trying to trick us into making free co2.
The secret is to be incredibly neurodivergent and unlock the secrets to extreme hyperfixation. The more you lose track of time, the better, as this is also the threshold where hunger ceases to exist.
-source, one incredibly autistic fuck (me)
i forget to eat and i regret to inform you we are not immune to this
