Do calories transfer over to the next day?

ready4fit

I've always wondered if you ate at a certain time or ate too much does your body still have it in your system for the next day or is each day a clean slate?

kissedbytheocean

I would assume it does to some extent. If I eat around 11pm, I'm sure some of it will still be there in the morning since digestion takes awhile. Obviously, you wouldn't still include those calories the next day (or I'd be in big trouble!) though.

ready4fit

lol! Yeah I wonder how much of it though. Could it possibly affect the next days meal, I wonder. Or like after midnight I consider it to be the next day but does my body think so? haha

Ruthe8

Your body does not magically reset during the night.

squirrelythegreat

Technically while in REM sleep, most functions of your body are completely shut down. Like digestion. This is why people have advised for as long as I can remember not to eat 4 hours before you go to bed. Not saying that 4 hours is some magic number or anything, but the principle is what matters.

laserturkey

I think some people count their calories sort of by the week, so they may eat more calories on one day and not so many on another, and it all balances out. If you are really hungry in the evening, go ahead and have something and you can try to eat a little lighter the next day if you want to make up for it. The "per day" thing is mainly useful to help us stay on track, but there isn't a magical rule that you have to wait until the next day to eat again if you are out of calories, just as you don't have to eat all your calories up for the day if you aren't hungry.

Maybe it helps to think of "x calories per day" as "x miles per hour." If you are driving 55 miles an hour, you don't really have to make sure you drive EXACTLY 55 miles in the one hour. x calories per day keeps you on a pace to lose weight over the long haul.

settledownspazz

I think some people count their calories sort of by the week, so they may eat more calories on one day and not so many on another, and it all balances out. If you are really hungry in the evening, go ahead and have something and you can try to eat a little lighter the next day if you want to make up for it. The "per day" thing is mainly useful to help us stay on track, but there isn't a magical rule that you have to wait until the next day to eat again if you are out of calories, just as you don't have to eat all your calories up for the day if you aren't hungry.

Maybe it helps to think of "x calories per day" as "x miles per hour." If you are driving 55 miles an hour, you don't really have to make sure you drive EXACTLY 55 miles in the one hour. x calories per day keeps you on a pace to lose weight over the long haul.

i agree, i think its more of an overall average that works

Montemuscle1970

It can take days for a meal to be completely digested, the whole time calories will be extracted. If you eat the food, the calories stay there until they're used as energy. You can eat as many calories as you want in a day, but you have to make up for it at some point.

Example:

1500kcals/day to maintain weight. You want to lose 1 pound per week, you reduce your kcals to 1000 a day.

This gives you 7000kcals a week to "spend" or "consume" so that you lose that pound over the 7 days.

If you binge on your first day of the week, say, 3000kcals, that only leaves you with 4000kcals for the 6 days left in the week.

If you can consume 4000kcals over the 6 days, you're still on track to losing the pound that week. It just gets really tricky to budget your calories when they're that low. Breaking up the calories evenly over the 7 days gives you the most flexibility, and its usually better for your body to have a steady diet.

So yeah, if you eat it, it still counts the next day.