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One pound equals 3,500 calories?
fdhunt1
Posts: 222 Member
Does anyone know of a study or scientific documentation that proves this to be true?
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Replies
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I don't have a link to a study or anything, but I concur. I'm a data geek and track my deficit and it is right on target within a few hundred calories of my weighloss.2 -
Would love to find out more on how you track your deficit0
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WholeFoods4Lyfe wrote: »
I don't have a link to a study or anything, but I concur. I'm a data geek and track my deficit and it is right on target within a few hundred calories of my weighloss.
I analyze mine pretty thoroughly. Obviously there is no way to get it exact because energy expenditures are not constant and logging cannot be 100 percent but it is close. I tend to log slightly high so my rate of loss exceeds my deficit rate of loss on a normal basis but that is my style. Lately my NEAT increase is throwing me off but that is a good problem to have.3 -
numbers geeks like me keep a spreadsheet that keeps track of calories in, calories out, and body weight.1
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I believe it's based on the generalization that burning one lb of fat will result in 3500 cals of energy, therefore if you are in a 3500 calorie deficit, your body will need to burn one lb of fat to make up that energy it needs. Where you could look to find some kind of source for that, I have no idea.
I think the 3500 cal figure is an estimation or average, not a carved in stone rule. Unfortunately, all the numbers we use are estimations or averages - the calories in food, the calories we burn with exercise, our BMR, the amount our deficit needs to be, etc. There are just too many variables IRL that could nudge each individual number each individual time off one increment one way or the other each time. You'd have to live in a lab hooked up to machines to be 100% accurate. They just provide a framework for you to do your own n=1 study and gain enough control of your numbers that you can get the results you're looking for.5 -
1 lb. = about 454g
1g of fat = approximately 9 kcalories
454 X 9 = 4,086 kcalories
My guess: Someone thought they would cut 15% off to make fat loss sound easier, and it stuck.7 -
Ive been averaging 2lb a week but am eating a 3500 calorie deficit per week, so I have lost 15lb since the 28th April. However my assumption is that as I started at 282lbs and only 6 weeks in (I think?) that 6lbs is the actual weight loss in fat but the rest is water?2
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Ive been averaging 2lb a week but am eating a 3500 calorie deficit per week, so I have lost 15lb since the 28th April. However my assumption is that as I started at 282lbs and only 6 weeks in (I think?) that 6lbs is the actual weight loss in fat but the rest is water?
That sounds about right.midwesterner85 wrote: »1 lb. = about 454g
1g of fat = approximately 9 kcalories
454 X 9 = 4,086 kcalories
My guess: Someone thought they would cut 15% off to make fat loss sound easier, and it stuck.
hmm interesting. Also maybe to account for some water that continues to always be lost along with fat?1 -
Oh dear, so its actually a 4k calorie deficit to lose a lb?3
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midwesterner85 wrote: »1 lb. = about 454g
1g of fat = approximately 9 kcalories
454 X 9 = 4,086 kcalories
My guess: Someone thought they would cut 15% off to make fat loss sound easier, and it stuck.
I've read that "body fat" isn't 100% fat which is supposed to explain the difference. I have no idea whether that's true or not, it's just in my head from somewhere, so reader beware.9 -
Ive been averaging 2lb a week but am eating a 3500 calorie deficit per week, so I have lost 15lb since the 28th April. However my assumption is that as I started at 282lbs and only 6 weeks in (I think?) that 6lbs is the actual weight loss in fat but the rest is water?
What have you averaged in the last 4 weeks?
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midwesterner85 wrote: »1 lb. = about 454g
1g of fat = approximately 9 kcalories
454 X 9 = 4,086 kcalories
My guess: Someone thought they would cut 15% off to make fat loss sound easier, and it stuck.
Close. A lb of fat stored in your body also has surrounding cell structures, it is not comprised 100% of fat. In general the figure is approximate. And it doesn't always hold true over the long term due to adaptation (See Kevin Hall's models, https://www.niddk.nih.gov/bwp (switch to expert mode, enable advanced controls))
However in the short term, when you average in other non fat mass that gets lost when starting from a state of having less fat available to lose, and also in the near to mid term when starting from obese levels of fat, it generally seems to work out close enough for government work, and seems to be a good enough average approximation.
