Just curious, say I take a crazy example, such as... I eat nothing but cookies one day, but I only eat 1500 calories worth of cookies and I burn 2500 calories worth of energy? Would I still lose weight on the calories in v.s calories out thing? (except of course, it would not be healthy in any way whatsoever)

What about 1500 calories of straight chicken, or straight peanut butter. I guess I'm wondering, if the food choices are awful, but you still remain below your expenditure levels, how will that effect fat loss?

Just curious, say I take a crazy example, such as... I eat nothing but cookies one day, but I only eat 1500 calories worth of cookies and I burn 2500 calories worth of energy? Would I still lose weight on the calories in v.s calories out thing? (except of course, it would not be healthy in any way whatsoever)

What about 1500 calories of straight chicken, or straight peanut butter. I guess I'm wondering, if the food choices are awful, but you still remain below your expenditure levels, how will that effect fat loss?

Yeah it doesn't matter from a Calorie point of view what you eat. The things that are a little different between individuals is that not everyone actually extracts the same Calories from the same food (for example some people don't digest lactose, others have no problem - so lactose has different Calories between those two groups of people).

And it doesn't matter which kind of exercise you do - what matters is the amount of Calories expended - which includes exercise and postexercise Calories as well as the basal metabolism.

When you eat a good deal less Calories than you expend, you will have to make up the difference internally - and that means mostly the glycogen and fat stores. The weight lost from burning glycogen is huge for each Calorie (because glycogen is stored with a lot of water) but there isn't that much glycogen you can burn. Large Calorie deficits end up coming largely from fat. Once we are talking about making up a deficit largely from fat, then it's largely 3500 Calories to a pound.

Gaining weight is a lot different. To figure out this side of the problem, you really have to understand if there is growth in muscle, (or in people who haven't fully grown, in other tissues). The amount of Calories for weight gain is not a simple 3500 Calories to a pound, unless it's all fat being gained. If it is muscle being gained, it's really hard to say, because it's not clear how much protein turnover is involved in muscle growth.

There are some other complexities - there are differences in how well fat stores energy between people (it is thought that some people's mitochondria "leak" electrons) which mean that formulas for basal metabolism are not that accurate. Like a lot of things that are hard to measure, you will get a lot of rule of thumb formulae published in books and on the net. It doesn't mean they are correct.

In some sense, everyone who is at this for a while ends up in the same place - you play it as you find it; everyone is different, and the ideas you can learn from simple "bookkeeping" work like Calories and macros, etc., are more so that you can learn the concepts than predict your individual progress.

Note that if you don't eat healthy, then you have to eat more Calories to get all the necessary nutrients; so in order to feel good and function well at a Caloric deficit, you have to eat really "clean". The other approach (which I do) is not to worry about eating very clean, and just add activity Calories to take out the "garbage". Then you don't have to be so precise about what you eat to make sure the few Calories you eat supply all the stuff you need in your nutrition as well as just Calories.

In other words, it's really easy to each too many Calories; so covering all the nutrition bases can lead to too many Calories if you aren't active. The more active you are, the more margin you have for nutritional error.

There is nothing more that upsets me than to hear something like " more calories burnt than consumed leads to weight loss" " loss a pound of fat a week by consuming 500 calories less than maintainance (calorific needs) "

It seems I should be consuming 2400-2500 calories a day, but I have never consumed that many calories a day - usually no more than 2000.
(I am talking about "clean" food - of course a few glasses of wine and chocolate cake would raise my calorie intake dramtaically).

But the point although I have been exercising daily and consuming less than 2000 calories a day for the past 5 years my b/f % is still rather high. By applying simple Maths I should have a b/f% of about 1 by now.

There must be another factor at work which maintains weight and fat - just calories in and out doesn't automatically help you loss or put on weight.

I think a study of Kangaroos might give the answer - the animals live on veggies but spend a lot of time hopping about Australia and have formidable strength.

In simple terms, if calories in is less than calories out you're going to loose weight. It's not healthy and you won't feel full for the entire day if you eat 10x 150 calorie cookies. But, yeah, mathematically speaking you will lose weight.

P.S - Great reply zenpharaohs, very informative.

There is nothing more that upsets me than to hear something like " more calories burnt than consumed leads to weight loss" " loss a pound of fat a week by consuming 500 calories less than maintainance (calorific needs) "

It seems I should be consuming 2400-2500 calories a day

Where did you get your estimate of 2400-2500 Calories a day? That's probably not accurate. It's hard to get a good estimate of basal or resting Calories without measuring gas exchange. The heart rate monitor can be reasonable. Things like the Harris-Benedict equation might be correct, but are usually wrong enough for individuals that I wouldn't use them at all. Those formulas express the average for the population but individuals are spread out around that average quite a bit. If you were only 10% below the average that would be about 250 Calories off.

Also note that nutrition information on food is approximate - it's not unusual for it to be off by 30%. Yes, I said 30%. So if you go by the food labels, you might think you ate 2400 Calories, but actually you might have eaten anywhere from 1700 to 3100 Calories!

