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basing max deficit on body-fat weight - interested in people's thoughts

canadianlbs
canadianlbs Posts: 5,199 Member
edited November 13 in Debate Club
this is my first thread in this forum, and i'm not looking for a debate-for-the-sake-of-debating so much as just interested in getting thoughts from people who might have better b.s. detectors for this zone than me. i found this article via good ol' google and although it makes sense on the face of it, i know a lot of bs can seem very 'logical', if you don't know where/how to check for the holes. the date stamp is almost 10 years old so i'm wondering if it's been debunked by more recent knowledge. it seems a little steep to me that at (about) 35lbs of non-lean mass atm, my body could supposedly sustain a whole thousand calories of deficit every day without dipping into the muscle-mass well.

http://baye.com/calculating-the-daily-calorie-deficit-for-maximum-fat-loss/


thanks for your input.

Replies

  • usmcmp
    usmcmp Posts: 21,219 Member
    I've seen that said in a few places before. I've never seen studies done on it, but it seems to be a frequently quoted number. 30-33 calories per pound of fat mass.
  • ilex70
    ilex70 Posts: 727 Member
    canadianlbs wrote: »
    i found this article via good ol' google and although it makes sense on the face of it, i know a lot of bs can seem very 'logical', if you don't know where/how to check for the holes. the date stamp is almost 10 years old so i'm wondering if it's been debunked by more recent knowledge. it seems a little steep to me that at (about) 35lbs of non-lean mass atm, my body could supposedly sustain a whole thousand calories of deficit every day without dipping into the muscle-mass well.

    http://baye.com/calculating-the-daily-calorie-deficit-for-maximum-fat-loss/


    thanks for your input.

    The more fat you have the higher deficit you can run without losing muscle. The number is an estimate pulled from one study.

    Read fireproof's post at this link for Lyle Mcdonald's analysis.

    The answer is "kind of", but not exactly, because reasons.

    forums.lylemcdonald.com/archive/index.php?t-11223.html

    Might be something newer out there though...
  • canadianlbs
    canadianlbs Posts: 5,199 Member
    :) thanks. i read up to the point where they started arguing, then i breathed in and read again, and then i realised i'd just have to file it in the 'moot' box with everything else since i don't know my own numbers with enough precision to make it meaningful.

    mostly it got my attention because i was originally just looking for the source of that 'aim for two pounds a week' Received Truth. but even at 5'3", 35lbs body fat is into the '10 more pounds for vanity's sake' kind of zone and i'd always thought expectations should be set lower than that by that point.

    thanks for the input.
  • Gallowmere1984
    Gallowmere1984 Posts: 6,626 Member
    If this were completely true, bodybuilders getting contest lean would be a literal impossibility, as by the time they got to 8% bodyfat, they'd be losing in the neighborhood of 5-10 lbs. of muscle tissue for every pound of fat lost (this number would obviously move depending upon total mass and deficit), since the energy to exist has to come from somewhere, and muscular tissue only contains around 700 kcal/g compared to fat's 3500. They'd not be bodybuilders for long, cutting that last few percentage points.

    You can't even pin that one on drugs, because while they can do amazing things for sparing LBM, they can't create energy from nothing, and I find it hard to believe that any drug could increase this supposed output maximum by a factor of ten or more.
  • trigden1991
    trigden1991 Posts: 4,658 Member
    ilex70 wrote: »
    canadianlbs wrote: »
    i found this article via good ol' google and although it makes sense on the face of it, i know a lot of bs can seem very 'logical', if you don't know where/how to check for the holes. the date stamp is almost 10 years old so i'm wondering if it's been debunked by more recent knowledge. it seems a little steep to me that at (about) 35lbs of non-lean mass atm, my body could supposedly sustain a whole thousand calories of deficit every day without dipping into the muscle-mass well.

    http://baye.com/calculating-the-daily-calorie-deficit-for-maximum-fat-loss/


    thanks for your input.
    The answer is "kind of", but not exactly, because reasons.

    This is the correct answer.
  • jemhh
    jemhh Posts: 14,261 Member
    My problem with the 30 calories per pound of fat deficit calculation is that so many people like to aim to lose as much as they can as quickly as they can and then they skip good advice like:
    Regardless of the amount of energy obtainable from the fat stores, daily calorie intake must be high enough to at least allow for adequate protein and fat intake and for as much carbohydrate as the individual requires to function adequately...

    The quoted advice ensures better nutrition and energy so that you can be active (both in an exercise and non-exercise way) and I think that both of those things are important. More important than losing weight quickly.

  • canadianlbs
    canadianlbs Posts: 5,199 Member
    jemhh wrote: »
    My problem with the 30 calories per pound of fat deficit calculation is that so many people like to aim to lose as much as they can as quickly as they can and then they skip good advice like:

    maybe that's where my startlement with the size of the deficit is. even if you took someone, crunched their numbers and then ran them on rails to make sure they didn't fall into that trap, is it even possible to make the deficit fit into their overall expenditure without dipping into that minimum-functionality need?



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