Minnesota Starvation Experiment:
- completely healthy (physically and mentally) guys were fed 1600 calories a day for a couple of months (3-4)
- (comparable to 1300 calories a day for women)
- (pretty low exercise levels)
- became neurotic, obsessed with food, miserable, felt ‘fat’
- lost 25% of body weight
- then:
- all were convinced they were ‘binging’
- all were convinced they were fat/would become fat
- (one guy even cut off his hand)
- some began to purge because they felt so guilty for eating ‘so much’
- all collected cook books, recipes, hoarded/collected/organised food a lot
- all displayed massive personality changes during both starvation and refeeding
- all met diagnostic criteria for anorexia nervosa
- none became ‘obese’ or ‘fat’ or ‘binge eaters’, even after eating up to 10,000 calories a day due to intense hunger
- all described this hunger as ‘maybe I’m just eating because I’m bored’ or ‘I’m hungry but I’m not hungry’ or ‘I just can’t stop eating’
- none became ‘obese’ or ‘fat’ or ‘binge eaters’
- all were restored to their natural size and shape naturally with no restriction in ≈1 year after weight restoration (some ‘overshot’ their natural weights temporarily due to bloating in the midsection etc whilst their bodies were still repairing)
- idk how relevant you will find this/ how accurate the information is (I’m pretty sure it’s 100% accurate but then again it’s 5:52am), but this is so important
I can’t find the original sources because I’m too tired but have these: [x], [x], [x].
