99 Kilos and 10 Days of Fasting: Why the Scale Won't Budge

99 Kilos, 172 Centimeters, and Ten Days of Fasting: The Scale Isn't Moving

A man, 172 centimeters tall, weighs 99 kilos and has been on a strict ten-day fast. He claims to eat almost the same as his partner—who weighs around 60 kilos—avoids pastries, pizza, and burgers, and does dumbbell exercises three times a week. The scale shows no change. His story has gathered 283 replies over nearly four years and is one of the longest and most heated discussions about why we gain weight and, above all, why we don't lose it.

The first thing to establish is that there's no medical mystery waiting to be solved here. It's arithmetic.

Why Eating Healthy Doesn't Prevent Weight Gain

Healthy and little are not synonyms, and that's where the misunderstanding begins. A calculation repeated throughout the discussion makes it clear: 100 grams of carbohydrates are around 500 calories, and a plate of pasta easily reaches 1,000. Legumes, rice, potatoes, and bread are decent foods and add up just the same. The example of imbalance used is explicit: if maintenance is 2,000 calories, 2,001 calories lead to weight gain, and 1,999 lead to weight loss.

The argument sharpens when someone points out that those who have cut out pastries believe they've already done the work and are still eating more than they burn. Oil, by the way, deceives anyone. This is the part of the analysis that generates the least discussion and that almost no one wants to hear.

Why Ten Days of Fasting Don't Move the Scale?

Because ten days is nothing. The most repeated answer sounds like a scolding: it takes ten weeks, not ten days. Muscle weighs more than fat, and weight takes time to reflect what's already changing internally. The cases accumulating at the end point in the same direction: six kilos in a month by skipping dinner, eight kilos by walking an hour daily, nine kilos by eating dinner before 6:00 PM. None of these results came in two weeks.

The nuance matters and is worth repeating: these are individual accounts, without clinical verification. They serve as an indication, not proof.

The Macronutrient War: Ketosis vs. Calorie Counting

This is where opinions divide. One group argues that carbohydrates are the enemy and trinc the paco recipe (a restrictive diet): less than 60 grams of carbohydrates per day, a single meal—known as OMAD—ketogenic, intermittent fasting, and, at the extreme, the Dukan diet. The other half responds with disdain: counting calories by eye, without a kitchen scale, is the brother-in-law method, and those who swear they eat little while gaining weight are almost always mistaken in good faith.

The distrust is mutual and quite reasonable. The first group says the body defends itself against a deficit and retains water; the second group says the body doesn't create fat out of thin air. There's also a hushed suspicion of hormonal issues—thyroid, pancreas, insulin resistance—which no one can confirm without tests.

The Day the Discussion Went Wild

And that's not just a figure of speech. In the middle of the exchange, someone brings up lions that don't eat breakfast donuts, another replies that a lion eats once or twice a week and that we are not lions, and a third person jumps in to discuss the dentition of ruminants, the human appendix, and the biological sense of expending energy just because. The discussion becomes absurd and, yet, productive: underlying it all is the question of whether moving without a reason is a natural behavior or a recent invention.

Alcohol sneaks in as a forgotten variable. A week without drinking means two or three kilos less; three beers or a bottle of wine can add over a kilo the next day, along with the food they encourage. And hovering over all of this is the forbidden word: willpower.

With this material, the most honest prediction is that there will be no agreement. The scale will continue to rule, the discussion will remain just as heated almost four years later, and the only thing beyond doubt is the obvious: ten days are not enough to know anything.