3500 calories per pound? 2 lbs a week?

ohhhhhhhhhhhh yeah it is in fact 3500 cals = 1 pound of fat. If you actually eat 1400 cals it takes likely 1800+ just to keep you lungs working and your heart pumping in a day. (400 deficti) If you look at your active calorie intake you are likely around 2000-2200 (another 400 deficit) to maintain your current weight, (this is my resting BMR and active BMR) so if you eat say 1400, well yes then you are maintaining a deficit of 3500 cals + a week. Its more then 500 cals a deficit a day, you have a 800 deficit with the above calcs 800 x 7 days = 5600 a week. If you want my personal formula email me. I follow MFP but for my own analytical brain I log in my food diary the formula daily of my actual deficit..........

Yes it will take you likely a year. If you do this too fast you will not keep it off and in some cases you may not lose if your body thinks its starving.....just follow the rules and you will see a loss.

:flowerforyou:

You probably did get close. when you have almost 100 lbs to lose or more you need a lot of calories per day to maintain that extra 100 lbs so when you reduce you caloric intake and start to exercise you are probably getting a big reduction.

Bad side is don't expect it to last...eventually it will even off the closer you get to your goal weight.

Well Blackbelt

You could gain a bunch more weight that way you wouldn't have to wait nearly as long for the pounds to come off. Believe it or not the more weight you need to lose the quicker it comes off:noway:

I have been fighting with my 30lbs for several years now..........I agree 2 lbs a week sucks!

There are a bunch of different websites that will help you find an estimate of the number of calories per day your body needs for survival. You do need to burn off 3500 calories to get rid of a pound!

Healthy weight loss is .5 to 2 pounds per week. Yes, that seems low but the key is changing your life so that you never, ever have to go through this again. So that means you relearn the way you eat, think about food, prepare food, deal with stress, celebrate, etc, etc. If you think you are "on a diet" and in 12 months you'll be done with it and can eat normally again then you will gain every ounce back. Trust me - I've been there and done that more than a couple of times!

If you eat right and exercise you may lose a bit faster, and at the same time you'll be building muscle - which burns calories at a higher rate than fat does. So muscle will definitely help you lose faster.

Good luck!

Healthy weight loss is .5 to 2 pounds per week. Yes, that seems low but the key is changing your life so that you never, ever have to go through this again. So that means you relearn the way you eat, think about food, prepare food, deal with stress, celebrate, etc, etc. If you think you are "on a diet" and in 12 months you'll be done with it and can eat normally again then you will gain every ounce back. Trust me - I've been there and done that more than a couple of times!

Good luck!

Water Baby made a great point. The real objective should be relearning how to eat in a healthy manner, and to develop a good exercise routine you can stick with forever. As someone who lost 80 lbs dieting, then regained 40+ when I got tired of dieting, I've finally figured out I have to make this change for the rest of my life. So, if it takes a bit longer this time to lose the weight, that's ok. The results, and my new eating and exercising habits, will probably stick with me. (Fingers crossed) Not that I'll give up Silly Chili forever, but I just won't eat the whole bowl by myself in one sitting....

The 10 lbs lost were definitely mainly water, do you even have an idea how much excess water is a body able to retain :noway: Other possibilities are you weighed at different times a day at the beginning and the end of that week or with different clothes on, this alone can make like 5 lbs difference.

A pound is about 3500 calories but it also depends what the calories come from. If you follow some of these diets that severely restrict carbs you will still lose weight even if you consume too many calories. It's because your body goes into ketosis mode or something like this, which is not its natural condition hence the unnatural (from point of view of mathematics) weight loss...

No matter how strict you are on logging your excercise and food and sticking to your daily limits, you will practically never see a 2 pound loss per week. In reality it varies very much and there's a lot of miscalculation going on... To begin with, the BMR calculation is just a rough estimation and there are a couple theories about it too so depending on which one you pick there's a difference in the numbers. Then there are personal features like metabolism speed and muscle mass, which cannot be calculated in your BMR... Not to mention the miscalculations in the food intake and excercise that happen on a daily basis... Unless you wear HRM 24/7 and have sensors all over your stomach and intestines, no one can tell how much energy you burnt working out or how many calories did your body really utilize...

