Strange question about caloric deficits

Aaron_K123

True, I oversimplified. Your body will pull all that energy but it will be no better than blanket starvation and you will lose muscle mass etc etc.

See, not sure if that's necessarily true either. You'd still be getting non-caloric nutrients, and you'd even still be getting protein, fat, and carbohydrates - the part of the meal that supplies energy. Muscle mass would most likely decrease, that's true, but I don't think it would be quite the same as blanket starvation. Because with blanket starvation you're not getting any nutrients or outside energy at all, and the flip side of starvation would be consuming nothing but straight glucose. Possible, but not a good idea, because you would be malnourished. You wouldn't be getting any vitamins or minerals, but you would have the necessary energy to survive. It'd be more similar to trying to subsist off body fat and vitamin/mineral supplements. Maybe some amino acid supplements (are those a thing? they seem like they'd be a thing).

Again, this is all theoretical. I'm so not trying to do this, XD I'm not completely insane,

I actually agree with you.

Aaron_K123

I'm not sure what you're trying to argue here. If you did manage to actually run a 3500 calorie deficit in a day, your body will break down any tissue it can find to harvest calories. You would end up in the hospital before very long.

Very long is longer than 14 days in my personal experience and longer than 4 months in the experience of people I've met. When you long-distance backpack you net in the negative calories and there really is nothing you can do about it because you are burning far more than you can reasonably carry with you.

GertrudeHorse

It would be an interesting experiment, I think, but not one I'm interesting in running on myself.

It would be a deadly experiment. Deadly is the word you were looking for, not interesting.

Honestly although I know you are coming from a good place and want to keep people away from what would amount to an eating disorder I do think you are exaggerating. I've known people who have gone on 4 month backpacking trips where every single day then netted negative calories (IE there TDEE vastly, VASTLY exceeded their intake like intake 3000 calories TDEE 6000 calories). It didn't kill them.

An intake of 3000 and TDEE of 6000 is a totally different ball park compared to 1200 intake with 4700 TDEE. The higher level of incoming calories would prevent a lot of the damage caused with teeny intake. At least I imagine it would.... All of this is speculation. Your experience comes closest but didn't meet the stipulations exactly. Could you have done what you did on less than half the intake you had? And with losing another 6 pounds on top of the 8 you lost? Maybe you could have but I guess it would kill a large percentage of other people who tried.

Aaron_K123

It would be an interesting experiment, I think, but not one I'm interesting in running on myself.

It would be a deadly experiment. Deadly is the word you were looking for, not interesting.

Honestly although I know you are coming from a good place and want to keep people away from what would amount to an eating disorder I do think you are exaggerating. I've known people who have gone on 4 month backpacking trips where every single day then netted negative calories (IE there TDEE vastly, VASTLY exceeded their intake like intake 3000 calories TDEE 6000 calories). It didn't kill them.

An intake of 3000 and TDEE of 6000 is a totally different ball park compared to 1200 intake with 4700 TDEE. The higher level of incoming calories would prevent a lot of the damage caused with teeny intake. At least I imagine it would.... All of this is speculation. Your experience comes closest but didn't meet the stipulations exactly. Could you have done what you did on less than half the intake you had? And with losing another 6 pounds on top of the 8 you lost? Maybe you could have but I guess it would kill a large percentage of other people who tried.

I don't know if I could have sustained my level of activity with less calories to be honest. The way I settled on eating 2500 calories a day is it was basically the most I could reasonably carry. I selected the most calorie-dense foods I could, freeze dried dinners for some variety, nuts, granola, etc and alloted myself 1.5 pounds of food per day (when you are going for many days you can imagine how limiting the amount you can carry gets. Even if I ate nothing but sticks of butter at 1.5 pounds per day weight limit I still could not have met my TDEE (although it would have been close). Obviously can't eat only butter so I tried to give myself some protein in the form of nuts and some jerky and other than fat and carbs. I didn't seem to lose a significant amount of lean mass during the trip but it was only 14 days. I'm sure the PCT through-hikers who hike 3000 miles over the period of months lose lean mass though, I mean I think we all agree its not a good plan to get healthy.

GertrudeHorse

It would be an interesting experiment, I think, but not one I'm interesting in running on myself.

It would be a deadly experiment. Deadly is the word you were looking for, not interesting.

Honestly although I know you are coming from a good place and want to keep people away from what would amount to an eating disorder I do think you are exaggerating. I've known people who have gone on 4 month backpacking trips where every single day then netted negative calories (IE there TDEE vastly, VASTLY exceeded their intake like intake 3000 calories TDEE 6000 calories). It didn't kill them.

An intake of 3000 and TDEE of 6000 is a totally different ball park compared to 1200 intake with 4700 TDEE. The higher level of incoming calories would prevent a lot of the damage caused with teeny intake. At least I imagine it would.... All of this is speculation. Your experience comes closest but didn't meet the stipulations exactly. Could you have done what you did on less than half the intake you had? And with losing another 6 pounds on top of the 8 you lost? Maybe you could have but I guess it would kill a large percentage of other people who tried.

I don't know if I could have sustained my level of activity with less calories to be honest. The way I settled on eating 2500 calories a day is it was basically the most I could reasonably carry. I selected the most calorie-dense foods I could, freeze dried dinners for some variety, nuts, granola, etc and alloted myself 1.5 pounds of food per day (when you are going for many days you can imagine how limiting the amount you can carry gets. Even if I ate nothing but sticks of butter at 1.5 pounds per day weight limit I still could not have met my TDEE (although it would have been close). Obviously can't eat only butter so I tried to give myself some protein in the form of nuts and some jerky and other than fat and carbs. I didn't seem to lose a significant amount of lean mass during the trip but it was only 14 days. I'm sure the PCT through-hikers who hike 3000 miles over the period of months lose lean mass though, I mean I think we all agree its not a good plan to get healthy.

Ha, we certainly do. And I am quite impressed by your tramping endurance. Maybe you are more machine than human after all...

2013sk

Burning 4700 calories... Are we on the same planet?????????????

gina_nz_

I don't believe the body necessarily loses one pound for every so many calories (3500 or whatever a particular article sites) burned. Weight loss isn't linear.

Fat loss is linear with calories expended. This fact is simply masked when you measure yourself with your scale do to things like water retention.

3500 calories is 1 pound of fat. That is just the amount of energy contained within 1 pound of fat by definition.

If only we could accurately calculate every single calorie burned. Unfortunately not.