How many calories equal a pound

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Jingsi84
Jingsi84 Posts: 127 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Just came across this article which says that the commonly held belief that 3500 calories equal a pound is wrong.
http://www.todaysdietitian.com/news/exclusive0612.shtml
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  • Jthanmyfitnesspal
    Jthanmyfitnesspal Posts: 3,521 Member
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    Without clicking through I can also say that a 500kcal daily defect was very accurate for me, losing very close to a pound a week every darn time I've had to do it!
  • SezxyStef
    SezxyStef Posts: 15,268 Member
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    Jingsi84 wrote: »
    Just came across this article which says that the commonly held belief that 3500 calories equal a pound is wrong.
    http://www.todaysdietitian.com/news/exclusive0612.shtml

    if this was a study and not a blog/article it might hold more traction.

    Even after reading it...there is nothing new in this article.

    It takes 3500 k/cal to burn 1 lb in a lab...does that translate exactly into real life...

    usually but not all the time just like everything else.

    The key is this...to lose weight you need a deficit and if you want to lose 1lb a week try 500 a day...and if that works awesome...if it doesn't check your math.
  • stevencloser
    stevencloser Posts: 8,911 Member
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    And their predictor is garbage too, not even factoring in activity or anything.
  • Packerjohn
    Packerjohn Posts: 4,855 Member
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    I noted the panel that said 3500 = a pound wasn't accurate didn't offer up anything better.
  • 4legsRbetterthan2
    4legsRbetterthan2 Posts: 19,590 MFP Moderator
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    I skipped through this, it basically sounds to me like they are disputing 3500 calories = a lb because it isn't applied well by most dieters.
    The 3,500-kcal/lb rule assumes that body weight changes linearly over long periods of time, which isn’t the case. As an individual loses weight, resting energy expenditure drops due to less body mass (not a “slow metabolism,” as often assumed).

    This is why you have to adjust your calorie goal as you lose weight, inexperienced calorie counters may not realize this, but not too many people will argue this fact once it is brought to their attention.

    As for the rest of the article, yes it is nearly impossible to perfectly calculate intake and burns since no one wants to live in a bio bubble. Hence, track your progress over time and hone you plan as you go.

    Nothing said here convinces me 3500 cals= a lb is a poor rule of thumb to use, it may take time to figure out proper application but that doesn't mean the rule is wrong.
  • J72FIT
    J72FIT Posts: 5,948 Member
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    not_a_runner wrote: »
    Hypothetical to see if I understand this-
    So basically, if your maintenance is 2000 and you reduce 500 calories for a 'pound per week', eventually you aren't going to be losing a pound per week any more if you continue to eat 1500 calories....?

    Well of course.
    I didn't click to their fancy 'new' predictor, but I assume it's just showing that if you stay on the same number of calories your weight loss will slow and eventually stall. This isn't really anything new.

    From what I've seen, it's somewhat common knowledge around the forums here that weight loss is not truly linear, and as we lose weight we need less calories to continue losing at the same rate. By making adjustments as you go to account for this, you can certainly keep to the '3500' calorie weekly deficit if that's still an appropriate goal. (I mean, as close as humanly possible. It's all just guesstimates.)

    This article seemed rather pointless, in my opinion. But I guess I already knew that my calorie needs will change over time.

    ^^^ All of this...
  • Tacklewasher
    Tacklewasher Posts: 7,122 Member
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    CSARdiver wrote: »
    Postmodernist tripe. Critical to a fault and offering up no solution to already known variables.

    Realizing anyone could critique any field using this same absurd criteria:

    How can you possibly build a house when a 2x4 is actually 1.5 x 3.5? ...and since rulers are not class A calibrated we cannot possibly know if a measured foot is truly a foot.

    Oh, it's not even that intelligent an article. It basically says if a 500 calorie deficit leaves you with 2000 calories to eat each day, and you never adjust for the fact that you've lost weight, then your weight loss slows down so 3500 cals can't equal a pound.

    It's been posted here before (was some time ago) and is complete and utter rubbish.
  • brittyn3
    brittyn3 Posts: 481 Member
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    Lol - fake news.
  • JillianRumrill
    JillianRumrill Posts: 335 Member
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    I wonder if things like that are written just to trip people up.
  • NorthCascades
    NorthCascades Posts: 10,970 Member
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    CSARdiver wrote: »
    Postmodernist tripe. Critical to a fault and offering up no solution to already known variables.

    Realizing anyone could critique any field using this same absurd criteria:

    How can you possibly build a house when a 2x4 is actually 1.5 x 3.5? ...and since rulers are not class A calibrated we cannot possibly know if a measured foot is truly a foot.

    Forget rulers. We should go back to using feet to measure feet.
  • CSARdiver
    CSARdiver Posts: 6,252 Member
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    NorthCascades wrote: »
    CSARdiver wrote: »
    Postmodernist tripe. Critical to a fault and offering up no solution to already known variables.

    Realizing anyone could critique any field using this same absurd criteria:

    How can you possibly build a house when a 2x4 is actually 1.5 x 3.5? ...and since rulers are not class A calibrated we cannot possibly know if a measured foot is truly a foot.

    Forget rulers. We should go back to using feet to measure feet.

    We'd have to omit climbers. We have really nasty feet.
  • CSARdiver
    CSARdiver Posts: 6,252 Member
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    JillianRumrill wrote: »
    I wonder if things like that are written just to trip people up.

    My conspiracy brain thinks this often. The diet industry is worth ~60B in the US alone. A free service such as MFP is a massive threat against this industry, so it is financially advantageous to post misinformation and disinformation.

    For this article I don't think so. It smells like confirmation bias. New researcher with a shiny new doctorate trying to make waves and make a name for herself.
  • GottaBurnEmAll
    GottaBurnEmAll Posts: 7,722 Member
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    It's such a ridiculous thing. I've read stuff like this before but only skimmed it this time. I lack the book knowledge to rebut it accurately but on a fundamental level can spot the flaw in their logic wherein they are not constantly adjusting caloric intake in their calculation for dropping weight while a conscientious dieter does.

    It's just ridiculous.

    I just started tracking very closely for the first time (rather than glancing at things and running numbers vaguely in my head and sort of thinking, meh, close enough), and I'm losing weight faster than that 3500 would predict (obviously something's off in my calculations somewhere).

    Close enough is good enough.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,178 Member
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    Writer who's bad at applied math criticizing dieters who are bad at applied math? Sure, that's useful. Not.

    Once I experimented enough to dial in a reasonable approximation of my NEAT/TDEE, I found "3500 calories = 1 pound" to be a close enough estimate to be useful in predicting changes in weight loss rate based on changes in calories eaten, in a dynamic sense. (Shock: TDEE/NEAT calculators estimate, not calculate! News at 11!)

    Useful applied math is useful. So are validated, reasonable approximations and estimates. And people who don't actually understand them, don't understand.

    Most of us didn't win the science fair prize in junior high, and weight loss is just science fair for grown-ups

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