The 3500 calorie equation must be flawed.

yoovie

Youre right!!! It is more complicated than that!!

here's the catch!

Its not math. The math is a general estimate based on what scientifically happens to a standard body in a standard situation. Your body is different. It does different things everyday, its diet goes up and down and changes, youre at different points in your monthly cycle, there may be stress or pressure in some area of your life affecting hormones, maybe your sleep has been off a little this week, there are 2 million factors that sway that number away from standard results - so just relax, do the right things and look at the big picture.

:flowerforyou:

yoovie

When I see someone say that you can eat junk and still lose weight... It makes me wish Id never participated in the thread.

yeah you can lose weight without eating right and without exercising - but there's a grand canyon difference between reaching your goal weight and getting the body you want.

The two are NOT a package deal.

AT ALL.

TheVimFuego

When I see someone say that you can eat junk and still lose weight... It makes me wish Id never participated in the thread.

yeah you can lose weight without eating right and without exercising - but there's a grand canyon difference between reaching your goal weight and getting the body you want.

The two are NOT a package deal.

AT ALL.

I like you.

yo_andi

Create a deficit of 500 calories a day...from what?

I absolutely agree. At best, we're making educated guesses about how much we are consuming in terms of caloric value, and how much our bodies need is essentially based on a population average. The key is to find what works for you.

ArroganceInStep

In addition to it being estimates (your estimated daily burn from exercise and daily intake from food) of estimates (a generalized formula for TDEE designed to be as accurate as possible for as many people as possible...making it accurate for no one):

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/of-whooshes-and-squishy-fat.html

ChantalGG

For my body and with the same workout, 1200 calories a day 2 lbs a month, 1450 calories a day, at least 1 lb a week.

betoarango

I belive there is another side to this claim. Efficiency. I'm a manufacturing engineer so if my medical part does not make sense, try to catch the drift not the medical inacuracies.
You do not run exactly as fast or as far as I do, you run longer or less, faster or slower, you have a different heartbeat, you gain muscle, lose muscle faster than i do. I had hepatitis as a child so my liver is probably not as good as yours, I live at sea level so my O2 intake per breath must not be as good as those of you who live in great altitudes... If our efficiencies in running, breathing, and muscle building are different you must also digest in lower/higher efficiencies than I do. All assumptions here include the fact that 100% of the calories ingested will be processed by the body. If your intestine is inefficient, or longer, or thickker or has more surface area or is thinner, all these parameters allow for differnet effciiencies. So if my intestine is 5% more efficient, my liver 10% less efficient, and my breathing is 7% less efficient, plus a zillion other parameters, we end up that 3500 perfectly measured perfectly calculated calories mean little since my body screwed up all these number by it's inate ineffciency while procesing them.

The energy in a gallon of gasoline is not the energy a car counts on to move, heat, friction, air resistance, tire rolling resistance means we only get a fraction of the original energy. A more efficient car (my body ) will go farther than a (my skinny brother in law's) less efficient car.
In our currrent weightloss case however inefficiency (as opposed to previous human history were being fat was awesome cause one would survive the starvation periods) is a plus. You will process less of what you eat and therefore loose weight comparably faster that the more efficent people.

I believe everyone is responsible for finding their numbers, these figures exist because we want a starting point, and I'm glad they exist, however it is again MY RESPONSABILITY to use them and alter them to find more about myself. I belive they represent a fair guess, and anyone who argues that 1 calorie over 3500 a day, will average a gain of 1 lb every 10 years is an idiot, and shouldnt even be paid attention to.

Just my 35 pesos... ( 2cents)

anna0478

Bump!

Findingmyathlete

When I see someone say that you can eat junk and still lose weight... It makes me wish Id never participated in the thread.

yeah you can lose weight without eating right and without exercising - but there's a grand canyon difference between reaching your goal weight and getting the body you want.

The two are NOT a package deal.

AT ALL.

