So, I was going through one of Thibs’ threads Forums - T Nation - The World's Trusted Community for Elite Fitness
My question is, why aren’t all competitive eaters fat? I believe it said between the two people, they’d eaten 99,000 calories in one sitting. Does your body just stop being able to process the food? My buddy and I were discussing this, and the only conclusion we reached is that it wouldn’t be fun to be the toilet in this situation.
[quote]chimera182 wrote:
So, I was going through one of Thibs’ threads Forums - T Nation - The World's Trusted Community for Elite Fitness
My question is, why aren’t all competitive eaters fat? I believe it said between the two people, they’d eaten 99,000 calories in one sitting. Does your body just stop being able to process the food? My buddy and I were discussing this, and the only conclusion we reached is that it wouldn’t be fun to be the toilet in this situation.[/quote]
Yes, your body has a limited food processing ability. Also, that one japanese guy that once tried to out eat a bear (failed) is also an avid gym goer
Most certainly the great majority of the calories are not absorbed.
On absorption, there are only two possible fates: being burned, or stored as fat.
It is clear that the two Japanese in that video are not storing any unusual amount as fat.
And they are not burning calories at such a rate: they would be absolute furnaces if they did.
However, it appears that they did experience a thermogenic effect, but perhaps no more than you or I would have from an ordinarily large meal. I cannot understand Japanese and so don’t know what the commentary was on those IR scans.
However, if 45,000 cal were absorbed and burned equally over say 24 hours (obviously an oversimplification) this would require that the metabolic rate be nearly 2000 cal/hour.
Try doing exercise at 1000 cal/hour and see if you are sweating as little as those Japanese were.
Clearly they are not generating heat at anything like that rate.
So: that much is not being burned, and it’s not being converted to fat. So, most of it is not absorbed.
Kobayashi unfortunately suffers from jaw arthritis so he hasnt won much lately…he can barely open his mouth but still puts up a good fight.
They’ve had a few documentaries about these guys and when they do train they always use things like oatmeal,salad, water etc to expand their stomachs but they do use the actual food item when training technique and timing themselves.
Thanks for the replies, this was bugging me all day.
Another question though, if you guys don’t mind chiming in. At what point does your body just say “to hell with it” and give up. I mean, let’s say you absorb 10,000 of those calories. I guess it’s possible to burn it off, but still that should lead to some sort of weight gain right? Sorry, if my question is dumb because I’m missing some sort of physiological understanding.
If you absorb 10,000 but burn only say 5000, then the other 5000 are stored. Some of this can be as glycogen; generally speaking rather little can be as increased muscle or other protein or tissue; and the balance, which would usually be the majority, would be stored as fat.
The body has no other means of dealing with the materials. Fat, carbohydrates, and protein cannot be sweated out (in substantial quantity), breathed out (except after being burned), pissed out (except for very small quantities of sugar in the case of diabetics), or eliminated in the feces. They’s got no place else to go.
And the body does not allow them to accumulate in the blood in such quantities.
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
If you absorb 10,000 but burn only say 5000, then the other 5000 are stored. Some of this can be as glycogen; generally speaking rather little can be as increased muscle or other protein or tissue; and the balance, which would usually be the majority, would be stored as fat.
The body has no other means of dealing with the materials. Fat, carbohydrates, and protein cannot be sweated out (in substantial quantity), breathed out (except after being burned), pissed out (except for very small quantities of sugar in the case of diabetics), or eliminated in the feces. They’s got no place else to go.
And the body does not allow them to accumulate in the blood in such quantities.[/quote]
Thanks a lot for the reply.