Calories

[enomike]

When it comes to weight gain how many calories would you say to eat in order to gain? Can somebody give me some answers? Personally I think that it would be around 5000 a day.:eat1: :eat2:

[Jay West Coast]

I think I know. I've read some Weight Room stories that suggest that if you eat a pizza (probably about 890823.77 calories), you'll gain 99 pounds by lunch.

Well, I mean, if you're the blonde High School prom queen.

Dunno; you might give it a shot.

[chickadee]

It really depends on your own metabolism and your amount of physical activity.

For me, it has to be at least 3500/day for me to gain significantly. That's hard to keep up for weeks on end, I just don't get hungry enough for that.

[Totmacher]

That's a complicated question. Not every calorie you eat gets digested and not every calorie you digest goes straight to gaining weight. You need around 2,000 calories a day just to keep breathing (luckily the average person has enough in reserve that it never comes to that). Anything over that should end up stored as fat, but a) there's a limit to how much fat you can grow in a given amount of time, b) at a rate of 3500 calories per pound of fat it's unlikely you'll notice any results in the immediate future. Your personal maintenance can be estimated pretty accurately from your lean body mass and level of physical activity. There's no shortage of webpages, books, pamphlets, and other resources that can help you estimate how many calories you need on a daily basis to maintain your weight and how many are in a given amount of a specified food, but, barring any metabolic abnormalities or physical disabilities, just eating an extra meal (500-1000 calories, nothing ridiculous) a day should be more than enough to gain appreciably.

[Falling Boy]

Go for tubs of lard, you know how many calories are in that shit!

[Jon Blaze]

Yep. It's pretty complex.
You only have direct control on the two concepts of the law of thermodynamics that applies to calories.
I found this on the lovely Kate Harding's shakesville blog:

“It is true that the First Law of Thermodynamics must apply to the human body. And, given the simplistic approach which many dull normals take, lots of people are confused about what ‘consumed’ and ‘burn off’ mean.

There are active control systems which reduce the amount of energy used involuntarily for many of the body’s autonomic functions. There are also significant energy excretion systems which are active in many bodies. A very basic enumeration is as follows; note that in real life you have to add a bunch of interactive arrows symbolizing the feedback controls (hormonal, and also enzyme regulation by product inhibition and allosteric interactions) which connect these systems.

C - N - S1- S2 - S3 - I - H - E - V = 0

C = calories eaten
N = non-absorbed calories excreted in bowels
S1 = calories stored as fat
S2 = calories stored as carbohydrate
S3 = calories stored as protein
I = calories used in involuntary movement
H = calories used for heat generation and other metabolic processes
V = calories used in voluntary movement
E = calories excreted in urine (Examples: fat converted to glucose in the liver, incompletely burned triglycerides and albumin)

Note that there is “manual” control only on C and V. Deliberate variation of C and V will immediately cause feedback to all the other systems, and you have absolutely no control over the net outcome. None of these variables are independent of the others. All adjust to restore equilibrium when any one of them changes. So you can’t say that the amount of energy stored as S1 is “whatever is left over”, because there is no such thing as “left over” in a feedback-controlled homeostasis.

So can increasing V and decreasing C result in less S1? Of course, provided that I, H and E don’t change enough in response to prevent that outcome. “Just try harder” is useless advice. You have no control over what your personal regulatory processes do with changes in voluntary input and output. And if you spend your life trying ever more drastic alterations of V and C in order to escape continuous public abuse by idiots, you can screw up the regulatory mechanisms even more.”


Which means: Another point that weight bigots can't use. HEHHEH ALLLLL RIGHTTTTTTT!! :p


So it's really subjective. There is 3500 calories in a pound of body fat, but in order to do that you'd have to have the calories directly injected in you. If you ate that amount, the energy required to have that food digest would be at least 100 I would say. Plus the human body naturally burns at rest, so on average I would say it would take at least 3800 for a full gain.

Most people gain very slowly, and that's usually safer, however. You can gain weight with as little as an extra apple in calories added to your diet per day over some years.

[Observer]

Everything Jon wrote is very true - and there is an additional factor.

The example above assumes that all of the storage calorie allocation is new weight - which is where the 3500 calories over other requirements applies.

Problem: in real life fat cells are seldom filled to maximum capacity - in fact if one has been dieting, ill or very physically active there can have been weight loss that has depleted the adipose (fat) cells. Serving as a source of reserve nutrition for the whole body is, after all, their intended purpose.

When depleted these cells are like little shrunken balloons waiting to be refilled. It takes a lot less than 3500 calories to refill a pound's worth of shrunken cells. Conversely it takes more than 3500 to build and fill brand new cells.

The latter is why weight gain that one expects should be taking place doesn't immediately happen and then seems to suddenly spurt 4-5 pounds in a short time. The earlier calories were being allocated to new cells while the later ones to filling activity.

Usually there is some degree of both building and filling going on, with the ratio shifting

[ChubbyBlackSista]

Wow 5000 calories a day is a lot to eat really when you think about it.

[olly5764]

I think it is better not to count the calories, just to eat as much as you want to, trying to work it out is a) rather pointless, owing to how different peoples bodies react, b) doing what feels to be right is often a better guide than a cold hard figure, c) it stops it becoming routine.
That is my opinion, feel free to disagree

[chunkeymonkey]

From what I was told from a MD.... 3000 calories make up 1 lb so depending on your activity, metabolisim and how fast you can shovel in a bowl of ice cream kidding about the ice cream there is a little math. Hope that helps a little.