End an Argument

[Gem]

A pal of mine and I are training for a half-marathon in September. At a 4th of July party this weekend she informed me that she was going to go nuts and eat anything and everything she wanted because (heres the argument):

the human body can only absorb so much fat/calories and after that it just gets rid of the rest so if you are going to eat unhealthy, or blow a diet, you might as well go hog-wild, because your body will only absorb so much of it and the rest won't affect the body.


I disagreed and said that this is exactly why people become overweight: they eat more calories than the body can burn and the body doesn't "get rid" of it...it stores it.

Am I wrong? My husband said that he had heard the same thing from someone.

I'll turn it over to the messageboard and the vast amount of bizarre knowledge everyone here seems to have.

 

[Joz]

My vote goes with you, Gem. I think you're right.

 

[The ClayTaurus]

She seems a bit confused. You can't just eat without consequences. What she's probably thinking is that if both of you are training for a marathon and you take a week off, your metabolism won't slow down right away. Which is true. Your metabolism takes a couple weeks to re-calibrate.


Unless she just eats until she has to puke, in which case she's right, the body can only absord so much!

 

[manu1959]

your friend is wrong.....if she was right all people would be thin

 

[Gem]

She wasn't saying you could eat like that all the time and not gain weight...only that in one sitting, the body can only handle so much.

So for instance, you aren't going to gain 3lbs after Thanksgiving dinner, because your body can't handle processing it all, so it gets rid of quite a bit of it.

It kinda makes sense...and at the same time, doesn't...know what I mean?

 

[Mr. P]

You are correct Gem.Tons of info out there.

Calories that go unused by the body fly into our fat cells. Even pencil-thin people have fat cells. Once stored, they stay until they are needed by the body.

http://www.dietbites.com/diet-unused-calories.html

So my body, being the frugal thing that it is, decides to store away a lot of those unused calories. What are they stored as? Fat, that's right, ugly body fat. Even if that 1500 calories was from food that is "good for me".

http://www.bodytrans.com/nutrition_guide.htm

If your caloric intake exceeds your nutritional needs your body will have to do something with the excess. It eliminates some of the unnecessary calories. This puts undue stress on your digestive system and can lead to a premature breakdown of the organs involved. It stores the remainder of the unused calories inside your body as fat

http://www.biofitness.com/fat.html

 

[Joz]

People are different.
There are some who are just that way. They don't seem to be able to gain weight. There are others that can look at a picture of food and gain weight.

My brother was just that sort of person until he hit a certain age. He just lost 25 lbs. Bodies change.
You could say, "nervous" to my mother & the weight would fall off her. Yet one of her half sisters is as wide as she is tall.
A cocktail waitress at one of the venues Mm plays told me she's lost 125 lbs thru gastro-bypass surgery. Looks good. But she says she loves food. Loves serving food so she can smell it. Wants to know what others are eating. Really I think obsessed is the word.

 

[Annie]

She wasn't saying you could eat like that all the time and not gain weight...only that in one sitting, the body can only handle so much.

So for instance, you aren't going to gain 3lbs after Thanksgiving dinner, because your body can't handle processing it all, so it gets rid of quite a bit of it.

It kinda makes sense...and at the same time, doesn't...know what I mean?

I know that for cross country my son and his friends always ate pasta the night before. If memory serves, they only topped it with olive oil and some seasonings, not meat or marinara sauce. Then again, they were in high school and all looked like they had bird legs. Let's put it this way, my son wasn't the skinniest by far, he was 5'9" and at that time, 112 lbs. He's still 5'9" and is up to 130 lbs, 3 years later. He still runs about 45 miles per week, but not with the training they did in high school.