Calories and fat

Neuropath

If I burn more calories than I consume in a day, does my body still retain some of the fat I have eaten?

tex43

nope,your calorie allowance is what keeps you healthy,the overage is what turns to fat.

SHBoss1673

I'm not sure I follow your logic. Dietary fat does not equal body fat. The two are completely separate. Can dietary fat turn into body fat? Sure it can, just as dietary protein can or dietary carbohydrates can, but it's not a given. Generally speaking there are a lot more factors than just how much food you've eaten today vs how many calories you burn, that's an overly simplistic explaination and only works in the abstract. As many many people on here will tell you, calories in vs calories out may work in theory, but in practice it's a lot more complicated than that.

Neuropath

Hypothetically speaking, if I were to eat zero fat for a month ( I would be unhealthy for sure ) where would the fat my body produces come from. I guess I am assuming that I have to put some fat in, in order to produce body fat. I would be very interested in learning just how my body generates fat from the foods I eat.

SHBoss1673

Hypothetically speaking, if I were to eat zero fat for a month ( I would be unhealthy for sure ) where would the fat my body produces come from. I guess I am assuming that I have to put some fat in, in order to produce body fat. I would be very interested in learning just how my body generates fat from the foods I eat.

when the body recognizes excess energy in the blood it immediately begins storing it by as Triacylglycerols and are stored in adipose tissue (body fat). This is done via a very complex chemical process started in the liver. If you were to subsist on no dietary fat at all, hair, skin, nails, vitamin distribution, and brain function would all suffer. Will you survive with no ingested fat? Probably, in this day and age, good fats are only a convenience store away, but you won't look so hot after a few weeks of doing so. and your body chemistry will be all screwed up.

To more directly answer your question, body fat is just a hydrocarbon chain similar to other macro nutrients (protein and carbohydrates) and basically your body, with a few relatively inexpensive (compared to say... creating an ATP molecule which is what muscles burn for energy) chemical reactions, can break down either protein or carbohydrates and turn them into fat for storage. So you see, it doesn't matter if you eat fat or not, your body can and will still store new body fat if it feels it can or should.

An important side note:

One thing has major ramifications on how much fat is stored. That is whether you are eating enough NOT to trigger major famine response in the body. by this I mean, if you consistently give your body enough food to do everything it needs to, while still staying below what will keep your weight at equilibrium, then your body won't feel the need to store every single little bit of extra energy as fat. This means that if you keep a REASONABLE deficit, and are relatively consistent with your food consumption and body chemistry (nutritional intake) then your body will burn fat when it needs extra energy, instead of storing fat whenever possible and burning other body mass to make up the calorie difference (bone marrow, muscle tissue...etc)

Neuropath

What is a reasonable deficit? Everything I have read suggest between 500 and 1000 calories a day. How can I get an accurate judge of my daily caloric needs. Is there anyway to accurately calculate how many calories I am burning during exercise. I do not trust the values I am getting for either my intake, or expenditure. any advice is appreciated. Thanks.

writer190

What is a reasonable deficit? Everything I have read suggest between 500 and 1000 calories a day. How can I get an accurate judge of my daily caloric needs. Is there anyway to accurately calculate how many calories I am burning during exercise. I do not trust the values I am getting for either my intake, or expenditure. any advice is appreciated. Thanks.

If you do not trust these values, you can try checking multiple sources. Most sources agree that a medium apple is about 70-80 calories and 3 oz of carrots is about 30-35 calories. Or, if you really want to, you can do the math yourself by checking the nutrition panel on every food you eat and measuring everything. That's a bit extreme, though, and I don't recommend it.
There are also many websites that can calculate how many calories you burn exercising.

SHBoss1673

500 to 1000 is generally a reasonable number for most, but that does depend on how much you need to lose. Someone with 10 or 20 lbs to lose probably can't afford a 1000 calorie deficit and would probably even struggle at a 500 calorie deficit depending on their body fat %.

As to knowing how much you need, well you can do it by going to any one of a number of websites out there, I'd say just google it, but if you don't want to trust that, webmd has a calculator that will give you your maintenance calories.

it's here: http://www.webmd.com/diet/healthtool-metabolism-calculator

and I use www.calorieking.com to find the calories in food I eat, but there are a ton of places that will give you that info.

lilmissy2

What is a reasonable deficit? Everything I have read suggest between 500 and 1000 calories a day. How can I get an accurate judge of my daily caloric needs. Is there anyway to accurately calculate how many calories I am burning during exercise. I do not trust the values I am getting for either my intake, or expenditure. any advice is appreciated. Thanks.

There is only so far you can count calories. The only way (well without a laboratory and a lot of free time and expensive equipment) to 'accurately' assess your intake against whatever you have used to estimate your requirements is to look at your results. If you are sticking closely to a set amount of calories and not losing weight (or inches) after a good amount of time (a month or so) then you need to either increase activity or decrease food to readjust your ratio.

Neuropath

My concern is that I have been losing weight, but that is not my goal. My goal is to reach 7% or 8% body fat, and gain muscle. I have been doing both cardio and strength training, so I should be putting ON mass, as a result of muscle being heavier than fat. In reality though, I have lost five pounds in the last two weeks. I've noticed I am more tired than usual, but feel fine otherwise. My intake is roughly 2600 calories a day after all is said and done, sometimes a 100 to 300 more, some times less by the same range. I have googled every calorie counter and calories burned calculator I can find, of course they all produce similar numbers. I am trying to get an accurate gauge of how many calories I burn a day, before exercise, the average result from a dozen or so websites is near 3000. To be honest I think this may even be as much as 300 calories low, but I eat very healthy, lots of fresh fruits and raw veggies, no fast food etc... so I didn't think the "extra" deficit would matter.The problem is that most of these calculators are not detailed enough to account for the variation of activity I do at work. I work in a warehouse where I am standing, walking, and moving boxes around all day. One or two days a week, I unload a container, which is very physical. I am starting to question if I need to re-evaluate.

stratdl

A more accurate way than all the equations available on the web to determine your metabolic rate (the rate at which your body burns calories) is to have it directly measured. You can have your resting metabolic rate (RMR) measured and you can also have your exercise metabolic rate (XMR) measured.

The direct measurement is generally performed by having the participant wear a heart rate monitor chest strap that is transmitting to a computer. The participant will also wear a mask that constricts air flow through the nose so that the only air exchanges occur through the mouth. The mask is then connected via a tube/hose to the same computer.

To measure RMR, the particpant will lay in a comfortable position in a quiet and darkened room for about 10-20 minutes. The computer measures the exhalations and heart rate and performs some magic, based on the chemical composition of the exhaled air. It then spits out a number. The RMR is the number of calories below which one should not fall when eating - going lower than the RMR can trigger "starvation mode" (the response that SHBoss described earlier).

To measure XMR, the participant will get on an exercise machine (treadmill, most likely, but exercise bikes and other pieces of equipment can be used). A predetermined exercise protocol is then set and followed. For example, on a treadmill, the participant may start at a pace of 3.0 mph with an incline of 0.0%, and then increase both speed and incline until the point of failure occurs (the point at which the body starts to burn strictly carbohydrates, I think, but I may be wrong). In this way, the Aerobic Base (AB) and the Anaerobic Threshold (AT) can be measured. The AB is the point at which your body burns 1/2 carbs and 1/2 fat. The AT is the point at which your body switches over to burning strictly carbohydrates. From what I understand, it is desireable to have the AB next to the AT. This test can also measure VO2 max, which is a measure of cardiovascular / aerobic fitness.

Depending upon the system used to measure the RMR & XMR, the computer can then create "Zones" at which differing amounts of calories are burned. It can further break down the number of fat calories burned per zone. These calories burned per zone would be the measure of calories that the particpant burns when working out.

Armed with this knowledge, the particpant can then use a good quality heart rate monitor (HRM) that tracks time spent in user-definable zones (Polar and Garmin both have offerings in this category). I'm not sure if the software will actually allow the user to enter calories burned per zone, but a simple Excel spreadsheet can do the trick.

This information is based on the tests that I've had since I began my fitness journey. I could have a thing or two incorrect (and I'm sure that if I do, someone will chime in with more accurate information).

In your case, if you had such a test done, you could then wear a HRM during your work hours and track the times you'd spent in your zones. I would think that any time that doesn't register in any of your zones would be time that would be attributable to just the existence of your body. However, once you have an accurate RMR, applying the mulitpliers for style of work (i.e., sedentary, light, medium, heavy, etc.) you do on a daily basis should adequately cover what your caloric needs are. If you want to get really far into fine-tuning, you could figure out what percentage you spend in each of the categories during your work day and come up with a customized number. You could even use that to have different caloric needs on weekends if you're just relaxing by the pool with an umbrella drink (full of water, of course).

I found out that my RMR is considerably higher (1919 vs. 1430) than the calculations alone (even those that take into account BF%). It just goes to show that each human being is very unique and that not all of us are characterized by the equations.

I hope that this rather lengthy reply gives you some insight!

Cheers! :drinker: