7thangel

Go fast for 40 days and then tell us if it is a myth.

malookiemaloo

I always understood that during a fast water was drunk and a very small amount of food eaten. And you do feel quite 'high' after a few days.

Regarding a virgin conceiving, I once heard that this can happen but it must be a girl. Something to do with chromosomes, whatever they are.


m

never been there

A good question. Jim Crace made a novel, Quarantine, out of it. The Jesus character doesn't allow himself to eat at night the way the normal fasters do. I'll refrain from spoiling the ending.

CX

Let's assume for the sake of argument a 29 year old Man who is 5'10", 158 lbs, and has 25% body fat. This is a reasonable average person with an acceptable fitness level.

This man would require, initially, about 15,288 calories a week to maintain his current weight. Assuming zero caloric intake that deficit should result in a loss of about 4.4 pounds a week (3500 calories per pound of fat). In the initial weeks he would lose about 75% of his weight from fat stores and 25% from lean body mass. After that he would lose about 90% of his body weight from fat. I ran this all through a spreadsheet (reducing caloric requirements as weight goes down)

Week # Weight BF%
Week 1 158.0 25%
Week 2 153.6 23.6%
Week 3 149.2 22.1%
Week 4 144.8 20.0%
Week 5 140.6 18.0%
Week 6 136.4 15.8%
Week 7 132.2 13.5%
Week 8 128.0 11.1%
Week 9 124.1 8.6%
Week 10 120.2 6.0%
Week 11 116.3 3.2%

The human male body contains about 2-4% essential body fat (fat required for proper minimal functioning). Unless you are an athelete anything below about 8% is dangerous. From the above around week 10 or 11 the body would start consuming essential body fat and organ failure would result. So theoretically speaking as long as he had a source of water the above individual could live around 70-80 days or so without food.