by JamesH | Jul 27, 2024 | Blog
The other day, someone sent me a question regarding weight gain during a cheat day (a day with no dietary restrictions whatsoever - meant for mental and physical recovery from dieting stress). And I figure I might as well share my answer here on the blog as well. So the question itself was: if i go on a big cheat day (around 7k+ calories), will all the unused calories become fat gain or most of them is water weight? thanks Okay, so first off, I’ll say that calories and water are two different things, so the calories can’t turn into water weight per se, but rather - the calories can be stored as glycogen, which can bind with water molecules to create the water weight gain effect. In addition - some food mass will remain in your digestive tract for a while and will also contribute to an increase in weight. Here’s the full answer: The specifics depend on how your diet has been going so far and what exactly your cheat day will contain. Usually, if you’ve been in a caloric deficit for several days at least and then have a big cheat day that contains a lot of carbs for example (which I recommend), those carbs will go towards refilling your glycogen stores (stored blood sugar) which will bind with water to create the water weight gain. Also, the increased food mass in your digestive system will also contribute to the weight gain. But the carbs themselves won’t really contribute much to fat gain at all. The protein from your meals will also not really contribute to...
