26/03/2024
IT’S NEARLY EASTER!! 🐣🍫
Today I wanted to dedicate a post to this time of year as I know for some it can trigger some apprehension with all of the treats surrounding us...
Being completely honest and transparent, a few years ago I used to really struggle at Easter. It would go either one of two ways for me...
1. In order to feel worthy of eating some chocolate, I would restrict and track my food intake religiously the weeks leading up to Easter Sunday so that I wouldn't "gain as much fat" if I did happen to have a binge. I'm talking eating below 1000 calories a day... which is not healthy and I really don't recommend 😬
or 2. I would have a massive blow out on chocolate... weigh myself to see that I have gained about 10 pounds... and then basically starve myself days later out of guilt and disappointment.
Thankfully, I have such a great relationship with food now and have healed this negative mentality… so I feel my job now is to help anyone who may be struggling with this or something similar. I’m about to give you an insight into something that completely changed the game for me.
In order to gain 1KG of PURE body fat you would have to eat 7700 calories OVER your maintenance calories… This may sound a little confusing I know, but hear me out.
For reference, your maintenance calories refer to the amount of calories that you need to maintain your current bodyweight. The average maintenance for women is 2000 calories, where for men it is 2500 - but this varies greatly depending on many factors.
When we are trying to lose or gain weight, we use our maintenance calories as a reference point. Therefore, to lose weight we would eat below our maintenance, and vice versa.
According to science, a kilo of pure body fat equates to the storage of 7700 calories. As you can see in the image above, this equates to 7 blocks of dairy milk (200g). This is also equivalent to 3 Domino’s pepperoni pizzas, 85 Tim tams or 8 bags of cheese supreme Doritos.
So imagine eating one of these listed above PLUS your usual daily maintenance calories… that’s what it takes to gain 1 kilo of pure bodyfat.
Now I know you are thinking why whenever I overeat and weigh myself I am at least 3kg heavier if not more?
Well, for every gram of carbohydrate that you eat, THREE grams of water is stored alongside this. THREE!! When you think about what people mainly overeat, whether this be takeaway, chocolate etc… it’s all predominantly carbohydrate dense food (nothing wrong with carbs by the way). So, the majority of this weight reflected on the scales is going to be water weight.
To prove this point, I guarantee that if you go back to the scales a few days later after you have resumed your normal diet, the scales will not reflect what it did initially.
So the moral of this post is please enjoy yourself this Easter… have the chocolate and treats. I hope I have given you a little piece of mind that you aren’t going to completely ruin yourself if you eat a chocolate bunny or two… because I promise you, the restriction that you place around these foods always leads to more harm than good.
I know that not everyone has experienced these issues or behaviours before, but if i'm able to help at least help one person feel a little less anxious about eating some chocolate on Sunday... my job here is done :)
I hope you all have a great week & a lovely Easter ♡
- Molly
