Stuff You Should Know - Fasting: deadly or what?

Episode Date: February 23, 2012

Avoiding food for religious or health reasons has been around for millennia. But while God may appreciate the sacrifice, how does it affect the body? Join Josh and Chuck to find if fasting actually can be healthy or if it's as bad an idea as it sounds. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Flooring contractors agree. When looking for the best to care for hardwood floors, use Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner. The residue-free, fast drying solution is specially designed for hardwood floors, delivering the safe and effective clean you trust. Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner is available at most retailers where floor cleaning products are sold and on Amazon. Also available for your other hard surface floors like Stone, Tile, Laminate, Vinyl, and LVT. For cleaning tips and exclusive offers, visit Bona.com slash Bona Clean. The War on Drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call,

like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to The War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and with me is Charles W. Chuggers Bryant. I'm hungry. Are you? I just had a sixth of a slice of pizza. Those are pizza out there? Yeah, you better hurry. That's all right. It's pretty good.

Look at all pizza. The cheese gets to my stomach as we detailed in our digestion podcast. You got a lot of great support for people. Anything work? I am going to make an appointment with a specialist for the GERD. Good. And get scoped, I think they call it, when they drop a camera down in there. They find out that I have a small dragon living in my stomach. And then the scope drops a film canister into your stomach acid to be retrieved later and developed. Yeah, so thank you for that support, people. I'm definitely gonna go get that checked out. He's going to the specialist. Going to a specialist. I'm not gonna quit drinking red wine.

Is that the problem? Well, no, I mean, I get heartburn from anything, which is, so that means I've definitely got a real issue. But obviously things like red wine and chocolate and margaritas and citrus. You poor guy. All the best stuff. All the best stuff. Margaritas, you could go either way. I like them during the right time of year. You need to just drink like white Russians all the time. It has a lot of milk in it. Chocolate though. That's a black Russian. Oh, right. White Russian. Or just drink vodka. Just drink milk and pretend you're wasted and be healthy. Chuck. Yes. Have you ever fasted? No, I've done the little master cleanse thing, but which is sort of a fast, I guess. Is that the

lemon juice one? Yeah. Okay. We've talked about this before. Yeah. I've done that as well. Yeah. And this is kind of like gives you shingles. Yeah, I'm not going to do it again. You're not? No. So I fast like all the time. I know that. All the time, maybe hyperbole, because I actually do eat sometimes. You just ate eight of a slice of pizza. Sixth of a slice. And so I have a pretty good understanding of what fasting can do and what it feels like. But what I did not know is that it comes from an old Anglo-Saxon word. Fasten. Oh, yeah? Yeah, that's the fact of the podcast for me. Well, that's remarkable. Fasten. Fasten. Fasten. There's a F-A-E-S-T-E-N. Fasten. Wow. Yeah. So people have been doing it for a while then, is what you're

saying? Well, yeah. Apparently, fasten means to hold oneself from food. And yeah, people have been doing it for a while because it's firmly rooted in a lot of religious traditions that have been around for many, many years. Yeah. And then there's other reasons that people fast. More modern ones. Sure. Medical fasting. Yeah. Which we'll talk about. Political statement. Fasting. Yeah. Hunger strikes. Yeah. There's a lot of that in the 20th century. It was big for hunger strikes. Oh, of course. Still is. But let's talk about fasting, shall we? Okay. Let's talk about specifically religious fasting, Chuck. Great place to start. It's been going on for thousands of years in religion. So you answered your own question? Yeah, I knew. Eventually. I was being coy. A lot of times they initiate a fast to

someone will do that to maintain contact with the divinity. And some say that if you fast for long enough, you will hallucinate and that that might be they might interpret that as communicating directly with God. Right. And I looked that up. I couldn't find out exactly why you hallucinate when you fast. I mean, that is corroborated all over the place. The best I could find you're dying. Well, the best I could find is that it's a it's a vitamin deficiency leads to hallucinations for some reason. But I don't know why. But no, not necessarily. I also came across some articles that suggested that hallucinations are a lot more natural than we would think because we associate them with mental illness or drug use. Right. In the West, we have a lot of negative connotations

