The 6-Thousand Calorie Quest (Part 1)

On Monday, I started to pursue a diet in low GI (glycemic index) foods. It has been proven that consuming low GI foods will provide your body with essential nutrition and assist in maintaining (or reaching) a low body-fat composition (Hellooo, Eight-pack!).

In layman’s terms, low glycemic index foods are digested slower than high GI foods, leaving you feeling full for a longer time- essentially allowing you to consume less calories without feeling starved. Personally, I found the most appealing part of the diet to be an allowance of one-day per week that I could consume as much of anything I wanted. Sounds like a deal to me! The goal of this cheat day would be to keep my metabolic rate high by consuming an excess of calories (in comparison to any other day of the week).

Hold up! There are a few ground rules for our “cheat day”:

1. Start off the day with a moderate meal- high in protein and insoluble fiber.
2. Consume small quantities of fructose before the second meal (and other high glycemic load meals). (Side note: Fructose is great for near-flat-lining blood glucose levels)
3. Increase the speed that food exits the stomach. (IE. Through caffeine intake, EGCG (found in green-tea))
4. Engage in brief muscular contraction. (Side note: This will bring GLUT-4 to the surface of muscle cells, allowing calories to be absorbed into muscle cells instead of turning directly into fat)

So there are the rules, you already know my goal of the day… now here are the results!

9:45 AM
- 1 cup mixed vegetables (105 kcal)
- 1/2 cup lentil beans (115 kcal)
- 2 whole eggs (fried w/ olive oil) (162 kcal)
Total = 382 kcal

11:30 AM
- 10 oz Florida’s Natural Orange Juice (138 kcal)
- 1 glazed donut (260 kcal)
Total = 398 kcal

12:30 AM
- Taylor ham, egg, and cheese on a roll (with salt, pepper, and ketchup) (400 kcal)

2:00 PM
- Glazed apple fritter (400 kcal)
- 12 oz Yerba Mate (5 kcal)
Total = 405 kcal

3:35 PM
- 10 oz Florida’s Natural Orange Juice (138 kcal)
- Chocolate cupcake with peanut butter frosting (550 kcal)
Total = 688 kcal

4:00 PM
- 12 oz Yerba Mate (5 kcal)
-  Milk chocolate bar filled with peanut butter (600 kcal)
Total = 605 kcal

6:45 PM
- 2/3 lb Burger (with bun, bacon, american cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion) (1300 kcal)
- Wedge fries (296 kcal)
- Birch beer / Cream soda (190 kcal)
Total = 1786 kcal

10:00 PM
- 8 oz Florida’s Natural Orange Juice (110 kcal)

10:10 PM
- 12 oz Yerba Mate (5 kcal)
- Sugar coated cake donut (360 kcal)
- Italian bread with 2 tbsp Nutella (290 kcal)
- 3 peanut butter cookies (180 kcal)
Total = 835 kcal

Bringing me to a grand total of… 5,606 calories in ~13 hours!

Now, we just need to add in the moderate exercises performed throughout the day, which, on-average gave us a 200 calorie offset. Terrific! Stay tuned for part 2 (coming Monday)!

Written by Tom Beute– a Christian, barista, and software engineer.