You’ve been good on your diet–you’ve even gone down a few sizes. With summer vacation coming up, it wouldn’t hurt to go off your diet for a week, right?
While your brain may be saying yes, you may want to rethink your strategy, say researchers from the Virginia Tech College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
New research from their lab shows that just five days of eating a high-fat diet–which people naturally do on vacation–could cause changes in the way your body’s muscles process nutrients, leading to increases in blood glucose and changes in your metabolism.
In short: You’re prepping your body for obesity, even if you’re not eating that much food.
“Most people think they can indulge in high-fat foods for a few days and get away with it,” says Matt Hulver, researcher of the study and an associate professor at the Virginia Tech College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. “But all it takes is five days for your body’s muscle to start to protest. This shows that our bodies are can respond dramatically to changes in diet in a shorter time frame than we have previously thought.”
For the study, Hulver had healthy young adults consume a diet comprised of 55 percent fat, 20 percent above the amount adults typically eat. Their everyday diet included foods people are prone to binging on, such as sausage biscuits, macaroni and cheese, and foods prepared with a lot of butter. While their caloric intake remained roughly the same, it did bump up their average fat intake by a lot.
Five days later, researchers took samples of their muscle cells to measure their glucose–and the news wasn’t good. In just five days their blood glucose had increased, slowing their metabolism. This made them prone to weight gain and obesity, despite not consuming extra calories. It also put them at risk for type 2 diabetes because it adversely affected their blood glucose.
The news is concerning to Hulver, as many people binge on fatty foods–and often eat them for far longer than five days in a row.
“If you think about it, five days is a very short time,” says Hulver. “There are plenty of times when we all eat fatty foods for a few days, be it the holidays, vacations, or other celebrations. But this research shows that those high-fat diets can change a person’s normal metabolism in a very short time frame.”
Hulver plans to conduct more research in the future looking at how these short-term changes in diet can affect a person’s body in the long run. For now, though, its short term effects are clear–it could make you fat, even if you’re watching your calories.
What This Means For You
It’s tempting to overeat on vacation, but be careful: Even just 5 days of eating “bad” foods could make your metabolism plummet. Instead, find a way to incorporate your favorite foods into your everyday diet–you’ll feel more satisfied and avoid binge-eating these foods in the long run.
Readers: Which foods are the most tempting to you?
Sources:
Five Days of Eating Fatty Foods Can Alter How Your Body’s Muscle Processes Food – ScienceDaily.com
Early Skeletal Muscle Adaptations to Short-Term High-Fat Diet in Humans Before Changes in Insulin Sensitivity (Study) – Wiley.com
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