Living without eating. Is it possible?
For the first time in months I start to feel hungry. An orange for breakfast is not meeting my food requirements. I use all the will power I have to extend my morning without eating. Orange before 10 am means that I will be hungry again before lunch. It’s true that after rapid weight loss it gets more difficult to keep up the pace. So far I have almost lost 12 kg’s in two months, but my weight loss is slowing down. The good news is that I can now get into my pre-pregnancy jeans for the first time. Needless to say they are still rather tight, but should fit perfectly again when I have reached my goal. I’m now only 4.5 kg’s away from it!
But back to starvation diets. Perhaps not the best of diets according to professional opinion. But is it really so bad? The last years, I’ve been religiously (almost!) following my beloved atkins diet. Cottage cheese and apple for breakfast, steak and salad for lunch, and meat, fish or chicken with vegetables for dinner. I keep on advocating it because it really works. You do loose weight and the weight stays off – until you start eating carbohydrates again. I also have more energy from it and generally feel and look better.
I try to keep this in mind, when I put myself through my current restricted diet regime. A proper breakfast in a few weeks will be fantastic. Even though it’s made out of cottage cheese and an apple.
A few days ago, Reinout and I bumped into an acquaintance in town. We did the usual small talk, and at the point of asking what’s going on in life, he made an intriguing revelation. He had stopped eating food. Reinout looked in astonishment as if not believing what he had just heard, but I sensed there was more to it. In fact not long before had we discussed the possibility of not eating for years after some articles I read on the topic. Reinout refuted my belief and the conversation ended pretty much there. So we were both surprised and intrigued to hear that someone that had been eating all his life had stopped eating for 7 weeks, only living on water and some supplements. I entertained the idea of my next diet, which would make my weight plunge in no time but was soon discourage of any such attempt, as our friend reminded us that he had not lost any weight what so ever. This made me even more curious and somewhat sceptical. How could this be possible? It’s like putting the laws of nature on its head. Energy must be consumed from somewhere, breaking down first fat, then muscle and tissue as the fat reserves are depleted. Everything I had learned about food and dieting, and biology and physics for that matter too, were discarded as false teachings.
I decided to dig deeper into this mystery. After all if this was possible, we had pretty much solved the century long famine of Africa. The woman that had “invented” and perfected “non-eating” into a fine art, would be next in line for the Nobel prize! Her name is Jasmuheen, and although I’ve never heard of her, the online evidence leaves a long trail. Jasmuheen has become the front figure to the so called breatharianism, which in essence is a philosophy that teaches us to live from the energy sources of our environment without physically consuming food and in some case drinks (water). This means that all the energy we need can be found through just breathing the air and consuming the sun light. I won’t go in much detail further, but wikipedia provides some interesting information. However, and there is always a however, Jasmuheen is by some people, considered to be a fraud, due to not being able to prove her abilities during scientific research. In those trials, her pulse increased to abnormal levels, her pupils dilated and she was showing signs of severe dehydration, only after four days. And contrary to what she claimed, she did loose weight.
Perhaps it’s just one of those things, when science clashes with belief. Perhaps the whole experiment made her out of sync, interfering with her abilities. We will never know. And yet it’s with awe and amazement that I look upon the quest of our friend. Although I’m a sceptic, I’m at the same time curious enough to continue a fair bit of research on this subject. And on that note, I believe it is now time for my orange!
I think she is a fraud. The thing is that some of “these” special cases involving superhuman feats or spiritual abilities sometimes have some truth to them. Often, the whole story is a lie or a gross over exaggeration. Sporadically, they’re actually true. A nice example is hibernation – we humans do not hibernate, I read in an issue of Scientific American some years ago that cases where someone got under some ice of a frozen river for 20 minutes and lived, was possible because of some exceptionally rare triggering of an old hibernation system we do have in our genes. The reason our cells rapidly die off when we lack air, is because the cells are asking for oxygen. Hibernation puts the cells also into “sleep mode”.
Then there’s the whole “can’t be done” crowd. People who dismiss stories that even vaguely remind them of anything they deem impossible and they’re bullshit detector goes off. They will always have a strong sense of disbelief for everything seems out of the ordinary for them – and ordinary is every day mundane life coupled with what they think is “common sense”. Such people are more often wrong than some stories are proven untrue. Try looking at the Guinness book of Records for starters – humans are capable of amazing feats…and animals. Brains that have a melted/liquid half part that re-learn lost abilities, a man born without arms that drives his car with his feet..or dogs without front paws or front and back paws on either the left or right side – but still run and jump around like champs.
P.S. It is kind of proven that consuming less during a lifetime prolongs life…proven in rats. Article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4520727.stm
In other words, I think this is a case where there is some truth, and some nonsense.
reply to this commentThank you! I would now go on this blog every day!
reply to this commentYour Message@Pawelotti:
I agree with you completely. The human body is an amazing machine and mechanism that still harbour a tremendous amount of potential that we have yet to discover or in fact re-discover. I don’t dismiss living without food either, as there are examples of Indian yogis that practice this. However their bodies have been adapting to this over years and decades, consuming very little energy, mostly being in static positions of meditation. So to live a normal life, like you and I without eating is something I must say I’m somewhat rather sceptical to.
Oh and the article you mentioned about prolonged life with low caloric intake. I’ve read this too, and don’t find it so far-fetched. I’m convinced we over-consume food, and especially sugary food, which is something our bodies are not optimized to handle. I’m not an expert on colon cancer, but I seem to recall having read that this is more prevalent today than 50 years ago.
reply to this commentYour Message@fracas: yes, sure, but you must think about that we change all the time, what we can do as humans. The environment and external circumstances, we accommodate so well over the years. Gens an other stuff and the mind, the survival instinct, everything matters.
Am I totally out of subject….
reply to this commentLove Naz
Your Message@Kharma:
reply to this commentYes I agree, but in fact changes happens very slowly. Example of this is our digestion system that is still adapted to hunter-gatherer circumstances when famine was common. Same goes for the appendix which has no function at all today. We can adapt to extreme circumstances, but only within certain boundaries and often with the use and backing of technology. I’m sure that some people might be able to achieve great deads through just will power, but it’s still pretty rare…
diets such as the atkins diet are very unhealthy. your body will get used to running off of hardly anything and then all of your fat intake will be stored because your body is afraid of running out. so all the fat your body usually gets rid of will now be stored. so basically you will gain just as much weight as if you ate normally, only you will get only a fraction of the nutrients your body needs (from not eating enough), many of which are used to break down the stored fat. so youll get fat and be starving your body of nutrients at the same time. so please stop encouraging everyone to do this because you alone are making health problems increase in the people who read this.
reply to this commenthaha okay i just finished reading your article, and if anyone thinks you can survive from not eating you are in serious need of education. Sunlight will get you vitamin D and thats it. unless you have perfected photosynthesis you should definitely be eating every day. i would love to inform people to help them help themselves, but if you actually believe this stuff then you are too far gone. every “fact” on your page contradicts the fundamental aspects biology, let alone logic
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