Question

Sounds nice

Jake

I have a very exciting spreadsheet that figures the amount of weight gained each week by plugging an average daily calorie intake. I play out little scenarios and figure out when holidays are to project what a woman following my spreadsheet would gain.

Scott

I think a person who overeating but not intending to gain is lucky to put on a pound every two weeks. Someone trying could, maybe hit a pound a week. This is all dependent of age, metabolism, exercise levels, etc.

This is a hard question, since I don't know that anyone has really done any "science" on this question for obvious reasons. I suggest attacking the problem by breaking it down into monthly or even weekly chunks. For example, I can see a person maybe gaining a max of 2-5 pounds a week -- but could someone really go whole hog and get closer to, say, 10 pounds? Once they started eating enormous amounts, you can presume that their capacity will increase, but the results will diminish somewhat as well, as the bigger you get the more food it will take to maintain that size -- though that's probably not an issue at lesser weights. So if two pounds a week for 52 weeks, that would be 104 pounds; if five pounds a week for 52 weeks, that would be 260 pounds; seven pounds a week would be 350 pounds; and if 10 pounds a week for 52 weeks, that would be 520 pounds. I don't know that a 10 pound a week pace is sustainable, since I don't think anyone could START at that rate -- it seems unlikely someone could consume enough calories in the beginning to hit that mark. So if you started at a generous two pounds a week for a month, then hit four pounds a week for the second month, got to seven pounds a week by month five, that would leave you 436 pounds of the 520 pounds to gain with six months remaining in the year -- a roughly 73 pound a month pace for the half year, which seems ludicrous. So if we do some guesswork and speculation, how fat could someone get would be reliant on a sliding scale. Quality of food matters as well, as your would want to avoid natural foods to a large extent and go for the empty calories that would go straight to fat. At roughly 3500 calories a day per pound of fat...this math is getting too hard. Let's just make some wild guesses. Month 1: 3 pounds per week -- 12 pounds Month 2: 3 pounds per week --15 pounds (Valentine's Day) Month 3: 4 pounds per week -- 16 pounds Month 4: 4 pounds per week -- 20 pounds (Easter) Month 5: 5 pounds per week -- 28 pounds (five weeks and Memorial Day picnic) Month 6: 6 pounds per week -- 27 pounds (summer BBQs) Month 7: 8 pounds per week -- 35 pounds (Fourth of July picnic) Month 8: 10 pounds per week -- 45 pounds (summer BBQs) Month 9: 10 pounds per week -- 43 pounds (Labor Day picnic) Month 10: 10 pounds per week -- 45 pounds (Halloween) Month 11: 10 pounds per week -- 55 pounds (Thanksgiving and leftovers) Month 12: 10 pounds per week --75 pounds (holiday cookie season and Christmas dinner) Even with some VERY generous assumptions based on calendar events and what someone's capacity for food would grow to, I got to 416 pounds. That seems a little high, but I don't know -- what do others think?

Bob the Builder