Ben Greenfield (podcast host) discusses a published case study of a man who fasted for 382 days, losing 276 lb (from 456 to 180 lb). The study monitored him closely and reported no catastrophic medical effects during the fast: blood glucose fell dramatically (Ben reports it 'was at around 30'), electrolytes remained within acceptable ranges, and the subject used multivitamins/minerals during the fast and largely kept the weight off afterward. Ben frames the subject as morbidly obese and emphasizes fat loss as the primary source of weight reduction.
Foreign.
We talk about over in the show. Notes@BenGreenfieldFitness.com.
What is it? 348. 348, that's it. Okay, so at BenGreenfieldFitness.com 348. So this guy didn't eat for 382 days. And by the way, he also didn't poop for almost two months. My brain is like exploding already. Okay, yeah, so he went from 456 to 180 pounds. So a 276 pound weight loss. And the amazing thing is that they studied him intensively during this period of time, meaning that they studied his blood glucose, they studied his electrolyte levels, they studied anything that could have occurred that would have indicated that his body was falling apart or that he was gonna die. And what they found was not only was the majority of that weight just pure adipose tissue, he just fricking burnt through fat. And when you burn through fat, by the way, you do mobilize a lot of fat soluble vitamins and minerals and other things that your body can almost feed upon as you're losing that weight. Now granted, this guy was what I would consider to be morbidly obese. Yeah, I love that word. It just makes being overweight sound horrible. But he was morbidly obese. And what they found was that not only were there no deleterious medical effects, his blood glucose plummeted. I mean it was at around 30. And to put that in context, mine for example, hovers between like 80 and 85. But he also had like normalized electrolyte levels. He kept that weight off forever after the study. I believe his biggest fluctuation after the study was £16. And I'll put a link to the article so that folks can read it. But the only thing that they did use was vitamins and minerals. So they did use some multivitamins, they did use some minerals.
