As December rolls around, one thing dominates our thoughts: food and meals. New Year’s brings festive gatherings, treats, and seemingly endless calories. Whether it’s a leisurely dinner with family or a lively night out with friends, many fitness enthusiasts worry about how holiday feasting might affect their hard-earned progress. But is overeating during the holidays something to fear truly, or are we overthinking it? Does your New Year’s meal affect your gains? Let’s count our calories and dive in!

Calorie counting 

A calorie is a unit of measurement of energy, and we consume meals and expend calories when eating and moving or just existing. Calorie matters as it is the essence of life, the energy we spend, and how we continue to function.

Why is calorie counting needed for your gains?

As the consumerism culture grows, we need to be mindful about the food and drinks we consume to ensure we are healthy. Many consumer products are jam-packed with calories, and by eating them on a regular basis, we store the excess energy as fat. But even if you do want to gain weight, the nutrition isn’t met for growth, which leads to gaining more fat than muscle. The overconsumption of meals and increasing calories will have great negatives, such as:

• Diabetes
• Obesity
• Sleep pause
• Depression and Anxiety, and more

If someone is looking at an increasing number on the scale, one can start looking at the calorie consumption and exhaustion to simplify the process of losing weight. And if someone wants to put on weight, they can look at nutritious food with higher amounts of calories per mass to grow.

How can we count calories? How much should we be consuming?

A simple method to know how many calories are contained within a meal is by judging how much carb, protein, sugar, fat, and alcohol are being consumed. 

• 1 gram of carb: 4 calorie
• 1 gram of fat: 9 calorie
• 1 gram of protein: 4 calorie
• 1 gram of alcohol: 7 calorie

But now, with many apps being developed and labs having labs to look at the calorie per mass, it is as easy as just inputting how much you ate of what you ate. We can look into apps like:

• MyFitnessPal
• MyNetDiary
• Fooducate

There are more apps and services that provide more, but these are widely used by many to track calories.

Does a day of calorie surplus affect my gains while I am in a cutting period?

A 2014 study explored the effects of short-term overeating on body composition, shedding light on how a brief calorie surplus impacts weight and fat gain. Researchers found that overeating meals led to an increase in body weight, primarily driven by higher total body water and fat-free dry solids, rather than fat mass. Despite the calorie surplus, fat mass remained unchanged. The study also revealed that physical activity levels and energy expenditure were not significantly different between the overeating and normal periods, suggesting that maintaining physical activity during overeating can help minimize weight gain.

In the study, there are two pieces of data to study. The first baseline weight and the second baseline weight. The first baseline weight is to get all the needed data on their normal diet, and the second baseline weight is the post-overeating period. The study concluded with the following data:

These findings are particularly relevant for individuals in a cutting phase, where the goal is to reduce body fat while preserving lean muscle. A short-term calorie surplus may cause temporary weight gain, but this is largely due to water retention rather than fat accumulation. This indicates that occasional overeating is unlikely to affect fat loss progress, provided regular physical activity is maintained. However, prolonged overeating or repeated surpluses over time can still lead to fat gain, emphasizing the importance of long-term consistency in achieving cutting goals.

Read: Why you should walk 30 minutes everyday: discussing benefits

In conclusion, a day or two will not affect your gains in the long-term cutting goals. There will be a short-term buffer where you will experience weight gain, but it is mainly water weight and will sooner or later come back to your weight before the meal. So, feel free to indulge in a day of meals with friends and family. Have a great New Year!