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I’ve spent the last 4 months eating 3-4000 calories (avg. 3400) to see if I could raise metabolism.
Results:
Red line is what I should be gaining based on a fitness app. (cals in/out)
Green is what I would gain if my metabolism was increasing by 6.5 calories a day. (that seems to be what I average when eating a surplus)
Blue is what is actually happening.
So it appears I’m plateauing at 22% gain, which is little higher than the average from the Sims overfeeding experiments (21%) but well within the range (18-25%)
Can you go into more detail on your “green” calculation? What’s the “formula” if that’s applicable?
In any case, cool chart!
Thanks!
I used excel to track weight, calories, and the theoretical surplus. Then I used the rough estimate of 3500 surplus calories for a pound of weight gain. So that’s red line.
After a couple months I could see some trends and added another line that adjusted my surplus each day as my metabolic rate increased.
Using speed of weight gain I made rough guesses for the starting metabolism and speed of increase until it made a trend line that was similar to what was actually happening. So that’s the green line.
For me 6.5 seems to be the average I increase per day.
Overall it’s a very rough estimate… but maybe interesting to some!
Very cool and interesting to see it plotted on a graph. Thanks @Rabu
Thanks @Rob!
The really interesting thing to me is that 6.5 cals X 7 days = 45.5 calories a week. Which is almost exactly what “Coldmember” suggested increasing by to avoid rapid weight gain.
Wow- that is really fascinating. I don’t know how many other people would be into tracking so specifically, but I’d love to find out if that’s a reliable benchmark when increasing metabolism.
That could be one of the next level fine tunings of this sort of investigation. Helping people predict with that sort of accuracy where their sweet spot lies in enhancing metabolic rate while simultaneously avoiding excess weight gain.
And while I still think honoring extreme hunger, especially in those with a long and storied history of restrained eating, is very valuable, I wonder if for the average mildly hypometabolic person a ~50cal/week, 200cal/month caloric increase might be a sweet spot for those who are up to tracking so deliberately.
I agree on all counts!
Very nice graph! It would interesting to see if that plateau eventually transitions to a downward slope.
Although I have a lot of time at the moment, I am far to lazy when it comes to that kind of tracking. I have no clue how many calories I eat or if I am steadily increasing or just maintaining due to trying to eat just a bit more than my hunger and hiatal hernia will allow. All I know is I’ve gained twenty pounds since Christmas. At six foot and 205 pounds that’s not too bad of shape but like a lot of people on here I am a bit scared of gaining too much. I wonder if it would be better to have a slightly more systematic approach. I feel like pushing the calories really high but slowly and steadily may have a better metabolic effect with less overall weight gain than just trying to stuff calories in willy nilly without much tracking. I feel like to get the metabolic advantage takes a lot more calories than what I am already eating but what I am eating is really throwing the weight on. Does this make any sense? And also what kind of metabolic gains do you think you have made. It would be interesting to see a chart like this with some temp info and maybe some anecdotal notes thrown in.
@Ashley – Thanks! I think Layne Norton and Eric Helms are two of the strongest voices spreading the word about metabolism in the body building community.
@David – I’ve been considering not tracking for a bit and just eating to appetite, but I’m too interested to see if downward trend starts!
@Jdubs – I’m starting to think that unless someone is in real trouble slow and steady might be the way to go. Which unless the hunger signaling is all out of whack means eating to appetite or a bit more.I actually started increasing in December (to 2400) after seeing my pulse was in 50’s and temp was in 96 region. Now pulse averages 75-85 during day and temp is 98+.
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