Why Do I Get Fat After I Eat?

World Wide Web | Why Do I Get Fat After I Eat? | Although the answer to this question might seem simple at first glance, there are actually many reasons as to why someone would gain weight after eating.The most obvious one, and this is what most people think of first, is fat gain. You gain fat whenever you consume more calories than your body is capable of burning. How much you burn depends greatly on your weight, height, and activity level - there are many different calculators than can help you determine that. So if, for example, your body burns 14,000 calories a week (that's exactly 2,000 calories a day), but you consume a total of 17,500 calories during that week, your body has an excess of 3,500 calories for that week. Since our body is a very efficient and cautious organism and wants to make sure it doesn't starves in the future, those excess calories get stored away for future use. 3,500 calories are roughly the equivalent of around 1 pound of body fat. So in the above example, you would end up gaining close to 1 pound of pure fat at the end of the week.

Another reason why you would gain weight after eating is an increase in stomach content. A large portion of what we put in our mouths is never used by the body as energy, and this excess is removed from the body through the process of defecation. However, it can take up to 36 hours for this to happen, and until it does - the scale will show an increase in your weight. This is nothing more than extra food in your stomach and intestines though, so nothing to worry about - it will "pass" on its own.

You are also quite likely to gain weight (not fat) after eating a meal with high sodium content, ie. with a lot of salt. The human body has a certain liquid-to-sodium ratio that it likes to maintain within the blood stream. When you consume a meal with a lot of salt, the content of sodium in the blood is elevated. To counteract this, our body will try to hold on to as much water as possible so that it can dilute our blood a little bit, just to keep the liquid-to-sodium ratio constant. The result is that we go to pee less often, which means we gain some weight due to the extra water we keep. This excess water will all go away in around 24-48 hours though, so again this isn't something to worry about - just keep it in the back of your mind in case one day you eat some salty nachos, and then notice the next morning that you weigh 2 pounds more than the previous day. It's just water.

The important thing to take away from what I am saying here is that there is a difference between "getting fat" and "gaining weight". Just because your scale shows a higher number than a few days ago does not mean that you have gained fat. Keep this in the back your mind and you will avoid unnecessary panic in the future.

Good luck!

Article Source: EzineArticles