Here is also a quote from another post that's relevant in a way...

For example, if an individual needs 2,000 calories per day to maintain weight, reducing intake to 1,500 calories, assuming exercise stays the same, should provide a 1 pound per week weight loss (Note: 1 pound of weight is equivalent to about 3,500 calories). Furthermore, reducing to 1,000 calories should result in a weight-loss of 2 pounds per week and going down to 500 calories a day should result in a weight loss of 3 pounds per week. However, if an individual actually reduces their intake to 500 calories, the weight loss would not likely be a steady 3 pounds per week because of the reduced metabolic rate. It would likely be around 2 ¼ to 2 ½ pounds.

To maintain your current weight, that would be your calories to maintain your BMR (mine's about 1500), plus activities.

As far as I know, it is a very well established fact, that 1 lb of fat = 3500 kcal. However, when people just start dieting, they often see a huge apparent weight loss in the beginning. I saw it myself. I believe, the explanation is the loss of glycogen, which is stored in the liver, muscles, and fat cells in hydrated form (three to four parts of water). The energy deficit required to reduce weight with glycogen as a fuel is a lot less (1800 kcal/lb). This weight usually is regained very quickly as soon as people stop dieting. And when you try to lose it the second time, it does not go away as quickly.
Here is the paper about glycogen:
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/reprint/56/1/292S.pdf

As far as I know, it is a very well established fact, that 1 lb of fat = 3500 kcal. However, when people just start dieting, they often see a huge apparent weight loss in the beginning. I saw it myself. I believe, the explanation is the loss of glycogen, which is stored in the liver, muscles, and fat cells in hydrated form (three to four parts of water). The energy deficit required to reduce weight with glycogen as a fuel is a lot less (1800 kcal/lb). This weight usually is regained very quickly as soon as people stop dieting. And when you try to lose it the second time, it does not go away as quickly.
Here is the paper about glycogen:
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/reprint/56/1/292S.pdf

There are all sorts of changes that take place, including those that you list. Things are pretty dynamic the first couple of weeks, and the larger you are, the greater the potential for big changes at first.

I have been following a pretty aggressive program--1000 Kcal/Day deficit + 2500-3500 Kcal/week aerobic exercise + 2 wt training sessions. I almost never replace my exercise calories and many days I only eat about 90% of my base. I have averaged 3.4 lb/wk loss over the past 7 weeks (24 lbs) -- and I have been stuck at 231 for about six days. So I KNOW the 3500 Kcal/lb figure is pretty accurate ;-)

I find the weight loss goes more in a stepwise fashion--stay at one weight 3-5 days, then a quick drop for 3-4 days. That could be my scale, too. I had a regular dial scale that is sometimes hard for my aging eyes to read (esp in the morning). I just got a new digital scale today, so I expect the changes to be more consistent (unfortunately, the new scale also revealed that the old one was underweighing by at least 1.5lb ;-( So I "gained" 1.5 lb today.

oh yes, 3500 calories equals a lb. if you lost 10 lbs in one week I can pretty much guarantee that most if not all of it was water weight. Real weight loss happens much more slowly than that. It took me about a year to lose 65 lbs and I am still working on my goal. Slow and steady.

You have to remember that when you are overweight by 100 or so lbs, your maintenance calories are quite high. You'dd be eating within the high 2000s to maintain that, so dropping down to 1400 calories IS a huge deficit for you, much larger than for someone looking to lose just 10 lbs, whose maintenance calories would be more like 17 or 1800.

Everyone's body composition is a little different, so you may lose a little more quickly or slowl or quickly but in general you can expect to lose 1-2 lbs a week... until you get closer to your goal weight that is, then it becomes a whole 'nother ball game! :laugh: :flowerforyou: