5 ms·

I'm not sure how this math checks out. 1lb of fat is roughly 3500 calories. Given 500 calories a day of excess, that would lead to 1lb of fat gain per week. 52

I'm not sure how this math checks out. 1lb of fat is roughly 3500 calories. Given 500 calories a day of excess, that would lead to 1lb of fat gain per week. 52 pound average gain per year?

jmpetroske 8mo ago
As you gain weight, your base metabolic rate also increases. Having fat means you inherently burn more calories, even if you don’t exercise any more. Take one person, say they eat 2000 calories to maintain bodyweight. If they start eating 2500 calories a day, they won’t gain 1lb of fat a week forever. As they gain fat, their body naturally burns more calories due to the increased body weight, and eventually a stable weight (higher than their original weight) will be reached. So yeah if you’re eating 500 calories above your metabolic weight, you’ll theoretically gain weight forever. But in this case your metabolic rate is rising over time, so you would be eating more and more calories per day.
- whatshisface 8mo ago
  Fat does not raise your metabolism by a lot (relatively), and tiny changes in diet lead to massive swings in the equilibrium implied by basal metabolic rate formulas. In fact, some formulas do not include weight due to body fat. If you think about it, that fact touches on the idea that your natural weight is being maintained by another body system, one related to GLP-1. By the way... if humans had to count calories to not accidentally starve or die from overeating, we would not have made it long enough as a species to invent a scientific way to do that. Even the diets of obese or overweight individuals are being naturally regulated, because anyone could physically eat even more.
  - margalabargala 8mo ago
    The potential for overeating chronically has not been possible for most people, in most societies, throughout most of human history. Our current caloric abundance being available to literally everyone in Western society is something unique to the past century.
    - whatshisface 8mo ago
      If you eat 1% fewer calories than you burn every day you will die. You will also die if you eat 1% more calories than you burn every day. Is it possible, really, to suggest that the availability of calories was 100% of the daily requirement of our ancestors, and not 99%, or 101%? That is a level of accident that exceeds belief. It is incredible to think this precise balance could be maintained by anything other than a closed loop of biological control. How would the wheat on a medieval farm know how much to grow each season? If it was off by 1% consistently, everyone would have died... unless they had a mechanism for satiation. How do you think our microbial ancestors maintained internal salinity, through the limited availability of salt in the ancient ocean?
      - cogman10 8mo ago
        > unless they had a mechanism for satiation It ends up being the opposite. Rather than the body having a satiation response, it controls the metabolism. If you've ever fasted, you've experienced this. You just don't have the energy to do much other than sit around when you are hungry. Ancient societies realized this, it's why they'd give out calorie dense meals to their farm labor. For a serf in England, harvest time was often met with a very calorie dense meal. For roman soldiers, they had a diet of meats and cheeses. I'd also point out that you don't need to have exactly 100% daily calorie intake. You can go a week with just 99% and catch up with 101% the next week just fine.
      - margalabargala 8mo ago
        You will also die if you eat precisely the amount of calories you burn every day. There exists something called a "feedback loop", something common in biology. You would probably find it interesting, you should look it up. Basically, it means that if you try to chronically eat, say, 1% more calories than are burned, your body will try to burn more calories to compensate. I'm not sure I grasp the rest of your comment, could you try again to explain? The wheat farm your ancestors worked did not provide the excess of cheap calories available to the present day American.
        8mo ago
  - tsimionescu 8mo ago
    It's not necessarily about BMR - if you maintain a similar activity level as you gain weight, you consume more active calories as well, in almost every activity, particularly the most common ones such as walking.
rootusrootus 8mo ago
This hits on something that seems to get lost in most of these "obese people are lazy fat slobs" circle jerks. A typical American gains 1 or 2 pounds per year as they age. This is not a candy problem, or a binge eating problem, this is way more subtle than that.
- moi2388 8mo ago
  More subtle as in still not a healthy diet with exercise?
  - deleted 8mo ago
    [deleted]
  - anon84873628 8mo ago
    Let's take a pound of fat as 3500 calories. To gain one pound in a year is an average of 9.59 excess calories per day. Or about 0.5% of the typical total daily intake. Yeah, managing a system within 0.5% is subtle. Especially when biologically and psychologically the pressure is towards over consuming rather than under. If you consistently eat a deficit you will very obviously feel hungry. If you consistently eat a small excess the effects that would lead you to regulate are much more... subtle.
    - throwaway173738 8mo ago
      10 calories a day is like the BMR difference between 20 and 30.
    - mathgradthrow 8mo ago
      Meanwhile, tracking consumption involves error bars that span a factor of 2. Go figure out how many calories are in an avocado. Is that per gram figure amortized for the weight of the pit, or is this just for the flesh? Counting calories precisely was invented by the processed food industry.
  - rootusrootus 8mo ago
    Judging from the downvotes my observation got, you're not the only person who skipped math class. I couldn't say it any better than the comment below this one that already replied to you. 10 calories a day, expressed in candy, is two M&Ms.
premiumLootBox 8mo ago
[dead]

I'm not sure how this math checks out. 1lb of fat is roughly 3500 calories. Given 500 calories a day of excess, that would lead to 1lb of fat gain per week. 52 pound average gain per year?

jmpetroske 8mo ago

As you gain weight, your base metabolic rate also increases. Having fat means you inherently burn more calories, even if you don’t exercise any more. Take one person, say they eat 2000 calories to maintain bodyweight. If they start eating 2500 calories a day, they won’t gain 1lb of fat a week forever. As they gain fat, their body naturally burns more calories due to the increased body weight, and eventually a stable weight (higher than their original weight) will be reached. So yeah if you’re eating 500 calories above your metabolic weight, you’ll theoretically gain weight forever. But in this case your metabolic rate is rising over time, so you would be eating more and more calories per day.

whatshisface 8mo ago
Fat does not raise your metabolism by a lot (relatively), and tiny changes in diet lead to massive swings in the equilibrium implied by basal metabolic rate formulas. In fact, some formulas do not include weight due to body fat. If you think about it, that fact touches on the idea that your natural weight is being maintained by another body system, one related to GLP-1. By the way... if humans had to count calories to not accidentally starve or die from overeating, we would not have made it long enough as a species to invent a scientific way to do that. Even the diets of obese or overweight individuals are being naturally regulated, because anyone could physically eat even more.
- margalabargala 8mo ago
  The potential for overeating chronically has not been possible for most people, in most societies, throughout most of human history. Our current caloric abundance being available to literally everyone in Western society is something unique to the past century.
  - whatshisface 8mo ago
    If you eat 1% fewer calories than you burn every day you will die. You will also die if you eat 1% more calories than you burn every day. Is it possible, really, to suggest that the availability of calories was 100% of the daily requirement of our ancestors, and not 99%, or 101%? That is a level of accident that exceeds belief. It is incredible to think this precise balance could be maintained by anything other than a closed loop of biological control. How would the wheat on a medieval farm know how much to grow each season? If it was off by 1% consistently, everyone would have died... unless they had a mechanism for satiation. How do you think our microbial ancestors maintained internal salinity, through the limited availability of salt in the ancient ocean?
    - cogman10 8mo ago
      > unless they had a mechanism for satiation It ends up being the opposite. Rather than the body having a satiation response, it controls the metabolism. If you've ever fasted, you've experienced this. You just don't have the energy to do much other than sit around when you are hungry. Ancient societies realized this, it's why they'd give out calorie dense meals to their farm labor. For a serf in England, harvest time was often met with a very calorie dense meal. For roman soldiers, they had a diet of meats and cheeses. I'd also point out that you don't need to have exactly 100% daily calorie intake. You can go a week with just 99% and catch up with 101% the next week just fine.
    - margalabargala 8mo ago
      You will also die if you eat precisely the amount of calories you burn every day. There exists something called a "feedback loop", something common in biology. You would probably find it interesting, you should look it up. Basically, it means that if you try to chronically eat, say, 1% more calories than are burned, your body will try to burn more calories to compensate. I'm not sure I grasp the rest of your comment, could you try again to explain? The wheat farm your ancestors worked did not provide the excess of cheap calories available to the present day American.
      - 8mo ago
- tsimionescu 8mo ago
  It's not necessarily about BMR - if you maintain a similar activity level as you gain weight, you consume more active calories as well, in almost every activity, particularly the most common ones such as walking.

rootusrootus 8mo ago

This hits on something that seems to get lost in most of these "obese people are lazy fat slobs" circle jerks. A typical American gains 1 or 2 pounds per year as they age. This is not a candy problem, or a binge eating problem, this is way more subtle than that.

moi2388 8mo ago
More subtle as in still not a healthy diet with exercise?
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
- anon84873628 8mo ago
  Let's take a pound of fat as 3500 calories. To gain one pound in a year is an average of 9.59 excess calories per day. Or about 0.5% of the typical total daily intake. Yeah, managing a system within 0.5% is subtle. Especially when biologically and psychologically the pressure is towards over consuming rather than under. If you consistently eat a deficit you will very obviously feel hungry. If you consistently eat a small excess the effects that would lead you to regulate are much more... subtle.
  - throwaway173738 8mo ago
    10 calories a day is like the BMR difference between 20 and 30.
  - mathgradthrow 8mo ago
    Meanwhile, tracking consumption involves error bars that span a factor of 2. Go figure out how many calories are in an avocado. Is that per gram figure amortized for the weight of the pit, or is this just for the flesh? Counting calories precisely was invented by the processed food industry.
- rootusrootus 8mo ago
  Judging from the downvotes my observation got, you're not the only person who skipped math class. I couldn't say it any better than the comment below this one that already replied to you. 10 calories a day, expressed in candy, is two M&Ms.

premiumLootBox 8mo ago

[dead]