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You can eat & absorb 2.5x your calorie needs


allgrownup

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“The researchers also examined past studies of overeating, in which people gorged on food to see how much weight they gained and how quickly, and found that most of them added pounds at a rate that suggested they could absorb about two and a half times their basic caloric needs. That is, participants might swallow more calories, but their bodies could not process anything beyond that limit.”

Pushing the Limits of Human Endurance
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/12/well/move/pushing-the-limits-of-human-endurance.html

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19 minutes ago, dudethatswaffle said:

So basically, people shouldn't eat more than 5000-7500 calories per day (depending on their size) because they'll just poop it out. That's actually good to know. Saves a lot of waste. That is unless they're just trying to see how stuffed they can get.

The average people. How about people endowed by a very high metabolism or high level athletes?

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2 hours ago, John Smith said:

The average people. How about people endowed by a very high metabolism or high level athletes?

I didn't actually read the article (shame, I know, but NYT paywall), but I presume the absorption of calories isn't determined by the person's basal metabolic rate but is determined by other factors. Granted, that's a pretty large presumption, but I would guess that the intestinal absorption rate of calories is not substantially different from an athletically active individual and a non-active individual of similar body type. Though I suppose protein and carbohydrate transporters could be up/downregulated in the gut.

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Guest Grumbar11
3 hours ago, dudethatswaffle said:

So basically, people shouldn't eat more than 5000-7500 calories per day (depending on their size) because they'll just poop it out. That's actually good to know. Saves a lot of waste. That is unless they're just trying to see how stuffed they can get.

More like 3500-10000+. You have to account for height, weight, activity level, age, etc. They did in the paper the article is working off. And other scientific papers reflect similar things with certain nutrients studied.

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4 minutes ago, Grumbar11 said:

More like 3500-10000+. You have to account for height, weight, activity level, age, etc. They did in the paper the article is working off. And other scientific papers reflect similar things with certain nutrients studied.

Can you link me the paper? I would still imagine that it begins to taper off at certain extremes of weight. Probably tied more closely to ideal body weight considering the gut is only so long. Obviously if there is a component of upregulation of transporters in the gut based on basal metabolic rate, that would make sense, but I'd still hazard a guess that the upper limit falls well below 10,000 calories a day.

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Guest Grumbar11
On 8/20/2019 at 12:38 AM, dudethatswaffle said:

Can you link me the paper? I would still imagine that it begins to taper off at certain extremes of weight. Probably tied more closely to ideal body weight considering the gut is only so long. Obviously if there is a component of upregulation of transporters in the gut based on basal metabolic rate, that would make sense, but I'd still hazard a guess that the upper limit falls well below 10,000 calories a day.

By paper, you mean papers. I do bodybuilding as a hobby. Here is a handful of research my trainer and I used to figure out absorption rates and other nutrient values. Some might not be accessable due to paywall, but others are free. Have at.

https://gut.bmj.com/content/17/6/456
https://gut.bmj.com/content/53/9/1279.short
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01296681
https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/94/1/58/4597976
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-nutrition/article/digestibility-and-absorption-of-the-calories-proteins-purines-fat-and-calcium-in-wholemeal-wheaten-bread/D8966C25C73E8BE96A437BDB84FB64B7
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-74255-2_15
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.jafc.8b00456
https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=ZW1mDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA60&dq=10000+calories&ots=uhDu7KKIxz&sig=X0eiWgUOKgj-aqLyYNnez2Lk5Y4#v=onepage&q=10000 calories&f=false
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1051227615001223
http://dmd.aspetjournals.org/content/44/3/366.short
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673668907976
https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article-abstract/55/1/299S/4715344
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7598063
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17118202
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15303106
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10539756
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3280601
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9880251
 

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On 8/20/2019 at 1:52 AM, boss frond said:

These studies are tiny and difficult to duplicate as well as being very severely limited by number of factors, including ethical ones and many factors being difficult to control.

True, but general understanding of calorie absorption and weight gain is well understood. If you have a person who regularly consumes 5000+ calories, that means they could potentially absorb 12,500 calories or more. Considering a football player of 6'6" and 265 pounds could consume 4000 calories to maintain their body mass/composition, they could absorb 10,000 calories. It simply depends on what your body is used to, your current body size, activity level, and bmr.

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On 8/20/2019 at 8:09 AM, Gusto said:

We just need someone to test out this theory and report back with the results=) I'd love to see someone document their gain eating 5k for a week, then 6k, etc. 

Many large body builders and athletes do this on a regular basis. Hell, Stephanie Buttermore was supposedly eating 10,000+ daily for a week prior to her current all in thing. I think she may have also eaten similarly for the first few weeks of her all in project. But you'd have to check her social media. 

