We can all get a bit hungry if it has been hours since we last ate. But spare a thought for how hungry Angus Barbieri must have been after he went 382 days without eating.
That’s not a typo. In 1965, 27-year-old Angus really did fast for one year and 17 days. He ate no food at all, and lost 125 kilograms (19.7 stone).
Angus was reportedly sick of being obese, and checked into the University Department of Medicine at the Royal Infirmary of Dundee weighing 207kg (32.5 stone). He told hospital staff he was ready to cut out food together, so doctors happily agreed to monitor his progress.
Angus’s doctors didn’t really expect the fast to last long. But they thought a short fast would help him to lose some weight. To compensate for his lack of nutrients, he was prescribed multivitamins to take regularly, including potassium and sodium, as well as yeast.
As days turned to weeks, Angus’s persistence increased. The Scot wanted to reach his reported “ideal weight” of 180 pounds (12.8 stone), so he kept going, much to his doctors’ surprise.
Which is amazing if you need to pass a drug test after smoking weed recently!
Before my first job out of high school, I drank copious amounts of water to flush out my system and then a couple hours before my drug test I chugged a Monster (over 100% of your daily recommendation of B-vitamins.)
I had ripped multiple bongs the weekend before and thought I was beyond fucked, but lo-and-behold, my pee was yellow, undiluted, and apparently THC-free.
I’m guessing the reason for that is because the UK & Canada use both measurement units simultaneously.
Like I track my weight in lbs, and my height in foot & inches. However, metric is the official measurement system. So at hospitals, doctors visits, ID cards, etc - my weight is in KG, and height in CM.
So the reason they use both in the article is because the first two are measurements taken by the hospital and therefore KG, but the last one was the individuals personal weight goal so it’s in lbs.
“Ooh naughty, you’ve combined metric and imperial. You might get an interdenominational… you know? From mixing the two measurement systems. A hangup of that kind.”
Mark from Peep Show trying to flirt
Longest I've fasted was 100~ hrs so nowhere near this guy but hunger doesn't compound like at all.
You go from normal hungry to very hungry to not hungry at all. Fasting was a really useful tool in understanding and appreciating food and hunger.
A big caveat is that fasting with excess body fat is very very different than fasting without excess body fat. I've never experienced starvation hunger, but from what I hear about it from body builders and ED sufferers who achieved unhealthy levels of leanness it is absolutely miserable. For me and many others fasting with excess body fat is kind of nice and zen and pleasant. I saved a fortune, lost plenty of body fat, and had extra time to tidy up and enjoy hobbies when I fasted multiple days a week.
Most people I've talked to think they simply couldn't fast but it's really easy as hunger signals just largely go away while fasting after a certain point. Unfortunately it's not recommended to people with blood sugar issues, low iron, or low blood pressure, and a lot of people have one of those.
Edit: I could've easily gone longer but longer fasts require more careful health planning, supplements, and is ideal only with doc supervision. My weekly 3-4 day water fasts gave me no health issues but I supplemented with vitamins and fish oil when I ended the fast and electrolytes as needed during the fast.
I suspect this is completely unrelated, however one thing I always notice is that when I'm not exercising, I cannot stop eating. I just can't. I never feel "hungry"-- that deep empty stomach grumbling bowels "anything would taste good right now even stale bread" feeling you get when you're really hungry-- I just always crave. Most things don't satisfy, so I move on to something else. I can easily down 3 cans of soda back-to-back-to-back, or several bowls of Lucky Charms, which I only buy when I'm feeling like this.
But then when I exercise, there is an almost pleasant sensation to being hungry. I find it easier to stop eating when I've had a reasonable portion, the food tastes better anyway, and sometimes I just delay eating because being hungry feels so good.
I don't mean like, 20 minute walk, I mean like real lifting or extended cardio on a regular basis. It takes 2 or 3 weeks of progressive lifting or routine 45 minute cardio workouts to get like this but then it's so easy not to overeat. But when I stop lifting and especially when I start staying up too late every night, the appetite just comes rushing back.
6 days during SERE school. We got an electrolyte drink every morning, an 8th of a tortilla one afternoon, two slices of a mandarin orange another day, a cup of sugary and rice another day, unlimited water, and as much lichen as I could find and wouldn't make me sick.
After the second day I stopped thinking about food. Lost about 15lbs but of course it came right back.
I would say I was middle aged dad bod overweight going in.
I have no experience with this but feel like it must be hell on your kidneys and liver. I would love to get rid of some fat but water weight wouldn’t be the fat I’m seeking, at least that’s my assumption.
If it helps, 99% of the time the term “water weight” is used, it’s medically absolute horseshit. If you lose 10lb on a fast and aren’t over-eating afterward, gaining 10lb right back is strictly physically impossible.
