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
Your friend probably has bulimia and needs professional help.
To answer your question in the context of an otherwise healthy person:
Besides all the vitamin deficiency problems others have mentioned muscles play a huge role in dieting. Muscles use a lot of calories. If you starve yourself they get broken down.
Less muscle means less calories used. Which means you must eat even less to keep off or lose weight. This is why a lot of fad dieters and soccer moms yo-yo diet. They lose a bunch of weight (a lot of which is muscle) but don’t do what’s necessary to retain muscle, when they hit their goal now their maintenance calories are lower than ever and they gain it back.
The way to counteract this is resistance training (weightlifting) and high protein relative to calories. It’s hard to get high protein if you’re starving yourself
Please Don’t do that! My god-niece had bulimia for less than a year, lost her damn vocal cords! The acids ATE her voice.
Regardless of if he keeps the weight off or not, repeated vomiting causes damage that can lead to death.
This is bulimia. I’m a recovered bulimic. After years of vomiting, while I didn’t mess up my teeth, I tore up my esophagus. Anytime I’m genuinely sick or vomit or sometimes even coughing, blood comes too. Some people aren’t as lucky and seriously damage their teeth or die while being on the toilet. He needs intense therapy.
I have a friend who did the same. He was chubby and now he looks like Shaggy from Scooby Doo. It took him about a year and a half. He looks really good now tbh.
His insides are fucked, but he’s been skinny for over a decade now and he doesn’t regret it. He might regret it like 20 years down the line, but who knows. It’s definitely bad for you tho.
There are a lot of dieting techniques that essentially encourage disordered eating behaviors, and many of them are encouraged. It’s important to remember that losing weight does not always mean healthy.
But outside of that, this is straight up bulimia and he needs to see a therapist/doctor because it’s very unhealthy.
Your friend has an eating disorder. I wouldn’t talk to him about effective or ineffective ways to lose weight. His weight isn’t the crux of the issue.
What’s sad is that in this day and age people don’t know what an eating disorder is and a second party has to come to the internet for help.
I’m glad they are getting the answers they need, but wtf, how did it come to this.
Your friend has an eating disorder. It’s called bulimia nervosa. It’s extremely dangerous for your mental and physical health, and not natural at all. Your friend needs professional help.
It doesn’t matter how happy he seems or how little his personality has changed otherwise. We can’t be with people 24/7. And even if we are, we can’t ever fully understand what’s going on in their heads.
Eating disorder rates are on the rise rn. And a not-so-fun fact is that eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of all psychiatric disorders, even higher than depression.
Your friend needs professional help, and you need to respectfully but firmly guide him towards getting that help.
“Starving yourself” is the only real way to lose weight. The question is just how you do it. Eating less or not eating at all for a period of time(fasting). Not bad unless you go crazy with it. Which, given your friend’s history, he probably is.
You can lessen the pain with hydration, cutting carbs (and sugar) so you will be less hungry and eating stuff that makes you feel full(protein and fats).
Vomiting food to try to lose weight, on the other hand, is an eating disorder called bulimia. It hurts the esophagus (to the point that some people get cancer) and *absolutely wrecks* teeth.
Your friend needs psychological counseling.
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