A new study has revealed that if you eat fatty foods just five days in a row, it can alter how your body's muscle processes food. 

Researchers indicated that after eating a high-fat diet, the way in which the body's muscle processes nutrients changes. This could lead to long-term problems such as weight gain, obesity, and other health issues. 

High Fat Intake Can Change How Your Digest in Days

Most people think they can indulge in high-fat foods for a few days and get away with it, but this study found that all it takes is five days for your body's muscle to start to protest.

After just five days of eating a high-fat diet, the way in which the body's muscle processes nutrients changes. This could lead to long-term problems such as weight gain, obesity, and other health issues. 

An article was published recently in the online version of the journal Obesity; researchers found that the manner in which muscle metabolizes nutrients is changed in justfive days of high-fat feeding.

This is the first study to prove that the change happens so quickly

How Our Bodies Respond to Eating Unhealthy Food

This study shows that our bodies are can respond dramatically to changes in diet in a shorter time frame than we have previously thought. Five days is a very short time. There are plenty of times when we all eat fatty foods for a few days. Holidays, vacations, or other celebrations can even have this effect. 

These high-fat diets can change a person's normal metabolism in a very short time frame. When food is eaten, the level of glucose in the blood rises. The body's muscle is a major clearinghouse for this glucose. It may break it down for energy, or it can store it for later use

The Muscle's Role in Digestion

Since muscle makes up about 30 percent of our body weight and it is such an important site for glucose metabolism, if normal metabolism is altered, it can have dire consequences on the rest of the body and can lead to health issues.. Researchers have found that muscles' ability to oxidize glucose after a meal is disrupted after five days of eating a high-fat diet, which could lead to the body's inability to respond to insulin, a risk factor for the development of diabetes and other diseases.

More on the Study

To conduct the study, healthy college-age students were fed a fat-laden diet that included sausage biscuits, macaroni and cheese, and food loaded with butter to increase the percentage of their daily fat intake.

A normal diet is made up of about 30 percent fat and students in this study had diets that were about 55 percent fat. 

Their overall caloric intake remained the same as it was prior to the high fat diet. Muscle samples were then collected to see how it metabolized glucose. Although the study showed the manner in which the muscle metabolized glucose was altered, the students did not gain weight or have any signs of insulin resistance.

Research teams will now look into how these short-term changes in the muscle can adversely affect the body in the long run and how quickly these deleterious changes in the muscle can be reversed once someone returns to a low-fat diet.