My friend has been starving himself and vomiting up his food consistently for the past 2 years i’d say, he’s about 65kg whilst being around 6’1, i try to tell him that it’s bad for your health and that sooner or later he’ll just put the weight back on again anyway, but he hasn’t, he’s stayed being relatively skinny and there has been no changes in his behaviour or personality in fact i’d say he’s much happier than he’s ever been.
In: Biology
For one, vomiting regularly coats the insides of your tract with acid, causing damage over time.
For two, the perpetual loss of inner fluids loses you water, nutrients, and general bulk that should be in your gut to maintain a stable environment.
Sounds like an eating disorder (bulimia) more so than him trying to lose weight. It may very well have started off with him doing it to lose weight but turned into a problem.
It’s bad because your body eventually goes into ketosis which is not healthy long term.
Organ health. Starving yourself may make a noticeable impact on your weight and fatty tissue appearing to be going down, but you also will be losing muscle. Your body can only absorb so many nutrients from fat, and your organs will be negatively affected to the point of damaging them over time. Obviously you cant check on the status and appearance of your organs like you may be able to with your body’s appearance, but over time your internal organs will be paying the price for a “weight loss hack”. The vomiting will also wreck your esophagus and could lead to some nasty reflux issues in the not-so-distant future. So while you may “feel fine” mentally, physically your body is not fine, and is simply just trying to survive.
This is an eating disorder.
His body will take nutrients where it can (muscle/fat loss) and will damage his heart. Many people with eating disorders, especially purging (vomiting) will mess up your electrolytes and can quite literally kill you.
Much of the damage from starvation/purging (including damage to teeth/throat from the constant stomach acid) is permanent and cumulative.
He really needs counseling and possibly inpatient treatment. This behavior escalates and he’s already pretty far down that road. I strongly suspect there’s more going on in his life; this doesn’t come from nowhere.
If you want more information on specific processes, there’s tons of info out there on damage from anorexia/bulimia, which are the formal names for these behaviors.
Muscle loss is a big problem if you starve yourself. Doing it occasionally to get ready for an event is probably not a big deal but two years is way too long to starve yourself. Also vomiting constantly is going to destroy his teeth.
The human body evolved to store fats and calories. this is because the abundance of food and ability to be obese is VERY new, compared to our evolutionary history. The natural state of most organisms is to struggle to eat and have enough to eat without enough to get overweight. Now keep this in mind.
When you eat normally, your body has a set Basal Metabolic Rate. that means it has a fixed amount of energy consumption it does. This is easy to decrease but difficult to increase. when you starve, your body decreases because it assumes you’re always going to have less and if you get more, it’s going to store most.
So after starving, it’s going to take less food and less time for you to quickly put on the same if not more weight. That’s why it’s bad long term
1. By starving yourself you can develop nutrient deficiencies. Eating is not just for getting calories but also vitamins, minerals, etc. and too little food might mean not enough of those nutrients. Depending on which nutrients are lacking basically every part of the body can suffer from this.
2. Starving yourself puts the body into survival mode. It literally thinks it might die due to not enough food. This leads to all kinds of unhealthy responses from the body to reduce the energy that it has to spend: muscles might be broken down to harvest energy and also reduce future energy need, the immune system is powered down, skin and hair suffer as they are not properly maintained by the body, fatigue sets in, mental capacity suffers, for women the period might stop.
Bulemia is not the same as fasting which is generally considered healthy in moderation.
The vomiting can prematurely erode his teeth, damage the esophagus.
If he’s using emetic agents like ipecac to induce vomiting, it can cause heart problems and heart damage in extreme cases.
Your friend may need to get help for an eating disorder to adjust his relationship with his body and with food. His current BMI is trending towards the lower end of healthy. Below 61-62kg for his height would be in the underweight range.
I’ve heard of people with who vomit regularly to keep their weight down having permanent heart damage. And dental issues are practically a given. You’ll find a bunch of other reasons if you search bulimia with anorexia.
This isnt losing wait, thats an eating disorder. Its causing him massive harm physically with the stomach acid coating his digestive tract where it shouldnt be and ruining the enamel on his teeth along with ruining his gut biome. Im not gonna touch on the emotional pain he must be going through to subject himself to this.
Honestly this post is so oblivious and ignorant that Im just going to assume you are trolling. On the off chance you arent, you need to immediatly get help for your friend. None of what he is doing is okay.
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