The bit about the 1944 study and how they rebounded eating way more food after their starvation really struck an emotional chord with me.
I had a few years of financial struggle as a high schooler and student, to the point where I was constantly hungry and very skinny. It was a bit of a traumatic time for me for other reasons, and this article gave me more insight into another dimension of it.
Since I hit a career stride and haven't been walking nearly as much, I've been at my largest ever. A kind of eternal overcompensation. My father also sometimes excused wasteful grocery expenditure saying "I've gone without before; I refuse to do it again".
Been there as well. Took me a while to recognize I did not have to finish every plate of food, that i could either save it for later when i was hungry again or just throw it away.
I try to waste as little as possible. Would have been nice to live in a house with a yard and some chickens. Would give them leftovers. Otherwise just turn it into compost.
>> I had a few years of financial struggle as a high schooler and student, to the point where I was constantly hungry and very skinny
Why didn't you just steal food?
That's what I did when I was poor. There's a store the size of a city block a 5 minute walk away from me, there are tons and tons of food stacked up in that store, any type of food you could want, and I'm going to go bed hungry? That didn't really make sense to me. I never went to bed hungry.
I respect property rights now, of course, because my belly is full.
When I was poor and in high school, I lived alone for a very long while in a house that my dad had started to remodel but then he got distracted by a woman and moved to her place. This meant winter in a house in the mountains literally missing a whole wall.
We lived in the middle of nowhere. I hitched rides to school from friends, neighbors, and rarely family. There was no store to steal from, so I stole food from the school.
I was on free lunch, so I'd steal an extra hamburger, sell it for half price to a kid for 50 cents, and I would use that to buy a can of soup when I could get someone to stop by the store. That would be my dinner that I cooked over a wood burning stove since I could warm up that bedroom but the kitchen was missing a wall and was _cold_ (between 20-40 Fahrenheit, but, again, poor, so no good warm clothes). My dad would give $20 every now and then, and I'd use that to buy potatoes that I'd heat in a toaster oven.
A plain potato, a school lunch hamburger, and usually a 50ish percent chance for can of soup was what I ate. I was skinny and hungry. A few years later, I would be able to eat regularly (and now I am doing more than ok), but it took nearly two decades to be comfortable throwing out a plate of food; the poor, hungry kid in me wasn't sure when the next food would come even though I now had food aplenty.
I was getting food regularly, just not enough. 2 peanut butter sandwiches, plates of rice and minimal meat don't do much when you walk 2h a day on average.
I was broke and not in a position to help myself as much as I was studying and building my skillset, not absolutely despondent.
In rich country, one likely can apply for some food stamps if can't afford food.
In poor country, store owners are likely not that rich too, and will fight hard those who steal.
I think the literature is clear enough on the difference between calory restrictions and intermittent fasting. The latter being much effective because it also reduces the production of hunger hormone, not the case with the former approach.
I had a few years of financial struggle as a high schooler and student, to the point where I was constantly hungry and very skinny. It was a bit of a traumatic time for me for other reasons, and this article gave me more insight into another dimension of it.
Since I hit a career stride and haven't been walking nearly as much, I've been at my largest ever. A kind of eternal overcompensation. My father also sometimes excused wasteful grocery expenditure saying "I've gone without before; I refuse to do it again".