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Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you start eating and just can’t seem to stop?
Well, you’re not alone. Binge eating can be a frustrating and defeating experience for many of us. It can quickly set us back in our health and fitness journey, especially when it comes to reaching our body composition goals.
And even if you don’t struggle with binge eating disorder, you may still find yourself overeating a bit too much a bit too often.
So, whether you’re dealing with true bingeing or not, in this episode, I’m serving up 10 science-based tips to help you stop binge eating, improve your relationship with food, and take control of your eating habits.
Sit back, relax, and let’s dive in!
Timestamps:
0:00 – Shop Legion Supplements Here: https://buylegion.com/ and use coupon code MUSCLE to save 20% or get double reward points!
4:34 – What is binge eating?
9:51 – What causes binge eating?
13:10 – Avoid restricting diets
14:56 – How does skipping meals cause binge eating?
18:50 – Avoid tempting foods
20:23 – Fill up on fewer calories
23:52 – Exercise
25:15 – Drink water
27:19 – Eat mindfully
29:25 – Manage stress
31:38 – Spend time with people
32:09 – Eat more protein
34:33 – What do I do when I binge eat?
Mentioned on the Show:
Shop Legion Supplements Here: https://buylegion.com/ and use coupon code MUSCLE to save 20% or get double reward points!
What did you think of this episode? Have anything else to share? Let me know in the comments below!
Transcript:
Howdy, howdy. I’m Mike Matthews, and this is Muscle for Life. Thank you for joining me today for another episode. In this episode, I’m going to be talking about binge eating, and I’m gonna be sharing 10 science-based tips to stop binge eating. Now, what is binge eating? Well, it is pretty simple. It is a situation where, Once you start eating, you just can’t stop.
So if you have ever said something like that to yourself, if you have ever said something like, once I start eating, I just can’t stop. Most of us have experienced this before then. You are familiar with binge eating. And you are probably also aware of how binge eating can set you back a step or three or 10 on your way to achieving your health and your fitness goals, particularly your body composition goals.
And if you don’t necessarily have trouble with binge eating per se, you don’t have binge eating disorder or you don’t binge to the point of. I just can’t stop, but you do tend to overeat a bit too much, a bit too often for your liking and for your body composition goals. Then this episode is going to be helpful for you too because these tips also apply to those of us who just eat a bit too much, a bit too often, but don’t necessarily take it to the point of binging before we wade into it.
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All right, so let’s start with a quick discussion of what binge eating is. I quickly commented on this in the intro, but I think it’s worth expanding on briefly. So, binge eating is a behavior that’s marked by eating a lot of food very quickly, and there are two types of binge eaters. On the one hand, some people occasionally binge and it doesn’t impact their health.
They occasionally just eat way too much, and they often offset these little episodes by exercising or being more restrained with their diet for a day or two or three afterward. and they lose any fat that they have gained by eating way too much on that one day. And then they more or less just carry on with their normal routine.
So these people, they are susceptible to overindulging from time to time. It’s often on. Special occasions, you know, birthdays, holidays, dining out in a restaurant they really like, but they do understand that they have to make up for it in other ways if they want to stay healthy, if they want to maintain their body composition.
And I myself have done this intentionally. So for Thanksgiving for many years, I would intentionally eat as much as I possibly could. I mean, I would eat until I basical. Couldn’t move because I was in so much pain and I stopped a few years ago because I just had had enough. And the food, honestly, in the last few years it’s been good, but it just hasn’t been good enough to even inspire me to want to eat seven plates of it like I used to.
And I remember distinctly the last time I did it years ago, I was at my parents’ house. I ate. Seven plates of food or something and then I’m lying on the couch. I basically can’t move. I’m sweating and I feel like I just swallowed a, a baby rhino OSCEs or something. And uh, that’s when I decided this is gonna be the last year of the Thanksgiving binge.
And then what I would do afterward when I would do that is I naturally just wasn’t hungry. The next. Unsurprisingly. And so I usually wouldn’t eat my first meal until probably like 2:00 PM so kinda like an intermittent fasting type thing. The next day just skip breakfast simply because I not only was not hungry, I actually like didn’t want food.
Physically, the thought of eating food was kind of revolting. And so then, you know, I’d eat a smallish meal, maybe around two. Smallish dinner. In both of those meals, I wasn’t even really hungry. I was just eating something because I don’t want to eat nothing. Although I guess it wouldn’t even have been unreasonable to just do like a 24 hour fast after eating all that food, and then the next day or two I would.
