Body Weight Maintenance

Got back from vegas and stepped on the scale this morning…and I weigh exactly the same as the day I left.

4 days of eating buffets and nothing changed

I had at least 1 buffet per day (one day I actually went to a brunch buffet and then a dinner buffet)

It was AWESOME! I can’t resist the food selection, it’s just so damn good to go up and have 100′s of foods to choose from.

All my measurements are the same as well (waist, shoulders etc)

I probably walked about 10km’s each day just going from casino to casino on the strip.

So with absolutely no attention to the amount of food I was eating it seems as though I ended up eating almost exactly at maintenance for 4 days in vegas using buffet’s as my main source of food (I had various other meals, but they were small in comparison to the buffets)

There is no reason for me to have expected anything different, as it would be very unrealistic to have overeaten enough in 4 days to make any significant change in my bodyweight or measurements.

John

Posted by johnbarban in Fat Loss, Weight Loss
Tags: body weight, Weight Loss, weight maintenance |23 Comments

23 Responses to “Body Weight Maintenance”

  1. Cooper Says:
    April 7th, 2010 at 1:25 pm

    John,

    I once had a one week vacation in Vegas and felt like I ate and drank an incredible amount of food and beer everyday. The morning after I got back, I found I was about 6 lbs heavier but after a couple of days my weight stabilised to 1 lb heavier than when I left. I can easily lose that in 1 week. That’s why I never understand why people go on vacation and stress about what they’re eating and drinking. It almost defeats the point of a vacation.

    Great place by the way but if I lived there I’d probably have to declare bankruptcy. It’s almost like living in a virtual reality. I couldn’t even tell if it was night or day when I was in the casinos.

    What did you think of it?

    Cooper

  2. johnbarban Says:
    April 7th, 2010 at 1:41 pm

    Cooper,

    This was my 6-7th time in vegas, and each time is just as fun as the last.

    I agree with you completely that worrying about gaining weight will spoil your vacation. Most of us just can’t gain that much weight in 4-5 days.

    JB

  3. Josh B Says:
    April 7th, 2010 at 2:08 pm

    This is really cool to read John because I had the same experience last weekend. I went camping at the beach with my girlfriend and ate mostly restaurant / campfire (smores, hot dogs) food, and also stuffed myself at a pizza buffet on Sunday. Despite my meals being large, they were few in number and we did a lot of walking on the beach and visiting shops along the seawall. I weighed myself Friday before we left and again on Monday and my weight was 185 on both occasions. I was pretty psyched! I felt slightly bloated from all the pizza but it has since subsided and I feel light again. It’s nice to know that you can enjoy yourself and eat well on vacation even when ‘dieting’.

  4. Keith Says:
    April 7th, 2010 at 3:15 pm

    Awesome John, btw which buffetts did you hit in vegas

  5. johnbarban Says:
    April 7th, 2010 at 3:39 pm

    Keith,

    We hit treasure island, flamingo, mirage, and Aria.

    JB

  6. The Homebody Says:
    April 7th, 2010 at 3:52 pm

    Maybe that was the mistake I made when I was out there acting like a “buffet godzilla”. I didn’t walk. I think I’ll walk next time. Even from the airport. Luggage and all…lol.

  7. Lionel Says:
    April 7th, 2010 at 4:27 pm

    John,

    The situation is completely different for me. As an experiment recently, I took two days of eating whatever I wanted, while continuing to exercise (those days it was intervals, or other forms of cardio, totaling about an hour a day). On the third day, I got on the scale 20 pounds heavier. It took a week of fasting,regulated water intake, and intense working out in brutal conditions under the Texas sun to get rid of all that weight. I realize that most of it was water, but I was a little spooked to go the week with my normal routine to see how it would settle. I’m 6’2, 165-170 pounds, beyond a golden A.I., so I’m actually on the skinny side, so it’s not like I make it rain at Taco Bell on a daily basis. What would you take away from this experience? I don’t want to bias your opinion with the conclusions I already drew, I’m just curious about your professional input. (And I know it wasn’t the “smartest” thing to do, I was just intensely curious about the results).

  8. johnbarban Says:
    April 7th, 2010 at 4:52 pm

    Lionel,

    That is a very interesting experience. If we knew your approx intake of calories over those two days we could come up with a rough calculation of expected fat gain.

    To be clear, FAT gain and WEIGHT gain are two different things.

