Overrate Today?

MorganLange508 wrote: »

Hi guys, I've been on my diet for about 2 months now and today is the first time I've overeaten since I started my journey.. I ate around 2300 calories today but have been eating around 1200-1300 a day for the past months, will I expect and weight gain?! It was relatively healthy food except some sugary cereal, if it helps I workout 6 times a week with around 30 miles of running a week. I am currently 5"3 and 126 lbs trying to get down to 120

You should be good! The food will be sitting in your stomach so if you weigh in the next morning chances are you might be up a pound or 2 I drank last night for first time in 6 weeks ... Ugh!!

You can do rough arithmetic in your head to estimate the impact, if you like. I'll do an example, but you'd have to use your real numbers.

You say you've been eating at 1200-1300. I'll assume that's net calories (you eat back your exercise) and that you've been losing 1/2 pound a week, which would be a healthy loss rate with so little to lose. With those assumptions, your daily calorie deficit would be 250 calories (below your maintenance calories): 1/2 pound lost weekly = about 1750 calories (because roughly 3500 calories in a pound) / 7 days = 250 per day.

So, you ate 2300 one day. With this example data, your maintenance calories (the number to eat to neither gain nor lose) would be 1550: 1300 (what you're eating) + 250 (daily deficit) = 1550. You lose nothing the day you overate, because you ate at or above maintenance.

Furthermore, you theoretically would've gained 750 calories worth of weight from that extra eating: 2300 (that you ate) - 1550 (your example maintenance calories, which are equivalent to the number of calories you burn daily) = 750. (As an aside, 750 calories is around 1/5 pound (750 / 3500 calories in a pound, approximately). Anything extra beyond that that you see on the scale would be water weight, the weight of the food in your digestive system, or something like that, and should leave quickly.)

In 3 more days, your daily 250 calorie deficit will result (mathematically speaking) in your losing that 750 calories of excess. So, if this were your real data, you'd have delayed reaching your goal by 4 days: The day you overate, and 3 more. Would that be worth it? Only you can say.

Obviously, if you want to look at it this way, you have to use your real numbers, not the made=up ones above. If you're losing a pound a week, plug in 500 where I used 250, etc. But it's the same reasoning process. And you could choose to eat a little lighter for a few days, or run a bit more, to make up for some or all of it, if you want to do so.

It could slow down your loss by about 1/2 pound this week.

Any weight you gain at tomorrow's weigh-in is more likely due to the increased sodium intake you had today than to the increased calorie intake. Just don't get in the habit of staying too far below or frequently going above your calorie budget.

You may be up on the scale the next day but it will be back to normal in a couple days