3500 Calories To Lose A Pound - Is This Formula All Wrong?
February 1st, 2008 Subscribe To Our Feed
By Tom Venuto, NSCA-CPT, CSCS
Most fitness conscious people have heard that there are 3,500 calories in a pound of fat, so if you create a deficit of 3500 calories in a week, you lose a pound of weight. If you create a deficit of 7000 calories in a week, you lose two pounds, and so on. Right? Well, not so fast…
Dr. Kevin Hall, an investigator at the National Institute of Health in Bethesda has done some interesting research about the mechanisms regulating human body weight. He recently published a new paper in the International Journal of Obesity that throws a wrench in works of the “3500 calories to lose a pound” idea.
Some of the equations in his paper made my head hurt, but despite the complex math he used to come to his conclusions, his article clearly prompts the question, “3500 calories to lose a pound of WHAT?” His paper also contained a lot of simple and practical tips you can use to properly balance your caloric intake with output, fine tune your calorie deficit and help you retain more muscle when you diet.
Below, I’ve distilled some of the information into a simple bullet-point summary that any non-scientist can understand. Then I wrap up with my interpretation of how you can apply this data in your own fat loss program:
Calculating the calories required to lose a pound and fine-tuning your caloric deficit
- 3500 calories to lose a pound has always been the rule of thumb. However, this 3500 calories figure goes back to research which assumed that all the weight lost would be adipose tissue (which would be ideal, of course).
- But as we all know (unfortunately), lean body mass is lost along with body fat, which would indicate that the 3500 calorie figure could be an oversimplification.
- The amount of lean body mass lost is based on initial body fat level and size of the calorie deficit
- Lean people tend to lose more lean body mass and retain more fat.
- Fat people tend to lose more body fat and retain more lean tissue (revealing why obese people can tolerate aggressive low calorie diets better than already lean people)
- Very aggressive low calorie diets tend to erode lean body mass to a greater degree than more conservative diets.
- whether the weight loss is lean or fat gives you the real answer of what is the required energy deficit per unit of weight loss
- The metabolizable energy in fat is different than the metabolizable energy in muscle tissue. A pound of muscle is not 3500 calories. A pound of muscle yields about 600 calories.
- If you lose lean body mass, then you lose more weight than if you lose fat.
- If you create a 3500 calorie deficit in one week and you lose 100% body fat, you will lose one pound.
- But if you create a 3500 calorie weekly deficit and as a result of that deficit, lose 100% muscle, you would lose almost 6 pounds of body weight! (of course, if you manage to lose 100% muscle, you will be forced to wear the Dieter’s Dunce cap)
- If you have a high initial body fat percentage, then you are going to lose more fat relative to lean, so you may need a larger deficit to lose the same amount of weight as compared to a lean person
- Creating a calorie deficit once at the beginning of a diet and maintaining that same caloric intake for the duration of the diet and after major weight loss fails to account for how your body decreases energy expenditure with reduced body weight
- Weight loss typically slows down over time for a prescribed constant diet (the “plateau”). This is either due to the decreased metabolism mentioned above, or a relaxing of the diet compliance, or both (most people just can’t hack aggressive calorie reductions for long)
- Progressive resistance training and or high protein diets can modify the proportion of weight lost from body fat versus lean tissue (which is why weight training and sufficient protein while on calorie restricted diets are absolute musts!)
So, based on this info, should you throw out the old calorie formulas?
Well, not necessarily. You can still use the standard calorie formulas to figure out how much you should eat, and you can use a 500-1000 calorie per day deficit (below maintenance) as a generic guideline to figure where to set your calories to lose one or two pounds per week respectively (at least that works “on paper” anyway).
Even better however, you could use this info to fine tune your caloric deficit using a percentage method and also base your deficit on your starting body fat level, to get a much more personalized and effective approach:
15-20% below maintenance calories = conservative deficit
20-25% below maintenance calories = moderate deficit
25-30% below maintenance calories = aggressive deficit
31-40% below maintenance calories = very aggressive deficit (risky)
50%+ below maintenance calories = semi starvation/starvation (potentially dangerous and unhealthy)
(Note: According to exercise physiologists Katch & Mcardle, the average female between the ages of 23 and 50 has a maintenance level of about 2000-2100 calories per day and the average male about 2700-2900 calories per day)
Usually, we would suggest starting with a conservative deficit of around 15-20% below maintenance. Based on this research, however, we see that there can be a big difference between lean and overweight people in how many calories they can or should cut.
