Research

Energy balance

Controlled caloric excess (1.4x maintenance) for 8 weeks in healthy adults causes significant increases in visceral adipose tissue, systemic inflammation, insulin resistance, and functional cardiovascular risk markers (abnormal circadian blood pressure variability and endothelial dysfunction).

If you are healthy and maintain your weight, eating 40% more than you need for just two months will still damage your blood vessel function and increase blood pressure variability. You do not need to be overweight to suffer these early cardiovascular risks from overeating.

GoodSupportsHIGH confidence
Controlled caloric excess in healthy human adults over only 8-weeks significantly increased BF, VAT, sIF [hs-CRP], IR [FPG, FI, HOMA-IR] and functional CVD risk [measured as abnormal circadian blood pressure variability and impaired resting endothelial function].
Alok Gupta et al. · Cardiovascular Diabetology · 2013

Why this rating

Prospective, controlled, randomized overfeeding study in healthy adults with rigorous metabolic measurements, though small sample size (n=14).

Source

Cardiovascular risk escalation with caloric excess: a prospective demonstration of the mechanics in healthy adults

Alok Gupta et al. · Cardiovascular Diabetology · 2013

DOI 10.1186/1475-2840-12-23

rct · n=14Cited 15×
Read the paper
DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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