eli5: why is gaining weight so easy but losing weight so hard
In: 61
Math.
To gain a pound of weight, you need to consume (eat) 3,500 more calories than you expend (use to keep yourself alive). That’s a lot of food, but it’s not *that* much food – think an entree and a slice of cheesecake at the Cheesecake Factory. If you were diligent and dedicated, you could gain a pound a day, although you might not enjoy it after a while. Once you had some practice, you might be able to gain as much as a pound and a half a day.
To lose a pound, you have to expend (through living and exercise) 3,500 calories more than you consume (eat). I personally expend about 2,000 calories a day, so even eating nothing I couldn’t lose a pound a day. Eating nothing for more than a week or so can kill you due to electrolyte imbalance; even people on medically supervised very low calorie diets usually don’t go below 500. And it’s hard to exercise enough to burn significant calories without eating, particularly over long periods.
(There are a lot of fine distinctions I’m glossing over, like loss of lean mass vs loss of fat mass, limits to the number of calories that can be metabolized over 24 hours, homeostatic mechanisms that tend to make you expend more or fewer calories when food is plentiful vs scarce.)
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