Fatty2022:
I noticed something and wonder if you have exeprienced this too.
Since ive gained weight and got in the obese range, i get sometimes really tired after eating a normal meal and wanna take a nap. this never happened to me when i was just chubby.
so does the added weight make the difference or is it cause im getting older (im just 22 though😅).
did you experience that? whats the science behind it if somebody knows, im interested
Actually there is scientific explanation for this and it isn't necessarily worrying. It's quite natural:
When you eat a meal, your body will almost immediately start working on digesting the food. Digesting basically means adding chemicals to the food that dissolve it into the molecules it's made of, whereafter the nutrient molecules wander from your intestines to first your lymph and then the liver and finally into your blood.
This process is actually quite energy consuming. Your bowel starts moving with peristaltic contractions that move the food through the system. Blood and lymph change their flow to the vessels adjacent to your intestines to supply the necessary oxygen for things to work properly and to make sure to remove the nutrients that pass through the walls of your bowels in order to transport them to the right places. Your liver has to handle and "repack" all the fat that you've eaten, which is also quite energy consuming.
All this requires oxygen, burns energy and produces all sorts of waste that the body has to dispose of either through liver, kidneys, lungs or rectally and the load on your organism is roughly directly proportional to how much you eat.
Look at most animals after they've been eating. They lie down and digest, some for hours or even days after a large meals. They don't really have the energy to move and IF they spend too much energy on moving, they might actually cause their body to digest the food less efficiently.
You say that you experience this after you've grown fat. Probably, it's not the extra fat on your body that does it but the highly likely fact that after you've let go and started indulging your cravings, you tend to eat much larger portions.
That will take more energy to digest and your body is simply telling you to lean back, relax and wait while it turns your food into nutrients and stores them. You will never see elite athletes eat large meals immediately before performing, as they know that if they do, their body will be allocating some of its resources to digestion and not performance.
So, the more you stuff yourself, the more tired you should expect to be after the meal.
Someone suggested seeing a doctor. That is never a bad idea if you feel worryingly tired, as some diabetes symptoms can be being very tired. But just being tired after pigging out is perfectly normal and just a contribution to your apparently increasing laziness 😁