Then of course part of the nutrition Calorie problem is that people absorb somewhat different Calories from the same food due to genetic differences in metabolism. Not everyone can digest everything that humans can digest. So that can reduce the Calories available from those eaten.

So if you are having problems with the Caloric balance, take a step back, and maybe see which differences you can figure out, and then learn to adjust the ones you can't. Nothing is going to change the old and well tested fact that a gram of fat burns to produce 9 Calories, and that translates into the 3500 Calories per pound. And in case you are interested, they measure that in a "bomb calorimeter", not in any living animal. So there is nothing wrong with that part of the picture. Just remember it is a small part of the picture easily taken out of context.

For example babies have a layer of fat in their upper body called "Brown Adipose Tissue". And, unlike other adipose tissue, it's not there to store energy. The baby is expected to get fed by the mother. The Brown Adipose Tissue actually acts like a heater - it converts the fat into heat so that the baby can survive being chilled better. It's not surprising that this stuff in more on the back of the baby - the front of the baby is expected to be next to the mother. Now this fat, if you were to burn it in a bomb calorimeter, would produce about the same 9 Calories per gram as normal fat. But in actual life, the brown adipost tissue doesn't store energy like other fat, it burns it. So just because you burn something in a bomb calorimeter and get some Calories per gram (which is also how food nutrition information is computed) doesn't mean that works out that way in life. You can burn chaff in a bomb calorimeter, and get the 4 Calories per gram that you get from grain, because cellulose (which is what chaff is full of) is a carbohydrate. But if you eat the chaff and not the grain, you will not get 4 Calories per gram from it; because you can't digest it.

So there is a real, testable, objective, and true meaning to the fact that 3500 Calories is what a pound of fat is worth. And in many situations in life, it does work out that way. Whenever it seems to be wrong, it means that you may have left out an important part of the picture in real life.

so I say it's a matter of trial and error.

I think the nest way to lose weight is to write a list of what you eat (with the quantity of each foodstuff) and then reduce eat serving say by 10% and see what happens (there is also exercise to help).

Most calculators, trainers, reckon I need about 2400 cals a day and 2000 to lose weight. But when I tried this I didn't lose anything so I put myself on a diet of no more than 1800 cals (plus exercise)and since February I have lost around 15kg.

I am quite confident that for me 2000-2200 cals a daily is maintenance and 1600-1800 cals a daily is weigh lose of neraly a kg a week.

One hurdle, though, is adaption. At first the diet seems very efficient but now losing a kg a week seems more and more difficult - more a kg a fortnight.

Anyway I am at a weight I haven't "seen" since the late 70's so if I can get my b/f% to 15 by the end of the month then I'll start eating again.
I might even let myself go and actually eat some of my birthday cake.

so I say it's a matter of trial and error.

I think the nest way to lose weight is to write a list of what you eat (with the quantity of each foodstuff) and then reduce eat serving say by 10% and see what happens (there is also exercise to help).

Most calculators, trainers, reckon I need about 2400 cals a day and 2000 to lose weight. But when I tried this I didn't lose anything so I put myself on a diet of no more than 1800 cals (plus exercise)and since February I have lost around 15kg.

I am quite confident that for me 2000-2200 cals a daily is maintenance and 1600-1800 cals a daily is weigh lose of neraly a kg a week.

One hurdle, though, is adaption. At first the diet seems very efficient but now losing a kg a week seems more and more difficult - more a kg a fortnight.

Anyway I am at a weight I haven't "seen" since the late 70's so if I can get my b/f% to 15 by the end of the month then I'll start eating again.
I might even let myself go and actually eat some of my birthday cake.


absolutely, its trial and error. Which means faithful food logging at the beginning to know how much you need to maintain/lose. Well done on progress so far, Gareth :tu:

There is nothing more that upsets me than to hear something like " more calories burnt than consumed leads to weight loss" " loss a pound of fat a week by consuming 500 calories less than maintainance (calorific needs) "

It seems I should be consuming 2400-2500 calories a day, but I have never consumed that many calories a day - usually no more than 2000.
(I am talking about "clean" food - of course a few glasses of wine and chocolate cake would raise my calorie intake dramtaically).

But the point although I have been exercising daily and consuming less than 2000 calories a day for the past 5 years my b/f % is still rather high. By applying simple Maths I should have a b/f% of about 1 by now.

There must be another factor at work which maintains weight and fat - just calories in and out doesn't automatically help you loss or put on weight.

I think a study of Kangaroos might give the answer - the animals live on veggies but spend a lot of time hopping about Australia and have formidable strength.


Hm, I'm only starting out with my program but I'm a little hesitant when it comes to these types of standardisations too, ie Harris-Benedict. Does a formula honestly accurately give you your BMR? I would have thought not, but it seems alot of information on here is in favor of these standards.

Unless I've got the wrong idea here, it reads to me like a 'one size fits all' kind of approach.

Hm, I'm only starting out with my program but I'm a little hesitant when it comes to these types of standardisations too, ie Harris-Benedict. Does a formula honestly accurately give you your BMR? I would have thought not, but it seems alot of information on here is in favor of these standards.

