Workout

What to Do When You Eat Too Much (So You Don’t Gain Any Fat)

admin August 19, 2024

0 37 5 minutes read

Does this sound familiar?

Most days, you stick to your diet and eat the number of calories you planned.

But some days, something goes wrong, you overeat, and you end up eating more calories than you should.

It happens to all of us at some point.

But the question is…

What should you do when this happens?

Should you compensate by eating less the next day or doing more cardio?
Should you just get back on track the next day without trying to fix it?

Which is the best route?

Which one can prevent you from gaining any fat, and get you back to losing weight as quickly as possible?

Let’s find out right now.

Table of Contents

Here’s How We’ll Answer This

I’ll play with both options – 1) eat less the next day to fix it, and 2) get back on track the next day – and let you decide which option to choose.

To begin, let’s pretend the following:

Our example person is trying to lose fat.
Their maintenance level is 2500 calories.
They created a daily calorie deficit of 500 calories.
Their goal is 2000 calories a day.
They expect to lose about 1lb per week on average.

And let’s pretend for the past few weeks, they’ve been hitting their 2000 calorie goal every day and successfully losing about 1lb per week as planned.

Good!

But then…

It’s happening!

They overeat and go over their calorie goal today!

Oh no!

How much did they leave?!?

In this example, we’ll say they’re gone 500 calories more and eat 2500 calories instead of 2000.

Note that it may be 300 calories, 700 calories, 1000 calories, 2000 calories, or whatever. That part doesn’t matter. This all works the same way either way.

So they ate 500 calories more than their target.

What should they do?

Option #1: Eat Less The Next Day

If they want to pay you tomorrow, they will need to eat 500 fewer calories. For them, that means eating 1500 calories.

That would be 1000 calories below their maintenance level, representing a 40% deficit.

Since a 20% deficit is considered an “average” size that is convenient for most, it would be more accurate to consider a 40% deficit to be too large.

And what happens when we fall short in this way? Or even when we eat much less in one day than we usually do? Or to hell, even if we just skip a meal (eg lunch) that we usually eat?

We are very hungry!

So let’s say this person successfully manages to eat 1500 calories tomorrow. Most people wouldn’t even be able to do that because of the real-time hunger it would cause, but let’s say this person makes it through the day.

The next day, they began to notice that they were more hungry than usual. Eating less the day before often has this effect.

So what happened?

More hunger hits them at some point and they end up eating more than they planned and exceeding their calorie target… again.

And what do they do?

They eat a little the next day to make up for it.

And what happened the next day?

They are very hungry from eating so little the previous day.

And what do they do?

They eat a little the next day to make up for it.

And what happened the next day?

They are very hungry from eating so little the previous day.

This cycle continues in some way, without artificial fat loss, accompanied by frustration, confusion, guilt, sometimes the onset or breakdown of disordered eating habits, many stupid thoughts (“I must be in a state of hunger!”), many irrational fixations that make things worse ( reducing calories even more, adding more cardio, etc.), and so on.

So, yes, that’s Option #1.

Option #2: Go Back to Normal the Next Day

Now let’s say they decide to simply go back to their 2000 calorie goal the next day instead of trying to eat less (or burn more) to make up for the day before eating those extra 500 calories.

What happens now?

One does not experience the negative impact on their hunger levels as they did with Option #1.

They feel better the next day (if anything, they are less hungry than usual since they ate so much the day before) and they are able to successfully hit their 2000 calorie intake every day for a week just like they did. I have been doing.

No problems at all.

What else is going on?

They lost fat that week.

Wait, what?!? How is that possible?

Shouldn’t they see progress that week? Or a bunch of fat profits because they exceeded their goal that one day?

No.

Why?

Because one day of exceeding your calorie goal – whether it’s by 500 calories or 2000 calories or anywhere in between – is not enough to cancel your entire deficit for the week (not to mention put you in a lot of money) as long as you’re back to normal the next day(s).

Think about it.

If this example person were to reach their goal every day, they would end up with a total weekly deficit of 3500 calories (500 calorie deficit each day x 7 days a week = 3500), resulting in a loss of 1lb per week on average. .

This week, despite going over 500 calories in one day, they still end up in deficit for the rest of the week.

Just short of a whole week of 2500 calories instead of the 3500 targeted.

But that’s not a big deal at all.

That will still result in fat loss progress, much less than intended (just for that one week), and that is still far from any progress or fat gain.

The truth is, “no progress” or “weight gain” are only things that happen if:

Go over your calorie target the majority or everything of the church. Especially for multiple weeks in a row.
Look at your calorie goal for the other day, think “bend it!” and purposely check your calories for the next few days… all because you wrongly thought one day of bingeing ruined everything and in reality it didn’t even make you smile. (Full details here: Fat Free Weight Gain in One Day)
Go over your calorie goal in just one day, try to make it back up the next day by eating very little, and end up in that cycle of eating less and eating more that we talked about earlier, which hinders progress.

But if you just put it behind you and go back to normal the next day, you’ll avoid all this nonsense and STILL make progress that week.

What else is going on?

You feel good. No frustration, confusion, guilt, or anything like that.

What else is going on?

You probably notice that your workout the next day goes better than usual because of the increased energy and performance from the high calorie/carb intake the day before.

What else is going on?

The next time you check your calorie target (and yes, it will happen), don’t panic, or feel like you’ve ruined your progress, or start thinking about what you should do the next day to make up for it.

You now have the first knowledge needed to know that as long as you return to normal the next day, you will be fine. And you will still end up losing fat that week.

What else is going on?

You no longer feel stressed or anxious about going to special events like Christmas, Thanksgiving, birthdays, etc. when you know you’re likely to exceed your calorie target.

Now you know it’s not a big deal if that happens every once in a while, so you can relax, enjoy the food, and go back to normal the next day to reach your goal most of the time.