3500 calories to gain 1 pound

mizuranch3070
mizuranch3070 Posts: 10 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Hello,
I have a question that’s been bothering me. I’ve read lately that you need to consume 3500 calories to gain 1 pound. And I take that as on top of your “running cost” which seems to be 1800 for my gender and normal weight. Last year I managed to gain a lot of weight over 6-7 months and I decided to put a typical day, actually one of the worsen days I had back then when I worked long shifts and didn’t bring lunch with me which wasn’t that common. When I do that I reach 2197 calories to be exact. I also calculated the intake I have today, I am not on any specific diet or the like, and it’s about 1450 calories a day.

I don’t really understand how I could have gained almost 30lbs last year from that calorie intake and how I could not be losing any weight nowadays on my new intake?? When everyone says that weight is basically calorie in, calorie out.

I don’t exercise at all. According to my phone’s health app I average about 6000 steps a day and that’s commuting to work and working standing up.
Does it make sense or is my metabolism not fully working..? I can also magically gain 10lbs over night, no joke. I don’t feel bloated from it at all and I don’t have to pee a lot either.
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Replies

  • mizuranch3070
    mizuranch3070 Posts: 10 Member
    Thanks everyone for the replies!
    The sudden gain of 10lbs I just threw in there because I find it very annoying and strange.. I figured though that my previous weight gain wasn’t just instant. I have no idea why I sometimes lose 10 pounds for a few days and then bounce up over night. That’s a lot of water weight I thought, haha.

    I wonder about the calorie counting, the food I put in was food I knew I ate then but could be more estimated (I mean that’s what I thought) like a very specific “tv-dinner” meal and happy meal at McDonald’s sort of thing. Not like “I had maybe 150g steak and 2 potatoes”. Is it the same with being off then? That’s why I chose to mimic a typical day when I didn’t bring food since I can’t possibly know the amount of food. I’m an extremely routine set person and easy to predict but I don’t think you guys are wrong..

    I obviously must be off. Because if it takes 3500 calories over the 1800 then I obviously ate that in order to steadily gain so much weight.
  • mizuranch3070
    mizuranch3070 Posts: 10 Member
    jennifer_417 wrote: »
    There's a psychological concept called the Hawthorne Effect. What was discovered was that the act of observing a particular behavior alone changed the behavior, often without the observed being aware that they are doing anything different.

    So, apart from the fact that there's no way to really know how many calories you're eaten every day, and it's astoundingly easy to eat many more calories than you realize if you're not weighing and measuring everything you eat down to the nano-particle, there's a really good chance that you simply ate less than you would normally, just because you were keeping track.

    I’ve never gone through a day keeping a food diary. It was just one evening I was a bit bored and had a food app and thought I’d see how much I had eaten that they and put it in. But that’s true then I couldn’t know down to every particle. So I didn’t think it was exact but I thought I’d at least get a ballpark :expressionless:

  • bbell1985
    bbell1985 Posts: 4,572 Member
    mizuranch3070 wrote: »
    monica182 wrote: »
    mizuranch3070 wrote: »
    Thanks everyone for the replies!
    The sudden gain of 10lbs I just threw in there because I find it very annoying and strange.. I figured though that my previous weight gain wasn’t just instant. I have no idea why I sometimes lose 10 pounds for a few days and then bounce up over night. That’s a lot of water weight I thought, haha.

    I wonder about the calorie counting, the food I put in was food I knew I ate then but could be more estimated (I mean that’s what I thought) like a very specific “tv-dinner” meal and happy meal at McDonald’s sort of thing. Not like “I had maybe 150g steak and 2 potatoes”. Is it the same with being off then? That’s why I chose to mimic a typical day when I didn’t bring food since I can’t possibly know the amount of food. I’m an extremely routine set person and easy to predict but I don’t think you guys are wrong..

    I obviously must be off. Because if it takes 3500 calories over the 1800 then I obviously ate that in order to steadily gain so much weight.

    To put on 30lbs in a year you would only need to eat approximately 280 calories a day in excess. So if your maintenance is 1800 (I’m not sure of your height and weight) and you are eating on average 2197 a day it’s means you will gain a pound every nine days. You don’t have to eat the 3500 calories extra in one, just a cumulative total of excess calories.

    Jesus.. how is anyone ever able to keep a stable weight then without constantly working out to keep the metabolism on level hardcore? 280 calories is like a toast before bed?!

    Yep. You don't have to "work out" though unless you really want to increase the amount you can eat. "Staying active" can help. The difference is small but it's there. Walk, move, etc.

  • bwogilvie
    bwogilvie Posts: 2,130 Member
    mizuranch3070 wrote: »
    Jesus.. how is anyone ever able to keep a stable weight then without constantly working out to keep the metabolism on level hardcore? 280 calories is like a toast before bed?!

