The Ejaculation Diet
People are always sending me ideas for the Skeptoid podcast. One that I got this week was too good to pass up: the ejaculation diet.
Yes, that’s right.
Superficially, it might make some sense. When you’re dieting, or especially when you’re fasting, your body tends to slow down its metabolism to reduce the consumption of resources. This keeps you alive longer than if you continued burning your energy stores at the normal rate. So, in effect, your body has a built-in mechanism to defend against your diet. How, then, does one get rid of those energy stores that the body is trying so hard to keep?
Ejaculate it out, of course.
Your body’s normal secretions, sweat, #1, and #2, are not naturally high in fats and sugars, which are the things you want to get rid of by dieting. Fortunately, one particular secretion is: semen.
One of the main ingredients of semen is fructose, a monosaccharide that’s found throughout your body. Extra fructose is stored in your fat cells, and most of us have more of that than we wish we did. The gonads manufacture this by drawing the needed ingredients from the blood. The blood then replenishes itself from whatever you eat. But, if you’re not eating enough, your blood will go elsewhere for that fructose: the fat cells. Ejaculate a few times a day, and don’t eat any sugar, and you will indeed force your body to draw directly from its fat.
Beats a day at the gym, doesn’t it?
Is this indeed the super-optimal path to weight loss? This isn’t really my line, so I wouldn’t make any such assertion. I do know that semen is also high in protein, and when your body is low on incoming food, muscle is the source from where your body will draw most of the proteins in semen. So, while I suspect that the ejaculation diet truly is a pretty powerful draw on your body’s resources, I’m not convinced that fat cells would be targeted more than other stores. I’m also not convinced that the average guy can muster enough frequent output to match what would normally be metabolized by a decent exercise schedule. Maybe it would, I just don’t know. I invite anyone with any special… um, expertise in this… to give this question their best shot.
(For those interested in how women might benefit from this, I invite adventurous readers to follow up on their own: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_ejaculation)
Citation/evidence for “semen is also high in protein”?
I have to do your Wikipedia-ing for you?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semen#Composition_of_human_semen
I don’t think citation is needed, most people are aware that semen is high in protein
Doesn’t seem high in protein to me. Relative to other foods it is rather low on protein.
Relative to OTHER foods? Remind me never to come to your house for caviar.
I think it is high in protein relative to other bodily secretions, not necessarily relative to other foods.
I think it would be better to have a diet buddy in this scenario.
prefferably someone who is interested in weight gain, if you catch the metaphore, albeit crude!
Reading the research, I do not understand why scientists have such a hard time collecting and analyzing female ejaculate to determine once and for all if it is urine or not.
And it is not, by the way.
“Reading the research, I do not understand why scientists have such a hard time collecting and analyzing female ejaculate to determine once and for all if it is urine or not. ”
Have they tried a little foreplay first? Maybe placing some scented candles beforehand would work.
Depending upon frequency and the vigor with which each event is applied, one might need to add the benefits of aerobic cardio aspects of such a weight loss program to the benefits to both participants (ie. diet “buddy”).
Is it crass to suggest that not only should one have someone to help, but it should be someone who needs to gain some weight?
An obese young fellow named Jack,
Thought to give this new diet a whack.
Though they said “You can’t beat it”,
It left him depleted.
Now he spends most his day in the sack.
If you do it right it WOULD be a decent exercise schedule.
I can attest that when I was much younger and able to expend much more ejaculate, I was much slimmer that I am today (53). Can that correlation be considered causation.
“…I was much slimmer that I am today (53).” Is that pounds, kilos,or stones? ;-)
Sounds like a plot by Big Pharma(tm) to market ED pills as a diet pills! Can you picture the advertising? An attractive middle-aged woman looks sincerely at the camera and says, “Now that he’s slimmed down on the Vi@gra Plan, I want him even more… and the Vi@gra works for that too!” And their sailboat heads for the sunset…
Yeah, I had to spell it that way to get by the spam filter.
Now you know how the spammers feel.
It made me feel… dirty…. and ashamed…
About 2 calories are lost in the semen.
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/46/how-many-calories-are-in-the-average-male-ejaculation
This misses the point. The numbers you’re giving refer to its value if you were to consume it as food — which is something that can be discussed among yourselves, if so inclined. :-)
What we’re talking about here is completely unrelated. This “diet” means taking those sugars out of your body, from fat storage where your body has already stored them, and disposing of them.
Two completely different questions.
Right, it removes about 2 calories of sugar and protein from your body. If someone consumes it as food, she’ll consume about 2 calories.
Isn’t there some additional energy expended in the “TAKING those sugars out of your body, from fat storage”
part of the process?
Yeah, but now you’re missing the point. We’re talking about removing sugars without burning them.
