What Happens If You Don’t Eat For A Week?
A week without food means not eating anything except water or other liquids. That’s it! No breakfast, no lunch, no dinner, nothing. Not even coffee or tea. You won’t feel hungry at all and you will have plenty of energy to do everything else you want to do during that time period.
So how long does it take before you start feeling tired after a week without food?
If you are like most people, you probably would think that you’d get tired very quickly. But actually, it takes longer than that. Your body needs time to recover from the lack of food intake. After a few days, your body might still be recovering but after a couple weeks it gets worse again because your metabolism slows down even more. When this happens, you may experience some fatigue for several months afterwards.
You may also experience some symptoms such as headaches, stomach aches, constipation, diarrhea etc. These are usually temporary problems though. They disappear within a few days once you start eating again. However, if they persist then consult your doctor immediately since these could be signs of something more serious like diabetes or cancer.
The main thing to remember is that it doesn’t matter how much sleep you get during the day; it all counts towards recovery time and eventually causes exhaustion again. You may think that you are only sleeping for a few minutes at a time, but it still adds up to hours and hours of sleep – which your body uses to recover.
So what happens if you don’t eat anything at all? Can you survive altogether?
What Happens If You Don’t Eat For 2 Days?
The answer to this question is very simple: No, you cannot survive without food for 2 days, or even 1 day for that matter. It doesn’t matter how much willpower you have or how much physical activity you get done during the day, your body still needs food. Without it, you will start to feel very weak and tired. It is true that most people can go for several days without food but it’s not something that should be tried regularly. The body needs food to survive, and if it doesn’t get any then it starts to consume itself for energy.
Doesn’t sound too healthy now does it?
Well you might be surprised to hear that some people still try this on a regular basis! That’s right; anorexics and other people with eating disorders don’t eat anything at all. They survive off of ’emotions’ and ‘self punishment’.
But is it really worth it?
I think not. Without food, your body can’t function properly. Most of the major bodily systems are affected when a person goes for a long period of time without food.
What happens if you don’t eat for a month?
The truth is, you won’t survive. Your body NEEDS food to survive. It also needs water and air too. If you don’t get any of these things, you will die. It’s just that simple.
But what exactly happens when you don’t eat for a month?
It’s actually not that different to what happens after a week without food. The main difference is it takes longer for the effects to become noticeable. A lot longer in fact. After a month of starving yourself, you probably won’t even notice any major differences at all. You might feel some fatigue, and have some mild cravings for food every now and again, but nothing too serious.
And this is the dangerous thing about starving yourself. The effects are so slow that you might not even realize how bad things are getting until it’s too late.
If you haven’t eaten anything for a month then your body will have effectively started eating itself to survive. Your major organs are slowly breaking down and not working as well as they should be. This also causes other problems since it stops your body from being able to produce fresh blood cells. The lack of blood cells makes it harder for your body to get the energy it needs and this causes you to feel fatigued. Dehydration is another cause of fatigue since your body isn’t able to perform at its best when it isn’t hydrated.
As I said, this process takes a long time since the effects are slow. You probably won’t notice anything wrong at first but as time goes on you will start to feel the effects. This is one of the reasons why starving yourself to death is illegal.
But it’s not just suicide. It’s a painful and gruesome way to die. It can take weeks before you finally pass on, but by that point your body has deteriorated so much that you are little more than a skeleton.
So in conclusion: Don’t starve yourself.
What happens if you don’t eat for a year?
Now this is the really interesting stuff. You might think that nothing would happen after a month, and you’d be right… mostly. A lot of the stuff I mentioned in the last section would still apply. Your organs would still be degrading, you’d still be dehydrated, etc. But the main thing that changes is how fast these things happen to you.
After a month of starving yourself your body starts to get used to not having any food. It adapts to the changes and slows down the effects. Your body actually starts eating itself at a slower rate. After two months of not eating, your body should be running almost completely normally. This is what makes starving yourself to death so dangerous.
You can practically wait it out.
After three months of starving yourself you probably won’t look too much different than someone who has been on a diet really strict diet. You’d probably be a little thinner and paler than average, but nothing too crazy. After four months though, that’s when people start to take notice. You’d probably be walking around looking like a bag of bones at this point and you’d have to lie about why you are not eating any food. If someone noticed the signs after this long, they might even call the police on you for suspected suicide.
By six months, you look like a walking skeleton. Your eyes are deep set in your skull and you have severe bruising all over your body. The only thing that keeps you going is your will to live.
By nine months, you are probably bed ridden at this point. You’ve broken almost every bone in your body from the inside out. You are nothing but a bag of broken bones at this point who is somehow still alive.
By twelve months, death finally releases you from this world. It is a painful way to die, but it is your own fault. You could have stopped at any time, but you kept going because you wanted to die.
There you have it. Now you know what would happen if you didn’t eat for a year. I hope you have learned something today.
Have a nice day.
Written by Aaron Corbett
Sources & references used in this article:
You are what you eat online: The Phenomenon of mediated eating practices and their underlying moral regimes in Swedish “What I eat in a day” vlogs by C Sandal – 2018 – lup.lub.lu.se
Real Kids Don’t Eat Quiche: What Food Means to Children by A Ludvigsen, S Scott – Food, Culture & Society, 2009 – Taylor & Francis
Don’t eat this book: fast food and the supersizing of America by M Spurlock – 2006 – books.google.com