Unless I've got the wrong idea here, it reads to me like a 'one size fits all' kind of approach.

Actually I think teh advice is to purely use the formulas as a starting point as for many even the word BMR or TDEE is new! Many have no idea how many caloreis the average Joe needs and tend to undereat/overeat/undersetimate/overestimate. It really is just a starting point:)

There is also the fact that to an extent your body can adapt to the amount your eating by slowing your metabolism. For example if your eating 2000 calories a day you might lose 2lbs a week for the first 8 weeks, then your body realizes thats all its going to get every day so it adjusts your metabolism to burn that amount causing weight loss to slow.

From personal experience I have found that my bodys maintenance is ~3000 and holding true to calculations when I drop my calories from 3000 down to 2000 I lose about 2lbs a week. But after about 8-10 weeks my body begins to adapt, and by ~12 weeks it has adapted to the point that it has slowed my metabolism down to a maintenance of ~2000 calories. Calories in VS calories out still holds true, but my body has greatly reduced its calories OUT so that it can survive off of 2000 calories without losing weight.

If your wondering, to get around this (twice now, yea I was REALLY fat) I just ate at what I believe my bodys unrestricted maintenance is (~3000) for a week, making most of the additional calories carbs (I don't remember exactly why, something about leptin). That seemed to work in "reseting" my metabolism, because after that week I went back down to 2000 calories per day and resumed weight loss at a rate of ~2lbs per week.

Worked twice for me, if you haven't tried it yet its worth a shot.

Do you think it's possible to pick up weight when a person is now eating more healthily, but is now also eating more calories?

My husband is struggling to drop the weight right now. He was severely undereating until now, when he realised that starvation is not going to work.

After increasing his caloric intake and exercise, he appears to be increasing in weight which is very discouraging. The accuracy of the BF% tester at the gym is not so great, but I know that there is partial muscle growth and fat gain built into the increase....the calorie increase has been from 1400 to 1900 cals per day. He's a big guy so I reckon he could still do better by increasing the food intake, but still worrying about the weight gain.

Any suggestions? He's always said he build msucle fast, but to build the muscle and not drop the fat...?

Yeah it doesn't matter from a Calorie point of view what you eat. The things that are a little different between individuals is that not everyone actually extracts the same Calories from the same food (for example some people don't digest lactose, others have no problem - so lactose has different Calories between those two groups of people).

Yeah, I always wondered about the lactose... so if I'm partially lactose intolerant, the undigested sugar, which is converted into gaseous by-products by bacteria, means that I don't gain any energy from it, right? How does that affect nutrient absorption though? So I drink some milk, lactose goes to waste, but how about the protein and vitamins and such???

well after I was massively overweight and my doctor told me I would be a "heart patient" very soon I got into a gym a "made up" my own diet plan. Although I used only the stationary bicycle I lost about 18kg in 6 months.

When I gloated about this achievement I was told had been doing it all wrong, had lost a lot of muscle, and directed to all these formulae. I stuck to a new diet plan but for two years I did not lose any weight at all althoughI hadn't started to lift.

This year I'm back to my old ways, disregarding formulae/theories and listening to my body. It works for me.

BTW when I say my maintenance is 2,400 cals that includes my training. Otherwise it would be 1600 - the training factor is 1.55 (?) Only theory.

Hmmm. Maybe it's just a matter of giving it time. I was worrying he was eating too little and that the starvation mechanism causes his metabolism to slow down thus eating more on a slow metabolism can cause weight increase.

Basically, I"m not sure whether to rely on the figures to help him, or simply rely on jhim ust going for the healthy eating and exercise frequently option. But then, what amount of foods is healthy eating.

Could it just be a matter of waiting till his metabolism picks up again? How long would this take?

Right now, the theory of intake vs. output is not working. by the maths he really should be losing well over a kilo a week, but he's not losing anything.

Yeah, I always wondered about the lactose... so if I'm partially lactose intolerant, the undigested sugar, which is converted into gaseous by-products by bacteria, means that I don't gain any energy from it, right? How does that affect nutrient absorption though? So I drink some milk, lactose goes to waste, but how about the protein and vitamins and such???

I think it depends on how the bacteria chop it up. You might get some of the Calories from the lactose, but not all of them.

I think the rest of the milk is absorbed well because as soon as the milk hits the stomach it separates, suggesting that the fat soluble stuff (vitamins, etc.) have a different fate than the sugar.

Although I used only the stationary bicycle I lost about 18kg in 6 months.

When I gloated about this achievement I was told had been doing it all wrong, had lost a lot of muscle, and directed to all these formulae. I stuck to a new diet plan but for two years I did not lose any weight at all althoughI hadn't started to lift.

You probably didn't lose a lot of muscle. People talk about muscle loss a lot more than it actually happens. Yeah if you are already lean and muscular, then you can concern yourself with muscle loss. Otherwise? Shelve that concern until you are.

Well it's not surprising that after you dropped the 18kg you got some pushback from your leptin.

And if you didn't start to lift then you're still doing it all wrong.