If to gain 1 pound (450 grams) you need to eat 3500 calories over your maintenance, how does it make sense that eating 400 grams of straight oil (which is 3536 calories) leads to a 450g gain which is more than the weight of excess food Where does the roughly 50 extra grams come from?
In: Biology
The underlying assumption is false. Eating 3500 excess calories of food does not mean you gain a pound. Conversely, burning off 3500 more calories than you take in does not mean you lose a pound. The best you can say is that a pound of fat when burned can be shown to contain about 3,500 calories of energy. But the biological processes of digestion and nutrient absorption and metabolism and hormonal regulation are far too complex to be accurately captured an a “number of calories equals amount of weight” formula. It’s a convenient shorthand for dieters, and the underlying idea that fewer calories taken in can lead to weight loss is sound, but the devil is in the details, and is highly particular for each individual. There are plenty of people who have a caloric surplus in excess of 3,500 calories each week, yet they’re not gaining a pound each week. And there are also many examples of individuals in a caloric deficit of 3500 calories a week, yet they don’t lose a pound a week, week in and week out. I wouldn’t get too hung up on a rigid formulaic approach when it comes to intake and weight gain or weight loss.
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