for hallucinations that aren't necessarily spiritual. Right. When in fact, other cultures might believe it's a form of enlightenment. Right. So hallucinations may not be bad. It may not be that you're dying and it may not be that you're mentally ill. It may just be that you're hungry. Yeah. Good point. A lot of times religious fasts are undertaken because you're atoning for sins is punishment. You're asking God for your forgiveness for your misdeeds. Yeah. These are the big two basically like you fast religiously either to get closer to God or to tell God you're sorry and thus get closer to God. Yeah. Yeah. I know what you mean though. Thanks. So let's, you know, you want to talk about some of the religions and why and when they fast.

Yeah. Buddhists. Buddhists fast on full moon days, holidays and they do it mainly for purification and to free the mind apparently. You know, your butt will follow if you free the mind. That's an old Buddhist adage. I had not heard that. I think so. Their fasting is mostly, it's not a full fast. You can drink. So I guess you could have soup, maybe just a broth. God help you if you have noodles in it, but you have to abstain from solid foods. Right. You can live on broth. Yeah, forever. Yeah. You probably wouldn't have a very productive life GI system. Right. But yeah, you could live on broth. Catholics, they fast on Ash Wednesday, Good Friday. Actually, they can eat a small meal without meat on those two days.

Yeah. So it's not exactly a fast, but they on Fridays during length, they're not really supposed to eat meat at all. That's why we have the filet of fish and for a little while in the sixties, the hula burger. That's right. Because a big crock was like, man, there's a mess of Catholics out there and they're not eating burgers on Fridays, but we need to get them in the store anyway. See, I'm thankful for that because I love a play of fish every now and then. Yeah. Like once a year. They fast to Catholics fast to show their control of their flesh fleshly, one of my favorite words, fleshly desires. That's so Catholic to do penance to show solidarity with the poor and people who might not have food. So I went to

a Catholic school for the first couple of years of school. Our lady of perpetual help. Yeah. And every once in a while, they would serve rice with a pad of butter for lunch. And it was kind of this fast, but it wasn't really fast because we're still having rice. But basically the whole idea was this is what poor kids in Bangladesh have to eat every day. Right. And you're just this spoiled kid. Yeah. So eat some rice instead and kind of get in the mindset. And I never did it because I got the point. But some of my friends would eat the rice and then eat their own lunch from home as well. Which even even in like second grade, I'm like, that seems wrong. Yeah. I don't think you're supposed to be doing it like that. Yeah. I mean, that didn't even have to be religious based. You

could do that in school today and just say as a hunger awareness, like in Australia. Yeah, Australia. What is that the 40 hour fast? Do you know anything about that? I know that I think they have it once a year and many, many Australians take part. And basically the whole thing is to, like you say, raise awareness of poverty of the state of the poverty stricken and also to raise money too. Oh, the 40 hour famine, excuse me, which is which is a fast. Yes. Boy, we headed that one off at the past. Good going, Chuck. Eastern Orthodox church members, they will fast on Lent. They observe the apostles fast and the nativity fast. And they think that it could strengthen your resistance to gluttony, which is obviously one of the seven deadly sins. Yeah.

And they eat no meat, dairy, eggs or fish during these fasts. So it's my understanding they can also eat a little something just not those things like carbs. They can eat bread. Oh, that'd be nice and bread and broth. But now you're talking. Yeah. That's what else you need. I can't think of any fruits and vegetables and stuff like that. Well, no, it says no meat, dairy, eggs or fish. So you could have fruits, vegetables, broth, bread. That's like that's a good kind of fast right there. I wouldn't even call that a fast. No, you can actually get gluttonous on that. Yeah, you could. The Jewish folks, they fast on Yom Kippur, which is the day of atonement. And they are doing this to atone for sins, obviously like the Catholics,

and special requests from God. I know it's so funny. It's like, hey, I'm not going to eat for 25 whole hours, but I have a huge favor to ask you, right? Sun up the sundown. Is that the deal? Yeah. And they have one of the the tougher fasts because they don't eat or drink anything for 25 hours. Right. That's like no nothing. That's a real fast. Yeah. Mormons, they fast on the first Sunday every month. This is kind of a weak fast, if you ask me. This is like a Tuesday for me. They have to skip two meals. They skip two meals and they think it helps them obviously get closer to God like many

