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A puzzle: how many ways can you come up with to gain weight while consuming less calories than you use. How can you lose weight while consuming more calories th

by kens 12y ago

A puzzle: how many ways can you come up with to gain weight while consuming less calories than you use. How can you lose weight while consuming more calories than you use?

icelancer 12y ago
Synthol is one way, but that's cheating. Injecting foreign substances into your body while maintaining weight. Water weight manipulation is the usual way to do this, especially in weight class sports (MMA, Boxing, Wrestling, etc).
dragonwriter 12y ago
IIRC, the energy content of muscle is lower than that of fat, so it seems like it could be possible to gain weight with a calorie deficit by an activity/diet pattern that burns fat and builds muscle at the right rates. It'd probably be pretty tricky to hit and maintain the right pattern, though.
- icelancer 12y ago
  Never thought about it this way. Pretty likely requires a very strict diet and the use of anabolic-androgenic steroids.
  - blister 12y ago
    Yes. It's generally extremely difficult to gain muscle on a calorie-restricted diet and you have to turn to diet/exercise regimes that do things like caloric cycling and carb-refeed days. It's still a challenge, even with strict adherence.
Someone 12y ago
Losing weight while consuming more calories than you use is simple: surgically remove something. Arms and legs will do, but removing fat is more popular. A diet that manages to get half your fat cells to die off would be magical (and probably dangerous).
- icelancer 12y ago
  DNP does just that. And it's... not safe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2,4-Dinitrophenol http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2,4-Dinitrophenol
MikeThisMuch 12y ago
The trick to this question is the 'less calories than you use'. You could obviously 'gain weight' by drinking several kilograms of water, but if we are talking about building tissue things get a little more complicated. Metabolism is highly flexible and in a more general sense tied to tons of lifestyle factors. It's not uncommon for athletes to change weight rapidly in hospitals. Extremely lean athletes may put on several pounds of fat while more muscular athletes can lose pounds of muscle. Clearly there is nothing inherently anabolic or catabolic about hospital diets, but the change in behavior makes the whole thing make sense. The same sort of nuance is needed when thinking about changing body composition. Since a normal persons BMR (amount of calories needed just to keep the body running during the day) is in the 1000-1500Cal range, it's pretty clear that activity is not the be all and end all of 'calories used'. If you suddenly change the type and quantity of calories, the body can respond by reducing calories burned through metabolism and adding fat stores to aid in future survival. This will have some adverse effects on day-to-day performance, but the body sees it as an acceptable tradeoff. Tl;dr - A sudden reduction in calories can cause metabolic changes, so even if X amount of calories barely maintained a body weight it's possible to gain fat at a calorie amount less than X

by kens 12y ago

A puzzle: how many ways can you come up with to gain weight while consuming less calories than you use. How can you lose weight while consuming more calories than you use?

icelancer 12y ago

Synthol is one way, but that's cheating. Injecting foreign substances into your body while maintaining weight. Water weight manipulation is the usual way to do this, especially in weight class sports (MMA, Boxing, Wrestling, etc).

dragonwriter 12y ago

IIRC, the energy content of muscle is lower than that of fat, so it seems like it could be possible to gain weight with a calorie deficit by an activity/diet pattern that burns fat and builds muscle at the right rates. It'd probably be pretty tricky to hit and maintain the right pattern, though.

icelancer 12y ago
Never thought about it this way. Pretty likely requires a very strict diet and the use of anabolic-androgenic steroids.
- blister 12y ago
  Yes. It's generally extremely difficult to gain muscle on a calorie-restricted diet and you have to turn to diet/exercise regimes that do things like caloric cycling and carb-refeed days. It's still a challenge, even with strict adherence.

Someone 12y ago

Losing weight while consuming more calories than you use is simple: surgically remove something. Arms and legs will do, but removing fat is more popular. A diet that manages to get half your fat cells to die off would be magical (and probably dangerous).

icelancer 12y ago
DNP does just that. And it's... not safe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2,4-Dinitrophenol http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2,4-Dinitrophenol

MikeThisMuch 12y ago

The trick to this question is the 'less calories than you use'. You could obviously 'gain weight' by drinking several kilograms of water, but if we are talking about building tissue things get a little more complicated. Metabolism is highly flexible and in a more general sense tied to tons of lifestyle factors. It's not uncommon for athletes to change weight rapidly in hospitals. Extremely lean athletes may put on several pounds of fat while more muscular athletes can lose pounds of muscle. Clearly there is nothing inherently anabolic or catabolic about hospital diets, but the change in behavior makes the whole thing make sense. The same sort of nuance is needed when thinking about changing body composition. Since a normal persons BMR (amount of calories needed just to keep the body running during the day) is in the 1000-1500Cal range, it's pretty clear that activity is not the be all and end all of 'calories used'. If you suddenly change the type and quantity of calories, the body can respond by reducing calories burned through metabolism and adding fat stores to aid in future survival. This will have some adverse effects on day-to-day performance, but the body sees it as an acceptable tradeoff. Tl;dr - A sudden reduction in calories can cause metabolic changes, so even if X amount of calories barely maintained a body weight it's possible to gain fat at a calorie amount less than X