Trying to understand deficit

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emilygraves1989
emilygraves1989 Posts: 25 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I've been reading through posts trying to get all the motivation I can, and I'm not understanding the food deficit theory. Can someone explain it to me?

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  • Talan79
    Talan79 Posts: 782 Member
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    Fat loss comes from a defecit, meaning you need to consume less calories than you burn. One pound= 3,500 calories. So to lose one pound a week, you need a defecit of 3,500 calories. If you burn let's say 2000 calories a day, you should consume 1,500 so you have that defecit. Make sense?
  • jemhh
    jemhh Posts: 14,261 Member
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    Eating in deficit means ingesting fewer calories than your body requires to maintain your current weight. It is what is required to lose weight. You can achieve a deficit by eating less, moving more, or doing a combo of those two things.
  • rainbowbow
    rainbowbow Posts: 7,490 Member
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    It's not a food deficit, it's a calorie deficit. ;) I'll explain this in the simplest terms i can! :)


    The food we eat is made up of macro and micronutrients. Macronutrients consist of protein, carbohydrates, and fats which make up the large majority of the foods you ingest. The micronutrients are the vitamins and minerals which are found in trace amounts.

    These macronutrients have calories (energy). Protein and Carbohydrates provide 4 calories per gram. Fat provides nearly double the calories at 9 calories per gram.

    Each day your body uses this energy to fuel every single biological process in your body. Including organ function, breathing, producing body heat, moving the muscular and skeletal system, fueling the central nervous system, etc. This of course includes any movement you make intentionally like getting up, walking, brushing your teeth, and anything else you do throughout the day.

    This is called your TDEE or your Total Daily Energy Expenditure. This is the amount of calories you use on a daily basis and the amount of energy you must intake to maintain your current weight.

    When you eat MORE calories than you burn throughout the day your body will store this energy as fat (in simplest terms). This fat can later be used when needed for fuel.

    When you eat LESS calories than you burn through the day your body will use this stored fat as the energy it needs.


    The simplest calculation is 3500 calories is about a pound of fat. So for 1 week (7 days) that would be about 500 calories a day you want to be in a deficit from your TDEE.

    Example- If it takes 2,000 calories to maintain my weight. If i eat 1,500 calories per day thats a deficit of 3,500 per week. Or in other words, i'd lose about a pound of fat per week.


    Does that make sense?
  • usmcmp
    usmcmp Posts: 21,220 Member
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    Your body burns a certain amount of calorie keeping you alive. This is your BMR. You would still burn those calories if you were in a coma. You burn additional calories during the day doing your normal life stuff like cooking, driving, and working. That, plus your BMR, is what MyFitnessPal uses to calculate your energy needs for a day.

    Once MyFitnessPal has an estimate for your activity and BMR they subtract a set amount of calories based on the number of pounds you want to lose per week. This subtraction of calories is the deficit. It means you are eating less calories than your body needs every day. When you exercise this site gives you more calories to eat because your deficit is already set and the exercise is more for heart, lung and muscle help than it is to help you lose weight.

    Weight loss comes from eating less calories than your body uses in an entire 24 hour period. Exercise is for other benefits.
  • emilygraves1989
    emilygraves1989 Posts: 25 Member
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    Oh ok I'm understanding now.
    So when I workout, I'm supposed to make up those calories because the amount I'm already eating is designed for weight loss.

    That's what I've been most confused about. I have been entering my workouts after I am done eating for the day, and having leftover calories.
  • RebelDiamond
    RebelDiamond Posts: 188 Member
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    emilygraves1989 wrote: »
    Oh ok I'm understanding now.
    So when I workout, I'm supposed to make up those calories because the amount I'm already eating is designed for weight loss.

    That's what I've been most confused about. I have been entering my workouts after I am done eating for the day, and having leftover calories.

    That is basically the right idea. My advice would be to be careful with this though as sometimes My Fitness Pal over estimates the number of calories burned from exercise. My goal is to either eat back half of the calories burned (a lot of people do this) or log only half of the exercise :smiley:

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