The expectation that every 3500 Cal that is clocked in will equal 1lb like... clockwork
has a substantial potential for disappointment 
, which is why it pays to stress that establishing the pre-conditions for weight loss and maintenance is more important than the timetable 
. 6 -
MyFitnessPal has an article and infographic about calories:
https://myfitnesspal.desk.com/customer/en/portal/articles/1599931-nutrition-101-calories
https://blog.myfitnesspal.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Calories-MyFitnessPal-Nutrition-101-Infographic2.png
The article says:
“Here’s a quick overview of the math:
1 pound of fat tissue weighs 454 grams
Approximately 87% of fat tissue (or 395 grams) is fat. The composition of fat tissue may vary slightly from person-to-person
1 gram of fat provides about nine calories of energy, though studies have shown it ranges from 8.7 – 9.5 calories per gram
395 grams of fat at nine calories per gram adds up to 3,555 calories per pound of body fat, which is rounded to 3,500. 1 pound is roughly equivalent to 0.45 kilograms or 0.07 stone.”
The article does not, however, cite any references or resources, which is what the original poster requested. However, it should clear up some of the questions that some of the other posters have.2 -
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4035446/
"A small but scientifically rigorous experimental and analytical literature was available to Wishnofsky as he began his quest to find a simple rule governing weight loss or gain. He first drew upon the 1911 chemical analysis of Bozenrad showing that 87% of human adipose tissue is "fat", the remainder water and non-fat solids. We now recognize that most of adipose tissue fat is triglyceride and Wishnofsky correctly assigned this lipid fraction a bomb-calorimetry energy density of 9.5 kcal/g. Wishnofsky then reasoned one pound (454 g) of adipose tissue has an energy content of 3750 kcal. He then turned to published experimental human weight loss studies and carefully distinguished between protocols that prescribed fasting versus those providing a low calorie and/or high protein diet. Wishnofsky understood the critical importance of this distinction as with fasting there are disproportionally large losses of body carbohydrate (glycogen) and protein with associated bound water. Turning to the 1930 classic 59-day very low calorie diet studies of Strang and colleagues6, Wishnofsky used the estimated daily energy and weight balance (−2100 kcal/d and −0.6 lb/d) to derive the energy content of weight change as 3500 kcal/lb. This result was "in striking agreement with the value of 3700 kcal obtained" from computations based on Bozenrad's adipose tissue samples."
The piece goes on to criticize the rule as outdated, but I'm another who found that it worked pretty darn consistently in my own case.6 -
Ive been averaging 2lb a week but am eating a 3500 calorie deficit per week, so I have lost 15lb since the 28th April. However my assumption is that as I started at 282lbs and only 6 weeks in (I think?) that 6lbs is the actual weight loss in fat but the rest is water?
What have you averaged in the last 4 weeks?
Im trying to look at my weight graph which seems to indicate I lost 10lb in the last 4 weeks, I thought it was less than that, I could have sworn that the first week alone I lost 6lbs, that cant be right0 -
Sorry, its 9lbs in the past 4 weeks.2
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Ive been averaging 2lb a week but am eating a 3500 calorie deficit per week, so I have lost 15lb since the 28th April. However my assumption is that as I started at 282lbs and only 6 weeks in (I think?) that 6lbs is the actual weight loss in fat but the rest is water?
Keep in mind that MFP or a TDEE "calculator" or your fitness tracker are just giving you a statistical estimate of your calorie needs, i.e., not gospel. There's a strong central tendency in these data (smallish standard deviation) but there is a distribution around the mean: We're not all right at that mean. (Logging is also an estimate, in effect, if course.)
It's circular reasoning, a bit, but I think a practical truth: Over 4-6 consistent weeks, your loss rate tells you what your deficit is, more reliably than arithmetic based off a "calorie calculator".
If you're losing 2 pounds a week over a longish time period, your deficit is more like 7000 calories a week than 3500, IMO.
But yes, water weight loss confounds the observation of fat loss, especially at first.
The "calculators" and my tracker are pretty far off, for me (based on nearly 4 years of careful logging and bodyweight scale data). Nonetheless, once I got a handle on my actual calorie needs, based on my own data, the "3500 calories = one pound" approximation was a pretty good predictor of what I'd see on the scale, after enough time for water/digestive-contents fluctuations to even out. Not perfect, especially in a case of sudden massive overconsumption, but pretty good.2 -
Definitely not!!! I wouldnt survive. It also includes a 10 day holiday where I ate my way through the week. I was 3500 cals over maintenance for that week but made it up the second week.
I am on around 1800 cals a day. Yesterday I took in about 3k.
I still maintain that its water is coming off but the fat will be being lost at the same rate as the actual deficit, which is around 3500 per week. I reckon the water will soon stop being lost and therefore the weight loss will then be 1lb per week.