Go back to my normal eating, but it’d be kinda like cutting. So I’d be like, eh, shoot for maybe 2000, maybe 2200 calories the next two days, and then just go back to normal. And so that type of binging is not necessarily a problem, especially if you are not prone to any sort of binge eating disorder or just eating disorders in general.
I don’t recommend doing it. But if you do something like that yourself and on a birthday or a holiday, there’s nothing particularly wrong with that. Now, if you’re doing it fairly often, that is something else. And that brings me to the other type. Of binge eaters. So some people they binge more regularly. They are binging at least once per week for a few months, for example.
That’s kind of a technical criterion, and these people experience a loss of control over the amount of food that they eat, so they feel. Out of control where if I contrast that with what I was doing, I was intentionally just eating as much as I could because I wanted to see how much I could eat. I felt like I was very in control.
It wasn’t very reasonable what I was doing, but I was consciously and intentionally doing it right. Whereas this other type of. Binge eater, they lose control. They feel ashamed afterward, they feel depressed afterward. And they also usually don’t compensate for these binges by eating fewer calories at other times or exercising more.
And these people are likely suffering from binge eating disorder, which is the most common eating disorder in the us, and it’s associated with several unwanted. Health conditions, including depression, poor cardiometabolic, health, strained relationships, chronic pain, obesity, and diabetes. So if you are listening to this because you are seeking help for binge eating disorder, if you know that you have this eating disorder, I would recommend speaking to your doctor.
This podcast is, Probably not gonna be enough to fully resolve it, but it still may help. But if you are more in the first camp, if you don’t need medical help per se, you can probably curb your episodic gluttony, or at least you can moderate it by using a few simple tips that I’m going to be sharing in this episode.
But before I get to those tips, I wanna talk a little bit about. Causes binge eating. So we humans, we are hardwired to love the taste of fat, salt, and sugar, and that’s why calorie dense, fatty foods are so appealing. These are the foods that gave our ancient ancestors the energy reserves that they needed to survive.
They needed to survive food shortages and famines and extended periods of vigorous physical activity with very few calories, big calorie deficits, right? Running around trying to find food, not finding much foraging, finding some berries here and there. Finally, after a week killing an animal and being able to gorge and so that at least biologically, evolutionarily speaking, is why fatty foods are so appealing to.
Now, as for salt, that increases water retention, which of course helps us avoid dehydration. Very important for surviving, and our sweet tooth would lead us to sugary berries that were likely edible and away from bitter ones that were likely poisonous. Now, We are also hardwired to desire a variety of foods because the more types of food that we eat, the more likely we are to get all of the essential vitamins and minerals that we need to stay healthy.
And so what we are looking at here is natural preferences for flavors, for variety that were once very valuable tools for staying alive, and they steer us toward certain types of food. However, those inclinations work against us in our modern lifestyle with hyper food availability. Those instincts have kind of turned against us.
We no longer are stalking the planes for dinner. We are roaming the aisles of the supermarket, and we have an endless variety of high calorie indulgences to choose. And unfortunately our biology has not adapted to that, has not adapted to the excesses of modern living, and that’s why we can’t count on them to maintain a healthy body composition for us.
That’s why it requires a bit of conscious. Effort to stay healthy. The good news, however, is we can take some specific actions to make it a lot easier to control our urges and to moderate our eating according to our health and body composition goals, while enjoying ourselves, while still enjoying our lifestyle and enjoying our diet.
And that means enjoying every meal, everything that we eat. And that brings me then, my 10 tips, which is going to help you stop binge eating if that’s a problem. Again, if it’s a big problem, this might not be enough, but if it’s a a minor, relatively minor problem, I think this is going to help. It can also help people who just tend to maybe eat more than they want to.
Maybe at night they tend to eat too much or when they’re bored. Tend to eat more than they should be eating or stressed and so forth. And so let’s start with the first tip. It is avoid restrictive diets. Now, diets that severely restrict calories or certain foods or entire food groups can trigger binge eating by sending you into a tailspin, commonly referred to as the binge.
Restrict cycle. So in the binge restrict cycle, what happens is you restrict foods and this causes your cravings to increase because often you have to avoid the foods that you really like to eat. Often it is carbs or it is. Sugar, or it is certain types of foods like red meat, for example. And so you have these cravings that are increasing, and then when you indulge those cravings, you feel kind of guilty because you are not supposed to eat food.
And then you atone by doubling down on your diet, and that kind of begins the cycle anew. So you restrict the. Crave it. You hold out for as long as you can. You eat it, you eat a lot of it. You feel guilty, you try to restrict your food even harder. The cravings come back with a vengeance, and so on and so on.
