Understanding weight gain: the accumulation of excess calories
Weight has a fun way of sneaking up on us. OK, not funny … FRUSTRATING! One day we feel thin, the next we are convinced that our jeans have shrunk. The good news is that no one has gone from being a healthy weight to being obese overnight. The bad news is that it can happen in a matter of weeks. But exactly how much do we have to overeat to gain weight? What does 100 calories of stored fat look like? Read on and everything will be revealed …
Everyone has a unique amount of calories that their body needs each day to maintain their current weight. Eat MORE than this and your body stores excess calories as a nice thick layer of fat around your organs and under your skin.
The best way to understand how much fat is stored each time we overeat is by thinking of an everyday household item that has little to do with fat … FRUITS!
The following list uses everyday fruits as a “fat storage size guide” …
20 excess …
Eating just 20 calories more than your body needs will store an amount of fat the size of a juicy raisin. That 20 calorie teaspoon of sugar in your tea? … neatly stored like a chubby raisin in your butt! Did you notice that your butt is slowly getting BIGGER? Drop the sugar!
100 excess …
Overeating with just 100 calories will store a grape-sized amount of fat in your body. A single grape may be small, but eating 100 excess calories a day for a year is a whopping 365 grapes … enough to give someone with a six-pack in 2009 a belly in 2010!
500 excess …
Overeating 500 calories will store a plum-sized amount of fat. If you’re in the habit of having a pudding and wine with dinner every night, that’s easily 500 excess calories a day … add 7 fat prunes to your body every week!
1000 excess …
Overeating 1000 calories will store an apple-sized piece of fat in your body. You’ll be amazed at how easy it is to overeat 1000 calories a day on a two-week summer vacation, which means you’ll fly home with a great tan … and a little orchard in your pants!
3500 excess …
If you consume 3,500 calories more than your body burns, you will get exactly 1 pound of fat, the size of a small grapefruit. Whether it’s 100 calories in excess for 35 days or 3500 calories in excess in a weekend blast … you just added a grapefruit to your waistline!
Fortunately, it works the other way around. If you have not eaten more than the daily allowance of calories and then you burn the following, this is the amount of fat you will lose …
A brisk 10 minute walk at 100 calories = one fat burnt grape.
At 45 minutes, 500 calorie body attack class = one fat burned plum.
10 minutes of brisk walking a day for 35 days = one fat burned grapefruit.