I am now successfully 10 days in to being a father of two.
It is VERY different from being a father of one..that’s for sure.
These last 9 days have been incredible.
Very little sleep. Only 1 workout session (a very quick shoulders and squats workout), and almost 6,000 calories per day!
Yep, 6,000.
According to the USDA food database and the nutrition charts of Starbucks, Second Cup and Subway I’ve been eating almost 6,000 calories a day and almost 60% of these calories were from refined carbs.
Not good – even by my liberal eating standards.
The result wasn’t pretty either.
Ever since I started fasting Eat Stop Eat style I’ve maintained a weight right around my goal of 175 pounds (down from 190-200)
I’m typically between 172 and 177 depending on the day (fasted weight).
Two days before my son was born I weighed in at exactly 175.
Sunday at 2 PM I weighed in at 181 pounds.
Even worse…I felt..fat. Not even fat. I felt squishy.
On Sunday I started my first fast in 10 days at exactly 2 PM.
By 11 PM I weighted 179 pounds.
By 6 AM this morning I was 177 pounds.
At 1:33 (just before finishing my fast) I was 175.7 pounds.
So what gives? Is Eat Stop Eat style fasting some sort of miracle fat loss cure?
Not in the slightest.
Fasting is really effective for weight loss, but it’s no miracle.
The truth is almost all of the weight I gained was water weight, most likely due to the higher than normal refined sugar intake, the lack of sleep, and the overall over-eating.
The rest of the weight was simply the weight of the food in my system.
If you eat 1 pound of ANYTHING you have added 1 pound of mass to your body (bread, butter, bricks, or lego blocks..it doesn’t matter..1 pound consumed is 1 pound added)…so if you do what I did and spend 8 days in the fed state..eating food at a much faster rate then you can get rid of it, you are bound to add some ‘matter’ weight.
The last little bit..yep, that was probably fat (there is no such thing as a free lunch…)
The other part of this truth is two fold:
1) We really have NO IDEA how many calories we are eating. I did my best to track my calorie intake and averaged around 6,000 Calorie a day. Realistically according to research this probably means I ate ANYWHERE between 4,200 and 7,800 Calories!
Judging by my weight gain, I’m guessing it was MUCH closer to 4,000 then it was 6,000.
2) We also really have NO IDEA how much we weigh. Our weights fluctuate from day to day..it is much more accurate to give a weight range then it is to give a precise weight. This is why it’s important not to freak out if you mysteriously gain 1 or 2 pounds…
These two facts make estimating and trying to rationalize weight gain an almost ludicrous idea.
You can measure and record as much as you like, but there will be time when it simply won’t make sense. This isn’t because your bad at math. It’s because every number you are working off of is an estimate!
So the point of this rather long post is simple -
There’s more to your weight then fat and muscle, so if you see 2-3 pounds changes, don’t freak out.
AND, even though there is no such thing as a free lunch,(overeating will almost always lead to some sort of weight gain), at least we can rest a little easier knowing that ALL of the weight isn’t pure fat.
That being said, if your goal is long lasting weight loss success and you catch yourself in a bad eating downward spiral, don’t try to rationalize your eating to yourself, simply realize what is going on and try your best to “right ship” as soon as possible.
BP
Tags: Fasting for Weight Loss
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This is a test comment by Brad Pilon to see if the comments are working properly.
B
Welcome to the land of two kiddos! We’re actually having our third in a couple months… woo boy…
I love both the precision of your numbers and the practicality of the takeaway. Every week matters in terms of our health, but no week can be so bad nutritionally that it destroys a healthy foundation built by years of care.
[...] Gain (And Lose) 6 pounds in One Week? | Brad Pilon’s Nutrition … [...]
Is it difficult to fast went sleep deprived? That seems to be when I have the most difficulty in making healthy food choices. It seems like it would be simpler not to eat at all.
Hi Brad,
So then, what is the rate of LBM growth that we should generally expect? It appears that you have left out this golden nugget from your post.
From various sources, we have been given the figure of 0.2 to 0.5 pounds per week on a slight caloric surplus diet and resistance training regime. And while increase in LBM would also entail increase in water and glycogen stores in the muscles, we should see around an additional 0.4 pound of weight gain from these. Therefore, if we were to gain 14 pounds in weight, 10 being LBM and 4 being glycogen and friends.
Is this assumption right? Do you have any specific research to back them up or to refute them in your opinion?
P.S. Just started Eat Stop Eat yesterday, the hunger pang is tolerable, but into the 20th hour, I started getting headaches (probably from sugar withdrawal?) and I started to leak watery stool though there isn’t much of a tummy upset. What gives?
Hi Brad,
Thought I’ll just add in another question for you.
Its an age gold question really: “to bulk or to cut, that is the question”.
I have read from various sources that they advocate cutting first prior to bulking using a slight caloric surplus diet.
The rationale they give for cutting first are:
i) Being fat overturns some of the hormonal pathways of the body, and it basically makes you more efficient at getting fatter. So getting to a caloric surplus diet in this state, is a big NO NO, since you will be gaining fat more than muscles.
ii) 3 words: Fat Cell Hyperplasia. By bulking, you are increasing your body’s fat cells, thereby making it harder and harder to loose fat in the future as your fat cell increases through overeating and acts as a magnet to increase fat storage when you overeat.
iii) Is there a third one?
So basically, all these hypothesis tries to discourage against bulking. However, I couldn’t seem to find research to back them up. Most of what these author says are anecdotal at best. And given your voracious diet (pun intended) for research and scientific literature, I hope you can shed some light on this matter for me (and your readers).
Most importantly, share with me your opinion on this, and back it up with your trademark research. I know you wrote an article sometime back describing your pre-ESE era disastrous attempt at bulking, how it mad you ultra far in 11 days and all. But you did not provide any research to back up your suggestion of not bulking. Could you please elaborate on the science behind it as well?
Thanks!
From my experience, I will say that unless you are a 22 year old just getting in to training, never ever ‘bulk’…ever.
I think you need to consider the fact that there may be an upper limit to what you can add. And that it may not go on in a linear fashion.
For people who are in their 30′s and up, who have been training for over a decade and are already strong and muscular, a pound or two a YEAR would be fantastic.
B
Super later comment, but i found my self in a similar situation. I started dieting successfully for the past 5 weeks, and lost a good 7 pounds, then on week 6 i hit the weekend where i consumed 2 days of probably 6000 calories. Have i botched all my efforts?