Does metabolism affect the total amount of consumed calories

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I’ve never figured this one out – if I consume excess amount of calories but shit most of it out, has my body really consumed the amount of calories from the food I ate?

For example if I lose all of my self control and eat a large 1500 calorie pizza in one go and take a huge dump half hours later – did my body really consume 1500 calories? Or just a fraction of it?

Logically I’m leaning towards the second option but I’ve heard that humans only excrete the inedible parts of food. Also if it were true, “shit yourself thin” diets would probably be quite popular.

Advice much appreciated šŸ˜€

In: Biology

3 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

This is a bit of a nuanced answer.

> if I consume excess amount of calories but shit most of it out, has my body really consumed the amount of calories from the food I ate?

If you eat it slowly, chewing it well, your body should be able to absorb most of the calories. The only exception would be if you just swallowed your food whole. In that case your body won’t be able to break the food down to get the calories. Like the classic example of eating corn and seeing corn in your stool. Obviously, your body didn’t absorb any calories from that because it is still fully intact!

> did my body really consume 1500 calories? Or just a fraction of it?

If that is all you ate that day, then yes, it likely did. But there is also an upper limit to how much your body can absorb in one go. 1500 calories isnt that much but if you tried to eat say 5000 calories of cake your body might not absorb all of that. This is the reason you see bodybuilders and other who eat a lot of calories in a day spread out their meals. If you tried to eat 10,000 calories in one go your body wouldnt be able to absorb all of it.

> Also if it were true, “shit yourself thin” diets would would probably be quite popular.

Well all sorts of crazy diets were popular. Some people advocated frying food in castor oil since its a laxative. it simply makes you poop before you can digest the food and absorb nutrients! But of course that is really dangerous. Another popular ‘diet’ was eating a tapeworm egg. so you would have a tapeworm in your stomach which would eat the food and help you stay thin. Then when you reached your goal weight, you took a pill which would kill the worm and you would poop it out!

But in the end, no ‘shit yourself thin’ diets are absolutely not recommended. You will not get the nutrients you need, your body will lose too much water and you will harm yourself in the end.

Anonymous 0 Comments

The dump you take a half hour later, however satisfying, is from food that you ate much earlier (i.e. yesterday). Youā€™ll see your pizza make its way out much later (maybe tomorrow), after your body has its way with those calories and nutrients.

The ā€œinedibleā€ parts of food you mentioned is fiber (edible, but your body canā€™t digest it, generally speaking). Thatā€™s still used by your body to make your dump more bulky and pass more quickly/easily.

Anonymous 0 Comments

The end result is allready processed and squeezed out of calories your body could take. Maybe a fraction of calories are forced out, but, as you mentioned, the shit out diet would be very popular. Of course, if a body is processing the food for shorter time, the calorie count is lower, but the causes and side effects are quite health damaging.