What to do after a binge day

raegan724

Hi,

I’m 19, a 5’2, 104 lb female. I have been working out 4 days a week, getting around 7-10k steps a day and eating 1700 calories and I’ve been really happy with how I look/feel.

However yesterday I’m not sure what came over me and I probably about 6000 calories. Suddenly my ab lines are gone and I just feel like crap.

I’m not sure what to do. I’m scared if I go back to just “eating like normal” like everyone says that I’ll store any of the extra weight I gained. 1700 is my maintenance. Should I diet for the rest of the week or should I really just go back to the habits I had before?

Lietchi

Don't diet, just give it a few days, at least, for your body to process what you ate.
Your ab lines being gone is water retention from the extra carbs and/or sodium.

In theory, you ate enough to gain 1.2lbs of fat, but considering the short time period within which you ate the food, you probably didn't absorb all of it. The body can also 'rev up' after a high calorie intake (more energy for workout etc).

I would give it a week to see what the 'damage' is, it's too soon to tell now.

sollyn23l2

Just go back to normal. It's really concerning to me that, at 104 lbs, and especially at your age, you're this worried about one day of overeating. Think about it this way.... 1 pound of fat requires around 3500 calories. You didn't even overeat by 3500 calories, so at most you MAY have put on one pound of fat, which, at 104 lbs, your body most likely needed. This is nothing.

AnnPT77

raegan724 wrote: »

Hi,

I’m 19, a 5’2, 104 lb female. I have been working out 4 days a week, getting around 7-10k steps a day and eating 1700 calories and I’ve been really happy with how I look/feel.

However yesterday I’m not sure what came over me and I probably about 6000 calories. Suddenly my ab lines are gone and I just feel like crap.

I’m not sure what to do. I’m scared if I go back to just “eating like normal” like everyone says that I’ll store any of the extra weight I gained. 1700 is my maintenance. Should I diet for the rest of the week or should I really just go back to the habits I had before?

My advice would be to go back to your regular healthy routine for at least a week . . . maybe more depending on what water weight fluctuations you normally see at your current point in your menstrual cycle.

Almost certainly, much of what you're seeing is water retention, not fat regain. *At least* give it time to see what happens when that drops off, because for sure some of it's water. I'd bet the impact will be less than you think right now. It may take a week, it may take 2 weeks, but if you've hit your cycle at a particular point, you might need to hang in there until the same relative point in your next cycle, in order to be sure.

Over-reacting now is a really bad plan, IMO. Letting yourself panic and "make up for" an over-goal day, without knowing what the effect on bodyfat truly was, is a slippery slope to psychologically bad places. Try to be clinical and analytical about this, instead. It's a science-fair experiment.

If you haven't read this article, it may provide some reassurance:

https://physiqonomics.com/the-weird-and-highly-annoying-world-of-scale-weight-and-fluctuations

There's also a tendency (not a guarantee) that eating well above normal levels on the rare day will have a smaller impact on bodyfat than the calories consumed would lead you to expect. Part of this may be that one's ability to metabolize all the calories (before the waste exits) is overwhelmed, I don't know - pure speculation. Part of it, for sure, is that exceptionally high intake has physical consequences in a typical person: Body temp increases a little, heart rate goes up a little, the next day or two's routine activity may be unconsciously a little higher, workout intensity may spike a little, etc.

(Stephanie Buttermore has a couple of videos on YouTube about her 8000-10000 calorie days, one that covers the math of what to expect, the other has actual lab tests the day after to see some of those "revved up" body effects I mentioned in the previous paragraph. I won't link them here because they'll show up as annoying in-line videos, but they're easy to find. (One or both may be two-parters, I don't recall.) Just make sure you get *her* videos, not other people's commentaries on her videos.)

I've been calorie counting for 6+ years now. You might be amused by a post I wrote here describing a weekend trip where I quite intentionally ate all the yummy things, coming up pretty close to the levels you're talking about as your estimate . . . and for more than one day. I tracked my calories as carefully as I could (some estimating needed), weighed myself daily, and the post has all those details.

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10603949/big-overfeed-ruins-everything-nope/p1

I'm not the only person here who's reported this kind of effect. I think you should just go back to your normal routine, calmly collect the data the results (scale weight, appearance (maybe photos?)), learn how your body responds to something like this. My suspicion is that that will have a calming effect, when it comes to long term psychological well-being.

The one other thing I'd suggest, though: If you feel like eating those extra calories wasn't worth it (IME sometimes it *is* worth it), and you're now regretful, think about why this happened, what triggered it, and make a plan for avoiding future recurrence. Rehearse that plan in your head a few times, vividly, like it was a movie starring you, to cement the plan in place. (Don't spend more than 10-15 minutes on this whole notion: Diminishing returns.) Then, next time similar circumstances occur, run that plan. If it works, great. If it doesn't, formulate a new and wilier plan.

Hang in there: I'm predicting that actual persistent effects will be surprisingly minimal.

callsitlikeiseeit

you're just bloated.

pretty much anytime anyone eats a huge meal or has a day where they eat everything in sight (and yeah, it happens to all of us at some point in time) the same thing happens to them.

you know the stereotype of a person sitting down to a holiday meal, and either mentioning that they have their 'fat pants' on, or unbuttoning their pants, because they know they are going to overeat and need 'the room'? When you eat, your body uses water to help digest that food. normal amounts of food, normal amounts of water used. no 'fat pants' needed. eat 2,3,4 times as much and your body has to use more water to process that food. So... water retention aka bloating. and the smaller you are, the more obvious it is.

its just going to take some time for your body to process and digest all that extra food.

one day of overindulgence is not going to make you fat. it won't have any lasting, long term effects on the scale. you'll see it (on the scale) for a week or two. feel crummy for a day or so. get back into your normal routine, and everything will be just fine. promise.