if a morbidly obese person suddenly stopped eating anything, and only drank water, would all the fat get burnt before this person eventually dies from starvation ? How much longer could that person theoretically survive as compared to an average one ?

Question

Currently on a diet. I have no idea how this weird question even got into my mind, but here we go.

In: Biology

Answer 1

There was a season of the show Alone, where dozen or so survivalists get dropped in the wilderness and have to survive — the last one to tag out wins. While he didn’t win, in the season I watched there was an obese guy who literally said he was expecting his fat to get him a long way toward victory because he didn’t have to rely on hunting nearly as much as the other contestants. And he was right. At one point in the show he said he thought he’d probably lost about 75lb — for the first couple of weeks he wasn’t even trying to hunt!