^this

corn63

Ahh. Duckface is back with another scientific revelation. Happy Monday! :drinker:

smpgetsfit

bump

ascotton80

The other comical thing is to hear folks say "as long as you eat to your calories, it doesn't matter what you eat"....WHAT A LOAD OF CRAP.

So many folks on here eat fast food, stay within their cal goals and lose no weight. Wanna know why? Fat and sodium. May fit into your cal goals but the intake of trans fat and sodium will kill all your other efforts. Or they eat an apple for the next meal and think they have balanced their goals for the day.

Its ok to have a cheat day, but do not expect to eat that type of processed food on a regular basis and hit your goals.

It's how it works for me - I stay within my calories, I lose weight. Regardless of what type of calories they are.

Erienneb

I've lost an average of 4lbs a week since I started six weeks ago. I have my calories at a 1000 a day deficit to lose 2lbs a week. I try to eat good stuff, but I'm realistic and I know it's not possible to eat 100% perfectly every day. I do what works for me...I am a diet 100x better than it was 2 months ago, but I still eat junk once in a while if I want it. I monitor sodium levels for blood pressure reasons but that's it, and I've lost six inches on my stomach, two on my thighs, and one on my bicep. I do maybe 30min cardio 5x a week and one strength day very minimal.

One day I'll stall and have to eat better, but it's a process, you can't do it all at once. I just try to change one small thing a week. I have 103 lbs left to lose, as I get closer I'm well aware I'll have to do better than I am. But to expect people to go from 0 to 60 is just ludacris.

fastforlife1

Thank you AnneHart Excellent information. I'll read your links later.

TheEffort

First of all, your body adjusts your metabolism when you restrict calories. Yo-yo dieters in particular have the problem that they've slowed their metabolism way down.

Secondly, you have to factor in inaccuracies in measuring how much food you've eaten and how many calories you've burned. People think that a teaspoon or a cup are way bigger than they are.

Third, everything here is an average, and people can fall on various sides of the bell curve. Heck, even the calorie counts of foods are an average.

Great points

Created by MyFitnessPal.com - Nutrition Facts For Foods

BogQueen1

The other comical thing is to hear folks say "as long as you eat to your calories, it doesn't matter what you eat"....WHAT A LOAD OF CRAP.

So many folks on here eat fast food, stay within their cal goals and lose no weight. Wanna know why? Fat and sodium. May fit into your cal goals but the intake of trans fat and sodium will kill all your other efforts. Or they eat an apple for the next meal and think they have balanced their goals for the day.

Its ok to have a cheat day, but do not expect to eat that type of processed food on a regular basis and hit your goals.

Agree with this 200%. The other week I had a really terrible terrible week. Ate almost every single meal out. I stayed within my macros for each and every day.... and didn't lose an ounce. The next week I cook at home, eat healthier, less processed foods, and boom, 2.4 pounds gone (some water weight I'm sure from all the salt in the stupid fast food). Suffice it to say, I just proved to myself that eating out has to be an 'every once in a while' thing, not an every day thing.

Mandr2199

Study performed in which a researcher set to prove this. He ate 1500 calories a day on junk food. Just twinkies, ho-ho's, cup cakes. He had a vitamin sup and a protein sup as well. In addition to losing 15 pounds he lowered his A1C, blood pressure and choles.
http://health.usnews.com/health-news/diet-fitness/diet/articles/2010/09/29/junk-food-the-new-weight-loss-diet

wmagoo27

Truth be told, there are not hard and fast rules for losing weight. We are all our own science experiments. Try this, try that, see what works. If it works, use it until it stops working, then find something else. There are too many factors involved to simplify it to actual rules. Hormone levels, stress at work, stress at home, sleep habits, workout habits, varying activity levels, macronutrients, micronutrients, amout of water you drink in a day, mood, etc. As complex as the human body is, any one thing can throw off your weight loss and limit your progress. Experiment.

onyxgirl17

Hmm I don't know, seems to work for me....