Warning: this article might be triggering for individuals with eating disorders. Here I share my personal experiences with starvation, analyze hunger on a more clinical level through supported studies, and finally report a starvation exercise in which I abstain from eating for a small period of time in order to relay the personal effects of hunger on both performance and mental health.
Today I am choosing not to eat for a period of time (it was going to be 24-hours, but along the way I changed it to 16-hours) to report the effects of hunger on both my body and mind. For some, this is likely no big deal. Intermittent fasting has been picking up speed in heath communities, and many don’t occupy their time with constant thoughts of food. However, for many others, food is an essential part of everyday functioning. After all, it is one of the vital components of life, the base of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Not only that, but food plays an enormous role in social interactions, as well as our mental health. And while many areas of the world are left ravenous and in desperate need of food and water, it seems preposterous to purposely starve yourself in a first world country. Even more preposterous? To have the audacity to lament your choice to starve. But today I’m not going to lament. I’m going to explore my firsthand experience with starvation, how short periods of fasting can be used as a health tool, and the psychological risks of long-term starvation, as well as the short-term discomforts.
What it’s like to starve
Some people don’t feel bad for those who “choose” to starve themselves when so many go hungry. Yet, at least 30 million people suffer from an eating disorder in the United States alone, as reported by the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders (ANAD), and I argue that eating disorders are not in fact choices. I started starving myself at age 12, as what first started out as calorie counting and scale monitoring quickly unraveled into 67 calories a day and an IOP hospitalization by age 14. Chronically starving yourself is its own personal form of hell, a delirious and agonizing process that nonetheless has moments of almost manic peace, as paradoxical as that sounds. Every single day from the age of 12 to 20, my thoughts were preoccupied by food. And I’m not exaggerating when I say every single day. I remember there were two afternoons total over an 8 year period when I had a brief reprieve from the constant thoughts of food and I felt as though I could live life as more than a number. Of course, those thoughts quickly lost traction.
What does it mean to live life by numbers? There’s the number on the scale, of course. That would be your worth. And the number in your dozens of food journals, the one that counted your daily calorie intake and determined if you were a “good” person. And then there was a chance for marginal redemption, the number on the treadmill, the grand total of the exercise log that decided if you were worthy of forgiveness. And what did this amount to? Constant mental duress, a full blow preoccupation that left no time or space for healthy, happy functioning. It meant forcing yourself to stay up until the wee hours of the morning, walking into school with 45 minutes of sleep because you wouldn’t let yourself sleep or you plucked yourself up at 4:30 a.m. to slave away on the basement treadmill in the hopes of redeeming your eating choices. It meant having all your friends think you’re cold, because you passed up on social gatherings that involved food (and honestly, which ones don’t?!), including Sweet 16 birthdays and special events. It meant getting dizzy daily in 7th period math class and wanting to faint, because you were terrified of even eating half a granola bar in the proximity of human life. It meant going hours upon hours upon days without any real form of nourishment aside from jello, egg whites, celery, and sugar free drinks. It meant an all-encompassing terror in relation to any aspect of food, including simply ordering a meal over the phone. It meant you were no longer a person, but a slave to the demons in your head, telling you every day that you were repugnant, shameful, unworthy and if you simply let your bones shine though, every aspect of your life would be mended. It meant weeping in despair, because you were so utterly empty that you lacked the effort to move, yet so agonizingly empty that you lacked the nutrients to drag yourself to sleep. In short? Hunger is a form of torture, a sick struggle to conquer your own base human needs. And now some people are recommending not eating to improve your health.
Is intermittent fasting healthy?
There is clearly nothing healthy about what I did to my body. Due to starvation, I lost my menstrual cycle for nearly two years, and I still worry that I did permanent damage to my body by inflicting such harm during my formative years. However, I still to this day take a strange sense of pride in my ability to endure, to withstand. This is a sentiment that was echoed many times in my online eating disorder forum groups, where we undeniably took a sick satisfaction in our levels of deprivation. And again, clearly, we were not being healthy. But there is actually a number of people, including health professionals, who champion abstaining from constant nourishment. Intermittent fasting is gaining mainstream interest, with some choosing to eat only during certain food windows i.e. 4 hour windows each day, or choosing to “take off” one or two days of eating every week. Of course, as someone who gave a large portion of my life to eating disorders and who has spent many long nights awake in bed with hunger pangs preventing sleep, I have to ask is this way of life healthy? And as someone who always looks at both sides of the picture, I have to admit, it appears that some people can “starve” themselves in a healthy way.
The Wall Street Journal reports that “The Fasting Cure is No Fad,” as it lists the benefits of intermittent fasting and time-restricted eating. The author advises people to cut out either breakfast or dinner in order to carve out 14 hour stretches that don’t involve food ingestion. Intermittent fasting is linked to improved chronic conditions, brain health and happiness, and physical improvements due to (in layman’s terms) giving your body a rest from constant food breakdown and digestion. Many also report spiritual elements that accompany overcoming your physical and psychological base needs. Though this kind of “benefit” does resonante as worryingly similar to my “anorexia pride,” it’s important to realize people enjoy many different ways of living. Just because I couldn’t starve myself in a healthy way doesn’t mean that others can’t reap the benefits of time-restricted eating.
One key difference about intermittent fasting and disordered starvation is that restricted windows of eating do not reduce the number of calories consumed in a day. They simply reduce the window in which those calories are to be consumed. That means that intermittent fasting does not involve starving yourself over long periods of time and failing to provide adequate nourishment. It means abstaining from food for certain windows of time, which perhaps could involve skipping breakfast, but then enjoying a very satisfying lunch. Therefore, there is clearly a key difference between starving yourself and restricting when you consume food, which is something that intermittent fasters need to remember in order to avoid veering into the danger territory.
The psychological effects of hunger
What exactly is this “danger territory”? What happens when we go from restricting our calories a healthy amount or limiting when we eat to when we are flat out depriving our bodies of nutrients on a chronic level? If you’ve taken a psych course in college, then there is a chance you’ve heard of the Minnesota Starvation Experiment, which has been recognized for a long time as maybe the most significant study on the physical, mental, and social effects of food restriction. Something that alarms me about the study is that the men being analyzed for the effects of restricted eating were given 1,600 calories a day, which is a number that I used to regard as significantly high. That means that the participants experienced a rapid deterioration of many areas of functionality when placed on a calorie plan that some consider average or even high, especially for females.
In the wake of World War II, nutrition researcher Ancel Keys decided to study how “semi-starvation” alters “the changes in motivation, then the behavioral consequences of the physical changes, and finally, the emotional, intellectual, and social changes which so profoundly influence the personality.” Following a 12-week control period of 3,200 calories a day, the willing participants then entered into 6 months of semi-starvation that cut their calories in half. The men reported an instant decline in motivation and physical energy, while apathy and irritability rose significantly. Eating became grotesquely ritualized, as food became the sole source of mental preoccupation and obsession, while every other aspect of life faded into the peripheral. Socializing was disrupted by boredom and overwhelming indifference, and romance evaporated along with the loss of sexual desire. These long periods of supreme lost of interest would occasionally be disrupted by brief spells of euphoria that were always followed by an emotional crash.
The truly disturbing elements of the study rose during the final stage, as participants entered into the 20 week rehabilitation period. Though physical recovery was slowly being made, mental health shockingly continued to deteriorate. Ritualized eating continued, while aggression and severe mood swings burgeoned. And then a shocking thing occurred: study participant Samuel Legg amputated three of his fingers while chopping wood one day, as he admitted to being “crazy mixed up at the time.” Though after roughly 3 months, moods and social behavior stabilized, the men reported not returning to their original relationships with food even long after the study was over. Overall, hunger had a profound and lasting effect on their mental health, physical fitness, and social interactions and desires. Hunger can therefore shockingly effect the way we view the world and our responses to human interactions, as well as our physical and mental health.
The bottom line
As you will soon discover if you choose to read my hunger chronicles diary entry, the bottom line is that starving yourself is not, in fact, worth it in my opinion. However, that doesn’t mean that we need to be constantly eating. It appears as though time-restricted eating can have beneficial effects on both weight management and chronic illnesses, as well as even happiness. But the important thing to remember is the necessity of finding a plan that works for you and your body. Some find fasting to be a renewing and spiritual exercise, a way to fortify both mental and physical strength by overcoming base needs. However, that doesn’t mean fasting is healthy or safe for everyone. Any form of fasting is largely not recommended for those suffering from or who have suffered from eating disorders, because as I’m sure many fellow people with eating disorders have noticed, it only takes a slight slip back into old habits to start unraveling those compulsive thoughts.
To wrap up this discussion, I do not believe that eating disorders are a choice, and there is no easy way to “get out” of them. In fact, once you have a serious eating disorder, I highly doubt it ever fully leaves you. However, there are many steps we can make to avoid disordered eating in order to prevent unhealthy food relationships from blossoming into full blown disorders. We can also make conscious efforts to not project toxic food messages onto not only youth, but friends, family, and peers. Is your diet really the most important thing about you? Do you really need to complain about your “thunder thighs” today? Or perhaps can we take the time to project body positivity? I, for one, take no aspect of eating (or having a body!) for granted. I appreciate every bite I put in my mouth, I look forward to special meals with friends and family, and I bask in my ability to order food and allow myself to eat and enjoy it! on a daily basis. These minor celebrations have been hard earned, won with blood and sweat and many years of tears. So if you’re considering starving yourself, the simple answer is don’t. There’s nothing glamorous about starvation. See for yourself.
Hunger Chronicles: Thoughts during a 2̶4̶-̶h̶o̶u̶r̶16-hour fast
22:00- Last food eaten; no reported hunger for 12 hours
10:18- Now a feeling begins to stir in my stomach, when the morning nausea churns into a gentle craving. I am not yet ravenous, but I am beginning to grow hungry. My thoughts are scattered, not yet unfocused per say, but I sense the feeling that I could better reel them in with a bit of protein. As I grow hungrier, I feel my anxiety levels rise, but there is not yet an obstruction to functionality. I am beginning to consider why I decided to do this, however, since it is Friday. What plans will I make for tonight, and how will they be impacted by my choice not to eat? Eating, after all, is a social ritual. How many social activities did I avoid in my life due to my fear of food? I don’t even want to answer that.
11:00- While I can still function without food (13 hours isn’t going to break anyone, especially when you spend 7 of them asleep and have the support of your ADD medication to block hunger), there are social concerns settling in. My friend wants to go out tonight, but what does that mean if I’m not eating? Nobody takes pleasure in filling their face while their companion stares at them, sipping ice water. And, of course, if you’re not eating, alcohol consumption is off the table. Because have you tried to drink on a supremely empty stomach? That can only spell disaster. Not to mention, I want to workout, and I don’t know if I’ll have the strength to commit to the gym. All in all, genuine starvation looks like languidly laying on the couch and lying to everyone (including myself) in order to weasel out of plans. The end result? Everyone is let down.
11:45- It has now been close to 14 hours since I have last eaten, which is what the Wall Street Journal article recommended as a healthy window of not eating. And I can tell you: I’m hungry. My head hurts, I feel nauseous in the empty space inside of me, and my stomach is churning acid in on itself. Oh the drama. What am I trying to say? My body is craving food. And I could push away these thoughts in order to attempt to achieve some spiritual nirvana, but even the Buddha came to the conclusion that self-denial was not the key to enlightenment. And I have social plans for tonight, plans that are going to be next to impossible to keep if I don’t allow food to slide between my teeth. It’s funny how when you’re not eating, all you think about is food. I used to be so “strong,” allowing my body to remain “pure” for such long stretches of time. My very poetic response to that mindset? Fuck that noise!
13:24- The thing about being hungry, being really hungry, is it clouds your mind. It hogs all of your energy, and dulls out everything else. Things that you need to do, tasks that a little protein would easily fuel, become unnecessary. You become shrouded in indifference. All of the things I set out to do honestly don’t feel like they matter. Thinking requires effort, while actually performing presents itself as a tedious task. It’s been roughly 15 1/2 hours since I’ve eaten, and though I had a large dinner yesterday, I did workout a lot afterwards. At 12:07 today, my body knew it was time to eat. And now that nothing is coming, I can sense its unrest. Of course you can last for far longer than this. But it’s undeniable that my drive, motivation, functionality, and focus are all taking a dip due to lack of nutrients. And it’s hard to focus on things aside from thoughts of food.
14:00- Here is the thing. I’m going to eat now, and tonight I’m going to get dinner with my friend. I don’t need to complete this exercise, because I already know the results. I am not happy. I cannot focus. I cannot properly execute my work, and I do not heave a healthy level of interest in things. I have not eaten in 16 hours, and I could wait another 8 hours to tell you how miserable I feel (with perhaps a brief flash of calm), but let’s spare a whole lot of melodrama and instead accept the fact that while, no, we do not need to be constantly eating, we also need to listen to and nourish our bodies. I know if I don’t enjoy a small, healthy meal now, then I will make disastrous meal choices tonight when the “starvation” period elapses. The bottom line: I do think there are benefits to be found in intermittent fasting. But it’s also vitally important to prioritize your mental health and understand your limitations. It took me a long time to earn my right to eat, and though some days I can go 20 hours or so without eating, today doesn’t want to be one of them!