What would happened to a 230 pound guy...

davidrip1

....if he had an average 3,000 daily calorie deficit for 2 months ?

harper16

Based off the limited information given, nothing good. 3000 daily deficit sounds unhealthy.

springlering62

To clarify, do you mean you want to eat 3,000 daily, which includes a deficit of some kind, or are you really meaning deducting 3,000 a day from some threshold, for a 3,000 a day deficit?

Terytha

Given the average sedentary TDEE of an average height, 30 year old dude at that weight, I'd guess starvation.

MikePTY

3000 calorie defict, a DAY? When I started I was 32, 5'11" 235 pounds, and active, and my TDEE (total daily calorie energy expendature) was around 3000, maybe a bit above. So to have a 3000 calorie deficit, I would have literally had to eat nothing, or close to it. And there's no way I could have been as active as I was without eating food (I would have passed out and died), so a 3000 calorie deficit would have been impossible. I am not sure if you mean something else by a 3000 calorie a day deficit, but it would be next to impossible to accomplish and nothing remotely good would come out of it.

If you want to lose weight, enter your stats into MFP, choose 1.5 pounds a week as a rate of loss (which is a 750 calorie a day deficit), and eat back 50-75% of your exercise calories to start. Trust me, this is not a sprint. I dropped from 235 to 191 and it took me over a year (with some breaks in between), but it was absolutely worth it to go slowly. Not only have a I dropped the weight, but I've maintained/improved my muscle, and improved my health. Crash dieting won't do that for you.

Courtscan2

Well given the BMR of someone that size is around 2000 calories, you'd need to burn 1000 calories per day on top of that while eating 0 calories, so I'm going to go with death. Death would happen.

Jthanmyfitnesspal

I think a reasonable deficit is no more than 25% of TDEE.

Duck_Puddle

Probably nothing too terrible because that would mean eating nothing and probably doing some exercise on top of that.

So after a few days/week, he’d be too weak to function, probably pass out and be taken to the hospital-at which point they would find him dehydrated and pump him full of fluids, run a zillion tests while he remained in the hospital getting a reasonable level of calories.

Hopefully that would be enough to convince him to not do something so ridiculous again.

Nony_Mouse

Is it just me, or have we had a rash of fully grown men wanting to starve themselves lately?

OP, quite aside from the fact that it would be near impossible to generate that kind of deficit, your body simply can't burn that much fat a day. Meaning that quite a chunk of your energy needs would be coming from muscle breakdown. Even if you managed it, you would a) look terrible; b) have serious deficiencies (micronutrients); and c) do possibly irreversible damage to your heart (which is a muscle).

nutmegoreo

Nony_Mouse wrote: »

Is it just me, or have we had a rash of fully grown men wanting to starve themselves lately?

OP, quite aside from the fact that it would be near impossible to generate that kind of deficit, your body simply can't burn that much fat a day. Meaning that quite a chunk of your energy needs would be coming from muscle breakdown. Even if you managed it, you would a) look terrible; b) have serious deficiencies (micronutrients); and c) do possibly irreversible damage to your heart (which is a muscle).

It has been really bad lately with this type of stuff.

OP, in addition to what's already been mentioned, the malnutrition can also mess up your hormones. Hair loss (might not show up until about 6 months after the fact, but will continue for a time fairly equal to the time you were starving yourself for), drop in libido, sleep disturbances, difficulties thinking, a larger than usual ratio of muscle loss compared to fat loss, etc., etc., etc. There are a significant number of health reasons to not starve yourself for 2 months.

Psychgrrl

Nony_Mouse wrote: »

Is it just me, or have we had a rash of fully grown men wanting to starve themselves lately?

OP, quite aside from the fact that it would be near impossible to generate that kind of deficit, your body simply can't burn that much fat a day. Meaning that quite a chunk of your energy needs would be coming from muscle breakdown. Even if you managed it, you would a) look terrible; b) have serious deficiencies (micronutrients); and c) do possibly irreversible damage to your heart (which is a muscle).

Definitely not you, I was wondering the same thing when I saw your post.

lynn_glenmont

Assuming you mean that every day this man consumed 3000 fewer calories than his TDEE, in theory at the end of two months he would weigh 110 pounds. In reality, there would eventually (and probably sooner than you think) come a point where he would find it impossible to achieve a 3000 calorie daily deficit, because his sedentary TDEE would be so low that he would have to eat nothing and still burn 500 to 1000 calories or a day, and he just wouldn't be able to do that for very long. Of course, the whole experiment could fall apart even sooner when electrolyte issues or burning of lean mass led to heart or other organ failure.

Nony_Mouse

lynn_glenmont wrote: »

Assuming you mean that every day this man consumed 3000 fewer calories than his TDEE, in theory at the end of two months he would weigh 110 pounds. In reality, there would eventually (and probably sooner than you think) come a point where he would find it impossible to achieve a 3000 calorie daily deficit, because his sedentary TDEE would be so low that he would have to eat nothing and still burn 500 to 1000 calories or a day, and he just wouldn't be able to do that for very long. Of course, the whole experiment could fall apart even sooner when electrolyte issues or burning of lean mass led to heart or other organ failure.

