Caloric Surplus, What Happens When...

Discussion in 'Fitness, Health & Nutrition' started by donewithweed, Jul 11, 2014.

  1. People say to gain weight you need a caloric surplus over your TDEE (Totaly Daily Energy Expenditure). A certain amount of calories a day extra, say 300-500, will help support mostly muscle gain and healthy growth with a good diet and training. Now they also say too much over your TDEE and it'll start to be stored as fat. My question is, will it all be stored as fat? Isn't there a point where your body can't store it as fat because you just ate too damn many calories in a day? Meaning it can't keep up, what would it do with the extra calories?

     
  2. People over simplify this issue.

    There is a lot of body chemistry happening and its not just about the ammount of calories.

    For example, if you ate 1000 calories of pure sugar for lunch, that might be half your calorie limit, but the insulin surge will cause nearly all the sugar toto be stored in fat cells

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  3. Alright well I am being a little more simplistic lol. I'm just wondering what happens when you eat more food than your body can process into fat, muscle, whatever. What happens to that food?
     
  4. To keep it as simple as I can, if you eat too much while you're bulking, practically all the excess calories will be stores as fat.  Your muscles only need so much protein before it becomes over kill and they just don't need the extra you're feeding it.  So it can't absorb any more food into your muscle cells and will send it to your, you guessed it, fat cells.  And fat cells, there's no such thing as too much lol.  300-500 extra is pretty much the staple but it still has to be clean food that your muscles can actually use to grow.  But I don't like to think so much in calories, it reminds me of fuckin Weight Watchers or something.
     
  5. Ive been wondering for a while something similar. Lets say instead of eating +300-500 calories a day, im eating +1000 calories a day. Yes, half that amount will turn to fat. But after i have gained some weight, muscle and fat, but i still eat the same amount of total calories as i was when i was eating +1000 calories... and my exercise remains the same, will i eventually start burning off that fat (through weight training, not running, to be precise).

    I know its a very specific question, but maybe theres a science guy on here that can answer lol

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  6. you need to worry less about the number of calories, and worry about what and when you eat it.
     
    example:
    if you eat 1,000 calories of cake after heavy cardio workout  (like 3 hrs).. then it won't do much of a difference as far your fat levels go. since you glycogen stores are probably completely depleted. however it will cause a huge sugar spike in your blood and while a lot of the sugar will go towards the replacement of lost glycogen it will also rob your body of essential nutrients, because refined sugar cannot be processed simply. it also won't do shit for helping you build muscles. 
     
    if you have that same cake and decide "to work it off" tomorrow.. then it won't work. your sugar spike will pass and your body will go ahead and store extra "sugar energy" as fat for later use. but you will not get to use it, unless you are running a marathon the next day.
     
    eat clean natural food and don't worry about counting calories. 
     
  7. You poop it out

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  8. us science gguys would need to understand said question.

    Are you asking if you eat the same and work out the same, will you gain weight and then lose it again?

    Sorry I don't understand the question at all

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  9.  
    Maybe, I just eat everything I can until my stomach hurts... I have a very hard time gaining weight. I am hypoglycemic and am still figuring out what that means (my doctor and the second doctor I saw both refused to tell me anything more than, "Google it.") as far as my diet goes.
     
     
    Ah, which is the part that confuses me as well. How does our body determine when to stop using nutrients and just excrete it? Wouldn't this make counting calories hard because you don't know how much your body actually decides to use?
     
    I'm not attacking you, and I hope it doesn't come off that way, I just really am trying to learn some new info here :)
     
  10.  
    Don was saying (all example numbers given):
    He eats 2000 calories a day. To gain weight, because he maintains weight at 2000 calories a day, people recommend eating 2300 to 2500 calories a day. He instead eats 3,000 calories a day. The larger portion of calories will be stored as fat now as he isn't using that many calories in a day. However, as he gains muscle and keeps eating 3,000 calories a day, he wonders if he will start losing the fat again.
     
    From what I know, yes. Your increased muscle mass needs extra calories to maintain their size, and especially to get bigger. So now that extra muscle weight is added, your body can use more of the calories taken in. The fat you built up will burn off, but it won't turn into muscle. Separate processes. The visceral fat you gain (fat around organs as a "cushion" of protection) is going to be harder to lose, compared to the subcutaneous fat (belly fats, arm fats, etc. more close to the surface of the skin, not so much around organs). Best bet is to eat 300-500 extra calories (in the example given, 2300-2500 calories a day) until you notice you are not gaining weight as fast, or at all anymore. Then add some more calories.
     
  11. I eat 3-4 times a day but if I missed breakfast then I eat a pint of ice cream with every meal.

    I don't count calories so I workout hard everytime and eat anything I want.

    I gain weight by doing compound exercises and eating big.

    My form of cardios are jump rope and sprint. It true what Muhammad Ali said "Float like a butterfly and sting like a bee". All that come from jumping rope on consistent basis so I feel light as fuck even if I'm gaining weight.
     
  12. Its chemistry

    There are only so many enzimes in your digestive system.

    Your body is always making more, but in the meantime the food is still moving through your intestinal tract.

    To put it another way, if you need to mix two chemicals to get a reaction, the reaction will stop if you run out of one, no matter how mmuch of the other you keep adding.

    Keep adding more food to your system, it won't matter if your enzimes aare being used up

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  13. #13 donewithweed, Jul 15, 2014
    Last edited: Jul 15, 2014
     
    Yum gotta love some Haagen Dazs mmm. Anyway I do mainly compound lifts as well, I gain the most and enjoy them the most.
     
