going way over maintenance... 10000kcal weekend

Tobeperfect35
Tobeperfect35 Posts: 11 Member
in Goal: Maintaining Weight
hi all,

i am fairly new to the community;-:)
i lost 25lbs since beginning of the year and reached 110lbs at the begining of july following healthy low carb but not extra low, med protein med fat; so i was maintaining that and then in september got colder and juts stressed out at work - ling hours etc and started eating above my maintenance randomly- talking 3000kcals etc but made up mostly of nuts so no junk; so ended up between 110-115 averaging at 112lbs which am happy with; but this weekend i felt am getting a flu so on friday i was so hungry i ate many carbs not like chocolates but cereal bars and just craved oaty bready stuff mostly, that added up to 3000kcals and yesterday i had below 2000kcal but very high carb and today i weighted myself i was 117lbs...then again i feel under the weather and all i craved was fruit, smoothie and yogurt and cereals and 2 crossaints, so today i ate between 4000-5000kcals because the portions were big... and carb content is 600gram haha.
i stopped counitng my calories a month ago but today just typed all the food because i was curious..., so it wasnt like a binge because i genuinely feel ill and now finally i dont feel hunger, but how is that gonna affect my weight? i dont remember consuming such amount of carbs in ling time. any carb cycles out there? any experience? thanks-:)

Replies

  • Tobeperfect35
    Tobeperfect35 Posts: 11 Member
    i am 5'4 btw
  • siluridae
    siluridae Posts: 188 Member
    edited October 2015
    Carbs don't matter. What matters is calories and yes, if you eat in surplus, you will gain weight.
    A pound is about 3500 calories, so you'll gain about 3 pounds of fat.

    Edit: Wait, you did not eat 10k surplus calories, but maintenance calories and excess add up to 10k calories.
    No way to know how much fat you gained then. Look up how much surplus calories you had and then apply the 3500 calories per pound of fat thing.
  • MissJay75
    MissJay75 Posts: 768 Member
    Siluridae is right. If I am reading you right, you ate 10,000 calories between Fri, Sat, and Sunday. I am going to guess you maintain at around 1700 calories, this may be slightly off, but close enough for you to see how this works. To not gain weight you would eat 1700 on each day Friday, Saturday, and Sunday for a total of 5100 calories. You ate around 10,000 so a surplus of around 4900 calories. Since 3500 calories equals a pound, you probably ate enough to gain a pound and a half this weekend. If your scale says more than that, the rest is your body temporarily retaining water from all the extra carbs & sodium.

    To help undo this, you must over the next few weeks, eat a couple hundred calories less each day until you have eaten under by a total of 4900 calories. For example, eating 1500 calories every day for 24 days. I recommend logging for a while even though you hit maintenance so you can make sure not to accidentally overeat too often.
  • kyrannosaurus
    kyrannosaurus Posts: 350 Member
    These things happen. Tracking the weekend was definitely a good idea for accountability and having the data to understand any weight gain associated with it. In a couple of weeks this will hardly matter.
  • andyluvv
    andyluvv Posts: 281 Member
    My advice? You were hungry, skip those days and move on. The important thing is consistency and breaking from a diet every now and again is good to make you go back to it refreshed. You won't stick to a diet you don't enjoy, so having a breather every now and again is a positive thing to do.
    Just like you, I had a really bad cold recently and didnt' log for two days - which I have over consumed by a massive amount - I didn't even have the courage to track it.

    I think that happens when your body has been going through diets for a very long period of time AND it ends up trying to fight the restriction - I'm not obsessive over it but I do tend to not manage to eat all my calories most days. And that's part of being human - I think my objective now is to try and use MFP as support rather than a rule. I'd like to manage my intake by how hungry I feel rather than what the app tells me to eat - like most of the people I know do. Just try and go back to eating healthy, It'll be a lot easier now that you've given yourself a bit of room to enjoy things you missed :)

    Good luck x

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