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The Great Unsolved Mystery of Temporary Water Loss in a Fast.
 
Mighty.Sun.Tzu Views: 1,871
Published: 14 y
 
This is a reply to # 1,661,534

The Great Unsolved Mystery of Temporary Water Loss in a Fast.


NB: The fact that most of our bodies are made of water and that we have far more than 20 lbs of water doesn't mean that we have 20 lbs of excess water that would come off from not eating,...

MST: This may be so, but with your level of certainty that temporarily losing 20 pounds of water in a fast is an abject impossibility, surely you have sources to back up this point of view?

NB ... without losing any tissue at the same time (which is very different then losing water with tissue).

MST: Well the burning of fat and protein tissue are separate and have already been accounted for. I was talking about temporary water loss as a portion of the overall loss and i would have thought you were clear on that point.

NB... If you excreted 20 lbs of water in a day you'd probably die from the electrolyte and blood pressure loss.

MST: I'm not sure what this has to do with anything, but ok :). If 20 pounds of water are lost in a fast it is taking place gradually over many days. I don't have my 3 recent fasting weight logs handy, but i believe the obvious losses in water greatly leveled off for me after about 14 days at which point the slow, steady and predictable losses from fat and protein burning continued.

NB from first post: 20 lbs of water loss is impossible, you [141 Girl] don't have 20 lbs of excess water to lose.

MST: Again since you express this with such immense certainty, surely you can provide your sources which lend substantiation to your position?

NB: First of all, people are not good at estimating their own calorie intake and dramatically under estimate:
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Nov06/meal.size.calories.ssl.html


MST: To every rule there are exceptions. When i logged calories and did intense cardio over 80 days about 15 months ago and lost 20 pounds, predictably a pound every 4 days, i actually got pretty good at it :).

NB: But in any case, you weren't burning 2000 calories a day, you were burning maybe 1000 calories or 800 calories or less or some ridiculously low number, because you had just fasted for 36 days...

MST: It's interesting that you can know what my body was doing with such astounding certainty. I had estimated my bmr at 2300 at the start of the fast and according to Dr. Shelton our metabolism is reduced by about 25-40% by the end of a long fast, which would have put me at about 1380-1725. I based my fat and protein expenditures on an average of about 1800 calories burned over the 36 days, a number which accounts for a more swift decline in metabolism in the beginning and a much more gradual decline towards the end.

NB: ... - you cannot compare the calories burnt by a person in normal conditions to the extremely slow metabolism of someone who just came off of a more than one month fast.

MST: Thankfully i was absolutely accounting for the metabolic slowing.

NB: Secondly, how does saying that someone at 140 lbs not have 20 lbs of excess water possibly lead to thinking that it follows that someone at 138 lbs gaining 25 lbs in 21 days would have had to gain it back in *all fat*.

MST: It doesn't. Mentioning how many calories i would have required to gain back 25 pounds of fat in 21 days was to point out the extreme and the ridiculous... and to point out that much of the 25 pounds could only have been a return of temporarily lost water.

NB: If its true (and its somewhat questionable) that it takes a 3500 calorie surplus or deficit to gain or lose a lb of fat,...

MST: this is the general number that seems to hold quite a bit of widespread acceptance. If you have a better number to go by, what is it?

NB: this in absolutely no way means that it takes 3500 calorie difference to gain or lose a pound of body weight - because when you gain or lose a pound in weight, you are *never* even on a fast, gaining or losing just a pound of fat. Muscle, connective tissue, and of course water, are all lost and gained in varying percentages as well.

MST: Of course we are losing fat and protein along with the water, what have we been talking about :)? How else could i have lost 39 pounds in 36 days with very low metabolism? Water weighs something but we lose and gain it in spite of what is going on in the calorie burning department. I really thought that's what this whole conversation was about :).

NB: Do you really think you gained 20 lbs of water though,...


