Comment on Anon figures out how dieting works
ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 5 months ago1 pound of body fat = 3500 calories, so if your normal caloric requirement is 2500 calories a day and you instead eat 2000 calories a day, you will lose one pound a week. Which doesn’t sound like a lot but if you keep that up for one year you can lose 52 pounds - which is a lot.
FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today 5 months ago
Alright, but the daily expenditure will go down alongside your current weight. The average* 35 y/o 5’9’ man, who exercises at least 30min a day 5 days a week, who weighs 217 will maintain weight at 2,871 while at 165 lbs will maintain at 2,452.
*average is emphasized to help explain why the calorie number is larger than in previous comments, which were a minimum estimate.
ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 5 months ago
A 420 calorie drop from a 52-pound weight loss implies a resting metabolic requirement for body fat tissue of about 8 calories per pound, which I think is a serious overestimate but I’m not sure. I’ve seen some sources claim 2 calories per pound for fat and 6 calories per pound for muscle, but other sources have claimed significantly higher amounts.
FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today 5 months ago
Yeah it’s really hard to pin down consistent numbers on this subject due to both interpersonal differences and demographic trends in data.