I’m not even sure that the sugars would be removed from the fat cells any faster on this “diet”.
I’ll try once more. This is about the physical volume and mass of the sugars being removed, translating (perhaps) directly to that much weight loss. Calories has nothing to do with it.
Sugar is 4 calories per gram, so 2 calories is half a gram.
If this really was effective, you’d be seeing an awful lot of malnourished teenage boys.
Of course, you could combine this other fad diets.
How about the Choking the Chicken Soup Diet?
“I invite anyone with any special… um, expertise in this… to give this question their best shot.”
Their best shot? No, you didn’t!
Ahem, I have to admit when I read your headline, this is not where I thought this was “heading”…
Also, I think the “experts” say that an orgasm burns off a big whopping 8 calories. Not much of a diet plan there either. Sigh.
This is also the wrong question. The “diet” as described is not talking about exercise from the physical exertion of ejaculation. It’s talking about the sugars removed from your fat cells.
This wasn’t a question. It was just a comment in the same vein. I wasn’t comparing them apples to apples. I was just saying…and I agree that a few people have missed the point. It isn’t taking 2 or 4 calories to expend the semen, it is pulling the stored energy out of the body. Though, like some have wisely pointed out, if this was the case, teenage boys would be a whole lot skinnier.
Side effects of the diet may include chafing and and asymmetrically developed forelimbs.
A whacking diet – what a whacky idea. Oh well, as folks say, it’s an idea whose time has cum.
I thought that the semen stored in your body if not ”used” properly, it gets disposed. Either by wet dreams, or urination. I am not sure if ”manual” disposal make the body to produce significantly more. I’ll ask a friend doctor of mine…
“Ejaculate it out, of course. Continue reading…”
You know…I hesitated.
I think the most important question here is whether/how much the frequency of ejaculation influences the rate of semen production. If semen is produced at a fairly constant rate (which it seems to be), then the question of its composition is irrelevant.
The main vein of this piece seems to be a limp assertion. Are you sure this article wasn’t copied and pasted from Whackapedia? I’ll be a slapped monkey’s uncle if Brian didn’t just blow a load of phooey in our general direction, I feel obliged to pull the pud on this piece of journalism. Of course, what is the logical next step after ejaculation? Retraction.
For women, there’s the lactation diet. Simply have a baby, and start removing those fats from your body in high-fat breast milk.
Now, I’m gonna feel the need to keep a towel handy every time I listen to Skeptoid…
And there’s a joke in there somewhere about “Lip” O-Suction for weight loss… but I can’t, I just can’t…
“Ejaculate a few times a day, and don’t eat any sugar, and you will indeed force your body to draw directly from its fat.”
Just by stopping eating sugar would be enough to lose weight. And the amount of sugar/protein lost through semen, given the small quantity, produced. It’s hard to imagine that the production of new semen would use significant energy.
I also vaguely remember reading somewhere that excessive sexual activity could excessively tax the immune system but have no idea where it has a scientific foundation – has anyone heard this before?
I can help but extrapolate from peoples suggestion regarding a “exercise buddy”. Why not go the whole hog and have classes in it. It could be the next thing after zumba – lol.
so many jokes, so little time — this is a pretty funny set of comments.
i have to say, upon reading the initial title, i thought the diet was going to be something one would have to ingest.
I just want to complain that sex education ruined the word ejaculate. It used to be useful for sentences like this:
“I’m not the murderer!” the colonel ejaculated.
But now everybody would assume the colonel was coming to conclusions.
Would that be Colonel Lingus? (Yeah. Sorry.)
Speaking as a nursing mother who is putting out over a quart of *other* bodily fluids also high in sugars and fats every day (I’m talking about milk, you perverts), it is a fabulous diet plan. But one that you men have NO HOPE of ever matching. (If you can, um… I’m scared).
My husband is jealous. He wishes *he* could eat cookies and ice cream every day and burn 600 calories without moving a muscle. Good deal all around.
This sounds like a hard diet.
Ahem.
A bang AND a whimper, eh Doc?
The entire male population of the world is an existing test group. The results are negative…..
What to do with all that ejaculate
<http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/nattural-harvest—a-collection-of-semen-based-recipes/5198959
Do you know what sugar is? 100% of the carbohydrate you eat is converted to sugar in your intestines. It is an infantile belief that sugar is bad but fruit and vegetables are good. What do you think fruit and vegetables are? Eat a good varied diet, don’t self limit your diet, avoid fad diets and you will get all the vitamins and minerals you need.
It is an infantile belief that fruits and vegetables are nothing but carbs, and that all carbs are equal.
Read up on fiber, vitamins, antioxidants, and glycemic index.
Cums in 31 flavors.
Sorry.