    You pointed out that most was water and I’ll add that we’re all forgetting the high water content of glycogen storage (2:1 water:glycogen)

    So it’s very realistic for us to have big fluctuations in bodyweight based on food content within our systems. You and I could drink a gallon of water today and be 8 pounds heavier just from the water (not including food, and glycogen storage, and maybe even a bit of fat storage)

    My workout partner is a big guy and he gain 11lbs in one day during a bbq drinking beers and eating burgers. It was just water, food, glycogen…by the end of the week he was a pound lighter than his previous weekly weigh in (he was on a weight loss diet at the time)

    I think most people think the look and weight if their bodies is just fat and muscle, but, it’s not quite that simple.

    JB

  9. sule Says:
    April 7th, 2010 at 5:20 pm

    hey john thanks for the post, keeps my head in the right mentality. however when i try these experiments for my self it doesnt seem to work?

    i ate what ever i wanted from saturday and sunday, and i gained 4 pounds by the end ( monday morning). i followed this with one fast and the rest of the week on low cals. by the next monday i was back ate my maintenance weight rather than lower? even through i ensure i was DEFINATELY in deficit for the week and burning lots of cals through my workouts. no carb up or anything seems to be helping fat loss at the moment

  10. johnbarban Says:
    April 7th, 2010 at 5:31 pm

    Sule,

    Just be clear that ‘weight’ doesn’t equal ‘fat’. Daily and weekly weight fluctuations are always much larger than fat gain or loss.

    JB

  11. Cooper Says:
    April 7th, 2010 at 6:18 pm

    Hey John, it’s looking like this future body composition manual of yours would be in high demand!

  12. Keith Says:
    April 7th, 2010 at 9:20 pm

    Just out of curiosity John,
    If you said you ate a maintanence every day at vegas, how many calories is that per day? What is your maintenence level

  13. johnbarban Says:
    April 7th, 2010 at 10:07 pm

    Keith,

    I’ve estimated my bmr at around 1900 or so and then we walked a good 10km’s every day in vegas…so whatever the calories burned from that much walking plus the 1900.

    JB

  14. johnbarban Says:
    April 7th, 2010 at 10:15 pm

    Cooper,

    Yeah I think it’s going to be more useful than I anticipate.

    JB

  15. Josh B Says:
    April 8th, 2010 at 10:18 am

    Hey John what happened to this week’s Phi-Life podcast?

  16. Jim Says:
    April 8th, 2010 at 11:02 am

    John, how did you come to the 1900 BMR? Is it based on height like in the”How Many Calories to Lose Weight” manual? I would like to know how to get from the maximums listed in that book to the average.

    Thank You

  17. johnbarban Says:
    April 8th, 2010 at 12:22 pm

    Josh,

    Phi life is up. we were a day behind because of vegas. Next time we have to put it up late we’ll announce it the week before so you’re not wondering what happened.

    JB

  18. johnbarban Says:
    April 8th, 2010 at 12:24 pm

    Jim,

    I just found a few BMR calculators that looked accurate online and fit with the known data on metabolic rates of lean tissue mass. This is a decent estimate for my size and when I was dieting down it fit with my rough estimate of calories needed to lose weight (1500 or less + exercise) so I think 1900 is a decent guess for me.

    JB

  19. Josh B Says:
    April 8th, 2010 at 2:43 pm

    awesome! about to listen to it now

  20. Ty Says:
    April 9th, 2010 at 1:52 am

    That’s great news for my Fiji holiday!!! Buffet breakfast EVERY day…..

  21. sara Says:
    April 10th, 2010 at 7:18 pm

    I appreciate the post but I wonder what the point is. The point I got was that if you “fall off the wagon” you should get back on, i.e. if you have a cheat day/even week, it’s not an excuse to give up. Is that correct or am I reading into it too much and you are just telling us about an awesome excursion to Vegas?

  22. johnbarban Says:
    April 11th, 2010 at 7:22 pm

    Sara,

    Many people think that even a day or two of not ‘dieting’ will cause any weight loss to unravel. The point is to remind everyone that you can enjoy yourself on weekends or vacations without worrying about diet or weight loss/gain.

    JB

  23. sara Says:
    April 12th, 2010 at 10:02 pm

    Actually this is one of the hardest concepts for people to wrap their heads around, including me. However, in my case, it wasn’t even a day or a weekend, just one meal and I thought I had no willpower/no hope. That is changing but to my surprise taking longer than I thought.

    Thanks for the blog! Keep posting!

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