Can you gain muscle after a binge?

Possibly, but not much at all as far as muscle tissue itself. It takes a while to build muscle tissue and one day of training won't add but a fraction of a gram if I had to guess.

No, it's not possible. Gaining/building/adding lean muscle tissue takes a long time and it difficlut to do, even more so for women.

Depending on the current level of your eating, how many carbs, and level of exercise intensity, you are most likely to see a weight gain because the glucose stores got topped off again if they were running low.

You can run your glucose stores in the 500 calorie level day after day, and then do a "binge" as you did, and top them back up to the 2000 avg you might hold, maybe more depending on fitness.

Well, with each gram of glucose goes 2.7 g of water.
1500 calorie increase in glucose stores ends up being 3lbs of weight. Good weight, weight you should have had in the first place, because you need those stores.

For those thinking they'd rather not have that kind of weight, then you might as well cut off an arm or purposely dehydrate yourself too, because it's a natural part of the body's functioning that should have been there.

So you might say just required water weight.

If I were in your shoes, I'd try to look at it differently. Binges aren't going to help you long term, of course you know, so don't try to justify or "use" it now-- it'll just reinforce it. No bueno. Don't do the opposite & beat yourself up, either. Take a practical approach as best you can: face the error and genuinely spend time figuring out exactly what happened for you so you can do differently next time. Then keep moving. We're all human, and this is a lifelong process, so settle in for the long haul.

If your diet is on point 95% of the time you don't need to sweat the occasional splurge.

Remember a pound's worth of excess calories is a pound regardless of the type and any excess would be stored because the body can't readily use it. I do think there is something to be said for the quality of the calories you ate though. For instance, if you ate a bunch of fatty/processed foods with no nutritional benefits, you wouldn't be able to gain muscle from your meal. If you included a lot of lean protein, your body would assimlate that and get more out of it to fuel and build the body.

You'll gain muscle over time by working your muscles; and working out in a zone that allows you to burn more fat as opposed to sugar as fuel is all you can do.

Personally, I'd chalk it up to a bad day, do my work out and make an adjustment to my intake throughout the week to balance out yesterday. One day is not going to stop your progress. Heck it may provide a little bit of a jolt to your metabolism. Lots of people on MFP have spike days.

Very true, if your body finally had a surplus to repair muscles better than normal and build up a bit, some gain there.
The glucose stores I mentioned.
You would have used any right then as energy needs too, though before bed maybe not the best time to have much increased energy.
So sure the rest as fat.

Regarding the workout zone and fat-burning zone, that is misunderstood. You will burn just as many calories of fat at higher intensity, plus more calories overall. Higher is better if it isn't pounding your body so bad as to cause injury.

The problem with the spike day method that you'll see comments on - if you body is already at a suppressed metabolism because of underfeeding the BMR, a spike day is not seen as a recovery day for the metabolism, but as a storage day for energy in case the underfeeding continues, which it usually does.

Generally people that have already reached a plateau or stall, and then start to incorporate a spike day without changing any thing else, will end up gaining weight after each spike day. If glucose stores was only thing, it'll be lost through the week. If more than that, then fat.

its actually kind of funny, because i'll eat a lot at a party, and get all these comments from people like "guess you're done dieting," or "man, i wish i could eat like you and lose weight." silly people.

:laugh: This happened to me last Sunday. I had a planned super-big splurge day at a Super Bowl party and got all sorts of comments like that. I think splurges can be good for you. The one last Sunday broke me through a little stall I'd been experiencing and I was actually dropped weight when I weighed in on Tuesday.

OP, if your diet is on plan 95% of the time, don't sweat this splurge. It may be just what your body needed.

I think I remember reading in a book called "4 hour body" that working out 90-120minutes after a binge can help minimize fat gain and maximize muscle gain. It's a decent book. I'll double check later and let you know.

There is some VERY goofy bro-science in that book!

Ditto.

The only thing about that one comment from the book, is that it is true. After every single meal, so not sure why it would be special after a binge.

After you eat, all the macro-nutrients taken in will be used for energy, and the protein can be used for repair if needed at that time.

That just means that the pre-eating state of using fat as main energy source has been turned off for a bit, and that is about the time limit to try to use up that available energy before the body decides to store the excess as fat.

But whatever activity is going to require the same amount of energy, whether that comes from fat stores, or from food just eaten.

So while a true comment in the book, who cares, happens after every food eaten (well, if there are carbs that kicks the insulin up anyway, or too much quantity that will too).

That tidbit of info should go in the book of obvious statements for weight loss. Right along with you must reduce the calories you eat compared to before the diet.