Re: It is NOT true!!!

As a med student, I feel the need to address the whole starvation v. fasting thing. Fasting is defined as abstinence from a certain food or foods for a period of time. It's a broad type of definition, hence the different fasts like water fasting, juice fasting, dry fasting, etc. What the girl did falls under the definition of a drink. That being said, it probably wasn't the healthiest type of fast.

In terms of dehydration, you can't live 65 days without proper dehydration and your body will quickly tell you if it needs more fluids. Thus, I can only conclude that her body was satisfied with the amount of fluids she was recieving.

In terms of starvation v. fasting, there isn't really a comparison to be made. Fasting is an action and starvation is a condition that can result from prolonged fasting of any kind. Starvation only occurs when the body has no more fat stores left, so under 6 percent body fat for males and under 10 percent body fat for females. If her body fat % is higher than 10 percent, she was not "starving". Biologically speaking, 24 -48 hours after a person's last consumption of food, the body runs out of glycogen and for a period of 1 - 3 days, consumes lean protein to enable the continuation of glycogenesis. After that, it realizes it's not getting food for a while and will switch to fat burning in an attempt to preserve lean body mass. Some energy will still come from muscle tissue, but a majority of it will come from fat. This continues until fat reserves are practically depleted. That's when the body enters "starvation mode" and begins seriously stripping lean muscle and vital organs. For a person of average weight, this occurs after 45 to 60 days. Obviously, an overweight person has a lot longer.

This is true whether one is fasting on water, tea, coffee, or diet drinks. As long as the body isn't getting any calories from external sources, that's the basic timeline you have to work with. Hope that helped a bit. Tweet