How much fat can you accumulate in your body after one day of overeating?
How much fat can you accumulate in your body after one day of overeating? How about Christmas or another holiday?
To stimulate excessive calorie intake, the researchers fed 16 men 50% more calories than they needed to maintain their weight (they ate 1,400 extra calories). After two weeks of haleala in this way they gained 1.36 kg of fat. That means almost 700 g of fat per week, or 70 g per day.
This study was not a perfect representation of a holiday you indulge in! Many of us overeat 1-2-3 days but not weeks in a row. But the data can be used to extrapolate how much you can gain in a day or two from overeating.
In this case, it was 90 grams of fat per day, at an excess of 1,400 calories per day.
The results are bolstered by another study from the Pennington Biomedical Research Center. In this study, 29 slightly overweight men ate 40% more calories than they needed to maintain their weight for 8 weeks. It accumulates a surplus of 1200-1500 calories per day. In the end, they gained 4 kg of fat, or about 500 g per week, 72 g per day.
Even though they ate a lot of calories every day for a long time, the fattening was about the same as in the study cited earlier.
There was also a study that strictly analyzed the effects of excess caloric intake in a single day. They took 15 women and men, physically active and with normal body weight, who ate 78% more calories than they needed in one day. It reached 6000 calories a day, instead of the 3350 they needed (it's an average). The diets were very high in fat.
No fat percentage was measured, only weight. The outcome? On average, participants weighed 0.8 kg. It is considerably more than the other two studies, but most of the weight gained was not fat. And even if it was just fat, it still wouldn't be catastrophic given how much they ate.
Not all the accumulated weight is accumulated fat
You may think that the results of these studies do not come with your own calculations. Why do you weigh 3-5 kg after the holidays? The answer is more or less 4 things: sodium, carbohydrates, water and the weight of the stool.
High consumption of sodium, carbohydrates and water leads to a sharp increase in body weight but not a significant increase in fat! And when you eat a lot of food, you inevitably consume a lot of sodium and carbohydrates, compared to normal.
Sodium and carbohydrates increase body weight by retaining water and fluids in the body. You've probably noticed that after a large meal consisting of pizza, french fries, burgers, etc., you retain more water. A single meal rich in sodium can increase your weight by water retention by 1-2 kg.
This leads to an increase in weight on the scales for a few days, until the body gets rid of excess water.
Carbohydrates can have the same effect. These are stored in the muscles in the form of glycogen, and each gram of glycogen retains 3-4 grams of water. This means that 400 g of carbohydrates can lead to the retention of 1200-1600 grams of water. Together, consuming excess sodium, carbohydrates and water can increase your weight by a few pounds overnight.
The good news is that the body will gradually get rid of excess water and carbohydrates, but until then the weight on the scales remains higher.
Another reason for a high weight is the amount of feces in you. Until the body digests and eliminates excess food, you will actually carry a few hundred good grams, maybe even over a kilogram. After a few trips to the toilet, the weight will drop significantly.
The moral is that of all the kilograms retained, only a small part is fat. And if you eat 3,000 calories above the maintenance levels, you accumulate a maximum of 200 g of fat. The problem is if you do this for more than 1-2 days. If you continue to eat excessively for a long time, you will end up gaining weight!
The average weight gain on Christmas or other similar holidays is 500 g. Such weight gain can be corrected in a week of low-calorie diet and exercise. So it's not the end of the world. Enjoy the holidays, but limit yourself only to Christmas Day and its surroundings and do not look for excuses to eat weeks in excess of calories!
05.01.2022