[Mer du Japon]

Hey guys,

So everything I've read says there is 3500 calories in a pound. So does that mean that if you eat 3500 calories in a single day then you will gain a pound? Or is it that your BMR would stop that from happening? I'm not sure if I understand how this works.

For example: I went to an Italian restaurant last night and ate a carb heavy meal-two pieces of bread with olive oil and cheese, two pieces of Brushetta with cheese sprinkled generously on top, half a meat lasagna, some spaghetti, meatballs, and Italian sausage, and a cannoli and half a brownie---yeah it was a major bad meal. Then I got home and had some of the leftovers.

I'm up 3 lbs today---I fully understand the idea of water weight, but with a meal like that, I'm wondering if it is possible to gain a pound in one evening?

[EricAnn]

It is possible that you could have gained an entire pound. It's kind of hard to tell, because I don't know the portion sizes, how many calories that meal would've been.

But the 3500 calories is on top of your BMR... So, 3500 + BMR (1500, for example) = 5000 calories that you would have had to consume that day to have gained an entire pound.

Remember though, your BMR is how many calories you burn doing absolutely nothing (unless you set it to calculate your exercise).

Of course there are other factors that play into all this, but that's how the "general" rule works.

I hope that helps some!

[drixnot]

It IS possible to gain a pound in one evening... but its not likely... that's ALLOT of calories... that's like 4 and a half whoppers... most people could not eat that much at one time.

Then you have to consider that the human body burns calories just sitting there... even while you sleep. I believe the formula is about .3 calories per pound per hour.... so if you weigh 200 pounds you will burn about 1440 calories a day just maintaining your body functions (breathing, heartbeat, body temperature etc.) Exercise would of course burn even more.

And yes to complicate things even more there is water weight to factor in. So looking at the scale isn't going to give you an accurate picture of how much fat you lose or gain in a day.

[thewalrus0]

I avoid the scale after a crazy big meal.

You have to remember sodium. Sodium is in everything, some things more than others. When you eat a lot more food than normal, even if the food isn't particularly sodium heavy, it's still more sodium than your body is probably used to.

I eat roughly the same types of foods each day, so even if I eat the same amount of calories but I have a sodium-heavy dinner, I will retain water for about 24 hours. For instance, I ate my calories one day but I had chicken tacos for the dinner. The beans were high sodium, the taco seasoning was especially high sodium, and the taco shells were fairly high sodium. I probably had 2,000 mgs ontop of the sodium I already get from my other meals. After a meal like that I didn't bother weighing in because I knew it'd show at least a pound increase.

So that's how I see it. I don't necessarily count my sodium each day, but I try to keep an eye on it.

That's a reason that after a big bad meal you might have quite a lot of water weight hanging on.

[kaplods]

I can't eat 4.5 Whoppers, but I HAVE eaten 5,000 calorie restaurant meals and some even higher (I made the mistake of looking up the calories online AFTER the meal rather than before). Which just goes to show that fast food restaurants do not have the monopoly on unhealthy food.

Ironically, here in the midwest restaurant portions are so ridiculous and so inexpensive that you hear many people say "Why go to McDonald's, when you can eat there and get more food for less money" (there being family sit-down restaurants - and not just the buffets).


Restaurant meals can easily contain 5000 calories. Some restaurant DESSERTS contain nearly 2,000 calories (the brownies with ice cream and sauce and the cheesecakes are usually the highest), and many appetizers are just as ridiculously high in calorie (like the blooming onion, which with one dipping sauce comes to just over 2200 calories).

It all boils down to calorie-density. 5,000 calories is a lot of sandwhich (even from a Whopper), but it's not all that much cheesecake. A relatively modest slice of cheesecake can contain almost 2,000 calories (and sadly I can, and have eaten three slices of cheesecake in a single day - and I wish I could have said it was all I ate that day).

Also, as David Kessler points out in his book, The End of Overeating, people (even thin people) can and do eat a lot more when food contains a sugar/salt/fat combination.

And the bread and pasta counts as a sugar, because starch converts quickly to sugar.

Pasta dishes are notoriously caloric. I made a "light" version of a lasagna this weekend and it came to about 450 calories per 3" by 3" piece and the recipe bragged about being "half the calories" of the original recipe (and that still would have been for a 3"x3" slice - most restaurant lasagnas contain 1,000 calories or more).

I'm not trying to be a jerk about this, just saying that when it comes to restaurant meals, it's incredibly difficult to judge caloric intake without having a good restaurant calorie counting resource (ideally before you go), and no matter what you can eat on a typical day, you can almost double it without any effort at all in many restaurants.

You can eat twice the calories you think you're eating, just because the recipes use more fat. So while you might think you ate twice your normal calories (because you ate twice the volume of food you usually do), but the food itself can contain twice the calories you think it does (so you're getting four times the calories for only twice as much food).

[Mer du Japon]

Thanks for the feedback guys, it's been very helpful. I guess I was kind of hoping it wouldn't do any damage, but come on! Who am I kidding- That's a lot of fatty food! Haha well it was amazing, and I've been good for the past few weeks, so I'm trying not to beat myself up about it too much-I'm just going to be very careful going forward this week. It's a nice little reminder that if I eat like that, there will be consequences. I usually eat the same foods everyday but the weekends always end up being rough.