Does Stated calories in food equal ABSORBED calories

ralphrich

OK, I screwed the pooch and ate the whole one pound order of fresh cut french fries last night. I busted the 1240 cal goal by about 600 after factoring in my 3/4 mile exercise swim. So my question is if I consume 1750 cal worth of fries, have I gained back aprox. 1/2 pound of fat OR will most of those cal make it to the throne.

Thank You In Advance

Ralph

GauchoMark

bad news - your body is pretty efficient about using/storing those calories that you swallow.

Good news - You were over your goal by 600. Your goal already INCLUDES a calorie deficit. If you are set to lose 1 lb/wk, your deficit is 500 calories, so you are only over maintenance by 100 calories. So, (if 1 lb/wk is correct) the day was pretty much a wash.

SideSteel

OK, I screwed the pooch and ate the whole one pound order of fresh cut french fries last night. I busted the 1240 cal goal by about 600 after factoring in my 3/4 mile exercise swim. So my question is if I consume 1750 cal worth of fries, have I gained back aprox. 1/2 pound of fat OR will most of those cal make it to the throne.

Thank You In Advance

Ralph

Energy values are approximations so it's never going to work out exactly as the math would indicate. You will probably gain some weight due to bloating/sodium.

Beyond that answer, I really wouldn't worry at all about micromanaging or predicting acute changes in weight based on slip-ups/etc.

Focus on long term trends and make good decisions as often as you can. You're not going to be perfect.

Best not to worry unless your french fry consumption starts preventing you from success over the course of weeks/etc.

geekyjock76

Taken from the wizard himself, Lyle McDonald when addressing the Energy Balance Equation:

A More Detailed Look at the Equation: Energy In

Now, energy in is actually the simplest aspect of all of this, this represents the number of calories that you ingest each day from the nutrients protein, carbs, fat, fiber and alcohol.

Of course, even that is not so simple. First and foremost, not all foods are digested with identical efficiency. On average, high quality animal-source proteins are digested with roughly 90-95% efficiency with vegetable source proteins coming in lower than that (80-85%), fats digest with about 97% efficiency and carbs can be as low as 80% depending on fiber content.

There can be some variance between different sources of the same nutrient as well. For example, a recently developed carbohydrate called resistant starch (it resists digestion) is absorbed with poor efficiency, more calories are lost in the stool compared to other carbs; some sugar alcohols share this effect (although they can just as readily cause massive stomach upset and diarrhea because of it). You don’t generally see massive differences in proteins or fats although there can be slight differences.

Put differently, some energy is lost prior to digestion (and shows up in the feces), never to be absorbed by the body. But strictly speaking you can make an adjustment on the energy in side of the equation to take digestibility into account with a correction factor (which would vary depending on the nutrient in question).

But I think you get the idea: the point is that the calorie in value can vary a bit depending on the specific nutrient and source of that nutrient. The amount of calories listed on the side of the food you’re eating may not be exactly the number of calories that make it through digestion and into the body. If anything, the value will be slightly less.

High-fiber diets tend to have this effect generally, as soluble fiber binds a small amount of protein and fat in the stomach carrying it out without digestion. So if you jack up soluble fiber intake, you end up absorbing less of the calories that went into your mouth; more are lost in your poop.
There is also some evidence that based on differences in the bacteria in the gut, there may be small differences in how well or poorly people extract energy from food during digestion, the most recent paper I’ve seen suggests that this can vary by roughly 100 calories per day. So that’s another place where the equation might be modified for any given individual.

I’d mention that, currently, no-one knows how to modify this in any useful fashion (although weight loss per se appears to cause the gut bacteria to shift to a different type) but that technology (through the use of pre- or pro-biotics) will likely come through in a few years.

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/the-energy-balance-equation.html

ralphrich

Thanks Gaucho, Side and Geeky. we are on the same page. I know that the only damage was a decrease in the loss rate and furthermore I compensated by burning extra calories today---swam 3/4 mile and 1 hr on the exercise machines at the Y which should be worth about 912 cals. I figure that while wild swings in nutrition are not desirable, If I my net cals average my calculated goal over the week, I'll loose the aprox 1.5 lb.. I'm 204# now and hope to get to 195# or less by Feb. 6 so I can fit into my wet suit [SCUBA} and not raise the sea level when I roll off the boat..

The basis of my question is that I know if I drink 400 cal worth of alcohol, many [or some] of those cals will pass thru as alcohol in the exhaled breath or in urine and never go to fat or energy.

ralphrich

Extra thanks Geeky..Lyle McDonald's answered my question perfectly and anticipated what would have been my follow-up questions.