 

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Some quotes from the NYT article:

Some quotes from the article:

- Our bodies seem to adjust to prolonged, repeated physical exertion and its energy demands by burning fewer — instead of more — calories over the course of the day, even if our exertions continue at the same level, according to a surprising new study of energy expenditure conducted during a 20-week running race across the United States 

- The study is among the first to quantify the upper limits of human daily energy expenditure and endurance, whether someone is running across the country, competing in the Tour de France or pregnant 

- a small but growing body of research suggests there are limits. A 2012 study of energy expenditure among modern hunter-gatherers, for instance, found that despite being in motion almost all day, the tribespeople burned about the same number of daily calories as those of us who sit behind desks all day. In effect, the tribespeople’s bodies seemed to have found ways to reduce their overall daily energy expenditure, even as they continued to move. 

- The changes in the runners’ energy expenditures were striking. In their first week of repeated marathons, the runners burned about 6,200 calories a day on average, a steep increase over their typical energy expenditure from the week before — and about what would be expected, based on their new level of activity 

- But 20 weeks later, although they were running just as much and at about the same pace, the racers had lost little body weight, and were expending about 600 fewer calories each day on average than they did in the first week. 

- By the end of the event, the researchers calculated that the runners were expending about two and a half times their resting metabolic rate each day, a notable decline from the early days of the event, when they were burning at least three and a half times their resting rate. 

- The researchers also examined past studies of overeating, in which people gorged on food to see how much weight they gained and how quickly, and found that most of them added pounds at a rate that suggested they could absorb about two and a half times their basic caloric needs. That is, participants might swallow more calories, but their bodies could not process anything beyond that limit.

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6 hours ago, allgrownup said:

Some quotes from the NYT article:

Some quotes from the article:

- Our bodies seem to adjust to prolonged, repeated physical exertion and its energy demands by burning fewer — instead of more — calories over the course of the day, even if our exertions continue at the same level, according to a surprising new study of energy expenditure conducted during a 20-week running race across the United States 

- The study is among the first to quantify the upper limits of human daily energy expenditure and endurance, whether someone is running across the country, competing in the Tour de France or pregnant 

- a small but growing body of research suggests there are limits. A 2012 study of energy expenditure among modern hunter-gatherers, for instance, found that despite being in motion almost all day, the tribespeople burned about the same number of daily calories as those of us who sit behind desks all day. In effect, the tribespeople’s bodies seemed to have found ways to reduce their overall daily energy expenditure, even as they continued to move. 

- The changes in the runners’ energy expenditures were striking. In their first week of repeated marathons, the runners burned about 6,200 calories a day on average, a steep increase over their typical energy expenditure from the week before — and about what would be expected, based on their new level of activity 

- But 20 weeks later, although they were running just as much and at about the same pace, the racers had lost little body weight, and were expending about 600 fewer calories each day on average than they did in the first week. 

- By the end of the event, the researchers calculated that the runners were expending about two and a half times their resting metabolic rate each day, a notable decline from the early days of the event, when they were burning at least three and a half times their resting rate. 

- The researchers also examined past studies of overeating, in which people gorged on food to see how much weight they gained and how quickly, and found that most of them added pounds at a rate that suggested they could absorb about two and a half times their basic caloric needs. That is, participants might swallow more calories, but their bodies could not process anything beyond that limit.

This supports what I was saying. If your basal metabolic rate (BMR) starts at 2480, then you gain 50 pounds, your BMR goes up accordingly. If you got to a rate of 4000 BMR, by the wording posited here you could absorb 10000 calories. Granted, you'd have to be either very large or active to need to, but it is possible.

Example:

If PlumpPrincess is 420 pounds, at her height and age she requires 3235 calories to maintain her weight if she does nothing all day. If she wants to gain weight, she could absorb up to 8088 calories if she managed to eat that many, which would allow her to gain approximately 1ish pound every day. If she were 500 pounds, it'd take 3671 calories to maintain, and she could absorb up to 9178 calories, which would be closer to 1.5 pounds gained daily. All this assumes she's sedentary, not working out, running or waddling around, and is not participating in sports.

Keep in mind, the larger, taller, younger, and more active you are, the greater your BMR, and thus the greater your absorption limits. There are more complex calculations that take fat mass versus muscle into account, NEAT activity, and other such things, but my example should provide the basic idea.

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I've always wondered if the people on My 600 Lb Life experience any sort of pain or discomfort from eating that much food on a regular basis. I'd imagine it would largely depend on each person's ability to properly digest the food. Some people have a hard time processing fats, for instance, while others might have some kind of gut flora issue that interferes with absorption, etc. Even if your digestive system is in tip top shape, I can't imagine how one would have an appetite for that many calories unless there is some kind of disconnect in the body's appetite regulation system.

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