I think you mean ~180 lbs (3000 x 60 / 3500 = 51.something)? Which is presumably the weight OP wants to get to.

AnnPT77

OK, let's assume that. Let's guess that he's 30 years old, average height (call it 5'10") and mostly sedentary, maybe some moderate walking in the course of everyday life, but no particular major exercise/activity.

He has a 3,000 calorie deficit, i.e., eating 3,000 calories below TDEE.

Without knowing his body fat percent, his TDEE is in all likelyhood somewhere between 2,956 (Mifflin St Jeor) and 3,374 (Harris-Benedict Original). So, every day for two months, he's going to eat something between -44 and +374 calories. The latter +374 calories would be about a couple tablespoons of peanut butter (around 180-200 calories) on one slice of bread (maybe 60-100 calories, and a glass of milk (85-150 calories or so, depending on fat % and glass size - we'll use that to balance out to the 374).

That, or equivalent, at the maximum. Every day for two months. While going about an ordinary life. Yeah, that's going to work out really well.

Not.

If I were him, I'd make a better plan, maybe the kind of thing some people have suggested above, instead.

VictorSmashes

Well, he'd starve. But my guess is that a man who ate in that deficit he might develop nutrient-deficiencies, anorexia nervosa, other cognitive impairment, and could develop many other disorders/diseases.

kshama2001

Looks like the Minnesota Starvation Experiment participants had a 1640 calorie deficit per day for 24 weeks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Starvation_Experiment

Sand_TIger

I recently saw something on YouTube about how you can lose a pound a day if you have a 3,500 calorie deficit... PER DAY... the person was advocating eating somewhat but exercising quite a bit, had absolutely no credentials, a dangerously low amount of knowledge about physiology, and I cringe to think how many people might have paid attention to the video.

Obviously, I don't advocate it, or think that impersonating a victim of famine is a good idea.

magnusthenerd

All of his dead relatives would come back from the grave to full life and health and congratulate him on the weight loss. I mean if we're making up scenarios that aren't going to happen, let's give them a made up happy ending too.
Generally the only people generating a 3,000 calorie deficit a day for 60 days are super morbidly obese people eating no calories, and even under full medical supervision, are probably making bad decisions.

aokoye

I keep thinking, "I mean if you really want to go on a hunger strike at least find something worth striking for". Mind you the potential force feeding that would ensue once you get taken against your will to the hospital sounds beyond awful.

cwolfman13

davidrip1 wrote: »

....if he had an average 3,000 daily calorie deficit for 2 months ?

Without knowing age and height and activity level, I put my stats in but changed the weight to 235 Lbs and set activity to lightly active in a TDEE calculator. The calculator indicates a TDEE of around 2700 calories. So you would literally have to consume absolutely nothing and then still exercise off 300 calories per day to achieve a 3,000 calorie deficit.

rodnichols69

I can tell you from experience. You would burn both fat and lean mass.

I worked out to net negative 3k calories per day. (2 hours in the am and 2 hours in the pm) In 3 weeks I lost 15 lbs, but about 1/3 of it was lean mass.

Build a serious plan around 2 - 2.5 lbs. a week and stick to it. There just aren't any short cuts. June will be here before you know it.

lynn_glenmont

Nony_Mouse wrote: »

lynn_glenmont wrote: »

Assuming you mean that every day this man consumed 3000 fewer calories than his TDEE, in theory at the end of two months he would weigh 110 pounds. In reality, there would eventually (and probably sooner than you think) come a point where he would find it impossible to achieve a 3000 calorie daily deficit, because his sedentary TDEE would be so low that he would have to eat nothing and still burn 500 to 1000 calories or a day, and he just wouldn't be able to do that for very long. Of course, the whole experiment could fall apart even sooner when electrolyte issues or burning of lean mass led to heart or other organ failure.

I think you mean ~180 lbs (3000 x 60 / 3500 = 51.something)? Which is presumably the weight OP wants to get to.

Sorry-- for some reason I thought I could "back-of-the-envelope" it without an envelope, while multitasking prep for my second shift of the day. Thanks for fixing the arithmetic. But I stand by the rest of it. I don't think that 3000 calorie a day deficit could be maintained even down to 180, and I think the risks of serious damage are still there.

Carlos_421

It's a moot point since he likely doesn't burn that many calories in a day anyway.

But if he ate literally nothing for two months in an attempt to try, he'd exceed Jesus' PR by 20 days.

magnusthenerd

Carlos_421 wrote: »

It's a moot point since he likely doesn't burn that many calories in a day anyway.

But if he ate literally nothing for two months in an attempt to try, he'd exceed Jesus' PR by 20 days.

Don't give him ideas, have you seen Jesus's abs? Divine. Probably used them to grind the flour for the loaves when he fed the 5,000.