I’m wondering what the amount is in real-world terms. How many cheeseburgers, doritos and super-xtra-large colas does it take?
Well, for what it’s worth. I’m 6’2" and weigh 285 lbs.
I haven’t drank a sugared soda in 5 years. On a typical day, I eat a sausage, egg, and cheese biscut for breakfast, along with a coffee (cream, no sugar). For lunch I’ll have a ham & cheese or turkey & cheese sandwich and half the time a single serving bag of chips. I’ll eat a normal dinner, whatever my wife cooks, and usually no other snacks. I’d say maybe 2 days a week I will have a candy bar or a 99 cent bag of chips.
I drink about 3x a month, usually either 3 beers, or 2 rum and cokes is all I can handle before I get too tired to drink more.
I don’t think I eat that much more than anyone else, but I am fat.
I don’t really exercise, but do things like take the stairs and park far as far from the building as I can.
Someone once told me that putting on weight is like storing goods in a warehouse… you actually have to increase your usual activities in order to burn that weight.
However, I always thought that increasing weight would require more calories just to move around normally. Frex, if I carried around a 100 lb. weight everywhere I went, I would need more calories to maintain my current weight.
But then muscle weighs more than fat, IIRC, so I wonder if the weight loss from fat loss would be lessened by the weight gained from muscle increase. o_O ? I only know from my big fat brother’s example… he’s over 300 pounds (at 5’8"), but he’s still able to get around. He has strong muscles under all that fat (when he hits me it’s dangerous). He eats a LOT.
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I don’t understand your question. Do you mean how many calories does an obese person have extra in their 60+ lbs of fat or how many calories a day do the obese eat over the non-obese?
Breaking my Straight Dope Virginity I can tell you that In my experience and from what I’ve read, the difference between the amount an obese person eats and the amount a ‘normal’ person eats isn’t all always that large.
An often quoted guidline for a healthy weight maintainence is 2000 - 2500 calories, if you’re not overweight and avaragely active you’re probably eating about this amount. I recently lost a fair amount of weight, about 100 pounds, and at one time I was what you could call obese. At my heaviest I weighed about 250 pounds and calculated that I consumed on avarage about 3500 - 4000 calories a day at this point, around 1000 - 1500 calories abouve what I should have been consuming, which isnt really that much extra when you consider the calorific values of many foods.
Your typical medium sized McDonalds meal can contain 1200 calories easily and a two litre bottle of Coke contains about 1000 carories If I remember rightly. For a person with a normal level of physical activity, a few larger portions every day and a fondness for sweet/fatty snacks can easily equal obesity without them actually eating a huge amount.
These days Im a good weight for my height and I don’t really eat a lot less than I did at my heaviest. I drink diet coke and other low calorie drinks, avoid chocolate and sweets and try to say out of McDonalds, this makes a real difference, but from day to day, my diet is very similar than it was before.
I can’t give you an answer in cheese burgers or whatever because what people eat is so varied, but I can tell you that it doesn’t take quite as much food as you might think to get obese, especially if you don’t do a lot of exercise.
Of course there are many factors that govern a persons weight and it seems that no one really knows why obesity is such a problem these days, but it does seem that it really doesnt take a lot to get fat.
It’s a common misperception that obese or significantly overweight people eat massive amounts of food. Most don’t. The human body is a incredibly efficient machine at storing food.
Aside from pathological cases, there are generally three things that contribute to being significantly overweight
1: A highly efficient (ie slow) metabolism re burning calories
2: Eating about 25% to 30% more than necessary, esp via snacking and late night eating. This mainly relates to eating beyond hunger and eating simply for pleasure or out of habit.
3: Lack of sustained, regular exercise
For people with slowish metabolisms, who don’t exercise, your body may only need 10-13 calories per lb of body weight per day to support your weight. For the same caloric intake of say 2800 calories per day, you can easily have people ranging from 200 to 280 lbs depending on their metabolism and level of exercise.
You can make your own judgment on this. The next time you are at one of those all you can eat buffets, take a gander at the volume and nature of food items others eat.
There are exceptions of course but in my experience, the larger the person, the larger the meal.
The replies in this thread seem to be saying that most obese people eat a similar diet as everybody else, but perhaps just a bit larger. I suppose that’s possible.
