Troubled me a very long time; still does. Here's the gist of it: IF YOU EAT NOTHING, you CANNOT GAIN WEIGHT. (Over the relative term, let's use 4 weeks). Obviously, ya gotta eat something during the 4 weeks). OK, leaving the house to go to dinner, you weigh 160 lbs. During dinner, you eat a total of 10 lbs., everything included. You should then weigh 170 lbs., agreed? Now as that food & drink is assimilated, used as "fuel", your weight ABSOLUTELY cannot remain at 170 lbs., agreed? Because fuel means heat produced, lost as energy, supplying cells with food. You go to sleep, and weigh in next morning. What will your reading be? 160? A bit more? Or a bit less? See the nebulousness of all this I'm trying to convey? EVERYTHING depends, in the short term, on how rapidly your body is burning calories vs. the occasional dumping in of gobs of them. So, what's my point, Grandma? Simply stated, can you gain more weight than the weight of the food you eat? IOW, is weight gain related to the weight of food eaten? I think yes, and no. Put yet another way, might we regulate and control our body weight, by paying attention to little else but the WEIGHT of the food we eat? I suggest YES. Simply because you cannot gain more weight than the weight of the food you eat. Or, can you? See why it's imponderable? Frank
Interesting thought @Frank Sanoica. I have always thought of weight gain with the respect of the amount of calorie intake a person partakes not so much as the 'weight' of the food eaten. My husband would be in a world of hurt if that was the case. I can see all the weight charts would be tossed in File 13.
I think that there are at least a couple of answers to this question, @Frank Sanoica . If you stand on the scales and then pick up a gallon milk jug, of course, you will weigh more, and if you drink that gallon of milk, your weight should still show those extra pounds on the scale. Will it turn into permanent body fat, that is a different thing altogether, and this is where the exercise and fat-burning part comes in. Your body will process and eliminate the leftovers of the gallon of milk, so that part of the weight will level out. Then, the rest will either be burned as fuel, or deposited in your body as fat; so the results of drinking that gallon of milk will probably be different for each person, depending on how active their metabolism is, and how active they are. Just living on lightweight foods is not the answer, even if you tried a fluffy popcorn diet, you still need to drink water, which balances out the weight of thatever you eat.