The F*ck It Diet. Caroline Dooner

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СКАЧАТЬ understand you are trying to fit into absurdly small jeans. It fights back against famine and restriction for your survival, and the more you diet, the harder it fights back.

THE MINNESOTA STARVATION EXPERIMENT

      During World War II, there was a starvation study conducted by Ancel Keys at the University of Minnesota. He wanted to learn how best to rehabilitate starving people after the war—so first, he had to starve people.

      Over four hundred conscientious objectors applied to participate in the study as an alternative to fighting. Only thirty-six men were chosen: those who were the most physically and mentally sound, and who were the most willing and aligned with the goals of the experiment.

      The men stayed together in dorm-like rooms connected to the temporary laboratory. They were allowed to leave, but the compound was their home base. For the first three months, the men ate normally while their health was closely monitored. They were fed around 3,200 calories a day, which was considered a normal amount. (Because it is.) They took jobs on the compound and walked around twenty-two miles a week.

      Then, for six months, their calories were dramatically cut—in half. They were only served two meals a day, which worked out to roughly 1,600 calories total. The participants were encouraged to keep up their walking.

      In this experiment, 1,600 calories was considered “semi-starvation,” which is really horrifying when you realize that this is the same “conservative protocol” used by the FDA to “combat obesity.” You’ve probably seen that calorie number floating around fitness magazines and doctor-prescribed diets. These days, 1,200–1,600 calories is considered an acceptable daily amount of calories for men and women.

      Men often run on more calories than women because of both size and muscle composition, but 1,600 is too low for anyone. In fact, even the new 2,000-calorie recommended daily intake “is only enough to sustain children,”² according to Marion Nestle, PhD and professor of nutrition and food studies at NYU. Let that sink in.

      So on only 1,600 calories, the participants’ strength and energy immediately began to decline, and they said they were constantly tired. Then apathy set in. They had all been strongly opinionated conscientious objectors, but now they didn’t really care about any of the things they used to care about. Next, sex and romance lost its appeal.

      All their thoughts became about food. They became completely fixated on thinking, talking, and reading about food. (Sound familiar?) Some began to read and stare at cookbooks for hours, mealtimes became their favorite part of the day, they’d be irritable if they weren’t fed on time, and even though their food was bland bread, milk, beans, or vegetables, they thought it tasted amazing. Many men would mix their food with water to prolong the meal, or drag out meals for two hours, or sneak food to their rooms to savor it slowly.

      The men had access to unlimited coffee, water, and chewing gum in between meals, and the men became addicted—some of them chewing forty packs of gum a day, and having around fifteen cups of coffee.

      The men, who had been, on average, healthy and muscular to start, became extremely skeletal during those six months. Their heart rates slowed way down, and the men were cold all the time—both symptoms of low metabolism and the body trying to conserve energy. Their blood volume shrank, their hearts shrank, and they developed edema and retained water. Their skin became coarse, they were dizzy, lacked coordination, and experienced muscle soreness.

      On the bright side, the whites of their eyes became brilliantly white because all their blood vessels shrank! So if you want to have beautiful porcelain doll eyes, starve yourself. You’ll just have to deal with lots of other horrible problems.

      Next, they started sneaking food from off-site. Remember, these men had been chosen specifically because they were the most willing and likely to comply with the experiment. But they still started cheating with extra food off the compound. In fact, the cheating became such a huge issue that the men were required to have chaperones every time they left. Three men completely pulled out of the experiment.

      These men were also profoundly psychologically changed by their restrictive diets. A few weeks into the experiment, one man started having disturbing dreams of cannibalism. Then he cheated on the experiment by going into town and devouring milkshakes and sundaes. When the head of the experiment confronted him, he broke down crying and threatened his life. He was discharged and sent to a psychiatric hospital, where after a few weeks of being fed normally, his psychological health went completely back to normal (!!!). LET THIS SINK IN! All this man needed to regain his sanity was more food.

      Yes, this man was an extreme case, but all of the men became anxious and depressed. One man recalls snapping at his good friend in the experiment nearly every day, and having to apologize often for his irrational outbursts.

      And the weirdest part of all: even though these men had become extremely emaciated, they did not perceive themselves as being excessively skinny. Instead, they thought other people were too fat. They were experiencing body dysmorphia, which is a phenomenon experienced by people with eating disorders where people see their bodies as a different size or shape than they actually are. It’s assumed that eating disorders could be a result of body dysmorphia, but these men didn’t even want to lose weight in the first place. They were experiencing psychological body dysmorphia just from the physiological effects of starvation. I can’t explain that one to you. But it’s eye-opening.

      So what do you think this means for a culture obsessed with controlling the food we eat and the way our bodies look? It does not bode well. Dieting and restriction messes with our brain chemistry big-time. It fucks with our mental health and takes over our minds until food and weight are all we can think about. We deserve better because this isn’t working.

      REHABILITATION

      The purpose of this experiment was to see how to rehabilitate people who were starving, and the goal was to figure out how best to help them recover. These dramatic physical and psychological effects weren’t even what the study was meant to focus on. The semi-starvation phase of the study was actually just to get the participants to the place that they needed to rehabilitate from.

      When Keys started re-feeding the participants, he only increased their food a little bit, assuming at first that slowly re-feeding would be the healthiest method—some by 400 calories, some 800, some 1,600. The group whose food was increased by 400 and 800 calories had no improvement at all. He gave them supplements and protein shakes. They still didn’t improve. The only thing that worked was more food. And lots of it. Upping their calories above what they ate before the experiment had an immediate positive effect.

      However, for many of the participants, the emotional disturbances of starvation lasted throughout the rehabilitation process, and some reported being even more depressed and anxious during the re-feeding and rehabilitation than they had been during the restriction. That’s important information for us, because it means that—hormonally and chemically—it can be a very bumpy road while you re-feed yourself after famine and dieting.

      Only twelve men stayed for some extra months after the end of the experiment for what Keys called “unrestricted rehabilitation.” On average, these men ate 5,000 calories a day, but sometimes as many as 11,500 calories a day. They often talked about a hunger sensation they couldn’t satisfy, no matter how much they ate or even how full they were.

      The men said there were lingering effects of this experiment, and many of them had recurring fears that food would be taken away from them again. Three of the men became chefs—all men who had no real interest in food or cooking before the experiment.

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