The 3500 calorie equation must be flawed.

The problem lies with the whole..

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

Maintenence level varies person to person. All the equations out there are just population averages, just estimates. Confounding that is the fact that it varies day to day, week to week, month to month.

You can use weigh-in results to reverse engineer your mantenence intake (CI-CO+Maintence = 3500*weight change) and use that knowledge to set deficits and surpluses that will have you gaining or losing at almost precisely the rate you wish. It takes a little more effort (and some working knowlege of post-elementary school mathematics, an a willingness to weight yourself daily), but it works like a charm.

For the most part everyone is just guessing their maintenence level. Even guessing wrong by 10% can have a massive impact on results. And all the equations out there to estimate it are merely guesses. And it varies over time anyway.

I pound of fat lost or muscle gained = 3500 calories works just fine as an equation governing the system, especially since most error is eliminated by reverse engineering your maintenence level, as the error cancels out.

Hi, I am fairly new here, but I have a general comment about this topic. I have friends ( non MFP) that call me and vent about how the scale doesn't move, I'm eating right, exercising, etc, but when I go to their houses, I see the food that is there and available....it's less that ideal. Minute noodles, chocolate bars, sodas (lots), processed food that you don't really know what it is unless you read the ingredients and still not really sure, no fruit or veggies, deep fried homemade donuts (so you eat the whole batch, not just the little bag from the store), homemade fries....the list goes on and on, I could rant for days!

Now, please don't think that I am a nasty person, but I think that if you lie to yourself you will never get anywhere! Make a point of marking down everything, everything, everything! A scale can be your new best friend! It will add some time to your day, but if it will help get the food issues under controll, you are totallly worth it!

I need a scale, and I mean NEED a scale at this point. I have to have that brutal honest device that says, " If you eat this little bowl of Doritos, Lays, etc, you are eating 300 calories.....oh do you really need them this bad?"

I am the first one to admit that I was guilty of eating some of these things, and still fall off the wagon from time to time, however, by being diligent with the food log I know where I went wrong, it's right there infront of me. So the next day I start all over again, clean slate and try something different.

So, junk the junk food from your cupboard if you are like me, it's there I eat. Buy some beautiful fruits and veggies and eat them, your body will thank you in so many ways. Be a totally conscious eatter. Be truthful to yourself, if you can't be brutally honest with yourself, who can you?

Keep on trying, and best of luck.

some weeks i have lost a pound the following week 3 pounds up to 4 pounds, I am eating pretty much the same each week and I do not eat all my exercise calories.

I am comfortable at around 1500 to 1700 calories a day I still have loads of energy and not very hungry often.

I agree with you 100%. I know from personal experience of knowing exactly how many calories I was eating (measuring, scales, lables, data bases before this site) and ALWAYS being at a defict, yet yeilding no weight loss. Yet by mathmatics I would have saved say 10,000 calories over a 10 day period. And I am stubbord and never give up on anything so I did it for months and nothing. So I know for me its BS. I wouldn't say everyone, but for some of us I think our body just adjusts its burn to what we feed it (I also haven't gained any weight in the past 10 years)

You went through all that effort...

Did you bother to calculate YOUR mainence level?
(not estimating it via some equation out there for estimating it; guessing in other words)

You are so right! Lab analysis shows that one pound of fat contains 3500 calories but what happens in the lab and what happens in a living, moving body are not the same. The exercise charts are an average and the rate at which we burn calories varies widely depending on muscle mass, basal metabolic rate, level of exertion etc. So whatever exercise you do may or may not actually be creating a 500 calorie deficit. Also since fluid retention is a factor in the scale number, the actual percentage of fat may be less while the pounds stay the same. Th e good news is that things should balance out over time so if you are weighing food, exercising etc, you should see the scale move in a two to three weeks. If not its time to change something in your diet or exercise plan. Hope that helps and is encouraging.

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.

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

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)

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