Once every few years I’ll get the hankering plus have the opportunity to stop at a Mcfast food joint and get a monster mega burger meal with the extra large heart attack fries and a sugar loaded frozen dairy. All told it is probably in the 15-1800 calorie range. Dumping all those calories into my body at once, how many are absorbed and how many are just visiting on their way to the waste disposal end? Assuming my lifestyle keeps my weight stable with about a 2200 calorie daily intake and I eat another 1000 calories that day, how many do I have to not eat the next day or burn off to maintain my weight? Skip the healthier options discussion as this is a splurge every few years type thing.
Depends on the source of the calories. The fats and proteins could be just visiting while the carbs could spend a lifetime on your hips.
Forget your 1-2 day trends. It’s too full of variables. Eating/consumption and calorie burning should be thought of over longer periods of time, such as a week, especially since you’re asking about – essentially – an average number of calories to burn, eat, repeat.
On the raw math side of the house: Eat 12 calories for every pound you weigh, each day on average (which means you don’t have to eat the same am’t each day, but the avg must be 12 cals per pound)… anyway… eat that am’t and you probably won’t gain or lose weight. Knock that down to 10 calories per pound of body weight on average and you should see slow to moderate weight loss, if all other variables (health, activity, etc) remain the same.
On the ‘we live in the real world’ side of the house: You probably can’t knock your calorie count down and lose weight and keep it off forever unless you recognize that sugar and other simple/processed carbs will turn you into a food zombie, and you WILL EAT more calories than you need, and you will never be able to leverage the calorie math, because a bad diet that focuses on calorie counts, and which does not stop the sugar intake and insulin spikes from said sugar intakes, will turn you into a food zombie with no will power (you have almost none from the start).
Books have been written. There is no simple way to go about this, but broad generalizations only. Each person is different. See a doc and nutritionist, but the 12 cal per pound of body weight and the 10 cal per pound of body weight are good mental starting points, to get your brain around the numbers. Focus on averages and try not to deviate more than 10-15% from the avg per day… because… you will turn yourself into a food zombie (if not already).
If you should avg 2000/day, then eat 1800, 2000, 2200, 2100, 1900, 1800, 2200, etc is a reasonable trend. Throw a 4000 cal day in there, and – in theory – you should be able to drop the avg by going a number of days below 2000, but good luck with that… food zombie.
PEACE
I think you absorb about 90% of those calories. That still comes out as only 1/2 lb of fat you might put on. You don’t have to drastically reduce calories the next day, you can reduce them slightly over time. If you normally maintain your weight, then you probably do that automatically.