The following is an article by Jeremy Warren of the Saskatoon Star Phoenix

Mann Starves For Awareness

D’Arcy Mann starved himself for 100 days. He did this by choice.

He ate, of course, during the 100 days, but limited his food to 200 to 400 calories per day — half of an apple in the morning, a can of tuna for lunch and the other apple-half before bed.

For more than three months, Mann, 37, wasted away and ultimately lost 63 pounds. — the size of an average nine-year-old boy — from a starting weight of 240 lbs. He lost hair, shaving cuts would take three weeks to heal instead of several days and he endured lethargy and bouts of dizziness and fainting.

“I seem to have aged two years in 100 days — the wrinkles are deep,” Mann said Thursday, two days after finishing the extreme diet. “This is something that will mark me, physically, for life.”

D'Arcy Mann lost a lot of weight and several notches in his belt after fasting for 100 days Photograph by: SP Photo by Greg Pender, of The StarPhoenix

Mann started The Hungry I project, documented on his website, on April 5 when he began the starvation diet. At midnight on July 13, Mann reached into a bag of ketchup chips and ended his quest to draw attention to eating disorders such as anorexia and obesity.

He readily admits the diet was a stunt and one he compares to Morgan Spurlock’s 30-day McDonald’s diet in the documentary Super Size Me.

“If I just set up a website with basic information, who’d read it? Why would they?” Mann said.

“To get people to pay attention, sometimes you have to do something extreme. I’m the first to admit it’s a stunt.”

Mann is a filmmaker and entrepreneur and regularly works with models and actors. The industry is rife with dangerously skinny people, he said.

“I tried to tell them that this wasn’t healthy,” he said. “So I sort of fell back on show, don’t tell.”

He gained an extra 20 lbs before starting the diet to ensure the already dangerous endeavour wouldn’t put him in the hospital.

“We’re talking about irreversible liver damage,” Mann said. “Didn’t want that — not a fan. So I put on the extra weight for safety.”

He blogged daily at www.thehungryi.org, where a worldwide following developed as he tackled nutrition and eating disorder topics. Mann educated himself and readers as he starved himself.

About 1.5 per cent of Canadian woman aged 14-24 having eating disorder, according to the National Eating Disorder Information Centre.

Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness — about 10 to 12 per cent of sufferers die from complications, says the Canadian Mental Health Association.

Reactions to his project weren’t uniformly positive. In the early days, Mann started receiving angry emails from the pro-ana crowd, a subculture that promotes anorexia as a positive way to lose weight.

“There are people who rapidly endorse (anorexia) as a lifestyle,” Mann said. “They would write to me to say I don’t understand and they’re proud about what is in reality a serious problem.”

But as the days passed and pounds disappeared, Mann started to hear from people recovering from eating disorders. They shared stories with Mann, and he in turn would share the stories on his website. The amount of men who wrote surprised Mann.

Liam, who wrote to Mann from the United Kingdom, dealt with a personal crisis by controlling the only thing he knew he could: His weight. After two years of counting calories — a mushroom for breakfast, porridge for lunch and a box of raisins for supper — the 6-foot-2 man dropped to 119 pounds. He sought help and is now up to 159 lbs.

“People are more than just the numbers on a scale,” Mann said, echoing a comment from a woman he met through the website.

Like the Internet feedback, Mann’s friends were equally split about the project. Some would buy and deliver food to Mann’s Broadway-area home when he felt too weak to leave.

Other friends stopped talking to Mann.

“Some of my friends are larger individuals who didn’t believe in this,” Mann said. “They know they’re overweight and know they’re unhealthy, but don’t have the discipline to put down the Cheetos and back away.”

Mann weighed about 260 lbs. when he turned 19. A troublesome stair climb one day drove him to the gym, where regular workouts helped him shed 55 lbs. within a year.

He’s maintained a healthy lifestyle since then, but post-starvation he faces a long recovery filled with soup and salad.

On Tuesday night, Mann sat down with two friends and he opened a bag of ketchup chips. After five handfuls, he felt sick. He’ll gain back weight by adding calories every day until he can eat regularly again.

At the end of the of the interview, Mann stood up from his chair, wobbled and leaned against the table.

“You’ll have to excuse me,” he said. “My body still isn’t right.”