I suppose it’s also possible that the obese guy I “shared” a two family house with and with whom I worked was the only obese person in the world who grossly overeats. He’d shovele food into his mouth all day, every day. Breakfast buffet at work? Better get there before he did. Lunch? Not until the family sized bag of halloween candy was finished while sitting at his desk, recovering from breakfast.
The rest of us in the office were amazed at his ability to eat anything and everything, all while sweating profusely and gasping for beath. Clearly, eating was his form of exercise.
But no, he must have been the sole exception. No other obese people grossly overeat.
For the record, 1000 - 1500 calories per day really is that much extra. Writing it off as simply a “typical medium sized McDonalds meal” is probably the kind of thinking that gets obese people in trouble in the first place. Don’t think of 1500 extra calories per day as just a meal at McDonalds. Think of it as an entire day’s worth of good eating.
One question I’ve been wondering about for a while. I’ve often heard it claimed on these boards that starving yourself won’t lose weight; it may even make you fatter. Why is it, then, that every contestant that ever stayed on Survivor past 2 weeks was dramatically thinner? (Which looks stunningly awful, btw, for those women who have breast implants. Yikes.)
aahala, you beat me to it. My wife and I always notice the same thing at the “all you can buffets”. It’s unreal how much some overweight people can eat.
I weight almost the same I did when I went in the service at 17 but it’s not been easy. I’ve had to diet and exercise since I was 23 to keep my weight normal.
One just has to burn the calories they eat or they are going to get fat… just that simple. Most but not all people are fat because they overeat.
What **astro ** said. The directionality of obesity and metabolic disorders such as diabetes isn’t established. Once the system’s thrown off, more weight gain is likely. It doesn’t help that doctors still often give low-fat diets to obese people, though there’s more and more evidence that low-fat diets make people gain weight.
I am 5’3" and weigh 178 pounds. I began November at 179.5 pounds. Here’s a typical week: In the last week, I’ve lost 1 pound. During that time (11/5-11/11) I have averaged daily:
1993 calories
90 g fat
210 g carbohydrate
34.1 g fiber
98 g protein
This is a slightly higher fat-to-protein ratio than normal for me, because I’ve been traveling a cheese is more easily available than lean meat and vegetables.
For exercise, I have averaged 1196 calories a day in intentional aerobic exercise. That means I have an average net intake of 797 calories a day.
Last winter I stopped getting aerobic exercise because I had a lot of anaerobic yard work to do. I ate fewer calories (~1600-1700) and did plenty of digging and building, but gained 30 pounds in 4 months. While I don’t have diabetes, I do have metabolic problems. If there’s one thing insulin is good at, it’s packing on the fat. My body is highly efficient at gaining weight.
Hope that’s helpful information.
I’m very overweight, and at this point it’s pretty much entirely a lack of exercise and a really low metabolism. I went on Weight Watchers once and took a metabolism-boosting pill, and more or less ended up eating the same amount of food, and losing 30 pounds in a month (with exercise). I was even fat as an infant and was put on a diet before I could walk. I ended up going off when I couldn’t really afford the pills.
I confess I do eat out of stress sometimes, but it’s not like I go get a bucket of fries and stuff my face. I hate fast food and I’m vegetarian. I eat mostly frozen dinners (the SmartOnes, mostly), granola bars, frozen vegetables and Boca burgers. I do have kind of a sweet tooth but I don’t keep any sweets, chips, or junk food in the house – about twice a week I grab a candy bar at work (that’s the stress eating). I don’t drink regular soda, only diet (I like the stuff better, I started drinking it on diets as a really little kid so it tastes normal to me).
Just cause they’re thinner doesn’t mean they’re not fatter. You starve yourself, you lose muscle mass faster than fat and your % bodyfat goes up. That’s not good.
- Applicants with medical problems (and psychiatric as well, BTW) have been screened out. 2. They’re exercising like crazy.
From the flip side, I have a hard time (and I keep after myself) getting 2000 calories a day down. My typical workday breakfast is a spoonful of cream cheese and a spoonful of cubed fruit with a hard boiled egg. Lunch is almost always a skinless chicken breast. I often blow off dinner, but if I do it, it’ll likely be a burger or a nuke meal in the 250-600 calorie range.
Weekends are usually a one good meal per day deal, at Black-Eyed Pea or some such. And I go out to eat at a good restaurant with friends about three times a month. My occupational position is such that I’m offered lunch out on somebody’s expense account 2-3 times a week, but I rarely accept.
