How come starvation isn’t used as a treatment for obesity, even though without food the body will consume fat reserves?
In: Biology
You’ll lose weight at first, but it’ll trash your metabolism so when you start eating again you’ll gain weight and have a hell of a time trying to lose again. I lost over 150 pounds from gastric bypass, maintained for 7 years. Then started eating a little more and ended up gaining 50lbs. Now I’m back to eating a bariatric diet and I’ve only lost 9lbs in 6 weeks. My surgeon told me my metabolism is slower now so it’ll always be hard to lose from now on. And that the only way to lose is to basically starve myself. If I eat 1200 calories, I GAIN again.
Because starvation is a situation that the body will respond badly to, and that will only hinder the treatment for the obesity.
Whatever causes the weight gain (physiological or psychological) is what should be treated.
when you do not eat enough calories that makes your body believe that you are going through hard times and it will lower your metabolism to preserve the extra energy it has stored up making it harder to loose the weight. also fat alone is not enough for your body to function properly. you need fiber, vitamins, and minerals. if you want to burn fat in this way i would recommend trying out the keto diet. you can still eat a lot of the food that you like but it cuts out carbs meaning the only source of energy your body gets is fat which will make it burn it’s own fat stores to maintain its energy
Because it requires constant supervision, otherwise the person will simply get hungry and go eat something they ought not. This is expensive.
Even if you didn’t go the total starvation route, supervision is ultimately the limiting factor- put a person in a house with pre-packaged food of, say, 1200 calories a day and tell them to only eat that would work great. Except that pizza places deliver.
There are some programs that already do this. For example, some obese truck drivers can do a supervised water fasting program as a covered health benefit to help jump start their weight lose journey.
“Medical Starvation” has been done a few times where someone is given water and vitamin supplements but virtually nothing else and they do lose weight and remain otherwise healthy. But it has be be done under direct and constant doctor supervision with lost of testing to make sure you are still getting all the various vitamins and nutrients you need that are not stored in body fat. Someone doing it at their own home without supervision will most likely just die due to malnutrition.
[Angus would like a word:](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_Barbieri%27s_fast)
> Scottish man Angus Barbieri (1939 – 7 September 1990) fasted for 382 days, from June 1965 to July 1966. He lived on tea, coffee, soda water, and vitamins while living at home in Tayport, Scotland, and frequently visiting Maryfield Hospital for medical evaluation. He lost 276 pounds (125 kg) and set a record for the length of a fast.[1]
It is used but they call it fasting. There are subs dedicated to it: r/fasting and r/intermittentfasting
It’s very effective and mostly perfectly safe unless you have a pre-existing condition that makes it problematic.
Because obesity is first and foremost a mental health issue.
The physicality if it is a symptom.
That’s the only real treatment for obesity – to eat less fuel than you burn. An obese person can’t just stop eating food entirely because they need to constantly take in vitamins, minerals, and amino acids to keep living.
Starving yourself by eating just the bare minimum of nutrients to keep living isn’t generally successful because weight loss is a matter of changing habits and not relapsing. Starvation, like fad diets, is not a sustainable habit, feels terrible and usually results in the person givibg up and eating more.
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