True Confession: I love buffalo chicken wings 
It is really funny how many nutritionist/dietitians that I know refuse to ever eat anything that could be labeled unhealthy. Not me. I think that it is important to enjoy the occasionally unhealthy food (if you like them) as it helps with sanity. With eating buffalo wings (or whatever your favorite forbidden food is) usually comes increase calories.
There are several different ways that you can do damage control to prevent the destruction of your physique. Today I wanted to highlight one in particular because it is potentially the most important one (and I just read a new study about it).
The best form of damage control is being lean. When you have lower body fat levels your body is more forgiving during days of caloric excess. This is for a couple different reasons. One is that when you are leaner you have improved insulin sensitivity (i.e. your body handles carbohydrates better). Another is that new research shows that when you are leaner, you actually undergo changes in the genes of your stomach fat in response to over eating (overweight people don’t have these changes) that may help keep you lean.
The concept that lean people can handle higher caloric intakes than overweight people is really applicable beyond just eating lots chicken wings (I was just trying to get your attention). The best real world application of this is that lean people can eat more calories while maintaining their leanness. This is the ultimate scenario isn’t it?
Eat more and keep your six pack.
But you have to get lean first.
-Mike
P.S. Next week Alwyn Cosgrove and I have something really exciting planned to you that will not only give you the extra motivation to lose any extra weight you have hanging around but we are also going to personally help you lose it.
I would guess that in reality, lean people can handle higher caloric intakes because they are:
1) More active, which is why they are lean to begin with
or
2) They are your classic ectomorph that won't gain weight without serious and continued high calorie eating.
In fact, my understanding is that someone who has just finished dieting down to very lean, let's say 10% is primed for fat storage. Lyle McDonald talks about this in a few of his books.
The body would prefer not to be lean for obvious evolutionary reasons.
Awesome post, Mike! I'd love to read that study reguarding genetic changes in abdominal fat (I'm a dork like that i guess…) could you post a PubMed link? Thanks!
Interesting! Why not try to be lean by eating.
Here you go http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/89/1/407
Pretty interesting. I think that science is just scratching the surface with this stuff.
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