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Is there a limit to the number of calories you can take in ?
Hi,
Watching You Are What You Eat on Channel 4, there seems to be people on there eating 10 to 15,000 calories (and more) a day . I believe that 3000 excess calories is equivalent to a pound in weight, but these 25 stone people are not gaining 3 pounds a day. Is there a limit therefore to the amount of food that can actually be processed in 24 hours ? What would the limit be ? It didn't look to me from the stool samples that unprocessed food is being passed straight out, indeed most of them seem to have trouble going to the toilet. What's going on here ? Cheers n |
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"norm" wrote in message
... Watching You Are What You Eat on Channel 4, there seems to be people on there eating 10 to 15,000 calories (and more) a day . Yup. Many binger manage to break way above the 5k mark during a single binge. Actually, the 15k mark was what was used during the Sims experience (feeding volunteers in jail an hypercaloric diet for several months to see what would happen). I believe that 3000 excess calories is equivalent to a pound in weight, but these 25 stone people are not gaining 3 pounds a day. Exactly. That's what the Sims experience showed. The 3000 calories = 1 pound equation is what is actually contained in your body fat. But your body is not 100% effective at converting excess calories to body fat. It seems to vary greatly from people to people. I even suspect it's not linear; I'm not sure you're as good at converting 10k extra calories as you are at converting a small extra. Moreover, the intestine can only process so much bulk, some of the food is bound to be flush away undigested if you ingest a huge amount of it (over-eaters know how their stool looks like after a binge). Besides, the digestive process itself burns energy (usually around 10% of the intake), but we know that that amount of energy can vary a lot, depending on a number of factors. One might think that digesting 1 gallon of ice cream does burn a significant amount of energy. The equation works well when converting body fat to energy, but I doubt it's correct in the reverse direction. Is there a limit therefore to the amount of food that can actually be processed in 24 hours ? What would the limit be ? I would guess it's purely genetic. Some people are very good at processing a large amount of food, others are not. That's why I think *super*-obesity has a genetic component. Regular over-eaters "just" become obese. It didn't look to me from the stool samples that unprocessed food is being passed straight out, indeed most of them seem to have trouble going to the toilet. Personnal experience seems to hint that it's possible to overload your intestine Constipation is just short term. Some people can oscillate between constipation and diarrhea, and a lot of unprocessed nutriments are evacuated during the later. That was pretty common when I overate. Going much much better now What's going on here ? I would guess several things : - Fat cells plainly refusing to get stuffed any more; that's what happens with insulino-resistance. The cells just become resistant to storing more, and excess nutriments remain in the bloodstream and go through the urine. That's why T2 diabete tend to gain weight under insuline if they don't change their diet. - Unbalance in nutriments cause enzymatic processes not to work. Like, if you don't get enough proteins, you might have a hard time processing a huge amount of fats/carbs. - Body reacting by kicking up the metabolism. Kind of the reverse of what happens when you starve yourself. - Efficiency of the biological processes involved in storing the extra energy being very wasteful, and maybe getting more wasteful as you try to stuff more energy through them. - Intestine getting overloaded. Fibers and even fats will eventually speed up the digestive process enough to prevent some stuff from being assimilated... |
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norm wrote in
: Hi, Watching You Are What You Eat on Channel 4, there seems to be people on there eating 10 to 15,000 calories (and more) a day . I believe that 3000 excess calories is equivalent to a pound in weight, but these 25 stone people are not gaining 3 pounds a day. Is there a limit therefore to the amount of food that can actually be processed in 24 hours ? What would the limit be ? It didn't look to me from the stool samples that unprocessed food is being passed straight out, indeed most of them seem to have trouble going to the toilet. What's going on here ? Cheers n That's wild! Depends on what you burn, too. Scientists stationed on the South pole need to consume 8000 calories a day just to maintain body weight. -- --------------- "Teach a child to read and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test."—George W Bush, Townsend, Tenn., Feb. 21, 2001 |
#4
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norm wrote in