of the religions do. And just basically just focuses their minds on God. Well, the cool thing about the Mormon fast, in my opinion, is that they're also required to give food and money to the needy. Right. What they would have spent perhaps on those meals. It's probably a good one. We should do one on Mormons as a whole. We've had that requested a lot. We totally should. I've read about this one guy named Paul Kingston and he is the head of an accused alleged crime family. It's a Mormon sect also. And he does 40 day fasts. Wow. Yeah. Wow. 40 days, man. Can you imagine? No. This guy did it. He does it. I bet his breath stinks so bad. We'll get into that. Muslims, obviously they fast on

for the observance of Ramadan, the ninth month on the Muslim calendar. And many of you might not know what Ramadan is. You want to tell them? I'll tell them. It commemorates the month when the Quran was first revealed to Muhammad. That's what Ramadan is all about. Oh, is that right? Yeah. So they don't have food. They don't have drink. They don't smoke. They don't curse. They don't have sex from sunrise to sunset. Yeah, for a month, every day for a month. That's right. And millions, millions of people do this during Ramadan, which is when is it like the take place roughly in November on the Gregorian calendar, I think? Is it? I think it is. And we've been asked to do one on Ramadan too. So we're going to, we got a lot. We haven't explained hardly anything, have we?

No. We still got so much law enforcement. Ramadan is a very famous fast, obviously, because of the length of time. And it is supposed to teach Muslims patience and modesty, spirituality. You ask Allah for forgiveness, pray for guidance, and you purify yourself. And that, it's really effective in like getting this, this mindset of, I want this, so I'll have it right now out of your head for a little while. Even a day really kind of opens your eyes a little bit beyond that one single day. So just deny denial or self-denial. It never leaves you, does it? Well, I have to say that like, the further I've gotten away from Catholicism, the more into self-denial I've gotten, ironically, yeah. All right. Well, let's talk about medical fasting.

That's an overview of religious fasting. We can get a lot more detail. Nice transition. Thank you. Well, medical fasting, a lot of people have probably engaged in, if you've ever had some sort of test done, a lot of times they're like, don't eat the night before your appointment. Or sometimes 24 hours, if it's like certain kinds of blood tests. Yeah. The reason for this is pretty straightforward and logical. With blood tests in particular, they want your body to have metabolized all the food, so they have a pretty good idea of what your baseline levels of things like cholesterol, blood sugar, all of these things are in your system normally. If you ate a handful of chicken fat right before you went in for your cholesterol,

test, it's going to skew the results a little bit. Yeah, that fat's going to be in your blood. But if you haven't eaten in 24 hours and your blood shows the same levels of lipids as if you had just eaten a handful of chicken fat, your physician is going to be like, we have to save your life right now. Well, yeah. If your baseline indicates something that scary, then no more chicken fat. No more chicken fat. And the same goes with if you were going to go under. Yeah, for surgery. Yeah, which apparently this one's becoming outdated. We both had surgery recently. You went all the way under, didn't you? I went into twilight sleep for my tooth. I went all the way under and I don't know what my oral surgeon used, but she brought me out totally. I was wide

awake within an hour of being put under like she did the procedure and then I was wide awake. I still need to ask her. You weren't groggy? No. Like I was just right back. I love the twilight sleep, actually. Yeah, it was pretty rocking. I mean, I was still wasted, but it was like I was awake. It wasn't like huge time loss or anything like that. Anyway, I wasn't supposed to eat. I thought just eat, but it's eat or drink and they had to delay my surgery like three hours because I was a drunk ass and drank some coffee. And the whole reason I didn't understand why until I read this article, but the whole reason they tell you not to eat or drink anything for the night before you're put under because they're worried you're going to puke and choke on your

vomit like John Bonham. I didn't know that. I thought it was just it could make you nauseous. Until I read this, I didn't realize that was a deal. No, but they may be phasing it out because it can make you nauseous. If you don't eat, if you take all those drugs on an empty stomach, right, you may be likely to be nauseated. And it's also really rare that they found. So I think it's not. I mean, they still did it with me, but the article says that it may be phased out because it's such a rare thing to choke like that. Right. And they're saying, well, a lot more people are having trouble with dizziness, feigning, because they haven't eaten anything. And we just pumped them full of drugs. So we're going to go ahead and let people eat.

