Bodybuilding Fat Loss

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

What If You Gained 10 Pounds This Weekend?

I always marvel at the reports I get from men and women who claim to have gained 10 pounds over a weekend. In truth, this is next to impossible. It doesn't matter how much you try to pig out, you just couldn't gain 10 pounds of fat in a weekend. Not even 5 pounds. Nor 3. Maybe 1, but no more.

So despite how much weight you worry you are going to gain this Easter weekend, the truth is, it's tough to actually gain pounds of fat in a weekend.

Take for example the traditional notion that there are 3500 calories in a pound of fat. To even gain 3 pounds of fat over a weekend, you'd need to consume an extra 10,500 calories. Now that's tough. In fact, that's about the number of calories in 19 Big Mac's.

Now please tell me you don't eat 19 Big Mac's in a weekend?

If you do, then you have trouble. Plus, that doesn't take into account the 1500-2000 calories a normal person burns each day. So over a 3 day weekend, you'd have to throw another 10 Big Macs into your diet to gain the 3 pounds in one weekend for our example. So let me know how eating 29 Big Macs in 3 days turns out.

I really hope no one tries that!

Also, take a look at this study. Researchers from Virginia State University gave men an extra 1000 calories per day for 8 weeks. For most people, that would be a tough challenge to eat that many extra calories unless they were eating all types of junk food.

By the end of the 8 week study, the men gained an extra 11 pounds. That's 11 pounds after 8 weeks of "pigging out", not just a weekend where they went to the Outback Steakhouse and had a "Blooming Onion".

Reference: Obesity 15:3005-3012 (2007)

What most people see on the scale after a weekend of "road trip eating" is just an increase in fluid retention due to the high-sodium and high-carbohydrate diet, as well as some fat (but certainly not 10 pounds of it in only 48 hours).

So the next time you get off track with your weekend eating and are shocked to discover that you've gained 10 pounds, just take a deep breath and realize that is not an accurate measurement of the real damage.

If you get off track, just focus on getting back in charge of your nutrition, sticking to whole, natural foods, and cutting out the high-sodium, high-carbohydrate processed snacks. This shouldn't be too hard, because you'll probably feel terrible from the weekend's junk food.

In addition to returning to fruits, vegetables, nuts, and protein for your meals during the week, make sure to add three total body resistance training workouts and 3 interval cardio workouts to help you burn fat and return to your normal weight.

Start with a bodyweight warm up, then do resistance training supersets to boost your metabolism, and then finish the workout with fat burning interval training.

If you do that, you'll lose weight, not gain fat!

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