How many calories can your body process in a day?

rosieg1979

I assume there is some sort of limit?

ie if I go 7000cals over my daily limit I won't put on two pounds by the next day. My understanding is that weight gain is caused by going over, over a period of time.

So weight gain wise, is it better to binge massively in one day (and presumably just poo out a load of calories), than to go slightly over on several days. Eg eat entire birthday cake in one day and go over by amount of birthday cake, or go over by a slice of cake for say a week?

vnovit

bump! i wonder too.

neanderthin

Some apparently can't process 1200, while others like Phelps need 12,000 to maintain. You don't poo out calories, it all gets absorbed eventually. Why do you ask........going bingeing?

TheVimFuego

Depends, some people carb cycle and deliberately deplete their muscle stores (glycogen) before they over feed on carbs to both replenish the stores AND keep the metabolism humming (carbs will keep leptin high, this is a good thing).

But this means planning ahead, obviously.

For a more ordinary balanced dieter I'd venture that over a week, say, it doesn't matter. The overall deficit would be the thing.

Just my take on it ....

TheVimFuego

Some apparently can't process 1200, while others like Phelps need 12,000 to maintain. You don't poo out calories, it all gets absorbed eventually. Why do you ask........going bingeing?

12,000 (supposedly) and a shed load of swimming

jacksonpt

I assume there is some sort of limit?

ie if I go 7000cals over my daily limit I won't put on two pounds by the next day. My understanding is that weight gain is caused by going over, over a period of time.

So weight gain wise, is it better to binge massively in one day (and presumably just poo out a load of calories), than to go slightly over on several days. Eg eat entire birthday cake in one day and go over by amount of birthday cake, or go over by a slice of cake for say a week?

Yes, it's all about cals in vs cals out. Everyone has a different number for their maintenance cals (where they maintain their current weight). Go over that number and you'll gain, go under and you'll lose.

There are a couple of things at play here. First is the unreliability of scales. If you go over by 7000 today, you won't (necessarily) be up 2lbs tomorrow. You could be up 5 or 6lbs. You could also be under by 100 and have the scale show an increase in weight tomorrow. The second is time frame. The body isn't going to digest, process, and store 7000 cals in an hour or even a day in most cases... you have to look at the bigger picture. If you are over by 7000 today, and even for the rest of the week, then you'll be over for teh week by 7000 and will likely see that reflected by the scale. You could be over by 7000 today, but under by 500 the other 6 days of the week and thus have a weekly net of +4000, and see THAT surplus reflected in the scale.

victoriannsays

I assume there is some sort of limit?

ie if I go 7000cals over my daily limit I won't put on two pounds by the next day. My understanding is that weight gain is caused by going over, over a period of time.

So weight gain wise, is it better to binge massively in one day (and presumably just poo out a load of calories), than to go slightly over on several days. Eg eat entire birthday cake in one day and go over by amount of birthday cake, or go over by a slice of cake for say a week?

Yes, it's all about cals in vs cals out. Everyone has a different number for their maintenance cals (where they maintain their current weight). Go over that number and you'll gain, go under and you'll lose.

There are a couple of things at play here. First is the unreliability of scales. If you go over by 7000 today, you won't (necessarily) be up 2lbs tomorrow. You could be up 5 or 6lbs. You could also be under by 100 and have the scale show an increase in weight tomorrow. The second is time frame. The body isn't going to digest, process, and store 7000 cals in an hour or even a day in most cases... you have to look at the bigger picture. If you are over by 7000 today, and even for the rest of the week, then you'll be over for teh week by 7000 and will likely see that reflected by the scale. You could be over by 7000 today, but under by 500 the other 6 days of the week and thus have a weekly net of +4000, and see THAT surplus reflected in the scale.

^^^ great way to put it

SideSteel

I'm looking for information on this right now but my understanding is that there in fact is a limit, it's just such a high limit (likely north of 20k calories) that it's irrelevant.

taunto

Isn't there the world largest women who's eating like 30k calories per day? I think she's trying to hit 1200 lb weight or something. I shall try and find the article

rosieg1979

That's interesting. I had kind of assumed that the body would just dump calories if they went too high. I realise excess calories get stored as fat, but I thought there was some sort of limit to the process, and when that limit was reached excess calories would be excreted.

drmerc

That's interesting. I had kind of assumed that the body would just dump calories if they went too high. I realise excess calories get stored as fat, but I thought there was some sort of limit to the process, and when that limit was reached excess calories would be excreted.

Eventually you'd get the ****s and/or vomit, thus putting a cap on the number of calories you can consume

jacksonpt

That's interesting. I had kind of assumed that the body would just dump calories if they went too high. I realise excess calories get stored as fat, but I thought there was some sort of limit to the process, and when that limit was reached excess calories would be excreted.

At some point you'll probably end up throwing up or with diarrhea, but I think that might be based more on volume than calories. Just a logical inference though...

bostonwolf

Some apparently can't process 1200, while others like Phelps need 12,000 to maintain. You don't poo out calories, it all gets absorbed eventually. Why do you ask........going bingeing?

Remember that Phelps spent hours a day in a pool. Much of his caloric load went to maintaining his body temperature, not the workouts.

It's not a simple calories in/calories out system. There are tons of variables. What types of calories did you eat (some are more easily digestable than others.) Is your intestinal flora healthy? If not you won't extract as much nutrition from what you eat as someone who is healthy. Are you sick? A raised body temperature will natural burn more calories.

R0asted

One thing that I've thought about is more about the Macro-nutrient ratios. If you consistently eat similar macros for 3+ days your body adjusts how much of the various digestive enzymes to produce to digest the amount of fat, protein and carbs you're eating. If all of a sudden you eat drastically different from how you normally eat, your body doesn't seem to have the digestive enzymes on hand to digest all the food and you get gas, diarrhea, etc. I suspect that if your crap looks like a bowl of oatmeal than your body didn't actually properly digest and absorb all the food. So in a way, I think there is a limit, but it's not static.

Also, I suspect that if you consistently eat 10K calories a day your body probably tries to accelerate your metabolism to adjust to your diet just like it slows your metabolism if you consistently eat very low calories.

neanderthin

Some apparently can't process 1200, while others like Phelps need 12,000 to maintain. You don't poo out calories, it all gets absorbed eventually. Why do you ask........going bingeing?

Remember that Phelps spent hours a day in a pool. Much of his caloric load went to maintaining his body temperature, not the workouts.

It's not a simple calories in/calories out system. There are tons of variables. What types of calories did you eat (some are more easily digestable than others.) Is your intestinal flora healthy? If not you won't extract as much nutrition from what you eat as someone who is healthy. Are you sick? A raised body temperature will natural burn more calories.

Hense the reason I was being vague. And yes it is as simple as calories in and out, the outside being confusing for most people.