eric1407

How many calories would be stored if a 130 lbs person consumed 6,000 or more cal in a one single day one time a month ?
This question irked me a lot, because I remember I have eaten more that 6000 cal during some special parties and events.
But I didn't gained weight, which may mean that the body does not store the food it takes at one time, may be it has an intake limit and it throws anything that exceeds its capacity.
Suppose the limit is 3000 cal, thus eating 3000 cal in one single day is like eating 6000 cal

Since 3000 and 6000 would have the same damaging effect on my BMI i would prefer to consume 6000 instead of 3000.

Misery16226

The body does not "throw out" food the way you seem to be implying. If the body threw out your food, you'd vomit, or poop it out the same as when it came in! Though lets say that with that persons lifestyle they are not active and don't eat 6000 calories all the time. If they have an average metabolism they probably will burn about 2000-3000 calories a day doing almost nothing. So that is probably the minimum amount they will be burning if they do more activity, they burn more calories. So even if they burned only 2500 calories that day, they would have 3500 calories left over in their bodies. That would equal 1 pound of fat BUT our body doesn't turn excess calories into fat right away. If that person ate lighter the next day, they body would start using those extra 3500 from the day before. So really you probably burn that extra calories throughout the week if eating normally for the other days. So yea you could eat 6000 calories once every month or so and probably not notice any weight gain. Probably won't lose weight either though.

P.S I can't imagine how you could eat 6000 calories in 1 day. That is like 4-6 days of food for me and most people. Think about that next time you feel like eating 6000 calories.. You are consuming almost a week worth of food. :/ That can't be healthy whether you gain weight from it or not.

mecompco

I agree that once a month would be fine. I CAN see (and often have done so myself, in the past) easily consuming 6K cals in a day. One day at camp last month I had 4K in one day (a lot of it beer) and I was really restraining myself.

I would, though, make sure to limit that to once a month, if you're trying to lose weight.

Regards,
Michael

eric1407

Thank you Misery16226 and mecompco !
I was just wondering if there is a scientific answer to the question, if someone ate 6000 cal in one single day , would he or she gain a pound of fat knowing that the surplus is more than 3500 in that single day.?
I would like to be a volunteer and conduct this experiment on myself just to quench my curiosity.
I personally think that human body must have a limit regarding its willingness to transform whatever calorie amount it receives into fat.
By the way mecompo ! Your results are astounding ! Do you have any blog or testimony to read more about your fat loss and methods ?
Thank you !

mecompco

Eric, I don't know of any scientific study like that--it is interesting, though. I do know that the "math" doesn't always add up when losing weight, so it stands to reason that it might not when (potentially) gaining weight. I'm sure there is some "overhead" involved in the storage of fat so that the excess calories probably aren't all available for storage in the fat cells.

I would, though, expect to see a fairly large gain in weight after such a day, simply due to fluid retention. How would one seperate that from actual fat gain w/o very sensative instruments (if they exist)? I would also expect that gain to vanish within a day or two of "normal" eating.

As to my weight loss methods and journey, it's all spread out on the forums here. I don't have any great secret--just tracking my 1500-1600 cals a day here on FitDay, doing some form of exercise daily and drinking lots of water. I do try to keep, on average, a 40/30/30 carb/protein/fat mix but don't panic if it's off a bit.

Oh, and I do plan for a "day off" every month where I feel free to eat/drink more than normal (though I still log everything). In a nutshell, that's it.

Regards,
Michael

HankG

I agree I don't think you'd gain one pound in one day. You are talking biological systems here. They have to become acclimated to processing things at varying rates. I think that a system used to processing 1800-2000 calories a day would become overwhelmed far before 6000 calories a day. How much overwhelmed? You can tell by how much waste comes out the other end really. It will process far more than the average 2000 though. Using myself as a guinnea pig, you can see my calories can fluctuate radically, but my system processes on the order of 2700 calories a day. Tracking over long periods of time, if I have a 5000 calorie day, most of that gets processed. I say that because doing the total accumulated net calorie gain or deficit over that period tracks very well with my change in weight and percent body fat. You could probably count on at least doubling your total calorie intake before you'd have to worry about lack of absorption from that much overeating.

eric1407

I think they are some sensitive instruments to evaluate weight gain since modern machines can evaluate body fat percentage but this experiment would cost money.

I I weren't battling my fatty tummy presently, I would conduct this experiment on myself.
Though I remember in the past I have never gained weight after one or two feasting days, but i did notice how fast and strong the alcohol effect on my belly.
After one night of beer binging I can feel literally my belly swollen up in very noticeable manner.

eric1407

The human body is complex, I don't think it follows any arithmetic logic when processing food, I have fasted one time more than 33 hours or so, with nothing but water, and yet my body weight didn't show any changes after a week, fasting 33hours should be like an earthquake in my body memory, but there was no one single trace of that earthquake on my body weight data.

HankG

It's not a question of arithmetic but just a particular organ's ability to function differently. It happens for all other organs (within bounds) as they become conditioned to whatever regular conditions they are placed in. I don't think there is one particular dividing line but just saying that in general if your system is used to taking in 1500-1600 calories, which the average sedentary woman would be doing, and suddenly try to force through that same system over 3x that many there is a good probability that many of that food is going to get pushed through undigested, assuming it goes down in the first place.

You can't look at weight fluctuations over a one or two day period and try to track meaningful fat loss/gain over that period. Deviations from day to day based on how much is in your digestive system, levels of water retention, et cetera can create multi-pound weight swings. I know they do for me anyway. If you are tracking all your calories and activities rigorously over a longer period of time, let's say 1 month, and look at the variation in your weight and body composition to see what the total fat and lean muscle mass loss are you should be able to get to get pretty close, including with a 33 hour fast in there.

taubele

Trying to apply hard-and-fast math to a biological system is like trying to catch a fly with chopsticks - unless you're magic like Mr. Miyagi, it's probably not going to work all that often.

There's a reason that scientists work with large data pools, averages, population statistics, and bell curves, for example. Hank is right on when he mentioned "biological systems" and is talking about how slow and varied the process really is - while all of us have bodies that work pretty much in the same way, there are slight differences within each individual that are going to skew results one way or another. That's why lots of people are needed for study, and why studies are performed over and over and over again to get what we would call "reliable" averages and data. There are individual differences, for example, between myself and Michael, or Michael and Misery, or Misery and Hank that make them all unique systems. Fauna in the digestive tract, eating habits, macros, competency of the digestive system, steroid hormones, past and present medications, etc. that are going to make bodies work differently.

Personally, I've had my weight fluctuate 6 lbs. in a single day. This could be due to many factors - time of day, circadean rhythms of the gut, fluid retention, my hormonal milieu, stress, etc. It certainly didn't mean that I suddenly consumed over dropped 18,000 kcal. (At least, I don't think so, unless I was knocked unconscious and had a lot of food forced down my gullet!)

To answer your original question, you would need plenty of scientific equipment if you really wanted a hard and fast answer, such as a metabolic "cage" (this is an apparatus that is capable of storing and calculating all of your excretions, including sweat, feces, urine, sloughed-off skin, etc.) and they would probably do it over several days.

If you're sincerely interested in digestive/metabolic literature, try scanning PubMed home --> this is the NIH index of most types of scientific study, organized by keywords. You can search it like you can any search engine. You'll be able to read the "abstracts" (summaries) of any article there, though to read the entire article you'd need a subscription to a journal. Universities and Libraries often have subscriptions, so if you can access pubmed.com through their internet connections, you'll probably be able to get to most of the full article texts.

~Terri