About The Project

“You’re going to do WHAT?”

There have been countless reports about how we in the West are getting fatter. Featured segments on your local news, Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution on TV, Morgan Spurlock’s Supersize Me in theatres… we go, we watch, we get repulsed, we vow to make changes… and we don’t. Supersize Me came out in 2004 and the data shows that we didn’t turn the tide on obesity in the 6 years since. In fact we’re stuffing our faces faster than before.

The Hungry I creator D'Arcy Mann at 240 lbs

But misery loves irony; while more than half of North Americans are overweight, and more than half of those are obese, as many as 1 in 50 starve themselves. Yes, starve. In this land of plenty. Reasons range from vanity to emotional trauma causing a need for control, but the results are the same; anorexia or bulimia. This does nothing to eliminate the emotional problem that triggered the need to regain some sort of control, but it does plays havoc on the body.

Added into the mix is a truckload of misinformation and misunderstandings of diet, from misguided notions of what people were “meant” to eat (really rationalizations without rational base, on both ends of the extreme) to government agencies mandating high carb, low fat diets that might actually be causing more obesity and heart disease.

So.

I decided to look at these topics and see what the latest information actually shows as far as obesity, anorexia, bulimia, extreme dieting, and other seemingly unrelated but all food-centered disorders.

I went so far as to gain weight up to 240 lbs then starve it off again – and more – over 100 days. In doing so I learned first-hand not only about the rapid fat loss and muscle atrophying that went with it, but the social isolation, mood swings, sleeplessness, and other trials that go hand in hand with this sort of harmful and extreme behavior.

The 100 day project won’t likely change any minds of those who already have the anorexia demon inside them, as they often rationalize their behavior and lash out at anyone who tries to convince them otherwise. But I do hope it reaches out to people in the early stages and convince them that it’s just not worth it. Similarly I hope that people who have rationalized being overweight or even obese will take an introspective look and consider how they’re shortening their lives.

Step A: Balloon, boy

Renée Zellweger ate all kinds of things to put on weight for the Bridget Jones’ Diary movies. In her experience, there were “fantasies about non-stop chocolate consumption or your fantasies about ordering the pizza and the spaghetti and the garlic bread. Then after a week your glucose levels are going crazy. You’re up and down and all over the place. It doesn’t feel good.” Jared Leto ate pizza, pasta, and gorged on melted Haagen Dazs ice cream laced with olive oil and soy sauce to bulk up for his role in Chapter 27.

I took a less scientific approach. Pints with friends, as often as possible, complete with the sort of golden-brown fried offerings bars call ‘food’. Deep fried veggies, dry ribs, chicken wings, you name it. And potato chips. and chocolate. and potato chips. This might sound like fun, but Bridget – I mean Renée – is totally right. It’s crap.

Step B: Dying To Be Thin

D'Arcy at 181 lbs

Now for the hard part: 100 days of living off of very few calories. I mean between 250-500 calories a day. It wasn’t easy downshifting from 3,600 Calories a day (yes, capital C. You’ll learn why in this blog) down to below survival levels. In 80 days I lost 55 lbs. but learned a lot about modern nutrition, and how many of us know the basics but ignore it because the harmful effects always seem to be in the future. Until the day they catch up to you.

For one thing my basal metabolic rate (BMR) slowed so much that on the rare day I went over 400 calories, it showed. Towards the end when I sucked in my gut I could actually see my heart beating through the flesh of my upper belly. I lost bone density, my muscles shrank even though I continued to lift weights (the amount I could lift went down to about 1/4 the amount I was lifting when I started) and I’d have dizzy or even fainting spells.

Step C: Mythbusting

From vegan to low fat, high carb to low carb, meaty diets there are so many things ‘taught’ to us that are more about making someone money, or making someone feel more important than you, than they are about real, healthy nutrition. Defended with the zeal of fundamentalists, many of these just don’t stand up to scrutiny. I hope to show you which ones are false, and why.

Positive Change

This isn’t a doom and gloom blog – I expose the problems but, hopefully, offer real solutions. Not all of them will be easy, and some of them might piss you off, but they’re meant to be positive, helpful, and realistic things you can do to improve the length and quality of your life.

The goal is to make you think about your eating and dieting habits to make a sensible change for the better; not based on the number in your waistband, or the numbers on your bathroom scale, but on your health.

Eat well and live long – don’t gorge or starve and die early.

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Note: Starvation is very harmful. Do NOT copy the 100 days of starvation diet. I did this as a project specifically to show how harmful undernourishment, anorexia, and bulimia can be.