For most of my adult life I’ve maintained some kind of exercise program ~7 months of the year, every year. I’m 5’11" and, at 155#, I’m about 13 pounds over my high school weight.
And, FWIW, I fidget. Big time. I’ve read that that is a not inconsequential calorie burning endeavor.
I don’t know where coffee, cigarettes and booze fit into the equation.
I am fat - clinically, I’ve been diagnosed as morbidly obese. I do not overeat. I do not eat at all-you-can-eat buffets. I’ve never binged, no chips, hate french fries, rarely eat dessert.
I eat on average 2200 calories a day. How do I know this? I’ve kept a food journal since I was 9. I’m now 37.
**Breakfast ** - 2 scrambled eggs, one piece of whole wheat toast and cheese, one cup unfiltered apple juice. approx. 500 calories
Green or black tea - no sweetener
**Lunch ** - 1 yoghurt. 190 calories
Herbal tea - no sweetener
**Dinner ** - varies, tonight’s was 6 oz steak, 8 oz spinach, 6 oz potato. let’s say 1000 calories
Crystal light Lemonade - no calories, Aspartame sweetened
**Bedtime ** - Herbal tea and 1 piece whole wheat toast and cheese. 200 calories
That makes today’s grand total was about 2000.
Please don’t assume that *all * fat people binge and overeat.
Many overweight people eat more calories than recommended. Some don’t, or have switched to healthier diets.
If you eat 100 more calories than you can burn every day (one mere small slice of bread), in one year you could easily weigh ten pounds more and in twenty years you could weigh 200 pounds more. If you climb the stairs instead of taking the elevator, the reverse might apply. One pound of fat roughly equals 3500 food calories. Figures differ for different people, metabolism varies (among other things) with age, weight and diet – so are quite approximate.
Also, going without food doesn’t mean that you won’t have an initial weight loss. But only a very small percentage of people seem able to maintain that weight loss for a couple of years. There is a strong tendency to gain it back – and then some.
If food was never easily available to them again, naturally they would be less likely to regain the weight. But it’s not just a matter of will power. It has to do with compulsive and addictive behaviors, body chemistry and the “pleasure centers” of the brain.
My stomach is the size of an egg, yet I still have to take medication that affects my body chemistry so that I don’t feel compelled to overeat. Now, to the contrary, I forget to eat. Today I’ve had one half of a bowl of tofu, noodles and carrots in peanut sauce and a cup of cider. Oh, yeah. And a margarita. I’m not dieting, but I wouldn’t mind losing another 20-25 pounds.
The only other time in my life that I wasn’t hungry for a sustained period was when I was on a liquid diet for 6 months. I lost interest in food altogether then too.
As for the buffet test, I wouldn’t think that that would be a very accurate test. It’s reasonable to assume that people who go to all-you-can-eat buffets like to do just that. That doesn’t mean that all obese people eat that way.
On the other hand, when I was morbidly obese, I did feel compelled to eat as much as I could and to do it quickly. (The same way that some people seem to feel the compulsion to drive or walk quickly.) My body handled it until I was 30, but after that I put on weight at about a pound a month for many years. You don’t have to overeat much to put on a pound a month. But after ten years, that’s an additional 120 pounds. Once your body has a fat cell, it is there to stay unless it is surgically removed.
DeVena, thanks for contributing. I notice that your caloric intake and mine are not too different (~200-300 calories per day difference).
My intent is not to be combative, but you’ve always got to watch it on sensitive topics, thus this caveat.
You mention that you’ve kept a food diary since age 9 - was it apparent at that age that you were gaining weight at a rate ahead of your peers?
DeVena, I just plugged the menu you gave into my software (as best I could) and got a total of 1245 calories. Unless you’re under medical supervision, that may be too few, and may contribute to your body behaving as if you’re in “starvation” mode.
Yes. And it takes more calories to function when you’re overweight, even if you’re on a diet.
Part of what hangs up the discussion is the outmoded “a calorie is a calorie” idea. As soon as you put the food into a body, metabolism, weight, and other factors play a role. For my body, a slice of bread is infinitely worse than a commensurate number of calories of, say, chicken. It takes me three days to recover from a single slice of white bread (in terms of blood sugar, weight, and peripheral neuropathy), whereas an extra hundred calories of protein, fat, or complex carbohydrate has little if any effect, even several days in a row.
Oops, missed the snack (and I even previewed). Comes to about 1489 calories.