     
    Thank you this is all helpful. Maybe I need to find some weed that'll give me the munchies again haha, I haven't had that in months... well either way I'm just eating a lot, trying to increase my protein and healthy fats. That seems to be a good idea for hypoglycemia, as well as eating very often to balance out my blood sugar.
     
  14. did you eat a lot of sugar as a kid?

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  15. Not as a kid. When I was under my parents roof things were generally healthy meals with occasional treats. Once I graduated high school, moved out, and went to college things changed. I ate lots more sugar at that point.
     
  16. Each person is different, but if you have been eating a lot of sugar, you most like built up an insulin tollerance. Meaning your body produces even more of it, which in turn, might cause hypoglycemia

    Idk tho. Its usually best to eat healthy and exercise first. Then see if your pproblems are still there

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  17. Ok for example lets say to maintain my body weight, i need to eat 2000 calories, to put on weight muscle, id need to eat 2500 calories. But instead, im eating 3000 calories, an extra 500 that im not really supposrd to eat. Which is getting converted to fat.

    Lets say some time passes. And i need to increase my calories from 2500 to 3000 to continue gaining (despite having already been eating 3000). At that point in time, will the fat that i gained from eating too many calories start getting burned and turnes into fat?

    In real life, i feel like im eating more than i need to be and gaining some stomach fat along with lots of muscle. I dont think i could really handle eating much more in the future when its time to "up my calories" again. So im hoping i can just work off the fat gained currently instead of adding 500 more calories to keep gaining muscle/mass.

    This is probably more complicated than needed to be but im getting frustrated with my stomach and hoping that itll go away if i keep eating the same amount over the next few months while progressing in weight training at the same rate as i have been and gaining muscle

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  18. Well to put it simply, if you eat more youll gain weight. Are you talking about gaining muscle weight?

    If you increase.muscle mass then you increase calorie needs, so yes, if you eat the same ammount but also gain muscle, you'll start burning fat.

    But being fat doesn't increase your calorie needs all that much. So if you get fat and keep eating you'll just keep getting fat

    Hope that helps
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  19. Also remember its not 100% about calories. If tour are fat even though you work out, you might be eating too many carbs. Excess carbs cause far storage and the inability to burn fat.

    Make sure most of those calories are proteins.

    Aerobic exercise increases the demand for lean muscle mass as well, if you do a lot of cardio, and cut ccarbs, you'll lose fat even with a calorie surplus

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  20. You may be well served to search the google machine for resources on healthy fats; in particular "high fat" diets with ample protein, cutting out starchy processed carbs and refined sugars.
     
    Especially in regards to your blood sugar issues, from the research I have seen, this type of diet may be especially beneficial for you.
     
    As yuri pointed out it is not as simple as calorie to calorie comparison, because depending on WHAT the calorie comes from, the metabolic process varies. IE sugar vs protein. A 1000 calories is not necessarily a 1000 calories cut and dry.
     
    If your goal is to be healthy, strong and muscular... check out the concepts of "paleo" and "primal" type diets. But especially peruse the research on how saturated fats reverse a myriad of health conditions while supporting many vital processes. The "high fat" diet described in this post is one that, ironically supports lean muscle mass especially when compared to high carb diets. There's too much information to outline everything in this post, so all I will do here is encourage you to start searching and learning. Google and MarksDailyApple.com are good starting points for this type of info.
     
    My diet has been pretty "paleo" or "primal" for quite some time now. Long ago I ran into health issues and had a diet that created them - high carb, sugar, refined BS and fast food. I went raw vegan for a while, basically as a cleanse to flush out my body and deliver an abundance of vitamins, minerals, fiber, enzymes and phytonutrients. After 6-8 months of this I began re introducing meat into the diet, but only organic/free range/wild caught/pastured/etc. while also excluding or heavily restricting dairy, starchy carbs, refined sugars, etc.
     
    I am 6'4" and before my transition weighed 230lbs, mostly muscular but I had an interesting "gut" hovering around where my colon sits/below the belly button.
     
    Now, eating lots of fruits and veggies plus high quality meat, with an abundance of healthy fats (olive oil, grass fed butter, coconut oil), I am hovering around 200lbs. My gym strength initially deteriorated while doing the raw cleanse, naturally. But after steadily working back into it, I am lifting the same weights I did in the past, whilst be 30lbs lighter. And I consistently have between a 6-8 pack depending on how many dirty foods/beer/etc sneak into my diet; that weird lower bit of belly fat is gone.
     
    TIME magazine recently prepared a landmark piece, We Were Wrong About Saturated Fats, and others are catching up also as the research is being analyzed. The high carb mantra is a boondockle pushed by profiteers of processed foods. The science shows whats what and healthy fats are critically important and a cornerstone to health. According to the misinformation, given how much (healthy- NO trans, shortening, margarine, etc) fats I consume, I should be overweight and in poor health. However it has proved the opposite.
     
    Instead of getting wrapped up in calorie counting, perhaps its wiser to just focus on health. Loads of raw foods, healthy fats and proteins, cut out all the processed/refined/sugary/nutritionally defunct garbage, cut back on dairy and starchy carbs, think lots of happy thoughts, lift heavy weights/exercise intensely several times a week while allowing adequate rest (day or two) in between... when you incorporate all this as a lifestyle IMO it gets much easier than analyzing micro and macro nutrient counts at every meal and hair splitting all of the details. Think in evolutionary, global, far reaching terms; and make it fun for you, enjoyable. Life is supposed to be fun and health is a birthright to you - it needn't be overly complicated!
     

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