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Micro wisdom delivered to your ears every morning in voice notes ranging from 3 to 15 minutes long. Wisdom on how to live a healthier and more fulfilling life. Every podcast will ground you in the present moment to ensure you know what's important, the here and now.
Hello. Good morning, everyone. So today's a very exciting podcast because we're gonna cover the Minnesota Starvation Experiment. It sounds exactly how it was really explained there. It's a starvation study, and it's really old study actually, so we're always looking for new studies, but let's go back to this famous study.
Speaker 1:And we learned a lot from this study, okay. So back in 1944, this study set out to systematically define the physical and psychological effects of human starvation. So obviously the original goal was to use the results to help farming victims at the end of world war two. So like a lack of food was devastating in many countries. You've got to remember this is a different world where we live in now right, but the findings extended way beyond that, so helping our understanding with weight loss and weight gain.
Speaker 1:So the study was actually published in 1950 and the report was 1,400 pages. That's mad, 100 pages. Luckily there's been some really good reviews of this stuff so I'm gonna cover that now. So the study worked like this, the researchers recruited conscientious, I can't even say that word, oh my god, conscientious, objectives of World War two and carefully screened over 400 applicants to finally wind up with 36 men. And the poster, will you starve that they be better with hold on, will you starve that they be better fed?
Speaker 1:That was the poster. So the study was split into three parts, okay. So part one was a twelve weeks of normal living and eating. So during this time the volunteers ate on average of 3,000 calories a day, so they were young lean active men, so this is kind keeping their body weight stable. So far cry from the today's, you're 1,200 calories.
Speaker 1:So this was kind of the control data. So they wanted to see what they were like, enough time calories, weight, they have enough data essentially in the healthy state compared to the next two phases. So phase two was twenty four weeks of semi starvation they call this, right. So this was designed to create a 25% body weight loss. Now in context you can lose five to 10% of your body weight is considered significant and can be very life changing to your health, right, so 25% here.
Speaker 1:So a one hundred and seventy pound man would be losing 43 pounds of weight loss taking down 127 So one hundred and seventy pounds to one hundred and twenty seven pounds I think I'm around, I'm not as to why I weigh in pounds, 180ish. So were that's like me going on one thirty. I can't fathom going down there. Honestly, what and by the way these guys were lean to start with. So on average, this is what they did, right?
Speaker 1:Total energy intake was just over 1,500 calories a day. Okay. Now this might not sound that loud to you, but remember these guys were maintaining on 3,000 calories a day. So that's a 1,500 calorie deficit every single day. Your most of you are on around a 500 calorie deficit, so this is 300% more of a deficit.
Speaker 1:That's 500 times 300% is three times more, which means they'll be losing nearly a pound of fat every two to three days. And they were instructed to keep their physical routine going, okay, which was 22 miles of walking each week. Right? So, yeah, that's hard. Fifteen hundred hundred calorie deficit a day is wild.
Speaker 1:So the men ate a diet similar to what people ate in Europe around this time which was two meals a day, they were rich in carbs, low in protein, small amounts of macaroni, potatoes, cabbage, blah blah blah. Okay. Part three, twelve weeks, so they did twenty four weeks of semi starvation and then they went into twelve weeks of restricted refeeding, okay, restricted refeeding twelve weeks, followed by eight weeks of unrestricted refeeding, okay, so eat whatever you want. So group one, so the scientists divided the men into four groups and increased their daily intake by group one was 400 calories, group two was 800 calories, group three was 1,200 calories, group four was 1,600 calories. So group one was now consuming 1,009 instead of 1,005, group two was consuming 2,003 instead of 1,005 and so on, okay, and they give them vitamin and protein supplements as well.
Speaker 1:So after the twelve weeks the volunteers were allowed to eat as much as they wanted and as expected it ended up being a lot. Let's have a look at the results. And you can see photos of this experiment. The guys look yeah. They just look like they've been in a concentration camp basically.