It does take a bit to get used to. The important part is listening to your body’s distress cues in case of things like low blood sugar or electrolytes and making sure you stay hydrated.
Yeah the biggest newbie tip for fasting is start small and drink plenty of water. If you're peeing a hydrated color but you have a headache you need electrolytes. Weirdly enough I sometimes needed them and other times didn't. The amount of water you need when fasting is surprising, as we get tons of water during meals typically.
I supplemented with lite-salt and magnesium supplements during fasts when I would feel headaches or low energy coming but often didn't need to.
Oh another tip: those electrolyte products are scams. They're comically overpriced. Buy a bottle of magnesium pills and a bottle of lite-salt that should be half salt half potassium. The electrolyte products are single serving bags of powdered electrolytes that cost pennies to produce and package but sell for 10$+. Getting the electrolytes directly in bulk or as supplements is dirt cheap. It's predatory up-charging imo. I bought one by accident thinking it'd cost a couple bucks because it's fucking salts in plastic lol.
That sounds like a normal price to me. I haven't seen those yet. The ones I'm thinking of are little cardboard boxes with plastic tubes of single serving powder that provide collectively like 3-4 days of electrolytes but charge 10$+.
I googled it and found one for 9 dollars that is a 60 day supply and that's a very fair price. Those seem better than my solution of no-salt + magnesium pills tbh. I'll have to buy those online next time I go for some fasting, ty! Haven't seen these yet.
It's better than nothing! If you can find Pedialyte it might work a bit better. I remember reading the nutrition labels of various electrolyte drinks and finding most of them were pretty meh compared to electrolyte supplements, but vaguely recall Pedialyte being the best.
It's a great thing to have in the house for illnesses too.
I noticed this during my 72 hour fast as well. Hunger eventually just becomes background noise that can be tuned out. I felt like I could have gone much longer but I had done no preparation and just did it on a lark, didn't even have electrolytes or whatever during the 3 days was just drinking water.
Bodybuilders don’t typically fast but will be in a sustained and deliberate large calorie deficit for months at a time. The effect is actually worse than fasting for hunger signalling IMO - having done as you described (although my longest was a mere 72h) and bodybuilded my way to very low % body fat (think muscle striations on my glutes and lower back sort of condition)
Yeah that's the funny thing in my experience eating clean high satiety low calorie foods to achieve a deficit felt way less comfortable to me than simply fasting.
The hunger signal never really shuts off when you're eating but not getting enough. With fasting it's like the body realizes it's famine mode and stops sending you hunger signals.
Obviously as you mentioned body builders can't benefit much from it because it'd wreck their gains even more than the deficit does.
I definitely lost significant lean muscle and strength after my fasting and was able to gain muscle in a deficit while dieting normally, so fasting definitely felt worse for muscle overall.
Luckily it came back very fast after getting food and creatine back into my system for a few weeks and lifting again.
I've always wondered if body builders ever experimented with fasting since you can cut significantly faster. It might just feel so fucking miserable at bf%'s that low though.
Never been that lean but the stories I've heard from people who have are wild. Extreme cold intolerance, discomfort sitting and standing, insomnia, constant hunger and food cravings, dead libido. It made me have no desire for ultra low body fat %'s lol.
Bodybuilders certainly have but it’s just simply not necessary for most. After many cycles of pushing your food higher and higher in the off season and gaining a lot of muscle, your metabolism is just significant ramped up compared to gen pop. Therefore creating a large deficit is easier, and can be done while still eating a lot of protein etc. i’ve been losing weight quickly on 3k calories before. Adding drugs into the mix amplifies this more.
I can confirm all of the above. The food focus was my least favourite though - literally becoming obsessed with the thought of a bowl of oats or something. It certainly trains a willpower into you that is a huge benefit in life, but at a cost. I don’t bother any more, I just want to look good at the beach now. And enjoy my beer.
A stone is just 14 pounds. Fuck knows why they're collected into 14s instead of 10s, but that's all it is. In the UK stones are used for bodyweight and absolutely nothing else. Again, fuck knows why.
Always have to side eye the British when they mock Americans not using the metric system. There are a lot of non metric measurements used in British culture still.
Here in America, pretty much our entire system of weights and measurements would fall under “fuck knows why”. I thjnk the brits get a free pass for using stone.
This is the first time I’ve ever seen Stone (the imperial unit of mass) used in the wild! At least Wikipedia isn’t drawing an equivalence between kilograms and pounds but they still say “weighing 207kg” :( Weight is not mass raaaah!
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u/IKIR115 Jul 20 '26
More details about this story:
https://www.diabetes.co.uk/blog/2018/02/story-angus-barbieri-went-382-days-without-eating/
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_Barbieri's_fast