And so then a much better option is to follow a flexible. Diet that allows you to eat all the foods that you like while emphasizing whole unprocessed, nutritious foods like fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean meats, fish, dairy, nuts, seeds, legumes, and others. And if you wanna learn more about flexible dieting, if you wanna learn how to make that work, how to lose fat and build muscle, eating all the foods that you.
For example, head over to legion athletics.com, search for flexible dieting, and look for an article I wrote, cold, how to Get the Body You Want with Flexible Dieting. It’s pretty comprehensive. Moving on to the next tip, which is don’t skip meals. Now this is the op. Of what many people are saying these days because fasting diets are very popular and all of them involve dispensing with regular eating times to spend extended periods fasting.
So sometimes it’s basically just skipping breakfast, like I mentioned earlier in the podcast. Okay. You don’t eat until 12 one or maybe 2:00 PM and then you eat all of your meals over maybe a six to eight hour period, and then you stop eating. That’s one way of going about it, but other fasting diets want you to eat nothing at all for 24 hours once a week or once every other week, or once a month.
Another type of fasting diet, although it’s more just like severe calorie restriction because it still involves eating. Food on your quote unquote fasting days. But you have the five two diet, you maybe have heard of that, where you eat normally for five days and then you heavily restrict your food intake for two days.
Maybe you eat like 500 calories, basically just protein two days a week and eat normally on the other five days. There’s the Ohma Diet, that’s an acronym. One meal a day where you eat just one meal a day, and that means that you are not eating food for the. 23 ish hours of the day, and so on and so on. Now, some people, they like these fasting diets because they condense your daily calories into fewer meals, and for some people they find that that’s more satisfying.
They’re eating larger meals and they are. Able to better stick to their calories and macros by doing that. Some people, for example, are not hungry in the morning. They don’t like breakfast, so it works very easy for them to just skip breakfast, start eating in the afternoon, eat larger meals, and rinse and repeat.
Other people though, they enjoy breakfast and research shows that some people tend to eat more food every day when they eat breakfast, and some people tend to eat less food when they’re not. Track or count just freely living. They tend to eat less food because when they eat breakfast, they are generally less hungry throughout the day.
But again, other people experience the exact opposite. So intermittent fasting can work well for some people and it cannot work well for others. And. It can not work well, especially for people who struggle with regulating the amount of food that they eat. People who are susceptible to binge eating research shows that in some people, once that feeding window opens, they really struggle to close it.
So the solution here is simple. If you are following some kind of fasting diet and struggling with overeating, just stop with the fasting diet. Avoid any type of diet that encourages you to skip meals and just stick with a more traditional eating plan, a breakfast, a lunch, dinner, maybe some snacks, and you can play with the meal compositions in the mule sizes.
For example, I prefer to eat light throughout the day and then eat a bigger dinner and eat something after dinner. That’s just how I like to eat, mostly because I’m doing a lot of work earlier in the day that requires me to think and to talk good like this. And if I eat a large meal, it just slows me down a little bit cuz your body goes into that kind of rest and digest mode.
And I would rather. Be in the rest and digest mode later when I’m not doing stuff like this. So that’s what works for me. But other people like to do it differently and that’s totally fine. And so studies show that that more traditional eating pattern is usually better for people who give into the temptation to binge a little bit too often that they should stay away from fasting diets.
Okay, the next tip is to keep tempting foods out of sight. This one’s pretty simple, right? Because the more you have those delicious foods around you, the more likely you are to eat them. If every time you feel just a little bit of hunger, something tasty is nearby, especially if it’s just in your desk drawer, for example, it’s gonna take some serious willpower to avoid overeating.
And when you have to say no 10 times an hour, or even five times an hour to all of your favorite stuff, eventually you say yes. And then you’ve already said yes, so you might as well say yes again and yes again and so on. And to avoid that pitfall, you can just make tempting foods more difficult to access.
Put them out of sight, banish them to the back of the hard to reach cabinet, for example. Or just don’t buy them. But if that is too much to ask for, at least don’t force yourself to look at them multiple times a. Hey there. If you are hearing this, you are still listening, which is awesome. Thank you. And if you are enjoying this podcast, or if you just like my podcast in general and you are getting at least something out of it, would you mind sharing it with a friend or a loved one or a not so loved one?
