Assuming I eat exactly my TDEE everyday, on day I have a big meal and consume an extra 200 calories over my TDEE. How long do I have to create a calorie defecit of 200 calories before they’re stored as fat by my body?
In: 672
I’m sure someone else will explain it better, but, In essence (at least as I understand it), The body doesn’t really process food on a 24hour schedule. We call it TDEE but it’s more of a convenience for us to measure on the daily than trying to measure second by second or minute by minute.
When you eat it takes 30-45~ minutes before the bodys processing of that food has gone far enough to begin extracting nutrients from it. From there, it’s 4-7~ hours before the majority of the meals contents are processed, and in total about 35~ hours to reach the uhm, other end.
Presuming you eat TDEE+200 in one sitting and you hypothetically finish the meal instantly, you’d be converting roughly half of the calories into fat because your body just doesn’t need that much energy in one go.
Now; With that said, The way fat cells work is a bit different from how people think; A basic TL;DR is that the fat cells act like a warehouse of energy. When a warehouse gets full, a new fat cell is made, Rinse, repeat as needed until the incoming energy stores from food are exhausted.. And your body won’t just get rid of empty warehouses, they’ll get reused.When you’re not taking in calories, your body burns through it’s stores of readily useful energy, then begins processing fat after that.
So doing exactly your TDEE in one sitting would result in your simple energy stores being filled, then the fat cells being filled with the excess, any extras needed being made, and then your body burns through the energy it has, and burns through those stored energies in the fat warehouse too, putting you back at square one. (Side note, This “simple first, fats later” ordering is essentially why intermittent fasting can be effective; You force your body to empty it’s simple stores and then it MUST process energy from fats because you’re not taking in anything new for an extended period)
TDEE+200 is the same thing except 200 extra calories will get stored; It may result in an extra fat cell or two, but essentially if you then eat -200 the next day, you’re back to square one possibly with a little more warehouse storage, so to speak.
In all practicality, You can’t really stop your body from storing excess energy in fat, That’s just what it’s ‘designed’ to do. If your goal is to minimize your body’s need to store energy in fat, you’d need to be eating many smaller meals throughout the day that sum up to the same TDEE, so that you’re not dumping more fuel on the fire than is needed to keep it going. But to completely stop your body from converting any excess energy to fat you’d need perfect knowledge of your bodies simple energy stores to be able to eat exactly what would fill those and not a calorie more.
At least that’s how I understand it all, in essence.
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