    Over the course of a year, the typical adult eats between 700,000 and one million calories, and yet the homeostatic feedback system of hunger and satiety is so finely tuned that many of them maintain a more or less constant weight, or just gain a few ounces a year. That's despite widely varying activity levels from day to day or week to week. It's striking.

    It's equally striking that a number of changes in the American diet and environment in the past half-century have disrupted that feedback mechanism for most Americans—look at the data and graphs on this NIH website. Adult and childhood obesity rates started to go up in the 1970s. The same is true in much of the world. It's not just an individual problem.
  • Nony_Mouse
    Nony_Mouse Posts: 5,646 Member
    mizuranch3070 wrote: »
    monica182 wrote: »
    mizuranch3070 wrote: »
    Thanks everyone for the replies!
    The sudden gain of 10lbs I just threw in there because I find it very annoying and strange.. I figured though that my previous weight gain wasn’t just instant. I have no idea why I sometimes lose 10 pounds for a few days and then bounce up over night. That’s a lot of water weight I thought, haha.

    I wonder about the calorie counting, the food I put in was food I knew I ate then but could be more estimated (I mean that’s what I thought) like a very specific “tv-dinner” meal and happy meal at McDonald’s sort of thing. Not like “I had maybe 150g steak and 2 potatoes”. Is it the same with being off then? That’s why I chose to mimic a typical day when I didn’t bring food since I can’t possibly know the amount of food. I’m an extremely routine set person and easy to predict but I don’t think you guys are wrong..

    I obviously must be off. Because if it takes 3500 calories over the 1800 then I obviously ate that in order to steadily gain so much weight.

    To put on 30lbs in a year you would only need to eat approximately 280 calories a day in excess. So if your maintenance is 1800 (I’m not sure of your height and weight) and you are eating on average 2197 a day it’s means you will gain a pound every nine days. You don’t have to eat the 3500 calories extra in one, just a cumulative total of excess calories.

    Jesus.. how is anyone ever able to keep a stable weight then without constantly working out to keep the metabolism on level hardcore? 280 calories is like a toast before bed?!

    By being aware of how many calories, on average, they are eating. As others have said, you don't need to work out, and certainly not 'constantly', to maintain your weight, but if you choose not to be active at all then you need to be aware that you need to eat less.

    And what are you putting on that toast to get it to 280 cals??
  • psychod787
    psychod787 Posts: 4,088 Member
    The 3500 calorie rule is kind of misleading. It can take more calories than that to gain a pound. When you take into account of the tef effect of food, cost to repair the body, and cost of storage, it could take more or less. People just use the 3500 calorie rule because that is the approximate caloric value in an lb of strait fat.
  • mizuranch3070
    mizuranch3070 Posts: 10 Member
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    mizuranch3070 wrote: »
    monica182 wrote: »
    mizuranch3070 wrote: »
    Thanks everyone for the replies!
    The sudden gain of 10lbs I just threw in there because I find it very annoying and strange.. I figured though that my previous weight gain wasn’t just instant. I have no idea why I sometimes lose 10 pounds for a few days and then bounce up over night. That’s a lot of water weight I thought, haha.

    I wonder about the calorie counting, the food I put in was food I knew I ate then but could be more estimated (I mean that’s what I thought) like a very specific “tv-dinner” meal and happy meal at McDonald’s sort of thing. Not like “I had maybe 150g steak and 2 potatoes”. Is it the same with being off then? That’s why I chose to mimic a typical day when I didn’t bring food since I can’t possibly know the amount of food. I’m an extremely routine set person and easy to predict but I don’t think you guys are wrong..

    I obviously must be off. Because if it takes 3500 calories over the 1800 then I obviously ate that in order to steadily gain so much weight.

    To put on 30lbs in a year you would only need to eat approximately 280 calories a day in excess. So if your maintenance is 1800 (I’m not sure of your height and weight) and you are eating on average 2197 a day it’s means you will gain a pound every nine days. You don’t have to eat the 3500 calories extra in one, just a cumulative total of excess calories.

    Jesus.. how is anyone ever able to keep a stable weight then without constantly working out to keep the metabolism on level hardcore? 280 calories is like a toast before bed?!

    Lots of possible ways.

    Some people like me, whose hunger/activity signaling us kinda broken, log food & count calories long term.

    Some people, whose signaling works well, feel full when they've eaten the right amount, or feel extra energetic when they've eaten a bit much so they move more, and it balances out at a healthy weight.

    Some people are creatures of habit, who've learned the right amount of food to eat, and they stick to that.

    Some use a scale weight or the fit of their clothes to notice when they've gained a bit, then cut back eating a little until the scale or the clothes' fit say they're back where they want to be.

    And some people ignore all of that for long periods of time and get steadily fatter.

    This was very insightful, must be that way. I did have the problem a few years ago that I mistakenly always eat until I was “thanksgiving full”. I’m not sure why I got to that point but that’s what I thought meant I was full. Might have been because my intake during the day was sooo extremely low that it went into overdrive.

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