Quick Question: Is It Possible To Be Overweight If You Under-eat (even With Bad Metabolism)?

[paka]

I am suspicious about why some people, sorry, are still fat if they eat as little as possible. Can having a low metabolism really make you gain excess fat despite eating fewer calories?

Just a theoretical question, I know it is bad to eat too little and metabolism should be high.

 

[Tenacity]

Whenever energy intake is in excess of energy expenditure, it'll be stored. I believe it to be as simple as that.

If you eat more calories than your metabolism can expend, you'll gain weight, no matter how high or low that metabolism is.

 

[paka]

Whenever energy intake is in excess of energy expenditure, it'll be stored. I believe it to be as simple as that.

If you eat more calories than your metabolism can expend, you'll gain weight, no matter how high or low that metabolism is.

I know, but can metabolism possibly get so low that you gain weight from eating only 1000 calories per day?

 

[Tenacity]

I know, but can metabolism possibly get so low that you gain weight from eating only 1000 calories per day?

I'd say yes, that's supposedly been observed. Instagram post by CowsEatGrassBlog • Jan 1, 2017 at 10:22pm UTC

What's the alternative explanation? If it weren't for the calories exceeding the metabolic rate, where is the weight gain coming from?

 

[tankasnowgod]

I know, but can metabolism possibly get so low that you gain weight from eating only 1000 calories per day?

If you are talking about muscle and fat in a full grown person, then no, I don't think I've ever seen documentation of this. However, with weight, yes, it's very possible, if that person is taking on massive amounts of excess water. My guess is that if you find a person gaining weight on so few calories, it would probably be massive changes in water.

It's well known that fighters before weigh-in can cut 20-40 pounds of weight through water, carb, and salt manipulation, and gain almost all of it back in a 24 hour period before the actual fight. Your situation would just be the same concept, in reverse.

 

[tara]

Can having a low metabolism really make you gain excess fat despite eating fewer calories?

I think so.

RP: There was a study about 30 or 40 years ago in which doctors use to follow the textbook standard that everyone can lose weight, if they eat less than 1700 calories a day because that was a study done in the 20s or 30s on healthy people and so they put a group of women who claimed that they were gaining weight on a thousand calories and put them in a closed ward and actually counted how much food they were eating and some of them could maintain their weight on 700 calories a day especially those who had dieted a lot because several adaption happen on chronic dieting.

See also the statistics Gwyneth Olwyn draws out in the 'Overweight Means Eating Too Much' section of this article:
Part VI Fat: No More Fear, No More Contempt.

I think there's plenty more evidence that famine/chronic dieting and other metabolic stresses can often produce adaptations that include a propensity to store fat even on lower calorie diets than normally required to run a healthy metabolism.

 

[LeeRoyJenkins]

Totally anecdotal here, but I know a woman - mid 60s, very overweight, prime Peat candidate (yoyo diets her whole life, weight up and down hundreds of pounds over the years), right now she's on a VERY restrictive, low carb diet - less than 600 calories per day and gaining weight (2 weeks straight). I think there are a lot of things in action regardless of calories in vs. out never was a fan of that thinking, and even though I've started to see it more accurately I think a simple calories in, calories out (when accounting for metabolism slow vs. fast) although closer to reality isn't the end all be all to weight loss/gain.

 

[aliciahere]

I always understood it that if you restrict calories/nutrients you body becomes stressed out and can go into starvation mode. As a result your body wants to store whatever it can get it's hands on as it's preparing for a long haul low calories. Doesn't happen to everybody. I don't remember the technical terms on how to explain it though.

I recal a post haidut made about how if a mother was under stress during pregnancy, the baby is more prone to be overweight

 

[Lecarpetron]

Another anecdote, but I know a 70 year old woman who is significantly overweight despite eating 1000 calories per day. She is also the only non-Peater I know of who actually eats VLF.