Who might want to learn something new. Word of mouth helps really bigly in growing the show. So if you think of someone who might like this episode or another one, please do tell them about it. The next tip here is to fill up on fewer calories. Now, most people think that our body gets used to a certain number of calories every day, or a certain macro breakdown every day.
When generally speaking, we actually tend to eat the same amount. The same volume of food every day. That’s more what our body gets used to. That’s also what makes us feel full at least. Mostly it’s the absolute volume of the food eaten. It’s not the number of calories contained in it to an extent. I mean, calorie density and macronutrient composition do matter as well.
A high calorie. Is generally gonna be more filling than a low calorie meal. And a high protein meal is generally going to be more filling than a low protein meal. But the volume of food has a major impact on satiety, and our body gets used to a certain volume of food at certain times of the day, and that’s why you could take all the food you usually eat in a day and you could double its.
Content without increasing the volume much. So adding fat would be an easy way to do that. Adding butter, for example, you could add butter to everything that you eat. Basically double your total daily caloric intake and still have no trouble finishing at all. You might notice a little bit more fullness, but you would eat all the food and it would be.
Easy. Now, fortunately, we can use that physiological mechanism to our advantage. For example, if you ate a Quarter Pounder hamburger, when you are accustomed to eating a half pound hamburger, let’s say that’s your lunch every day. Let’s say it’s homemade, right? Make it a little bit healthier, so you normally have a half a pound of.
And then you eat a quarter pound of meat, you are probably going to feel hungry when you finish. But if you were to pad out that smaller hamburger with lettuce and tomato and onion, and if you were to make it match the volume of the larger hamburger, you would find that smaller burger about as filling despite containing far fewer calories.
And that has been shown in one study in particular. They actually did exactly. That in another study there was a smoothie basically that was made and in one condition, the smoothie was, I forget the exact ingredients, and it had a certain number of calories. It was like your basic kind of protein smoothie, right?
Some fruit, some milk, I believe there was some protein powder, and then in the other condition there was that smoothie, but with less calories. So I think they reduced it by using a lower calorie liquid. They might have used a little bit less fruit, but they whipped air into the smoothie to make it match the volume.
So you were drinking the same amount of liquid, but contained far fewer calories. And what the researchers found again, is that fullness and satiety was about the same in both conditions. So while filling up on fewer calories, Technically doesn’t prevent you from binging. It does help you limit how much you can eat.
So if you can take something that you like to eat and if you can increase the volume of it without greatly increasing the calories, you can at least eradicate that feeling of guilt that often accompanies a very high calorie binge. All right, tip number five is to start exercising if you are not already training regularly.
You wanna start doing that for many reasons, but in the context of binge eating studies show that regular exercise, and that’s resistance training, that’s cardio or just going out for a walk every day. If you’re not doing anything yet, that is where I would recommend you start. Just start walking every day, even if it’s 15 minutes a day, try to get up to 45 minutes or so of walking and that plus just kind of walking around.
In the course of your day-to-day living should be able to easily add up to at least 10,000 steps per day, which is mostly just a marketing message, but it is a, a good target to shoot for because it does represent, eh, an hour and a half to maybe an hour or 45 minutes of total walking every day. And so studies show that regular exercise, including walking, can help you stop binge eating.
For example, in one study conducted by scientists at the University of Pittsburgh, 81% of women who walked three to five times per week for six months. Binge eating just three to five walks per week. That’s it. Furthermore, exercise and particularly strength training has been shown to boost self-esteem, and that is significant because low self-esteem is strongly associated with binge eating.
So if you can improve yourself, Esteem you may be less likely to binge, and strength training is fantastic for improving your self-esteem. Next tip number six is to drink enough water. This is a very simple way to quell hunger, which means it also can help dampen the urge to binge. So if you are a little bit hungry, you might actually be a little bit thirsty because your body can perceive those things, or at least you perceive them in the same.
It feels like hunger, but it’s actually thirst. So for example, there was a study that was conducted by scientists at Virginia Tech and in IT people who drank 17 ounces of water before eating food consumed about 13% fewer calories than those who drank nothing. And another study worth mentioning was conducted by scientists at the University of South Carolina, and in this study, researchers found that people who drank around 50 ounces of water a day, so less than a half a gallon per day, ate almost 200 fewer calories per day than people who drank less.
And it’s possible that drinking more than that can further blunt hunger and further reduce calorie intake. And of course, that was just people freely eating, freely living. They were not controlling their food intake according to a diet or according to any sort of special instructions. And the reason I mentioned, More water Drinking is 50 ounces per day is not bad, but most people need a bit more to stay properly hydrated.
