How To Gain 7 Pounds Of Weight In One Day

Why an increase in scale weight doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve gained fat and what is really going on

Remember that time when you went out to eat and woke up the same weight you started dieting at 6 weeks ago?

Here’s what likely happened, and why.

A familiar story

You’ve been dieting for a while, and things are going well. Your weight is way down on the scales and the mirror is being particularly kind. When you get the call to go out for a pizza that Friday with a group of friends, you figure you earned it. What’s more, dat ass is getting into the previously inaccessible jeans with room to spare. It’s on.

You eye the menu eagerly. You spot a bad boy with anchovies, capers, and black olives. Reminded of your holiday to the Cinque Terre a few years back, you make your choice.

A tad salty, you wash it down with several glasses of water, and then some more. In fact, you’re feeling all kinds of thirsty. When you arrive home, you notice you haven’t needed to go to the loo for some time. Still feeling a bit parched, you smash down more than a pint of water before finally going to bed.

Holy shit balls

3-mother-fucking-kilograms. You step on the scale 15 times to make sure it’s not lying. Somehow one pizza and a glass of chardonnay added 3 whole kilogrammes to your previously petite frame. That’s almost 7 pounds of lard in old money.

If fat gain is that easy then what now? Are you doomed to be like Sarah at work? Pretending to like her mid-afternoon snack of carrot sticks and low-fat hummus. You know she’s dying inside. What the hell happened?

Let’s find out.

How much fat can you gain in one go?

A huge, acute, increase in weight from fat gain takes work and is not only dependent on how many calories you eat. How active you are during the day, and how much more active you are after pigging out play a part. As do the type of food you eat, and how fluffy you are, to begin with.

If we’re being generous, a semi-authentic pizza can top out at about 1,500 Calories. I’m not talking about a pizza that is the size of a table and has a hot-dog stuffed into its crust. Add a few hundred Calories for wine, and assorted nibbles. You end up with an absolute maximum of 2,000 kcal for that meal. You ate 1,000 Calories during the day. All that minus the number of calories you burn on average (let’s say 1,800), and you’ve got a 1,200 Calorie surplus.

Body fat is made up of fat, water, and protein. 1 kg of the stuff contains roughly 7,559 to 8,254 calories. Energy storage is not perfect either. The food you eat is rarely, if ever, all stored as fat.

We have a maths problem. How can a surplus of 1,200 Calories equate to around 23,100 Calories of overnight fat gain?

It can’t. Something else is going on.

Sodium, water, and weight gain

Your body is smart. It doesn’t worry about things like what do you really want to do with your life, or where do you want to go on holiday next year. When faced with a situation, your body gets shit done. One of those things is water and electrolyte balance.

If the amount of sodium in your bodily fluids varies in an extreme way, bad things can happen. Your body will regulate this by balancing the amount of sodium with the volume of water. Eat more salty food than normal, and your body will do it’s best to conserve water to decrease the concentration of sodium.

A huge amount of salt above normal + lots and lots of water = massive weight gain. Relax, you didn’t go from Iceman to Duane overnight after all.

You’ve been there before

You’ve found yourself in this situation before. Large jumps in weight can be negative if you feel like you’ve been doing everything right. The thought that one pizza with friends could cause a massive amount of fat gain can push people back to old habits, bingeing, or worse. Feeling like weight gain is inevitable, you might avoid social situations involving eating altogether. When finally faced with having to go to a wedding or birthday, you eat everything in site. You’re going to wake up heavier anyway, so who cares?

What to do now

Now you know what’s actually going on in your body, you’re in control . Here are a few tips to help if you’re going out to eat a high sodium/high carb meal.

• Stay off the scales for a few days. When you go back to eating your regular diet, your body will excrete the water it’s holding onto. In a few days you’ll be back to normal.
• Drink normally. Don’t be a gimp, trying to dehydrate yourself to “flush out” the water is stupid. Let your body do it’s thing.
• Avoid high sodium foods. You’ve learned a lot here. But if you might still get freaked out by transient changes in water balance. Stuffing yourself with anchovies and going wild with the salt shaker might not be a good idea. If this is you, stay away.

Gaining a huge amount of fat after eating one meal out is much more work than you’d expect. Next time you wake up to an earth shattering scale reading, don’t panic. It’s caused by fluctuations in electrolyte and water balance, not fat storage.

Bear this in mind, and stay away from the scales if you’re eating more salt than normal.

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