Speaker 1:They look really bad. During part one of semi starvation, the men dropped to approximately 30% of their control body fat and had an over 20% decrease in their strength. So in twenty four weeks they dropped 30% of their body fast, huge numbers, and 20% decrease in their strength. Okay, so just in twenty four weeks. Their heart rate slowed down from an average low of about 55 beats per minute to about 35 beats per beats per minute.
Speaker 1:This was a sign that metabolism was slowing in order to decrease the amount of energy they burned at rest. It's thought that this is the evolutionary survival mechanism. The men's bodies were conserving energy so they could survive a farming longer. Okay, so the researchers call this like a calorie defense. Decreased blood volume, shrinking of the heart size and shrinking of blood vessels including in their eyes which give them more of a porcelain like glistening.
Speaker 1:Okay, and their hair follicles began to harden, they lost hair, they noticed they were less coordinated, they were more sore, they become less comfortable sitting down, plus they got colder more easily, and this is due to the decrease in metabolism and body fat, right? But psychologically, right, this is what happened to them. Obviously, you're feeling cranky when we don't have food for the day, guys. You know, these guys are only on 1,500 calorie deficit a day. They complained about feeling cold and constantly tired.
Speaker 1:They had a decreased sex drive and an increased interest in food, reportedly looking at cookbooks and pictures of foods obsessively, and they were irritable, especially if they had to wait too long for food or it wasn't served on time, so basically very, very hungry. Right? And here's a few other outcomes that are quite interesting. The men were given as much coffee as they wanted in gum, so they would chew up the faulty packs of chewing gum a day and 15 cups of coffee. Depression rating were the highest by the end of the calorie restriction and lowest at the end of the refeeding, and the men didn't perceive themselves as too skinny but instead thought that other people looked more fat, which is characteristic actually of anorexia, or those with anorexia sorry.
Speaker 1:So only a few weeks into the experiment one patient reportedly kept having cannibalistic dreams and would cheat on trips into town sneaking in milkshakes and sundaes and stuff like that. When the lead researcher confronted him the man broke down crying but then began to threaten the researcher and threatened to take his own life. He was removed from the study and put into a ward. Okay? But what happened after they started eating again is the question here.
Speaker 1:You talk about people talk about starvation mode and damage to metabolism. Let's have a look at what happened to these guys who were put on pretty much starvation, right? Even the Hannibal Lecter bloke I just mentioned now, he seemed fine after going a few days back to a normal diet and he was released from the psychiatric ward, know, so like, some of you been in a deficit for too long, I mean you might be going a bit crazy. But no I would never suggest anyone go anywhere near this. This is just I don't even think they would be allowed to do this experiment again because it's so extreme.
Speaker 1:Anyway, so during the first few weeks of unrestricted refeeding, participants ate an estimate of 11,000 calories a day. Some of them ended up vomiting because they ate too quickly too much. I'm not surprised by this. What happened after the study? This is like an extreme version of you going into a deficit it's too much for you and then binge eating on weekends.
Speaker 1:It's kind of what's happening. Right? So what happened after the study? A lot of the participants reported having abnormal eating patterns for months to years after the study and maintained higher than normal body weight for quite some time before returning to normal. Some participants maintained a level of food insecurity years after meaning that they feared food could be taken away.
Speaker 1:This may have contributed to abnormal eating patterns. Okay? Now what's interesting to me is this. In 1997, there was a, researchers from the University of Switzerland reanalyzed this data and they found that the volunteers body fat returned to 100% of pre starvation levels faster than their fat free mass, basically muscle. So they basically they gained all their fat back but they didn't gain all their muscle back.
Speaker 1:This caused a problem. During the time that their muscle mass was lower than pre starvation, so before the experiment started, the men continue to naturally overeat. But the good news is once their muscle mass was approached to a 100% back, the drive to overeat stopped. The bad news is the lag between the two cause body fat to end up going to a 180% of pre starvation levels. So when they finally gain their muscle back, ended up putting on a 180% more body fat as a result until they even out again.