I dont see it as a problem by the way!2 -
If you are losing around 2 lb/week (after the first couple of weeks), you ARE at a 1000 cal deficit. Maybe your activity or other factors of TDEE is higher than you assumed.4
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I am logging everything diligently and am the most lazy person you could ever imagine. I put my exercise in when I do it and I have put sedentary as my level. I dont know what a tdee is. I just used what the MFP told me. I suspect that without making any changes I will drop down to 1lb a week over the next month.0
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I am logging everything diligently and am the most lazy person you could ever imagine. I put my exercise in when I do it and I have put sedentary as my level. I dont know what a tdee is. I just used what the MFP told me. I suspect that without making any changes I will drop down to 1lb a week over the next month.
There doesn't need to be an obvious reason why MFP or a "calculator" is wrong. They just are, sometimes. (It's statistics, which I think I explained as clearly as I know how, a couple of posts back . . . and I'm not saying that statistics are a lie, or without value; quite the contrary. It's just important to understand what they tell us, and what they don't.).
I have no idea why I lose weight like a house afire at a calorie level that both MFP and my always-worn, good-quality fitness tracker say should make me maintain weight, and maintain at a calorie level that should have me gaining at least a pound a week. But I do. And I'm not mis-logging my food/exercise by literally hundreds of calories a day over the course of 4 years. There's no obvious reason it's inaccurate. It just is.
Unless you have had some serious medical problem that leads to very substantial, unusual water retention, you aren't at all likely to be losing enough water weight on a continuing, multi-month basis to account for the difference between a pound a week and two pounds a week on the scale.3 -
What Ann said.
When I started (I had already been losing weight for a month, so not a water weight thing), MFP estimated that I would lose a max of 1.8 lb/week at 1200. I ate more than 1200 (and ate back exercise cals), and yet lost more like 2.5 lb/week, sometimes more. I eventually figured out that what I had thought was sedentary based on my job and MFP's description was not really sedentary (I live in a city and walk more than 10K steps per day, often more like 15K).
So MFP's estimate of my calorie burn per day was wrong.
Sometimes it's not even activity, your burn is just naturally somewhat higher than expected.
(TDEE is just your total calorie burn per day.)3 -
Well I'll enjoy it while it lasts but have calculated all my goals and timescales on 1lb a week. I would doubt I even make around 2000 steps a day. I am double the weight I should be so it always comes off quicker at he start when someone is very big0
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Definitely not!!! I wouldnt survive. It also includes a 10 day holiday where I ate my way through the week. I was 3500 cals over maintenance for that week but made it up the second week.
I am on around 1800 cals a day. Yesterday I took in about 3k.
I still maintain that its water is coming off but the fat will be being lost at the same rate as the actual deficit, which is around 3500 per week. I reckon the water will soon stop being lost and therefore the weight loss will then be 1lb per week.
I dont see it as a problem by the way!
So at some point during these 6 weeks you were on a 10 day holiday? How recent was that?
I think it is pretty uncommon to lose large amounts of water weight past week 2 without medication but I won't say it is impossible.
I wouldn't change anything right now because you don't seem to be at any risk. In another 4 weeks you can look at your numbers again and see if you can determine your true rate of loss.2 -
It was the 18th May and we returned 10 days later.0
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It was the 18th May and we returned 10 days later.
Well you have had a very relaxed beginning to your journey which is a far better than a very uptight and restrictive start.
I don't really have any other advice for you other than keep learning and working on logging accuracy. I have had a food scale since I started at MFP but it still took time to refine my logging. I still occasionally go back to basics to see if I am making any errors. 6 weeks ago I found one that I have been making about once a week all along. It was an error making me log too high so it never hurt me but it was an error nonetheless.0 -
midwesterner85 wrote: »1 lb. = about 454g
1g of fat = approximately 9 kcalories
454 X 9 = 4,086 kcalories
My guess: Someone thought they would cut 15% off to make fat loss sound easier, and it stuck.
I've read that "body fat" isn't 100% fat which is supposed to explain the difference. I have no idea whether that's true or not, it's just in my head from somewhere, so reader beware.
Makes sense. Body fat is living tissue, organized into cells, so it can't be pure fat. And there have to be capillaries, or whatever you call the smallest blood vessels, serving the tissue.
ETA: sorry, I see other people have come along with actual studies, instead of mere logic.
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Oh dear, so its actually a 4k calorie deficit to lose a lb?
Actually I read a study some years ago and that calculated a pound closer to 4400 or 4700 calories. I didn't pay much attention at the time but I've thinking in the back of my mind that it's closer to 4000+ than 3500 as well.1
This discussion has been closed.
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