And in the I want to take a minute to explain the difference between nauseous and nauseated. You know this. Yeah. So nauseous means that you're causing nausea. Right. So I'm making you nauseous. I'm nauseous to you. Okay. Okay. Nauseated means that you're feeling or suffering from nausea. So you would say I'm making you nauseated. I'm nauseous to you. No, I'm nauseated is what you would say. Unless you are aware that you're making other people nauseous. And that's with that's behaviorally speaking. What do you mean? Well, like you're nauseated with someone's actions. Or does that mean literally physically, right? You're nauseated with somebody's actions that would make the other person

nauseous. They have the ability to cause nausea and other people. Gotcha. I never knew that. It's a big, big deal. The more you know. Thank you worldwide words, by the way. Is that where that came from? Yeah, that's a great sign. I haven't seen it. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take America's public enemy. Number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts

as guilty. The cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the I heart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Do you crave a good mystery? Tune in to the great detectives of old time radio podcast featuring episodes of different detective dramas from the golden age of radio every day Monday through Saturday. The lineup of radio detectives currently includes Sam Spade, Dr. Tim detective, dangerous assignment, follow Vance, yours truly Johnny dollar and tales of the Texas Rangers.

I'm your host Adam Graham and I offer commentary and humor after each episode and also respond to your questions and feedback. Enjoy a good mystery before bed while driving or whenever you crave old school radio goodness. Listen to the great detectives of old time radio on the heart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. So what happens when you stop eating? Your body is going to start burning. You know, if you don't have any protein, your body is going to break down your muscle. It's going to start eating that because that's protein. Yeah, the scary notion. It is which is why if you're on a low calorie diet, you want to eat lean protein. Yeah. And it's also why you'll feel weak if

you're on like a hunger strike. Yeah. Like to the point where you can't get out of bed if it's you haven't eaten for three weeks or hallucinating. Exactly. A long term fast can damage your heart because your heart's a muscle. And what what your body is doing is going after your muscle because your muscle is made of amino acids, which is the building blocks of protein. So it's saying, well, basically we have a bunch of store of amino acids here where your brain is like, no, no, I use that to lift things or I use that to pump blood. Right. Your body's like, no, it's a bunch of amino acids and I need it right now. Yeah. If you feed your body lean protein, logically speaking, it will go after other things, e.g. fat stores because it has protein. Right.

So aside from the heart, though, liver and kidneys can also decrease in size if you don't have enough protein and damage those as well, which is not good. It's not good. That leads us pretty clearly to fasting for weight loss. Right. Yes. There's a weird catch 22 for fasting for weight loss where your body, if given few enough calories or if on a fast, enters what's called starvation mode. And when you enter starvation mode, it goes, it does things like going after your muscles, which is bad. Yeah. But it also lowers your metabolism to preserve calories. So the fewer calories you take in, the fewer calories you end up burning. Yeah. It's weird. Yeah. Not weird. It actually makes perfect sense. Yeah. But it's also extremely unhealthy.

It is. And there's a, I dug into WebMD for this. And they say that there's a lot of controversy on this. People say, you know, some people say it's can be effective. Other people say it can't. But they say if you really weed through all this stuff that most medical experts say that it is not healthy at all. It'll come back quickly. If you fast to lose weight, it's really just liquids. Beyonce made a lot of headlines when she did the master cleanse and lost 20 pounds for dream girls. Wow. Awesome movie. Did you see that? No. I don't know if you'd like it. Might not be your thing. Okay. That's good. Health risks that we already covered. Liver, kidney and heart. And this doctor says, you know, people try all these weird diets.