Speaker 1:So they've seen this in other studies actually that when you lose so this is why it's really really really really really important that you do not go into a severe deficit because you risk losing muscle mass higher, you must eat higher protein and essentially training twice a week is enough to maintain or sometimes gain muscle mass, right? So you don't wanna get into a position where you lose weight and you lose muscle at the same time because you gain the weight back quicker, but you don't gain the muscle back. Rinse, repeat. Yo dieting basically. Yo yo dieting does this where you lose a lot of weight.
Speaker 1:So you go on these plans, weight watch, slimming, whatever it is. You lose a lot of weight fast. You also lose a lot of muscle. And then you put all the weight back on, but you've not put the muscle back on. Your hunger levels are higher than before and you go upwards and you gain more weight and you overpass so you even say you were two hundred pounds you lose to one sixty you go back to two ten and you rinse repeat rinse repeat until you're two forty and you keep going up up.
Speaker 1:This has been well documented. So I think that's probably the biggest finding from this is that obviously you've got the all the other stuff but it's super interesting how hunger levels and their eating patterns didn't go back to normal until muscle mass was regained. And muscle is expensive to build guys, but it's easy to break down. When you're in a catabolic state, you're fasting for example, not good. When you're fasting, it's not good.
Speaker 1:Okay. This is I know a lot of people get into fasting now, but you don't wanna be fasting. You don't wanna be in low calories. You don't wanna be low protein. You really don't wanna go here, especially as you're aging.
Speaker 1:It's one of the most important things. And this will come out in five, ten years time, this will be so obvious in the research. It is obvious now, but it'll be so obvious that people will be kicking themselves for losing muscle mass. And I'm not saying you gotta have muscle mass to have big biceps, That's not what it's about. It's about quality of life and maintaining kind of metabolic tissue.
Speaker 1:Main make sure your hunger levels don't go skyrocketing. Okay? So the main takeaways from this study is the body will start defending itself against calorie restriction or energy restriction. Okay. So no quick fat losses are gonna overcome these millions of years of evolution.
Speaker 1:Right? We know this. Metabolic adaption happens. When you lose weight your metabolic rate decreases. Okay, so obviously the lighter you are the less energy your body needs.
Speaker 1:This is known as metabolic adaption basically like where as you lose weight your metabolism comes down and And then if you keep on the same calories, eventually, your metabolic rate will drop enough that your new calories ended up being your maintenance, and then you have to drop again and drop again. And that's why it gets harder and harder as you get lighter and lighter. But when you lose weight, there's a good chance you'll end up with more body fat and less muscle than you had originally. That's a fact of yo yo dieting. That's a fact of doing these starvations.
Speaker 1:Just pretty much this has been data now since, well, 1940, isn't it? Eighty years. Eighty years we've known this now, and there's more studies obviously. And obviously, of course, highly restrictive diets can have a massive impact on mental and emotional health as seen in this, you know, as seen in the people dropping out, as seen in people's depression and everything. But when you go back to baseline and you wait to your maintenance for a few days or a week, you can see a massive significant difference in how you feel.
Speaker 1:So if some of you are feeling irritated and you're trying to lose weight and you've doing it for weeks, maybe it's time to go to maintenance for a few days. Okay. So highly restrictive approaches will always backfire. There's nothing more devastating for your health in terms of fitness than going on a diet or you wanna push yourself too much because you wanna lose more weight quickly. Back to the episode where I mentioned my sister wanting to push more weight loss and she's already had eight pounds, not happy with it once more.
Speaker 1:This is what risk to us. Go ahead. Go against all of this. It's up to you. It's not gonna do you any favors in the long run.
Speaker 1:And muscle plays a huge important role, in our energy burned, and how you how you feel health and fitness wise, your kind of general day to day activities, preserving muscle mass is essential. Okay? Powerful strategies like I mentioned, two times a week resistance training whether that's weights, dumbbells, resistance bands, body weight, get enough protein in over time. Huge, huge, huge win for you. So I hope you enjoyed this episode.
Speaker 1:I think this study is amazing. You can go read up more about it if you want. But it's one of the groundbreaking research studies that happened that helped us understand the human body and the extremes. So take advice from us as you will, and I will speak to you all back on the podcast tomorrow.