: Hi, Watching You Are What You Eat on Channel 4, there seems to be people on there eating 10 to 15,000 calories (and more) a day . I believe that 3000 excess calories is equivalent to a pound in weight, but these 25 stone people are not gaining 3 pounds a day. Is there a limit therefore to the amount of food that can actually be processed in 24 hours ? What would the limit be ? It didn't look to me from the stool samples that unprocessed food is being passed straight out, indeed most of them seem to have trouble going to the toilet. What's going on here ? Cheers n That's wild! Depends on what you burn, too. Scientists stationed on the South pole need to consume 8000 calories a day just to maintain body weight. -- --------------- "Teach a child to read and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test."—George W Bush, Townsend, Tenn., Feb. 21, 2001 |
#5
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On Tue, 24 Aug 2004 17:05:52 +0100, norm
wrote: Hi, Watching You Are What You Eat on Channel 4, there seems to be people on there eating 10 to 15,000 calories (and more) a day . I believe that 3000 excess calories is equivalent to a pound in weight, but these 25 stone people are not gaining 3 pounds a day. Is there a limit therefore to the amount of food that can actually be processed in 24 hours ? What would the limit be ? It didn't look to me from the stool samples that unprocessed food is being passed straight out, indeed most of them seem to have trouble going to the toilet. What's going on here ? Cheers n They were showing stool samples on TV??? My Olympic lifting coach claims he eats 10000 calories a day, though I'm not sure it's true. He eats really a lot, though. I know he takes performance-enhancing drugs (HGH, primarily, maybe others), and I think those affect metabolism. Chris |
#6
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On Tue, 24 Aug 2004 17:05:52 +0100, norm
wrote: Hi, Watching You Are What You Eat on Channel 4, there seems to be people on there eating 10 to 15,000 calories (and more) a day . I believe that 3000 excess calories is equivalent to a pound in weight, but these 25 stone people are not gaining 3 pounds a day. Is there a limit therefore to the amount of food that can actually be processed in 24 hours ? What would the limit be ? It didn't look to me from the stool samples that unprocessed food is being passed straight out, indeed most of them seem to have trouble going to the toilet. What's going on here ? Cheers n They were showing stool samples on TV??? My Olympic lifting coach claims he eats 10000 calories a day, though I'm not sure it's true. He eats really a lot, though. I know he takes performance-enhancing drugs (HGH, primarily, maybe others), and I think those affect metabolism. Chris |
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"OceanView" wrote in message
... That's wild! Depends on what you burn, too. Scientists stationed on the South pole need to consume 8000 calories a day just to maintain body weight. Keeping the body temperature constant burns a *bunch* of energy! Dietitians looked at the diet of Napoleon's infantry. The men were on a 7000 calories diet (well, when they were not trying to invade Russia)... Walking 16+ hours a day does burn some calories |
#8
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"OceanView" wrote in message
... That's wild! Depends on what you burn, too. Scientists stationed on the South pole need to consume 8000 calories a day just to maintain body weight. Keeping the body temperature constant burns a *bunch* of energy! Dietitians looked at the diet of Napoleon's infantry. The men were on a 7000 calories diet (well, when they were not trying to invade Russia)... Walking 16+ hours a day does burn some calories |
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"Lictor" wrote in
: "OceanView" wrote in message ... That's wild! Depends on what you burn, too. Scientists stationed on the South pole need to consume 8000 calories a day just to maintain body weight. Keeping the body temperature constant burns a *bunch* of energy! Dietitians looked at the diet of Napoleon's infantry. The men were on a 7000 calories diet (well, when they were not trying to invade Russia)... Walking 16+ hours a day does burn some calories I hope they had good shoes! That's a lot of marching. -- --------------- "Teach a child to read and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test."—George W Bush, Townsend, Tenn., Feb. 21, 2001 |
#10
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On Tue, 24 Aug 2004 19:57:42 +0200, "Lictor" wrote: "norm" wrote in message .. . Watching You Are What You Eat on Channel 4, there seems to be people on there eating 10 to 15,000 calories (and more) a day . Yup. Many binger manage to break way above the 5k mark during a single binge. Actually, the 15k mark was what was used during the Sims experience (feeding volunteers in jail an hypercaloric diet for several months to see what would happen). SNIP Thanks for a comprehensive and interesting reply. n |
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