how fast is it possible to gain weight?

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tomatoey
tomatoey Posts: 5,446 Member
edited December 2014 in Health and Weight Loss
Or how long would it take to gain 5 lbs (actual pounds, not water)?

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  • onasaz
    onasaz Posts: 19
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    Fat or lbm? Fat in a week is doable but you need to eat alot.
  • tomatoey
    tomatoey Posts: 5,446 Member
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    Total mass, probably fat.
  • DopeItUp
    DopeItUp Posts: 18,771 Member
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    A week, tops. You'd need to eat something like a 17500 calorie surplus. So 2500 above TDEE for a week. That's not even that hard.
  • tomatoey
    tomatoey Posts: 5,446 Member
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    Thanks! No, indeed it's not. I'm trying to reverse engineer what happened after this unhappy fact. I 've been over, but not by that much. Either I accidentally weighed myself dehydrated and got an unusually low number last week, and have actually been incrementally gaining for longer than a week, OR my tdee has changed due to some possible medical issues, OR I'm underestimating my food. The last is likeliest except calorie counting isn't new to me. OR, I'm a magician. A fat magician. A fagician.
  • jacksonpt
    jacksonpt Posts: 10,413 Member
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    DopeItUp wrote: »
    A week, tops. You'd need to eat something like a 17500 calorie surplus. So 2500 above TDEE for a week. That's not even that hard.

    Agreed.

    17,000 surplus calories in a day or 2 is hard. In 5ish days, not so much. In a week+, easy to do, even by "accident"
  • Kalikel
    Kalikel Posts: 9,626 Member
    edited December 2014
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    I could gain five in a week, easy.

    Interestingly, when it was fatter, I could eat more and gain less. If you looked at the calories in what I ate, I should've been much, much bigger...according to the math and at the end, anyway.
  • allyphoe
    allyphoe Posts: 618 Member
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    I gained more than 40 pounds in 6 weeks after discontinuing medication. I was ravenously hungry all the time, no matter how much I ate.

    My best guess based on your follow-up post is that it's water weight fluctuation.
  • yarwell
    yarwell Posts: 10,477 Member
    edited December 2014
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    tomatoey wrote: »
    Or how long would it take to gain 5 lbs (actual pounds, not water)?

    5 weeks for 5 lbs of fat at +1000 cals/day extra. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22215165
  • court_alacarte
    court_alacarte Posts: 219 Member
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    i gained 10 lbs in less than 2 months from emotional eating. :/ not as hard as you think. i was drowning in a sea of cosmic brownies, cookies, chinese food, office luncheons and breakfast tacos. it was fun until my slacks started feeling snug...
  • jacksonpt
    jacksonpt Posts: 10,413 Member
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    tomatoey wrote: »
    Thanks! No, indeed it's not. I'm trying to reverse engineer what happened after this unhappy fact. I 've been over, but not by that much. Either I accidentally weighed myself dehydrated and got an unusually low number last week, and have actually been incrementally gaining for longer than a week, OR my tdee has changed due to some possible medical issues, OR I'm underestimating my food. The last is likeliest except calorie counting isn't new to me. OR, I'm a magician. A fat magician. A fagician.

    Could it just be that scale weight fluctuates fairly significantly? 5lbs is well within the normal range.

    Progress is about long term trends, not short term changes.
  • beastcompany
    beastcompany Posts: 230 Member
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    As mentioned, it's very easy to achieve that kind of weight gain in a weeks time.


    The thing to remember is that the body's natural potential to build lean mass is capped at roughly .5lbs/week, so anything beyond that .5lb range is adipose tissue (fat), meaning of that 5lbs you will have gained .5lbs of lean mass & 4.5lbs of fat mass...not exactly an ideal development.
  • tomatoey
    tomatoey Posts: 5,446 Member
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    allyphoe wrote: »
    I gained more than 40 pounds in 6 weeks after discontinuing medication. I was ravenously hungry all the time, no matter how much I ate.

    My best guess based on your follow-up post is that it's water weight fluctuation.

    Yikes.. yeah that's got me to my original starting weight. Sorry that happened to you :/

    It wasn't like that this time, for me, though. :/
  • tomatoey
    tomatoey Posts: 5,446 Member
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    jacksonpt wrote: »
    DopeItUp wrote: »
    A week, tops. You'd need to eat something like a 17500 calorie surplus. So 2500 above TDEE for a week. That's not even that hard.

    Agreed.

    17,000 surplus calories in a day or 2 is hard. In 5ish days, not so much. In a week+, easy to do, even by "accident"

    Yeah, seems that way :/
  • tomatoey
    tomatoey Posts: 5,446 Member
    edited December 2014
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    yarwell wrote: »
    tomatoey wrote: »
    Or how long would it take to gain 5 lbs (actual pounds, not water)?

    5 weeks for 5 lbs of fat at +1000 cals/day extra. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22215165

    Thank you!
  • tomatoey
    tomatoey Posts: 5,446 Member
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    jacksonpt wrote: »
    tomatoey wrote: »
    Thanks! No, indeed it's not. I'm trying to reverse engineer what happened after this unhappy fact. I 've been over, but not by that much. Either I accidentally weighed myself dehydrated and got an unusually low number last week, and have actually been incrementally gaining for longer than a week, OR my tdee has changed due to some possible medical issues, OR I'm underestimating my food. The last is likeliest except calorie counting isn't new to me. OR, I'm a magician. A fat magician. A fagician.

    Could it just be that scale weight fluctuates fairly significantly? 5lbs is well within the normal range.

    Progress is about long term trends, not short term changes.

    True. My fluctuations are usually 1-2 lbs, unless I'm gaining. Gotta tighten up my numbers, I think.
  • katherine_startrek_fan
    katherine_startrek_fan Posts: 425 Member
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    tomatoey wrote: »
    jacksonpt wrote: »
    [quote="tomatoey;30527511"

    True. My fluctuations are usually 1-2 lbs, unless I'm gaining. Gotta tighten up my numbers, I think.

    My numbers have tightened up tremendously over the past 2-3 weeks. I actually miss the bigger fluctuations because I don't feel like I'm making as much progress without them.

    For instance, last week I was down to 239.9. Then my weight shifted a few times by a few tenths of a pound (mostly upward). Finally today I dropped down a pound today to 239.

    It also makes me worry that I am going to stall out, which is the last thing I want to do with 60 pounds to go!

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