Does it matter if we binge?

SiBarber

In a nutshell, my question is whether eating an average amount every day is better for you then eating a small amount most days and then binge eating 1 or 2 days a week?

You often read or hear about the problem of “Binge Drinking”, or at least you do if you live in England, where the argument is that consuming a specific amount of alcohol in one sitting is worse than consuming the same amount spread over several days. Being a man, the NHS say that I am binge drinking if I consume more than 8 units of alcohol in one session, but they set the weekly safe limit at 28 units. So if I didn’t touch the booze at all from Sunday to Thursday but then had 10 units a day on Friday and Saturday I would be well under the weekly guidelines but my health might suffer due to the all-or-nothing approach.

So, I was wondering if the same was true of calories? At the moment MFP lets me have 1,900 calories a day in order to achieve my desired 1lb a week loss. I’ve only been doing it for 3 weeks but so far I am managing to stay well under my target throughout the week which gives me a decent amount to play with when it comes to the weekend and still be under my weekly goal, even before I’ve taken off calories for exercise. Then I started wondering if this approach makes any difference to how much you lose when averaged out over, for example, a month? Is there any evidence to suggest that my body would react differently if I ate exactly 1,900 calories a day rather than 1,500 for 5 days a week then 2,900 on Friday and Saturday? Or is it just the total number of calories over a specific period?

The same applies to exercise as well, does it make any difference if you burn off 215 calories a day walking a dog compared to 500 calories at the gym 3 times a week? For the purposes of this discussion I don’t care about fitness, I’m purely talking about weight loss.

Anyway, it was just something that I was mulling over and figured it would do for my first ever post. This is purely for my own interest and I’m not going to base my entire program on the results or anything like that, I’m just curious. )

Simon

belgerian

Personally I think we ( I say we becouse I do this occasionally also) are asking for trouble. It is a slippery road to go down and I still do it occassionaly. So from a straght calorie in vs calorie out point of view I dont think it matters but from a emotional, psycological point of view I think it matters a lot. Also from a overal general healthy lifestyle I think it matters becouse for myself I occassionaly will start planning binges and working out with the intent of binging such as I will burn 500 cal today so I can go home and eat a bowl of ice cream. Granted occassionaly if I do this no big deal but when it becomes obsessive or more than a couple times a month then for me it becomes a issue.

Arthemise1

People talk about calories in versus calories out like it's just a number, but our bodies aren't that simple. I think you'd have a greater chance of having your body think it needs to hold onto the fat if you're depriving it and then giving it a banquet. I don't have any medical studies to cite, though.

I know you said you didn't want to look at fitness, but that's what I'd really worry about. I have diabetes in my family and so am at a higher risk to get it. I'd be leery of having the dramatic spikes in blood sugar over time. I'd think your body could handle a relatively stable level of calories better than it could the spikes.

dlwyatt82

Your body is constantly digesting whatever food you give it, and using what it can for energy. When we work with daily (or even weekly) calorie counts, we just do it because that's simpler for us to keep track of, even though your body may be going back and forth between storing fat or using it for energy multiple times per day. So in theory, it really shouldn't matter when you eat your food; the end result will be roughly the same.

However, at some point during an extended period of low-calorie intake, your metabolism will start to slow down in response. You'd be burning less calories, affecting your overall deficit in that same week-long period. I don't how long that takes, and it's probably different for each person. Would the 3-5 days between the "binges" be enough to cause a weird metabolic response? I have no idea.

As general advice, it's probably best to keep the difference between your high- and low-intake days as small as you can manage. I haven't done it on a schedule in a couple of months, but for a while I was treating Friday as a "cheat day" where I'd eat around 700-1000 calories more than the other days (my usual daily target was 2400 calories at the time), usually by going out to a big dinner.

This is all just focusing on the question of how your body handles the calories, of course. I'm not touching the psychological / diabetes / etc concerns that others have mentioned.

waldo56

If you follow the work of Lyle McDonald (bodyrecomposition.com) at all (diet/fitness guru who is known for diets to get bodybuilders into ultralow BF% contest shape), not only is this not a bad thing, it is encouraged. He is a strong advocate for diet breaks and refeeds within the context of a weight loss plan.

Chronically lowered intake tends to have negative metabolic effects (see all the ZOMG HELP!!!! threads for details), the occasional refeed helps to keep this effect at bay. It also helps strongly with long term diet adherance.

In short, meeting your weekly goals with every day the same or meeting your goals with most days under and a few days way over should at worst be even, if one is expected to be better than the other long term it would be the varied approach with binge days.

SiBarber

Thanks for all the quick replies.

belgerian - I was really only curious from a biological/physical point of view but you are absolutely correct, from an overall fitness perspective you have to take the psychological aspects into account. I'm certainly guilty in the past of giving myself an occasional treat as a reward that turns into a regular thing and eventually sabotages my efforts. That is especially true of those times when I've tried to give up specific things alltogether (beer, chocolate etc.) and that's one of the main reasons I'm enjoying MFP so far, you don't have to rule anything out as long as you count everything.

Arthemise1 - I didn't mean to give the impression I don't worry about fitness, it's one of the main reasons I'm on here, I just meant that for the purposes of this discussion I was purely interested in whether you'd lose more weight using one method or the other.

SiBarber

I wasn't ignoring the other 2 replies, they came through while I was writing the last comment. You've both more closely addressed the question I was really asking, so thanks. I had not heard of Lyle McDonald until last week but then a friend (who is also on here) told me about that website. I had a quick look at the time but I confess I have not read through it in detail yet. What you've said about the diet breaks stopping your metabolism from slowing down definitely makes sense and I know people who have experienced that first hand. As for the diet adherance, I can personally vouch for that one. Like I said in my first reply, whenever I try to give something up altogether, or do the same thing every day, I always end up failing after a month or so and as soon as it happens once that's usually the end of it. Knowing that I have that bit of slack for the weekend makes it much easier to stick to it during the week.