There's a hundred thousand different books on odd diets. When everyone knows the way to lose weight is lower your fat, eat five fruits and vegetables a day, drink a lot of water and do some exercise and get plenty of sleep. If they say, I want to fast. Let's say you want to fast and do it in a good enema just to clean yourself out. Very, very dangerous to do that. What? Enemies? No, they're not. To do an enema while you're on a fast. Oh, okay. It's not a good one to punch. Okay. WebMD says what you're going to do is you're going to flush your intestinal tract of your good bacteria and put your health at serious risk. And this is the whole detoxification thing. There's one camp that says, you know, your body detoxes itself. There's no scientific evidence

that any of these cleanses do any good. Then there's another camp that says, well, if you're eating healthy, then your body's doing a great job of detoxifying itself. But most people don't eat healthy. They eat packaged processed foods. And so your body could actually use some help detoxifying. I mean, it makes a lot of sense. It's the same thing with saunas. Like, they're like, well, yeah, I mean, you might only sweat like a very small amount of toxins out of your body, but you're still sweating that amount out. How could that hurt if you're doing it properly? There's definitely two camps on this. It's very controversial. Yeah. Same with a calorie restricted diet, which I know we've talked about before. There's two camps on it. The fact of the matter

is, is neither one knows for certain whether they're right. That's true. A lot of it's just based on common sense and logic. Ketosis. If you go without eating for a couple of days, your body's going to enter a stage called ketosis. And that is what your goal is. If you do the Atkins diet, they preach ketosis. And that's what happens when your body runs out of carbs to burn for energy. So it burns fat, which sounds like a good thing. But the breath I mentioned earlier, be prepared for a really awful halitosis. Is that right? Tell me about it, Chuck. Well, it's just one of the side effects of fasting and ketosis is you're going to have rank halitosis. I don't know the science behind it, but it's true. And so carry around. If you're going to be doing that kind of thing,

just take care of your mouth a little more. Get a tongue scraper. I think probably while we're on this, we should take the time to debunk the whole idea that you should be drinking eight glasses of water a day. Debunk? Well, you should definitely drink water. It's not, it's good. It's good to drink water, but that whole eight glasses a day thing. There's people who rigidly drink eight glasses of water a day. Right. Totally arbitrary. Okay. And what the amount? Yeah. There's a guy named Tim Crowe who's a professor of nutrition at Deakin University who's kind of gone to the trouble of debunking this. Apparently back in 1945, the U.S. recommended 2.5 liters of water a day. Was it part of the war effort? I would imagine so. So this is where

this whole eight glasses came from, right? But there has also been this whole, it has to just be water idea. Right. Like it can't be coffee. It can't be salt drinks. Well, now that one guy said liquids, water and other liquids. Right. At least on WebMD. Technically, you could get it all from coax, which is, you know, it's going to have all these other side effects. But it's water, you know, one of the main ingredients in coke is water. Same with coffee, same with tea, all this other stuff. So if you're drinking water, drink water, but that whole eight glasses a day thing is apparently not true. Says that one guy? There's, well, the problem is, water intake varies by body, size, weight. It's two individuals, say eight glasses a day. Yeah, but let's put it this way. It's never

going to be bad for you. Is it? Yeah, there's, you can die of water toxicity. Well, not from eight glasses of water. No, but people have that lady who did that. That lady did that contest, drank like 12 gallons of water or something like that. I know, isn't that crazy? That wasn't that much, but there's a lot. And then I'm sorry, there's one other, there's one other problem that can develop from not eating, from fasting. When you lose minerals, not only can you hallucinate, but specifically if you have not enough potassium, copper and magnesium, you can lose electricity or electrical function in your heart. That's not good. Yeah. Well, it's also going to put a big hit on your immune system. If you're fasting, you're going to have a real hard time finding

off sickness or, and if you get sick, you're going to have a real hard time getting better. Yes. Because you're not getting the stuff you need, the good stuff. Agreed. The nutrients. So what's next, Chuck? Hunger strikes. That's really the last reason that we have for fasting. And throughout history, a lot of people have made political statements by going on very public hunger strikes to raise awareness. And it's, you know, it's a good way to get attention if you're a Gandhi. And Gandhi did do that, I think in 1945, because the crown was saying, hey, let's get this new Indian constitution underway and let's codify the caste system that keeps people in these, this horrible socioeconomic hierarchy. And Gandhi said,

