[braindouche]

Oh this is interesting. This behavior is fairly common knowledge among cat people: if you have an adult cat that's being persistently hyperactive and displaying increased hunting/pouncing in a manner that's out of character for your cat, you need to take your cat to the vet for a checkup, your cat probably has dental problems and isn't eating.

What I'd like to know is why this reaction isn't more common among humans. I'm a fat person who's tried calorie restriction and all it does is make me tired and depressed. I suspect there's a good reason for that, and it has a lot to do with why I'm a fat person in the first place.

[dan00]

> What I'd like to know is why this reaction isn't more common among humans. I'm a fat person who's tried calorie restriction and all it does is make me tired and depressed. I suspect there's a good reason for that, and it has a lot to do with why I'm a fat person in the first place.

There're interesting stories about people changing their weight after a stool transplantation, without changing their diet.

The bacteria in the gut seems to have a deep impact how food is utilized, even which kind of food is preferred and how you feel eating it, but it also seems to work the other way around, that the food effects the kind of bacteria in the gut.

It makes perfect sense to work this way, on one side you prefer food you can better utilize, on the other your body is able to adapt to the available food.

So changing the bacteria eating different food should also be possible, but the change might be quite unpleasant, you certainly won't feel that well, it might take some time and you need quite a bit of will power to get through.

[JamesBarney]

Unfortunately the studies on stool transplants didn't replicate.

[elliekelly]

There's a great book about this called "The Diet Myth" by Tim Specter. IIRC he's a Professor of Genetics and specialized in twin studies and sort of stumbled into researching gut bacteria because he was fascinated by identical twins were one was obese and other was a healthy weight. It's mindblowing how little we know and understand about such an important topic.

Edit: If you're interested, this talk[1] he gave at the Boston Science Museum is what made me read his book.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEAdtGa549I

[Asooka]

Calorie restriction is different to starvation (at least as usually used). When I'm actually starving, I do feel strangely energetic. Your body takes time to switch into starvation mode and during that time you do feel lethargic. IIRC it takes about 6-8 hours of not eating to enter starvation mode.

[narag]

When I'm actually starving, I do feel strangely energetic.

You get the same effect without starving, just restricting carbs:

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

[phonypc]

This is a very strange way of using the word starvation. You're more closely describing ketosis, but even that tends to take quite a bit longer than 6-8 hours to be significant.

[gowld]

If you feed your cat, shouldn't it be obvious how much of it's food it is eating? Unless it's hiding the food somewhere.