What Happens If You Eat Too Much Food At Once?

The average meal takes 1 to 3 hours to leave the stomach. But a large meal can take 8 to 12 hours, depending on the quantity and fat content.

Although your stomach may feel as if it will burst, gastric rupture is extremely rare.The problem is usually limited to people with major eating disorders; in a study of people who had died with Prader-Willi syndrome, which causes excessive overeating, about 3 percent of the deaths were due to stomach rupture.

 But while your stomach won’t burst after a big meal, overeating will make your body work harder. The extra digestive workload demanded by a food binge requires the heart to pump more blood to the stomach and intestines. Heavy consumption of fatty foods can also lead to changes that cause blood to clot more easily.  As a result, heart attack risk appears to surge. One study of 2,000 people that showed a fourfold increase in heart attack risk in the two hours after eating a big meal. 

As the stomach releases food into the intestines, the gallbladder begins to squeeze out bile to help with fat digestion. Like the rest of the body, it has to work harder after a big meal — a frequent cause of gallstone attacks, which occur when clusters of solid material get stuck in the narrow duct that connects the organ to the intestine. These attacks are seldom fatal, but the pain mimics a heart attack and can be excruciating. Many people don’t know they have gallstones until an attack occurs.

Large meals increase the risk for flatulence, because bits of undigested food slip into the colon and begin to ferment. And people with existing health problems that require special diets have to be careful about their intake of salt, fat and calories at Thanksgiving.

Simple strategies can help minimize the gluttony. Keep the serving dishes in the kitchen, so you won’t take extra helpings mindlessly. Stick to foods that require utensils — we eat finger foods faster than those that require a fork.

Finally, contribute to the dinnertime conversation. The more you talk, the less you’ll eat.

Source:- https://www.quora.com/What-happens-if-you-eat-too-much-food-at-once