you know what, you do that and I'm not going to eat and the whole world will pay attention. And the Brits were like, oh, shut up. And Gandhi was like, no, I'm going to do it. And they're like, oh, no, you're not. And he did it. And everybody paid attention. And he said, one day, Sir Richard Attenborough will make a movie about me. Is that who made Gandhi? I think so. Huh. And Ben Kingsley will play me because he looks just like me. That's cray cray. That's good stuff, Chuck. That was a great back and forth. Bobby Sands, the infamous Irish hunger strike in Ireland. And I'm sorry, in 1981, in May's prison in Northern Ireland, he fasted for 66 days. And I'm pretty sure he had some of his IRA cohorts taking part in it with them. Yeah,

I think nine other guys died, including him. Okay, 66 days. Yeah. So they had demands, various demands like, hey, we want to wear our own clothes. We want to be able to socialize and correspond with the outside world. Sure. Mail some, mail some letters here and there. We shouldn't have to do penal work as part of our sentence here. And nine prisoners died, like you said, and 60 others died in the violence that followed. I think there were some riots that happened afterward. And that was a really big deal. I think I wrote about that in my How Long Can You Go Without Food and Water article many months ago. That's where we talked about the calorie restricted diet, isn't it? I think so.

I'll have to tweet that episode. It's a good one. Agreed. Man, that seems like a gazillion years ago then. I don't even remember what was in it. I don't either. And then we mentioned the 40 hour famine, which is an annual event in Australia. And basically, people say, I'm not going to drink food or water for 40 hours, and I'm going to raise awareness. That's a really good way to raise awareness to just say, I'm not eating. Yeah. And you can't make me. And then people will try. Authorities will be like, no, we have to keep you alive because we want to keep you in prison. The logic all over the place, huh? Chirks.

The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy, number one, is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. They can do that. If they need drugs, of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops, are they just like looting?

Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jackmove or being robbed. They call civil answer for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Do you crave a good mystery? Tune in to the great detectives of old time radio podcasts featuring episodes of different detective dramas from the golden age of radio every day Monday through Saturday. The lineup of radio detectives currently includes Sam Spade, Dr. Tim Detective, Dangerous Assignment, Follow Vance,

Yours Truly Johnny Dollar and Tales of the Texas Rangers. I'm your host Adam Graham and I offer commentary and humor after each episode and also respond to your questions and feedback. Enjoy a good mystery before bed while driving or whenever you crave old school radio goodness. Listen to the great detectives of old time radio on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast. You got anything more about fasting? No. You know, be careful if you're out there. Anorexia is a real problem in the world and it can get out of hand and there was a sidebar in this article we didn't cover but we'd be remiss without mentioning that. Anorexia nervosa. That's

right. Yeah, not good. No, neither believe me. I saw a thing recently where a plus size model, did you see this? This female plus size model had her picture taken with a regular model and they were like both nude and just hugging and it looked like she was hugging a small child and I think they had and she was doing this to raise awareness that like this image that they put out with models is just A unattainable and B unsafe and I think that I can't remember the year but it was something like 20 years ago the average model was like 8% smaller and thinner than your average person and nowadays it's like 25% or 23%. Well, not only that, they alter them digitally through like Photoshop or some other photo editing suite. Yeah, to just do crazy things for them.

They don't even look right if you see what they do to them in Photoshop afterward. It's crazy. It's a great article. I wish I could remember where it was. It was going around Facebook though but I think it is a very good message to send out that Chuck from Stuff You Should Know thinks that that plus size model was uber hot and sexy. Well, good for you Chuck. She looked good man. That's how a woman should look. That was very nice of you. Not like that little frail waif waif of a lady and if you're like that naturally I'm not you know I don't want to make you feel bad about yourself but if you're starving yourself to make you look like that then some guys like a little junk in the trunk as they say. I think that's an excellent one to end

this one. Way to go Chuck. Thank you. So you have nothing more now about fasting? No, nothing more. Any other discourse? Jerry's just laughing there. He's like boy these guys are spiraling. Well if you want to know more about fasting you can type that word into the search bar at howstuffworks.com and Chuck said junk in the trunk so that brings up listener mail. So listener mail as I just said right. I'm shaking my head no. I knew that you were going to say that. South by Southwest announcement continues. Is this the generic one or the specific one? This is the generic version. Okay this is the where this is filled with deceit and trickery. Yes we are having a party on Monday March 12th in Austin Texas. Yeah. No badge required.

Let's not forget also dude we're doing an official live podcast on the day before March 11th. Yeah 3 30 p.m. Oh okay well I'm glad you remember that. What's going on March 12th? March 12th is a party we're having and at a place to be announced later downtown Austin and there will be performers, comedians, bands and some other special treats and it will be in the evening hours. Yeah it'll be a cool party. Early evening hours. Can we call it a party? It's a party. Okay it'll be a party. And you don't have to have a badge for this. You do have to have a badge for the live podcast on Sunday. You probably have to be 21 don't you think? No I think it's a restaurant as well. Yeah I think you can come in there and eat. Awesome. Or if you're 21 you can come in there

and drink your face off. Yeah bring your pocketbook. We're not buying drinks. No you can buy us drinks. Yeah here you go. Can we get to it now? Yes okay. Uh appropriately this is from an Ozzy fan that has uh to wants to raise awareness for weight loss. Weird. I don't know. Funny how that works yeah. Greetings from Down Under. I just wanted to plug a little something for the Ozzy Corner of the SYSK nation and we have a lot of Australian fans. Substantial. One of our major Ozzy broadcasters has started a new initiative called the 1 Million Kilo Challenge and the goal is to get Australians to collectively pledge to lose 1 million kilos. It's about 2.2 million pounds for you backwards folk as she calls us. Their site is www.1 and it's the number 1 millionkilochallenge.com.au

that means Australian and it gives you all the diet and exercise plans you need to shed that slab in 10 weeks starting on January 30th. Maybe I should do this. You can complete the challenge as an individual or as a team so I thought why not rally the SYSK Army. I think it would be a great way for Ozzy listeners. Ozzy listeners to interact, get healthier and dominate all the other teams. So I created a team. Conveniently name them Team SYSK. International folk always complain when we can't enter your contest. So how about we make this the official Ozzy thing. Of course you guys can still sign up if you're willing to fake an Ozzy address and get your kilos to pounds converter at the ready. I have pledged to lose 5.3 kilograms

that's 11.7 pounds that I put on last year and I'm really pumped up about it. I don't know how to get this out to the SYSK nation but I would love it if we could encourage any other Ozzy or otherwise listeners to sign up and fight the slab together and this is how you do it. Live, email us and we read it the next day. So here we are. She says PS I noticed the Colbert nation doesn't even have a team so we've already won up them again. Nice and that's in 30 days. January 30th is when it kicks off and that is number one million kilo challenge dot com dot au and throw a www in front of that and you'll be taken straight there. And is there a team page? She said she started Team SYSK so I guess it might be like Kiva where you might can enter that in a team section or something to find

out. Okay I'm going to look after this actually. All right well we'll publicize it if we can. That is live. Thanks a lot live we appreciate you going to that trouble and thanks to everybody listening. If you have a cool story that you want to tell us about it doesn't matter if it has to do with fasting or anything else we want to hear it just whatever general assignment how about that. Yeah you can find us on twitter at SYSK podcast facebook at facebook.com slash stuff you should know and you can also reach us via email at stuffpodcast at discovery.com be sure to check out our new video podcast stuff from the future join house to work staff as we explore them as promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow brought to you by the reinvented

2012 Camry it's ready are you the war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff stuff that'll piss you off the cops are they just like looting are they just like pillaging they just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed they call civil asset. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. This is teslan figaro host the straight shot no chaser on the black effect podcast network on our heart radio on my podcast will cover a number of topics politics black lifestyle racial justice and food for the soul to inspire you my guests will include everyone from gangsters pastors

politicians activists you name it they pulling up come sip this truth with me and like i always say you can either use it or lose it but i can't make it choose it subscribe now listen to straight shot no chaser with teslan figaro on the iHeart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast