How often do we need calories? Would one 8000 calorie meal every four days replace four 2000 calorie meals every day? Is four 500 calorie meals a day better than one 2000 calorie meal a day?

Question

I was wondering this the other day. It’s similar I think to “How efficient is out digestive system”. Is there an optimal number of calories to take in every X amount of time to maintain a steady…calorie intake? Energy generation?

In: Biology

Answer 1

the short answer, your body can absorb about 240 calories of carbs an hour, this varies a bit but as a general number. So, It possible that eating massive meals like that you might end up with some of the calories passing through you entirely.

But it likely wouldn’t be healthy for a multitude of reasons, which pushing your body back and forth from complete 0 calories to a massive amount of food would probably take its stole as it might shock the digestive system (people who have gone without food/starving actually eat very small meals when recovering, because eating a lot at once stresses the digestive system out and makes many throw it back up)

The other big issue is we need to intake more than just calories a day, a lot of your vitamins and minerals, salts, potassium, etc. that you need that body cant really store it,so you need to regularly be refilling your stores of them.