Probably closer to three quarters of a gallon per day, and some people might need a gallon or even more per day depending on how much they’re sweating. So anyways, the key takeaway here is the next time hunger strikes, drink some water. First it may. Kill the hunger, and if it doesn’t, it can help you eat less when you do eat.
And generally staying hydrated is going to help keep your appetite under control. And if plain water is just too boring for you, then go with lower no calorie beverages. Drink tea. Drink flavored water. Drink coffee. You can even have a Diet Coke. If you want to have a Diet Coke, enjoy it. It’s not gonna make you fat.
It’s not gonna give you cancer. It’s just gonna make you think. Holy shit, that’s delicious. Alright, tip number seven is to be present. Eat mindfully as people say. Now what does that mean? Well, many people mindlessly binge only. They’re not concentrating on how much they’re eating. They’re concentrating on the tv, they’re concentrating on their phone.
It’s usually those things, and that’s why studies show people who eat while watching TV tend to overeat and tend to be overweight. And so an excellent way to combat distractedness at mealtimes. Is mindful eating, and that is simply a technique that aims to help you gain control of your eating habits and to improve your relationship with food.
And it’s pretty simple if you’re going to eat mindfully, you want to eat slowly. You wanna focus on every bite of food that you take. You want to pay attention to your hunger cues and only eat to the point of being satisfied, not stuffed. You want to concentrate on the food as you’re eating it. You want to concentrate on the taste and the texture and the smell, and even the appearance of the food.
You can even pay attention to how it sounds as you move it in your hands and chew it in your mouth. Again, focusing on the food, seeing what you can notice about it with all of your senses. And mindful eating also involves approaching food as if it’s the first time you’ve ever tasted it. Letting go of any past experiences that you may have had with a food or an ingredient.
Really trying to experience it newly each time that you eat it. And I know that. Kind of woowoo, all of that. But several studies do show that those techniques help people binge less regularly. So next time you eat, sit down, turn the TV off, put your phone down. Spend some time thinking about the food you’re eating, focusing on the food that you’re eating.
And one other thing I’ll mention is although eating with others is great, research shows that many people tend to eat more when they are eating with others. So remain cognizant of how much you are eating, how much you are intending to eat, and don’t get so lost in conversation that you find yourself mindlessly eating a couple thousand more calories than you wanted to eat.
Okay, tip number nine is reduce stress. Of course, this is on the list, but. Need to say it because many people find that the more stressed they are, the more likely they are to binge. Many people eat food simply because they’re stressed, not even necessarily binge. They just feel stress and they go to a food that makes them feel comfortable.
And there’s nothing wrong with that per se. But if it happens too often, or if it happens in two large amounts, if it’s too extreme, Then it becomes a problem. And as far as binge eating goes, just eating way too much food in one sitting. Many people don’t know that stress can prevent you from recognizing when you’re full.
So if you’re stressed, you tend to just eat more than usual because your appetite is a little bit screwy. You’re not getting the same satiety cues that you are used to, so you just keep going. And so reducing stress levels is a big part of minimizing the risk. Binging and controlling calories and macros in general, and some good ways to do this include listening to classical music.
Studies show that classical music sharpens your mind. It engages your emotions. It lowers blood pressure. It can lessen physical pain and depression, and it can help you sleep better. All of those things have been shown in research. Listen to your classical music. I would also recommend consuming Less media because research shows that exposing yourself to a constant barrage.
What’s always bad news increases stress levels. No surprise there, but I need to say it. So I’d recommend capping your media consumption to, let’s say no more than 30 minutes per day. And if you can get below that, if you can get to 15 or five, you might be surprised how much it can lower your stress levels.
If you are spending 60 plus minutes a day, consum. News or other types of media that is doom and gloom, doom scrolling, as they say, right? The next tip kind of goes with the last one, and that is spending less time with tech. Cause studies show that the more people use and feel tied to their computers and cell phones, the more stressed they generally.
Feel, in fact, overuse of technology has even been linked with various symptoms of poor mental health, like depression. Next tip is spending more time with people, so maybe spending less time on the computer, less time on the phone, and then more time with people, especially people. You like your nearest and dearest, and studies show that that is one of the best ways to lower stress levels and lower anxiety.
Yoga is another great stress buster. Exercise in general is good for lowering stress, but yoga in particular is good for lowering stress, and research shows that it can also reduce the incidence of binge. All right. My final tip for managing binge eating is to eat more protein because one of the primary obstacles that people encounter when trying to not binge is just hunger.
