Weight has a funny way of sneaking up on us. OK, not funny… FRUSTRING! One day we feel skinny, the next we’re convinced our jeans have shrunk. The good news is that no one has gone from a healthy weight to obesity overnight. The bad news is that it can happen in a matter of weeks. But exactly how much do we have to overeat to gain weight? What does 100 calories of stored fat look like? Read on and all will be revealed…

Everyone has a unique number of calories that your body needs each day to maintain your current weight. Eat MORE than this and your body will store excess calories as a thick layer of fat around your organs and under your skin.

The best way to understand how much fat is stored every time we overeat is to think of an everyday household item that has surprisingly little to do with fat…FRUIT!

The following list uses everyday fruits as a “fat storage size guide”…

20 too much…

Eating just 20 more calories than your body needs will store an amount of fat the size of a juicy raisin. That 20-calorie teaspoon of sugar in your tea?…stored neatly like a plump little raisin in your butt! Have you noticed that your butt is slowly getting BIGGER? Drop the sugar!

excess of 100…

Overeating for just 100 calories will store a grape-sized amount of fat in your body. A single grape may be small, but eating 100 excess calories a day for a year is a whopping 365 grapes… enough to give someone with a six-pack in 2009 a belly in 2010!

500 excess…

Overeating for 500 calories will store a plum-sized amount of fat. If you’re in the habit of eating pudding and wine with dinner every night, that’s easily an excess of 500 calories per day… adding 7 plums of fat to your body each week!

excess of 1000…

Overeating for 1000 calories will store an apple-sized lump of fat on your body. You’ll be amazed how easy it is to overeat 1,000 calories a day on a two-week summer vacation, which means you’ll fly home with a great tan…and a little garden in your pants!

3500 excess…

If you eat 3,500 more calories than your body burns, you will gain exactly 1 pound of fat, about the size of a small grapefruit. Whether it’s 100 extra calories for 35 days, or 3,500 extra calories on a weekend blast…you just added a grapefruit to your waistline!

Fortunately it works the other way around. If you haven’t eaten more than your daily calorie allotment and then burn off the next few calories, this is how much fat you’ll lose…

A 10-minute walk with 100 calories = a grape of fat burned.

At 45 minutes, 500 calorie body attack class = a plum of fat burned.

10 minutes of brisk walking a day for 35 days = a grapefruit of fat burned.