All i ate today was a salad with ranch dressing all over it

and a bowl of oatmeal from a package with sugar and butter

and a turkey sandwich with cheese and mayonnaise on white bread

He says he was WEIGHING his food. That indicates that he knew enough about what he was doing to realize that condiments and such contain calories. I also know that FMB is pretty into cooking, so he's knowledgeable about that sort of thing. Still, the scenario he outlines is just really bizarre and seems to defy scientific logic (as indicated by his doctor's disbelief as well).

There is no such thing as the "starvation mode" as thought of by dieters. Your metabolism will drop slightly with extended calorie restriction in response to less body mass (as you lose weight) but won't drop to zero (or you would be dead).

The internet is full of people that supposedly gained weight on 500-1000 calorie diets yet no metabolic ward study (where someone else controls the food) has ever actually found one of these people.

There are several issues that make it seem like it exists. One is that food charts are frequently wrong and can be off as much as 20%. Also, it's impossible to get an 100% accurate calorie count on some things, like meat, because the actual fat content varies so much.

Also, there are short term effects that can mask your actual fat loss. Water is the worst as it can vary by several pounds a day. Women have it worst here because hormonal changes can cause them to gain a lot of water weight in a short time. You have to do it consistently for a longer period of time to get an accurate picture of what is going on. A few days won't show it and can be deceiving.

Here is an extreme example:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2495396/

A 27 year old man fasted with nothing but water and a few supplements for 382 consecutive days. He went from 456 pounds to 180 pounds. Tests during his fast showed he didn't lose all of his muscle. He also maintained at 196 pounds five years later so he didn't wreck his metabolism and gain it all right back.

Just read the first page......and it said that guy would go 37-48 days between bowel movements. ****ing hell.....

If you don't eat anything, there isn't much waste to poop out. :shrug: I believe later in the paper that he wasn't constipated. Just no waste.

Yeah....it would just be weird to go that long without taking a shit.

I would fall way behind in my reading.

I watched a show from Britain online recently. They interviewed a man and a woman who couldn't lose weight. The subjects were logging their calories and only eating 700-1000 calories a day...sure enough, they were medical marvels and couldn't lose any weight despite eating like birds.

Then, the show revealed that they had hired private detectives to follow them around. Turns out that they were literally eating a thousand or more calories a day that they didn't even realize...especially when drinking.

People genuinely don't realize what we put into our bodies...even when we try to be aware of it. It's a bizarre sort of denial.

Opposite end of the spectrum.....but there was a show in England where they wanted people to eat a huge amount of calories to see how quick they'd gain weight. I'm talking like 8k-10k calories a day. The test subjects complained that it was almost impossible to force themselves to eat that many calories.

It got down to that few calories because I started at 1200-1500. And since that wasn't working, I'd just "eat less." And this is why it's frustrating. Because I know what I did, and I know the results I had. And people don't believe me. I honestly felt like a fat anorexic.

Just after posting on this thread, I was catching up on the comments on Ray Cronise's blog. Ray is one of the guys that helped Tim Ferriss with his 4 Hour Body book. He has some pretty interesting insight into the mechanics behind weight loss.

In the comments to his last blog entry, someone was complaining about a long term plateau that he could get through. Ray's followup was:

This was followed by a comment by a client of Ray's:

(emphasis mine)

I've done the potato hack over four days and you lose a shit-ton of weight. I also experienced the lower blood sugar.

If someone thinks they "can't" lose weight, try this for two weeks and I bet you will (and it won't be muscle as potatoes have complete protein plus you aren't going to lose significant muscle in two weeks even if you ate nothing). It's an eye opening experience.

It IS tough. Also, not everyone will gain the same amount of weight because some people spontaneously increase movement (called NEAT) in response to increased intake.

Unfortunately, if I were to eat like that, I would slip into a coma and retain all of it. :#

I remember Michael Phelps talking about how he hated eating during the Olympics because it was pretty much all he did all day besides swim. He just got sick of it because he couldn't shovel bacon and eggs down his throat fast enough.

It really is incredible what our bodies can do.

Yeah.....the program was on why skinny people don't get fat. These people were having to find interesting ways to get in their calories for the day....because they HAD to. They talked about putting mayonnaise on pizza to get in the extra calories.

On Fridays, I could easily do that if I wanted. I had to hold myself back last Friday and still ate 7500.