I was doing some research for my bio class and I just got to wondering how the body processes things. One example the book gave was someone eating 500 calories extra over a week leading to weight gain but I thought what if they ate a lot in one sitting! For example, does eating 2000 extra calories one day (2000 over what you burn) cause you to gain more or less (or same) weight as if you overate 500 calories for four days in a row?
I hope this gets an answer (with sources) as I am very interested as well. Curious to see if there is some sort of limit to nutrient/calorie absorption to where there is some sort of limit, but it’s high enough for us to ignore.
In my experience , my personal body, I experience less/none/minimal weight impact from one day of overeating , but a week or two of slightly over eating will make me gain weight. Every body is different. It depends on what you over eat too. Over spiking insulin on sugar and junk repeatedly every day makes your body react different than one big sitting , one day. I think? I’m not a doctor
Calories timings doesn’t seems to matter thru the day, for weight evolution, tho the glycemic charge, the way nutriments gets absorbed and ofc your overall energy should I guess vary, atsome point. Schedule is different from country to country, individuals from individuals…
One meal a day dieters stupid proof their eating.
Eating multiple meals gives you multiple opportunities to over eat. One meal a day fixes this.
eating multiple meals might convince you you can snack vs a strict “I’m only eating once a day” gives you a hard line not to cross.
So yeah, people will lose weight. Is it healthy or sustainable? I question that.
What’s healthy and sustainable? Weightlifting to build muscle. Muscle demands calories so it actually boosts your metabolism allowing you to:
eat like a normal person bc now you have a metabolism that will actually burn the calories you eat
dieting will actually be effective and you won’t have to cut as many calories to see changes.
Dieting without building muscle will just teach your body to do less with less and thats when you get people eating 1000 calories a day, constantly exhausted and not losing weight.
Or, someone loses a bunch of weight and they can’t go live a normal dietary life bc they’ll just gain it back since they don’t have enough muscle to support a normal dietary life.
For me if I eat a bunch of junk in one day, usually a bunch of junk food at once, later on that day and the following day I am going number 2 a lot and they volume coming out is absurd. I think my body just had too much food at once, can’t process it all and eliminates a good chuck due to malabsorption.
It’s always calories in vs calories out. Proof? Look at all of the bodybuilders and fitness pros out there. Every single one of them will tell you something different. Some people eat all day long. Some people eat in a 2 hour window and fast the rest of the day.
Look at the guy who only ate twinkies and vitamin supplements. He counted his calories and he lost fat over the month or 2 month period (whatever it was).
When we have excess calories, our bodies store it as fat. When we’re at a deficit, our bodies use fat for energy (simplified version).
Eating a lot in one sitting will probably lead to less just due to the extra calories burned when trying to digest bigger meals plus there are theories there’s a cap on how many calories one can digest in a certain amount of time, meaning there’s likely calories slipping through your digestive track and out without actually being digested
People vary greatly, and it is difficult to tease apart what questions you are really asking - are we dealing with hyperpalatable foods? Is the person metabolically flexible, staying in ketosis, stressed physically or mentally? How are they approaching eating; why are they eating it all at once.
A study said one-meal-a-day is better for blood sugar control. As you get older, one meal every two days might be worth trying. But for the example you give it is about identical. Those are pretty innocuous amounts; Olympians will do 12k kCal days, to give a deep end.
I lump a large majority of my eating into two weekend days lately, and I’ve been finding it useful in losing a last few pounds
There is a myth that “Sleep after eating will gain weight.”
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So that myth suggested that we should all do “Sleep after eating” and we can eat less resource(food) and avoid famine.
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google “Law of conservation of energy”
“The law of conservation of energy states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed - only converted from one form of energy to another. This means that a system always has the same amount of energy, unless it’s added from the outside.”
it probably doesn’t make a practical difference. unless the extra 2000 calories is in a single meal and it’s all protein (and even then) you could easily absorb that surplus over a day and then it wouldn’t matter if you had it in a single day or over more.
perhaps it would make a difference if you ate 10,000 extra that day, there might be digestive issues that impair the full absorption of those calories.
It’s all about total calories over time. That time is hourly, daily, weekly, monthly , and yearly. Over eat with excess calories you gain weight. It doesn’t matter in the end when you ate it or in what increments. In your example above it’s the same results.
This may be something that differs from individual to individual. There is a way to measure it using doubly labeled water. However, this is pretty expensive. I do not think anyone has done a study on what you want to know.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK233774/
They initially did studies with smaller animals and worked up to primates and humans and humans are different from all other species they tested IIRC.The pop science book Burn covers this pretty well.https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/07/16/1016931725/study-of-hunter-gatherer-lifestyle-shows-why-crash-weight-loss-programs-dont-wor
I think for some people it wouldn’t make a difference and for others, spreading the calories across several days would lead to less weight gain. My reasoning is that some people will naturally increase their NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis) when they increase their calorie intake. So they eat more and then unconciously they move more by standing, fidgeting, changing positions while sitting, etc. which increases the person’s TDEE. But there’s a point of diminishing return. Increasing one’s calorie intake by 2000 isn’t going to increase that person’s NEAT for that day, much more than increasing it by 500 calories. Taking in the 2000 calories all at once means an increase of NEAT on only one day. But spreading the calories across 4 days means increases calorie burn for all 4 days. This only applies for those people who naturally increase their NEAT in response to increased calorie consumption. For those that don’t it likely won’t make a difference.
Im sure there’s studies on your title, but how often you eat is irrelevant if total calories are the same. Let’s say you maintain your weight at 2k cals per day. 2k times 7 days is 14k calories. One day you could eat 4K calories and the next about the same or less or more, but if you’re at 14k calories at the end of the week still, you’ll still maintain your weight. Same goes for weight loss or whatever your goal is.
Look up Layne Norton. He talks about actual studies and may even touch on your exact question in his last nutritional book.
If you’re talking about a theoretical clinical study where all other factors besides the distribution of excess calories were controlled, my guess is that there would be a negligible difference in actual weight gain.
A bigger meal might result in an increased heart rate which would result in more calories burned. But say you were overeating by 166.66 per meal for 4 days a week, I wonder if you might still experience an increase in heart rate proportional to if you ate one 3000-4000 valley meal one day out of the week.
Conversely, say you normally ate 2000 calories a day and were adding an extra 500 a day for 4 days, you could divide that into five 500cal meals a day, which would be quite small, therefore heart rate and blood pressure might be less affected, therefore weight gain might be neglibly higher.
It you were to factor in actual behavioural patterns impacted by how you eat, I would think the difference in weight gain would be much more significant.
Another question! For some odd reason I can’t eat a big meal in the morning but all my lunches and dinners I can eat like it’s nobody’s business. Is this worse off the eating mighty balanced meals all day?