One man has shared an intriguing journey on social media as he went on a planned 1,000 hour fast without any food whatsoever, only consuming water and supplement electrolytes in the process.
While some diets and religions recommend regulated fasting whether for weight loss or spiritual reasons, it's only really ever a small stretch of hours that force your body to retrain for a short period of time.
Some on social media like to take things to the extreme though, testing their own limits and sharing the results for us all to see, and that's exactly what happened with user @wasserpest, otherwise known as Maru.
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Against the likely recommendation of many scientists and health experts, this man announced his plan to go 1,000 hours (the equivalent of around 42 days straight) without any food at all, only consuming water and supplements like sodium, magnesium, and potassium.
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Obviously this is an incredibly dangerous experiment that can leave dangerous effects on the body, but seeing the progress tracked throughout the lengthy thread is undeniably fascinating.
Having clearly fasted before, they remark that the "first 72h are the toughest because your body is constantly signaling you to eat," and that it "gets way easier after that initial period."
Maru explains that they 'break' their fast by taking the aforementioned electrolytes, which does negatively affect weight loss due to the way that sodium retains more water. This is somewhat similar to what is seen in the Keto diet, as most of what you're actually losing is water and not fat.
"Usually the fun part of fasting doesn't start until the 100h mark," Maru explains, "that's when a switch is flipped in your brain and you will feel like a god no matter how little you slept."
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Despite being over a week in though, it's still challenging to get rid of your body's desire for food: "Spending nye without any yummy snacks or drinks was tough, but I made it, I'm alive." Furthermore, in the days between December 26th and New Years Day they have managed to lose 4.5kg.
Reaching the quarter-mark of the challenge though Maru reveals the methods they're utilizing in order to keep away the hunger pangs: "Watching Japanese food YouTube shorts in bed and yearning for a fat bowl of soup every night... the usual."
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They did eventually cut the end goal short by 200 hours to 'just' 800 due to a move to Tokyo, but that's still just over 33 days, or an entire month of not eating.
Perhaps to the surprise of many, even after 29 days of not eating they're still able to go to the toilet, describing that it was "not a whole log, but there was definitely some substance to it. Very interesting that there's still something left in my body after a whole month of no food."
Eventually everything was cut short at 714 hours, equivalent to 30 days. They managed to lose around 15kg across the month, and rewarded themselves with an appealing bowl of broth and vegetables as their first meal back.
When detailing how they were able to manage such a long time without any food whatsoever, Maru outlines that you can do it "if you have enough body fat on your frame, that's what ketosis is for."
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Still, it's not something that we'll be rushing to try any time soon!