What do you catabolize first during starvation?

From Reddit –

What do you catabolize first during starvation: muscle, fat, or both in equal measure?

I think fasting better describes your question. You can fast on just water for several weeks and even longer. Having some minerals like sea salt helps keep energy up. Prolonged fasting has a number of significant health benefits.

Fat is mobilized as fuel and protein is spared.

“What do you catabolize first during starvation?”

Your companion?

Interesting read, thanks.

Jives with my limited experiences.  I’ve done a few 3 day fasts, and one 7 day fast.  The first couple days are usually rough as to hunger, feeling crappy and lethargic.

During the 7 day fast, towards the latter half, i actually felt pretty good, had a lot of energy, and started to have very clear and vivid dreams of a higher spiritual nature.  It wasn’t completely calorie free, but extremely low.  I mostly drank herbal teas with some lemon juice, a little salt, and a little bit of either sucannat or coconut sugar.

Many different animal studies show that reduced caloric diets, significantly increase longevity of the animals. Pretty interesting.

During this last b.p. trip, i pushed my body more than i ever have in a consistent, longer term sense (Camino was a breeze in comparison), and definitely was burning through fat reserves, lost some noticeable fat and slimmed up.  We didn’t always provision very well and sometimes were hiking on lower caloric consumption than we should have been, but thankfully plenty of fat reserves to drawn upon.

Regarding the Naked and Afraid shows, i’m always amazed that more people don’t try to bulk up on fat reserves before starting it–sort of like Sumo training where you stay fit and active, but purposely build not just muscle but also store fat. A lot of the people are downright skinny or “cut” before, and not surprisingly look near emaciated towards the end.

If Clarence had been drinking water during the current XL show, he would have been doing better than most of the people.  We don’t watch much t.v., but we’re a bit addicted to these shows.