And if you eat a high protein diet, that is an excellent way to control. Hunger specifically, research shows that increasing protein intake decreases appetite through several mechanisms, including favorably altering hormones that are related to hunger and fullness. And that satiating effect of protein applies to a high protein diet as well as a high protein.
Meal research shows that high protein meals are more filling than high fat meals, for example, and are also more filling than high carb meals. And the most filling of all are high protein meals with some carbs and fat. So if you can have a mixed meal, so for example, if you have a high protein and high carb meal, what many people don’t know is if you add some fat to that meal, it can make it even more filling.
Whereas a high fat meal, like eating an avocado, for example, not very filling very. A lot of calories, not very filling. Protein by itself is more filling than carbs. Carbs by themselves are more filling than fat, but you combine them all together and you have, let’s say, a good portion of protein in there, anywhere from 30 to 50 grams of protein with some carbs, with some fat.
That’s the most filling meal of all, and as far as how much protein you should be eating every day. There are different ways to calculate this. You’ve probably heard 0.8 to one gram of protein per pound of body weight per day, and that works well for people who have a healthy body composition, who are not particularly overweight or obese.
But if somebody is overweight or obese, that doesn’t quite work because let’s say a woman weighs 250 pounds. Does she need. 250 grams of protein per day. No, she does not. So in that case, you could say, well, how about 30 to 40% of total daily calories from protein? That’s another way to do it. It requires a little bit of mapping though.
And so my preferred alternative measurement is one gram of protein per centimeter of. Per day. That works out really well for basically everybody, regardless of their current body composition. All right, so I’ve shared my 10 tips for binge eating less, for better controlling binge eating. What should you do when it happens though?
Because even if you do everything that I said, There still are probably going to be some times when you over-indulge. Maybe it’s not an all out binge, but it is a bit too much. Now. Many people feel regret after doing something like that because they think that it is a dietary transgression and indiscretion and it’s going to thwart their ability to reach their goals.
However, If you instead just show yourself the same compassion and forgiveness that you would show a friend, it can help you better accept that you made a mistake. Accept responsibility for that, and just steam ahead unfazed. And it’s also worth considering that any damage that you might cause by overeating, even overeating to an extreme degree, it’s probably not as bad as you think because.
No matter how much you eat, you can’t gain more than probably a pound and a half, maybe two pounds of fat in a day. And to do that, two pounds of fat, well that would require, let’s just say an extra, probably eight to 9,000 calories. So that means. Eight to 9,000 calories more than you burned that day. And a lot of those calories are going to have to be from dietary fat, not from carbs.
It’s gonna have to be a lot of dietary fat. There can be some carbs in there, but not much protein because protein is not converted. Body fat, essentially. There’s no physiological mechanism whereby the body can convert protein into body fat. Carbohydrates can be converted into body fat, but it’s a very inefficient process, and research shows that it doesn’t really start to kick in until you have.
Eaten a ton of carbs several days in a row. In one study, uh, subjects needed to eat, I believe it was about a thousand grams of carbs per day for several days in a row before their bodies really started to convert portion of those carbs into body fat. Dietary fat, however, can be converted into body fat very easily because it’s chemically similar to body fat.
So if you wanted to gain two pounds of fat in a day, Eight to 9,000 calories more than you burn. So let’s say you burn 2,500 calories in the day, all right? You need to, let’s just call it 12,000 calories. That’s your target for the day, and a lot of fat, a lot of carbs, and not a lot of protein. That’s how you do it, and that’s to gain just two pounds of fat that you could lose in one week of dieting fairly easily if you wanted to.
So if in a meal you ate 2000 calories, it was a mixed meal, there’s some meat in there. So let’s say it was kind of a high protein meal, high carb meal, moderate fat meal. How much body fat are you going to gain from? Meal? Not very much. And how much body fat are you going to gain if, let’s say for the day you are now 2000 or 3000 calories over your expenditure?
Not very much. Not even a pound, maybe a half a pound, maybe even less, depending on again, exactly what you ate and some other. Metabolic factors. And so let’s say worst case scenario, your binge put on a half a pound of fat. You could lose that in literally a couple of days of aggressive dieting, which of course you can get away with if you’re, uh, dieting for a few days.
If you wanted to, you could eat, even if you’re a muscular dude, you could eat 1500 calories for a couple of days, high protein if you wanted to, and lose that fat. So just remember that when you do slip up and you. Eat and or drink too much. It’s really not that big of a deal. It only becomes a big deal if you do it too often.
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