The Weird Results of Mike Geary's 6-week Overeating Experiment

The following is an interesting e-mail I received this morning:


My 6-week overeating experiment:

Here's the deal... I decided to use myself as a guinea pig and attempt an overeating experiment over the last 6 weeks.

Basically, I wanted to see how much weight I would gain if I purposely tried to overeat on a consistent daily basis for 6 weeks.

What do you think happened? Did I get fat? Maintain the same? Get leaner?

My theory was that if you eat the right types of super nutrient-dense foods and don't stray from those foods, that the body will automatically rebalance itself (hormones, appetite, etc)... and even though you're attempting to overeat, as long as nutrient-density is maximized, total calorie balance will inevitably end up at a level where I would not gain weight.

This goes along with my theory that calorie counting is basically pointless as long as your nutrient density of your foods is so high that the body obtains all of the nutrition it needs and re-balances your appetite and hormones to account for this.

Think of it this way... if you eat 1000 calories worth of soda, donuts, and cookies, your body needs to readjust hormone levels, increase your appetite and try to force you ingest more food to attempt to get more nutrients, since those 1000 calories were almost devoid of the nutrition your body needs.

However, if you eat 1000 calories worth of healthy foods with high nutrient density such as avocados, whole eggs, nuts, vegetables, fruits, grass fed meats, and other healthy options, your body obtains most of the nutrition it needs and accounts for this by leveling your appetite and hormones in the time period following that meal (the remainder of the day perhaps). In this scenerio, your body is not forcing you to eat more food (via cravings) to obtain the nutrition it needs since it already received a boatload of nutrition.

Ok, here were the caveats in my little experiment:

1. I couldn't just eat any and all types of foods... I would overeat on as much food as I wanted, but ONLY the foods that are "approved" according to my rules... this means all foods had to be unprocessed natural foods.

Some staples during my overeating phase were tons of whole eggs, full-fat grass-fed raw cheese and yogurt, avocados, almonds, pecans, walnuts, lots of virgin coconut oil and olive oil, grass-fed butter, berries, lots of fruit and veggies, sprouted grain bread, raw almond butter, sweet potatoes, and lots of venison and grass-fed beef.

2. I was still training very intensely 3-4 days/week at the gym but nothing extremely different from my normal workouts (this means that my caloric expenditure from exercise was not drastically different than normal).

The end result after 6 weeks of trying to stuff my face with as much healthy food as possible:

>> My body weight stayed EXACTLY the same! I didn't gain a single pound.

I know the first reaction of many people is that I just must have a "fast metabolism" or something along those lines and that's why I didn't gain weight.

But that is false!

The truth is that I have no problem at all gaining weight when I overeat on junk foods, or lots of processed foods in general. I can guarantee you that if I was overeating on pasta, white rice, cookies, white bread, and other processed foods during these last 6 weeks, I would have gained a massive amount of weight.

In fact, as I've mentioned before, in the past I've easily gained as much as 10 lbs in only 1 week when I've been on some sort of vacation and simply eat the normal types of processed foods that everyone else is eating.

This proves that I'm just as prone to gaining weight as anybody else.

However, notice the stark contrast in my experiment with attempting to overeat on all healthy unprocessed foods... I simply couldn't gain weight because my body would be constantly readjusting hormone levels and appetite levels to account for the super-high nutrient density I was giving it.

In the end, this meant that my body automatically maintained calorie balance without the need for calorie counting.

This is the type of eating that pretty much totally eliminates cravings... Remember I've said before that I don't think I've had any real cravings in at least 5 years (that's the time since I've been more strict on the type of foods I eat).

I also think it's actually fun and more enjoyable to eat in such a healthy manner (for the skeptics that think this involves some sort of deprivation).


Mike Geary
Certified Nutrition Specialist
Certified Personal Trainer
Creator The Truth about Six Pack Abs