How much food fits in a person?

May 12, 2009 6:09 PM

How much food and waste can a person carry inside them, in terms of weight? In other words, if I weigh 195 lbs, how many of them could be attributed what I've ingested?

Of course, a percentage of what I eat will actually become part of me. But I'm assuming not most of it. So what I'm really looking for is the maximum possible variation in weight from day to day due to food.

Also, lets say for practicality that even at the baseline "empty" weight I still have a healthy level of body hydration -- I don't want to compare someone who hasn't eaten or drank in weeks to someone who is filled to capacity with water and food.

posted by TSGlenn to Health & Fitness (10 answers total)

A few pounds.
posted by gramcracker at 6:12 PM on May 12, 2009

For an upper bound, I'd look at eating contest winners and estimate the weight of the food they take in.
posted by zippy at 6:17 PM on May 12, 2009

I assume you're talking about this in absence of any disease like megacolon. The stomach holds between a liter to 1.5 liters of food. A liter of water weighs about a kg (2.2 pounds). Answerbag failed to answer this question satisfactorily, but did note that you'd puke before you "filled up." So there's not really a "maximum possible" that avoids illness, standard fitness folks say that a 5 lb weight fluctuation day to day is within the totally normal range based on variations in eating/hydrating. This is in line with my general anecdata about myself.
posted by jessamyn at 6:20 PM on May 12, 2009 [1 favorite]

Joey Chestnut once ate 66 hot dogs which is about 14 1/2 lbs. of food, not including the water soaked up in all the buns (his technique is to dunk the buns in water before eating them). I'd guess the buns were holding at least a liter or two of water total. So let's say 20 lbs?
posted by hamsterdam at 6:37 PM on May 12, 2009

It's also important to remember salt and sugar intake can impact your daily weight fluctuation in the form of fluid retention. The amount of fluid you retain each day depends on a number of complex hormonal factors, as well as lean muscle tissue vs. bodyfat percentage.

At any rate, if you really want to establish a baseline of what you weigh when 100% empty, do a full colonoscopy bowel prep. It won't be pretty, but at least you'll know your guts are pink and squeaky clean.
posted by aquafortis at 6:49 PM on May 12, 2009

This past Thanksgiving, I put on 16lbs in a 12 hour period, which I shed over the course of 6 days. It was rather uncomfortable.
posted by zerokey at 6:56 PM on May 12, 2009 [5 favorites]

To add, last year when I was a scale slave (would weigh myself 6-8 times/day - in the morning, after each meal, after bathroom runs), I gauged that my average dinner, including fluids, was between 4 and 7 lbs (mostly high fiber veggies), which would be shed within 8-10 hours.
posted by zerokey at 7:01 PM on May 12, 2009

There's a chart about 3/4 of the way down on this page of the Hacker's Diet that you might find helpful. It's dealing with averages, though, not food-champion numbers.

If you'd like to find your "true weight," even if you're not on a diet, I'd recommend checking out physicsdiet.com - track your weight for a week or so, once a day, and you'll get a good feel for where you're sitting.
posted by ewingpatriarch at 7:03 PM on May 12, 2009

Recently (maybe last fall) a show in Japan had a guy eat a kilogram of 7 different foods on different days. He'd start at 7 at night, and eat until he finished. Then they'd let him sleep for 7 hours. In the morning, they would weigh him to see how much of the weight he had retained overnight. The different foods were ramen, pizza, tofu, cabbage, soba noodles, rice, and finally grilled slices of pork (yaki-niku). Aside from the schadenfreude of the episode (it was pretty funny seeing him labor through plain rice (they finally let him sprinkle bits of nori and sesame seeds on the rice), through a kilo of tofu, and then, when he finally got to the pork, watching the smile on his face turn to utter pain about two hours into it. It took him roughly 5 hours to finish the meat, 4 hours to get through the cabbage.

The upshot was that his body weight changed very little with the cabbage and tofu (he was sweating profusely while eating, and probably lost a lot of water that way). On the other hand, he retained almost all of the kilo from the pork, and about 800 grams from the pizza as well. That, and they pointed out the caloric values of the various foods, cabbage having almost none, while the meat had nearly 6000 calories.

Anyway, depending on the food you eat, you could retain a significant amount of food weight for several hours, or, if you eat the right food, you'll retain very little.
posted by Ghidorah at 7:13 PM on May 12, 2009 [1 favorite]

Twenty odd years ago, I picked up this book about mathematics which contains this picture of the daily food consumption of a German carpenter in the sixties. This picture inspires/haunts me for years now. I've tried a couple of times to eat about as much as this guy has on the table, but is always the beer that did me in.
But that's nothing compared to the Irish. This book describes their potato consumption in the 18th century, which adds up to 5 kilos of potatoes and a pint of milk (and take it from me, they sure could se the milk) for every adult man per DAY (with the addition of a little oats and some peas), citing this source.
posted by ouke at 1:25 AM on May 13, 2009 [1 favorite]