I haven't seen her on the forum in a looong time. You might try to PM her.

You asked about burning muscle spiking insulin, frankly I don't know but my guess is that would be really anti-evolutionary. The body destroying protein to create excess glucose, which requires excess insulin, seems like a ticket to really quick death for people who were starving or not getting quite enough protein as it would quickly eat away at important muscles, like the heart.

If that did happen, those people would've died off and not bred, hopefully. (Sorry not-quite ancestors!) Since you can live easily 30-60 days without food the body would need to be REALLY sparing about burning muscles and hopefully wouldn't go ripping up muscle to make extra energy it didn't need, just to release insulin and store it as fat.

My guess is that the reason we get really weak when fasting is because the body is trying to last as long as possible and probably keeps the blood sugar pretty low.