Chile Pepper
02-20-2013, 08:06 AM
I've been thinking about this a lot since it came up in another thread. This past weekend I weighed 120 on Saturday morning and 123 on Monday morning. Yikes! On the other hand, while I did eat more than during the week, I'm sure I burned more calories than I ate, based on a conservative estimate of calories burned versus a generous estimate of calories consumed. Even if my estimates are off, there is no way I consumed the 10,000 calories it would take to gain three pounds of fat. So what's going on?
A little Internet research turned up a very interesting explanation (http://citygirlbites.com/blog/archives/144):
Any increase in carbohydrate or sodium intake will cause your body to hold on to water. For example, lets say your normal diet is moderate in carbs. Then you overindulge on the weekend on bagels, dessert, and maybe some pasta. Your body does several things with these carbs:
1. some is used for immediate energy
2. some is stored as fat
3. much of it goes into energy stores in the liver and muscles.
These stores are called glycogen and will provide your body with energy as time goes on. Runners try to fill up their glycogen stores by eating pasta on the night before the marathon. They want to stuff their energy stores full of stored carbs to be used as energy during the race. Now here is the catch – in order to hold the carbohydrate in storage, your body needs to hold onto water. For each gram of carbohydrate, your body needs to hold onto 3 grams of water.
aha! I tend to eat a low-carb diet during the week and then indulge a bit more on the weekends. My calorie intake is still reasonable, so this seems like a very plausible explanation for why I'm gaining weight—and then losing it—so quickly. I'll have to try moderating my carbs a bit more on the weekends to see if that helps improve the cycle.
Any thoughts?
A little Internet research turned up a very interesting explanation (http://citygirlbites.com/blog/archives/144):
Any increase in carbohydrate or sodium intake will cause your body to hold on to water. For example, lets say your normal diet is moderate in carbs. Then you overindulge on the weekend on bagels, dessert, and maybe some pasta. Your body does several things with these carbs:
1. some is used for immediate energy
2. some is stored as fat
3. much of it goes into energy stores in the liver and muscles.
These stores are called glycogen and will provide your body with energy as time goes on. Runners try to fill up their glycogen stores by eating pasta on the night before the marathon. They want to stuff their energy stores full of stored carbs to be used as energy during the race. Now here is the catch – in order to hold the carbohydrate in storage, your body needs to hold onto water. For each gram of carbohydrate, your body needs to hold onto 3 grams of water.
aha! I tend to eat a low-carb diet during the week and then indulge a bit more on the weekends. My calorie intake is still reasonable, so this seems like a very plausible explanation for why I'm gaining weight—and then losing it—so quickly. I'll have to try moderating my carbs a bit more on the weekends to see if that helps improve the cycle.
Any thoughts?