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
He’s definitely WAY more fatigued that he would be if he just ate normally, his gut health is completely getting destroyed, his oral health is 🚮, it’s overall a disgusting habit, and with subpar nutrition you’re basically saying bye to a chunk of your lifespan and health. Get your friend some help
My neighbor now has a feeding tube from esophagus damage due to throwing up over a long period of time. This won’t end well for him.
Muscle loss, and chronic dehydration is tied to insulin resistance (that’s why an unquenchable thirst is a sign of diabetes). You cannot get electrolytes from water.
my mom’s best friend died of a heart attack at age 36. no one saw it coming, she was a really active and otherwise healthy woman. not sure if she was bulimic at the time, but we know she did struggle with bulimia for years & the doctors said that’s most likely what caused it. left behind her husband and three kids. it’s definitely no joke, and can cause severe health issues even after you stop. you should definitely encourage your friend to go get help.
Your friend has an eating disorder called bulemia nervosa. What they can expect is to lose their teeth pretty soon as all that stomach acid they’ve vomiting up chews through the enamel on their teeth.
They’ll also have a whole lot of other problems, like lower bone density, heightened risk of throat cancer, tears in the throat lining… Let’s stop to look at that one for a second.
Every time your friend throws up they’re bringing stomach acid up through their throat. Now that’s burning your throat. How seriously? It’s acid designed to dissolve a piece of steak or other meat. Except your friend’s throat is the piece of meat. If it happens occassionally (like when you’re sick) the body has time to heal, but with your friend regularly throwing up there’s no time to heal, so those burns become deeper and deeper.
Does your friend like talking? Because they can kiss that goodbye. The vomit will dissolve their vocal cords, and that’s not the worst of it.
One of those burns will eventually find its way to the carotid artery in their throat and one day while they’re throwing up they’ll feel blood rushing down their throat as they drown in their own blood. And there’s virtually nothing you can do to save someone when this happens unless you happen to have an intubation kit handy – and you won’t unless you’re in a hospital emergency room.
Your friend is killing themselves. They’re doing it slowly, but they’re killing themselves.
You need to tell someone and get them help before they find themselves lying on the bathroom floor vomiting up blood and then dead. And it won’t take long, I’d give them 30 seconds of consciousness, 1 minute to hypovolemic shock, and maybe 5 minutes until brain death at the outside. Even if you’re in a hospital when this happens the odds on getting help in time are slim.
Your friend needs help urgently. Before they end up dead.
You need a caloric deficit to lose weight. A healthy person can accomplish this by eating what ever they want just that they need to burn more calories thru the day than they are consuming. You don’t need to starve yourself, just be more active
Why would he put it back on?
> 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
Fyi this is TERRIBLE advice to give your friend who is extremely evidently suffering from an eating disorder. By telling your friend “dw your efforts will be in vain, you’ll just get that weight back”, you are making your friend more likely to keep doing this to themselves and are actually feeding *into* the eating disorder.
Your friend absolutely does need help, because bulimia is very serious and severely harmful, but do be extremely careful with what you say to folks with eating disorders.
Okay so, let’s say that you’re someone who doesn’t have some form of bulimia or anorexia, and you’re thinking “hey maybe I just starve to lose weight! Is that a bad way to lose weight?”
The answer is yes, it is a bad way to lose weight. Your friend was either very large or is the exception in the sense that he’s happy with his weight loss.
Most people who go on a weight loss journey via only caloric deficiency end up wondering why they don’t look the way they wanted to or were hoping to look. And that’s because if you’re not 80-100lbs overweight, losing weight will fix *some* things, but you’ll basically just be a smaller version of yourself. Which means, whatever areas of your body didn’t look great, will still look like that, just smaller in volume.
All that to say, exercise and some form of weight training are actually the way to develop your body into what you actually want it to be. And doing this means you have to fuel your body appropriately for the activity and for lean tissue growth, which means you can’t just starve yourself.
If you want a good way to lose weight, find yourself a sustainable diet that you enjoy and can integrate into your life going forward, and find some physical activities (gym, hiking, running, whatever) that you enjoy and will stick to. It might take a little longer, but you’ll be healthier (starvation can damage you in various ways), AND you’ll actually change your bodies appearance in a positive way.
Because your body is made up of a small ecosystem of bacteria that helps break down / digest food. By not eating, you kill off this internal ecosystem. Along with that, most of your initial weight loss is water, not fat. Prolonged starvation results in weakening of the entire digestive tract, put simply, your body isn’t designed to go on without food. And as such, your body starts to break down when you don’t eat food.
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