My experience is that massive ingestions throw off the math. If you consume 20,000 calories in one day, I think the overload causes much of it to flow through your system undigested. The number of calories that you need for maintenance ranges by activity levels. Figure 10 calories per pound with low activity and 12-14 with moderate activity. It can go much higher for people engaged in high levels of physical activity. Michael Phelps needed to consume something like 20 calories per pound to maintain. If you eat more than the number of calories to maintain, the extra will normally be stored as fat. Figure a 200 pound relatively active person who needs 14 calories per pound to maintain. at 2,800 calories per day, they will stay the same. If they were to start eating 3,500 calories a day, the extra 700 would cause them to gain a pound every five days. While that kind of weight gain may sound insignificant at the rate of a pound a week, over the long haul it can make quite a difference. Always eating 700 calories more than they need would mean doubling their weight in four years and weighing 400 pounds is considered relatively fat in most circles. The trick here though is that as you gain weight, the number of calories that you need also increases, although the amount per pound for maintenance tends to decrease as the lifestyle tends to become more sedentary. At 300 pounds and needing 12 calories per pound for maintenance 3,600 calories means that they are then just maintaining. If they want to continue gaining at that slow rate, they would need to increase the daily intake to 4,300 calories. Assuming a reduction in the number of calories needed for maintenance to 10, 4,300 calories would eventually maintain 430 pounds. Since one supersized meal at McDonalds with a Double Quarter Pounder, large fries, and a large chocolate shake is 2,050 calories, I am surprised that more of us don't weigh 400 pounds. Obviously, adding a late-night snack of this meal on top of your normal meals based on maintenance would quickly cause an uptick in weight. Adding 2,050 calories a day would likely all "stick", whereas eating 20,000 calories in one day probably would not. It is also relatively easy to add something like that extra late-night meal. You will go to bed feeling stuffed, but manageable. Eating 20,000 calories in one day or even 10,000 calories every day is much harder to do than it may sound. Adding that extra 2,050 calories a day, however, to the 200 pound model in the illustration above, even if they maintain their active lifestyle of 14 calories per pound would be consuming 4,850 calories a day supporting an eventual weight of 346 pounds. Figuring that the activity levels starts to slide down with the effort of moving a heavier body when that energy level drops to 10 calories per pound, they would end up weighing 485 pounds. Again, I can't understand why more people aren't getting fatter. Oh, maybe that is why the average-sized woman has changed from a size 12 to 14 and now to 16, while pattern sizes have seen vanity sizing changes. A woman wearing a 14 in 1937 would need an 8 in 1967 and a 0 in 20ll. The Misses waist in a size 14 was 27 inches in 1970. A waist of 27 inches in the Misses sizing in 2011 was a size 6. A size 14 in 2011 Misses had a waist size of 32 1/2 inch - an increase of 5 1/2 inches. Did I mention that I am amazed that more of us don't weigh 400 pounds with fast-food restaurants everywhere? Read my non-fiction short story "Simone" on Fantasy Feeder.
4 years
