“Boils down” in the same way that a days long cross country road trip boils down to putting lots of gas in your car.

Yes, fuel technically is the main physical component involved in moving mass across distance, but there are myriad other hurdles and points of failure involved such as driver health, sleep, food and navigation.

One, you can run out of fat reserves. You can also run low on critical minerals or electrolytes like magnesium or potassium and have a heart attack. Also, while fat may replace a carbohydrate source, you need protein intake as well. It’s obviously happened to people in famines.

This guy fasted for a year but consumed some essentials.

I think if you consume nothing but water you will die at some point.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_Barbieri%27s_fast

For 382 days ending on 30 June 1966, he consumed only vitamins, electrolytes, an unspecified amount of yeast (a source of all essential amino acids) and zero-calorie beverages such as tea, coffee, and sparkling water, although he occasionally consumed small amounts of milk and/or sugar with the beverages, especially during the final weeks of the fast.

Not a doctor nor dietitian—Protein-Energy Undernutrition is what can bring this about. More or less it’s a deficiency of macronutrients, even though there is technically enough energy in the form of fat, which leads to potentially life threatening conditions.

Fasting and starving yourself aren't the same. Starving is either being out of food without fat reserves or eating too little each day so your body never switches over to burning fat stores. Fasting is overall pretty safe and becoming better studied recently.

I've been fasting every other day since October and used it to lose 50 LBS. I've felt pretty great the whole time and eat high protein/take a multivitamin on eating days to make sure I don't run into any issues. Occasionally I drink electrolytes on fasting days if I'm being active. Many also do time restricted eating without issues

if you ignore all the things that make it wickedly difficult it’s actually pretty simple!

Have they released any results from that trial? I read about it being implemented but didn't see any follow up.

I think ultimately the government would need to allow the mass prescription of ozempic or something to tackle the obesity crisis here. For many overweight people they are fighting against their environment with genes which would have served them better in an era before an unlimited food supply was guaranteed.

The length of your comment explicitly shows how such a process is not “simply eat.” With peace and love you contradict yourself from the get go :) It’s quite a task.

But! Thank you for taking the time to express this. I think you can allow yourself a certain sense of accomplishment for being able to pull that off and it’s very powerful of you to be willing to share with others. I just do think the “it’s simple” narrative is more harmful than it is welcoming to those who need it most.

I've basically tried that for a few years and haven't put on weight.

All my family is pretty much overweight, but I can eat kebabs, spaghetti and chocolate all day, drink beer and soda (until I was literally fed up of all of it, felt the mountain of food in my throat pretty much) and not move a muscle and I still actually lost some weight.

However I do think there's some actual malabsorption or something behind it as well, just can't get the public doctors to pay any fking attention no matter the evidence I have.

So yeah it should be as simple as that, and for most people, it definitely is. But someone who actually makes a post about the subject might be more likely to have some sort of aberration.

Personally I'm trying gluten free rn. I have been tested for celiacs in the past, but either I got false negatives or it's NCGS, which would explain a lot, as it's not as violent as celiac usually and wouldn't show up on tests.

That's funny, I was about 115 (5'9" female) after recovering and the first time I had someone feeding me thrice a day was at school in England during a year abroad when I was about 20. I did balloon to a healthy 140ish (ten stone, as they put it) which kinda panicked me but then dropped back in my 20s because poor, and never had extra food. It never bothered me being skinny at all, I preferred it for looks but it wrecked my bone mass. Now I am mid 50s and 150lb - that is with eating what I want, and working out heavier, and even though it's a healthy size and I'm so much stronger and technically more conventionally beautiful proportions, it bothers me, still feel attached to being skinny. Oh well. I guess nobody is entirely satisfied with their body.