With the Thanksgiving holiday just over, most of you are looking forward to a week of increased exercise and reduced eating to try and compensate for the over-indulgence that took place during that Thanksgiving meal.
For some of you though, might have been pleasantly surprised when you stepped on the scale and discovered that you weren’t actually a great deal heavier than you were before – in fact, you might have remained at the exact same body weight.
What’s going on here and what causes this to happen?
Situational Overeating
The body is an amazing thing; this we have already seen time and time again throughout our lives. If there is one thing about the body that’s true, it’s that it likes maintaining homeostasis.
Essentially, your body does not want to change – it’s going to do everything it can to stay right in its comfort zone so it knows it’s safe and secure there.
This is also why you typically plateau on a workout program if you don’t make any changes and also why it can get so damn hard to lose those last ten pounds.
When it comes to eating now, the same situation applies. If you overeat on a single occurrence, your body is actually going to do what it can to prevent you from gaining weight. It’s going to speed up the metabolism temporarily, trying to burn off the excess calories coming in as heat, or store the additional carbs in the muscle glycogen stores (if they are depleted to any degree).
That’s not to say you won’t gain water weight though, so it’s important to note the difference.
Water weight is weight that is retained due to a high volume of salt in the recent diet or if you are currently on a low carb diet, a high intake of carbs.
True weight is weight that has formed because you are taking in more calories than your body is effectively able to burn off.
The difference is huge and it’s critical you are able to differentiate.
The particular-high calorie meal you eat could very well lead to water weight gain, but the chances that it leads to pure fat gain are slim to none.
Think about this logically. In order to accumulate one additional pound of body fat, you will have to consume 3500 calories over and above your maintenance intake.
Most people have maintenance intakes around 1500-2500 calories each day.
Therefore, you’d need to eat 5000-6000 calories in a single day. That is A LOT of food. Most people will not be able to do so.
So, when you jump on that scale after having one very high calorie meal or day of eating and see it move up two or three pounds, rest assured that this is likely temporary weight.
Your body will return itself back to normal soon, and if anything, you might have actually done yourself good in the long run since a day or two of high calorie eating can jumpstart a sluggish metabolism.
It’s when you are consistently eating higher calorie days on a regular basis that problems with true fat gain start to develop.
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