Hello I've been browsing 3fc for a while now but has only just registered so I'm not sure if I'm posting this in the correct place (apologies if I'm not!)
I've gone through something very weird about calories, weight gain and weight loss the past week and a half and would like to see if anyone's experienced a similar situation before:
From 22/11 to 30/11 (9 days in total), I was binging on and off every day, putting me at at least 10,000 calories above my TDEE for the 9 days total.
On 4 of those days I binged hard on cashews (polished off 1.5 lbs in 5 days), so 3,500 calories of the 10,000 calories came from cashews.
After trying very hard to get back on track, I've successfully restricted to 1000 calories per day for the last 4 days, putting me at a deficit of 2,400 calories (I'm a female and my TDEE is 1600 calories).
According to calories in, calories out, what I should be seeing is:
Total excess calories stored in my body: 10,000 - 2,400 = 7,600 calories
Which should equate to 1 kg of real weight gain.
What's puzzling me is that as of this morning, I'm only 0.3 kg above my weight on 22/11 morning. Since the other food I've binged on are the "classics" (i.e. chocolate, chips, bread, and PB), the only thing I can think of that lead to the discrepancy to calories in, calories out theory is eating cashews.
I'm not complaining about my "luck" but I'm just extremely curious about the effect of nuts on weight gain.
Any thoughts??
PS I'm sure that I calculated my excess calories of 10,000 accurately.
Nuts are healthy for you but of course in moderation as with everything else. Everyone is different and has their own trigger points which affects them, for example mine is high sodium and processed carbs, it really slows down my loss.
If it's not affecting you then lucky you I wish I had the same luck with ice cream haha :P
Not all calories are the same, and maybe there were some nutrients in the nuts that your body needed to use? You are much better off eating whole foods, although bingeing is not ideal regardless of your food choice. wishing you well.
Nuts are healthy for you but of course in moderation as with everything else. Everyone is different and has their own trigger points which affects them, for example mine is high sodium and processed carbs, it really slows down my loss.
If it's not affecting you then lucky you I wish I had the same luck with ice cream haha :P
haha i guess you're right! everything in moderation is how a healthy approach to dieting should be! unfortunately i've been stuck in an "all or nothing" mindset lately
Not all calories are the same, and maybe there were some nutrients in the nuts that your body needed to use? You are much better off eating whole foods, although bingeing is not ideal regardless of your food choice. wishing you well.
yeah, i think binging on PB and cashews is a warning sign that i don't have enough fats in my diet maybe?
thank you! i'm trying to train myself not to snack during the day (or night!) and eat substantial, whole meals for my main meals
If you feel you should up your fats, add more in on a daily basis. I don't do a low fat diet and have still lost a substantial amount of weight eating whole foods and enjoying plenty of cheese, nuts and butter.
IMO, nothing to do with the cashews, metabolism, or "luck." Your experiment was way too short-lived to yield any meaningful data. A simple fluctuation in water retention could account for the discrepancy between the expected and actual figure at weigh-in time.
I agree it's not enough data but I also think maybe your TDEE calculation is way off. How tall are you, how much do you weigh, and what's your age (assuming you're female)? I'm 5'5", 149, and yesterday I burnt 2300 calories (walked about 14k steps, so over an hour of walking a day). I burn about 2000 if I don't walk much (8-10k steps) and maybe 2100 if I walk around 11-12k steps. When I put "sedentary (office job)" into the calculator, it says I burn only 1700 calories per day. That's totally off. Sometimes only by 100-300 calories, sometimes by 600 calories. If I'm sedentary, yes, I burn less. But I'm not really sedentary but I'm not really that active either, I just walk places. So you would' think I would be "moderate exercise" just because I walk for over an hour of the day, but that's the calculation that works for me as what I burn. SO it is highly likely you burn more than 1600 per day.
Restricting to 1000 calories is probably a key causal factor in why you're bingeing. That's too little food for most people, particularly people who have a propensity to binge. Binge urges are heightened when you experience mental or physical deprivation. Your number one goal is to stop bingeing, as you'll never maintain your weight or lose weight until you do. As well, for me, I'll never be happy when I'm actively engaging in binge eating, it's miserable for me. Your second goal - second to STOP BINGEING - can be to lose weight, but it has to be done very carefully and with a minimum amount of calories. It might be you can only do a deficit of -300 per day. THAT IS OKAY. Every day at maintenance or below by a reasonable amount is success and you will slowly lose weight as you go.
I agree with Freelance that this one incident is not enough data to draw conclusions. However, your post reminded me of my dad's experience. Growing up, I always remember him as being somewhat overweight---not obese, just overweight. He had a major sweet tooth. Fast forward to about 60 yo, and he had a massive heart attack and discovered he was a type II diabetic. He lost weight, mainly from just substituting sugar-free products for the products he always ate. He had always loved nuts, though, and could polish off a normal-sized can of mixed nuts or cashews in one afternoon while reading a book. When he became diabetic, he didn't stop doing that-----but even so, he DIDN'T REGAIN any of the weight he had lost. I could never figure that out since he did not cut back in any other way except on his carb/sugar intake. I have always been one to believe in calories in/calories out in terms of weight loss, but his experience made me give another thought to the low-carb craze, i.e., maybe there is something to it (not that I plan to try it because I love carbs too much).
Hmmm...while there isn't enough data to determine the weight loss, eating cashews is actually a step in the right direction.
Raisin5Cookies is right---not all calories are the same. Those cashews are probably giving you the nutrients your body needs much better than some of the other foods you're eating.
I have found that when I binge in smaller doses (one week out of six, for example), there isn't a shift in my weight. However, when I binge over the course of six weeks, there is a large shift in my weight. I don't always track the details of what I eat, but this has been true for me for at least the last three years.
Perhaps the short(er) amount of time has more to do with it than anything.
Quote:
Originally Posted by IanG
1.5lbs of nuts in 5 days is not a binge.
It's a lot of nuts, yes. But not a binge.
You don't get to determine what a binge is for someone else.
Binging on CASHEWS not affecting weight?
I've been browsing 3fc for a while now but has only just registered so I'm not sure if I'm posting this in the correct place (apologies if I'm not!)