MST: If the amount of fat and protein we burn in a fast are based on our metabolism, if we can make a good estimate of our ever decreasing bmr and can from this estimate... along with what is known about the physiology of fasting... discern how much fat and protein tissue we are burning,  then aside from intestinal contents, early carbs and anything else that is being burned in insignificant amounts (ie: toxins), WATER SHOULD ACCOUNT FOR ALL THE REST. Water loss, temporary and otherwise is thus the big wild card and what is left over.

You, yourself, speak of the extremely low metabolism in a fast. If i lost 39 pounds with such exceedingly low metabolism, how much of this do you believe could possibly have come from fat and protein?

To the best of my knowledge based on various literature i have come across, I estimate that over a long fast we burn about 10 times as much fat as actual protein (which is not to be confused with the whole wet muscle which contains a lot of water and glycogen among other components)... and that over a 30 day fast we will burn about 1-2 pounds of this dry protein.  One such source: 

"The Physiological Changes of Fasting
Many of the most dramatic changes that occur in the body during fasting take place on the first three days of the fast. These occur as the body switches from one fuel source to another. Normally, the primary form of energy the body uses for energy is glucose, a type of sugar. Most of this is extracted or converted from the food we eat. Throughout the day, the liver stores excess sugar in a special form called glycogen that it can call on as energy levels fall between meals. There is enough of this sugar source for 8-12 hours of energy and usually, it is completely exhausted within the first 24 hours of fasting. (However, once the body shifts over to ketosis or fat as fuel, this new fuel is used to also restore the body's glycogen reserves.)
Once the liver's stores of glycogen are gone, the body begins to shift over to what is called ketosis or ketone production - the use of fatty acids as fuel instead of glucose. This shift generally begins on the second day of fasting and completed by the third. In this interim period there is no glucose available and energy from fat conversion is insufficient but the body still needs fuel. So it accesses glucose from two sources. It first converts glycerol, available in the body's fat stores, to glucose but this is still insufficient. So it makes the rest that it needs from catabolizing, or breaking down, the amino acids in muscle tissue, using them in the liver for gluconeogenesis, or the making of glucose. Between 60 and 84 grams of protein are used on this second day, 2-3 ounces of muscle tissue. By the third day ketone production is sufficient to provide nearly all the energy the body needs and the body's protein begins to be strongly conserved. The body still needs a tiny amount of glucose for some functions, however, so a very small amount of protein, 18-24 grams, is still catabolized to supply it - from 1/2 to 1 ounce of muscle tissue per day. Over a 30 day water fast a person generally loses a maximum of 1-2 pounds of muscle mass. This conservation of the body's protein is an evolutionary development that exists to protect muscle tissue and vital organs from damage during periods of insufficient food availability."

from:
http://www.gaianstudies.org/articles4.htm


NB ... - you probably gained 10-13 lbs of water (which is definitely possible to have in excess water as evidenced by some people's rapid weight loss on some forums here) - 3-5 lbs of instestinal contents (highly possible give a 90 vegetable and fruit diet) and 7-12 lbs of muscle, fat and other tissues - which is highly possible given the super slow metabolism experienced after a 36 day fast (I don't know what that 10% was and it could have made a huge difference, but lots of fruits are lots of calories.

MST: I think what could possibly account for a fair portion of the quick gain is "faster than normally possible" post-fast muscle gain, particularly because a pound of this dry muscle will be joined by a lot of water and a good amount of glycogen... I am not sure of the exact figure (searched for a while and came up short), but i believe a pound of this dry muscle not including the glycogen becomes about 5 or 6 pounds once the water and glycogen are added in.

A gain of 1.5 pounds of this dry muscle can thus add 7.5-9 very quick pounds and i believe that after a fast the body is exceedingly primed to add muscle with the right kind of stimulation and nutrition. I began re-training muscles on day 7, so by day 21 i had two weeks of pretty good training in with a lot of potential for explosive results.

I wasn't thinking about this in earlier posts, but another point to ponder is that if i lost about 1.5 pounds of "dry" muscle over the 36 day fast, this alone could have accounted for 7.5-9 pounds of the 39 pound loss and re-gaining this muscle within 21 days could have accounted for the same 7.5-9 pounds of the 25 pounds re-gained... a pretty fair portion.




 

 

 
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