If you have very high body fat to begin with, the typical rule of thumb on calorie deficits may underestimate the deficit required to lose a pound. It may also be too conservative, and you can probably use a more aggressive deficit safely without as much worry about muscle loss or metabolic slowdown.
If you are extremely lean, like a bodybuilder trying to get ready for competition, you would want to be very cautious about using aggressive calorie deficits. You’d be better off keeping the deficit conservative and starting your diet/cutting phase earlier to allow for a slow, but safe rate of fat loss, with maximum retention of muscle tissue.
The bottom line is that it’s not quite so simple as 3,500 calories being the deficit to lose a pound. Like lots of other things in nutrition that vary from person to person, the ideal amount of calories to cut “depends”…
Note: The Burn the Fat, Feed The Muscle program not only has an entire chapter dedicated to helping you calculate your exact calorie needs, it was designed very specifically to keep a fairly conservative approach to caloric deficits and to maximize the amount of lean tissue you retain and minimize the amount of metabolic adaptation that occurs when you’re dieting. The approach may be more conservative, and the fat loss may be slower, but it has a better long term track record… You can either lose weight fast, sacrifice muscle and gain the fat back like 95% of people do, or lose fat slow and keep it off forever like the 5% of the people who know the secrets. The choice is yours. For more information, visit: www.burnthefat.com
References:
Forbes GB. Body fat content influences the body composition response to nutrition and exercise. Ann NY Acad Sci. 904: 359-365. 2000
Hall, KD., What is the required energy deficit per unit of weight loss? Int J Obesity. 2007 Epub ahead of print.
McArdle WD. Exercise physiology: Energy, Nutrition, and Human performance. 4td ed. Williams & Wilkins. 1996.
Wishnofsky M. Caloric equivalents of gained or lost weight. Am J Clin Nutr. 6: 542-546.
About the Author:
Tom Venuto is a natural bodybuilder, certified strength and conditioning specialist (CSCS) and a certified personal trainer (CPT). Tom is the author of “Burn the Fat, Feed The Muscle,” which teaches you how to get lean without drugs or supplements using methods of the world’s best bodybuilders and fitness models. Learn how to get rid of stubborn fat and increase your metabolism by visiting: burnthefat.com
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How To Repair A Damaged Metabolism
January 26th, 2008 Subscribe To Our Feed
By Tom Venuto, CSCS, NSCA-CPT
If you’ve caused metabolic damage as a result of following starvation diets or losing weight too rapidly in the past, it can be extremely difficult to achieve any further fat loss at all. The good news is, metabolic damage can be repaired. All it takes is the right combination of metabolism stimulating exercise and metabolism stimulating nutrition (NOT just a diet), all done consistently over time.
The big irony is that most of the diet programs that claim to help you get rid of excess weight, only end up making it harder for you in the long run because they use harsh metabolism-decreasing diets and not enough exercise (almost never any weight training).
It may take a little longer if you have really messed things up with severe starvation dieting in the past, especially if you’ve lost a lot of lean body mass, but it is never hopeless. Anyone can increase their metabolism.
Most people get an almost immediate boost in metabolic rate when they start the Burn The Fat program. However, the results are not going to be “overnight.” Give it a little time…
Within 3 weeks your metabolism will already be more efficient. Within 6-8 weeks, it’s burning hot. Give me 12 weeks of consistent diligent effort, sticking with all the metabolism boosting strategies I teach, and your metabolism really will become like a turbo charged engine, and I’m not exaggerating when I say that.
What’s most important for upping your metabolism is CONSISTENCY in applying the Burn The Fat nutrition and training principles every single day.
That includes:
- Meal frequency: eat 5-6 small meals per day
- Meal timing: eat approximately every 3 hours, with a substantial breakfast and a substantial post workout meal.
- Sufficient Caloric Intake: maintain a small calorie deficit and avoid starvation-level diets (suggested safe levels for fat loss: 2100-2500 calories per day for men, 1400-1800 calories per day for women; adjust as needed)
- Food choices: Select natural, unprocessed foods with high thermic effect (lean proteins like chicken, turkey, egg whites and fish are highly thermic, as are all green vegetables, salad vegetables and other fibrous carbs)
- Cardio training: Push up the intensity a bit if you really want to get a metabolic boost. Walking and low intensity cardio is fine, but higher intensity is more metabolism-stimulating
- Weight training: The basic exercises that include the largest muscle groups or even call into play the entire body as a unit (squats, front squats, split squats, deadlifts, stiff legged deadlifts, overhead presses, all kinds of rows and core-activation exercises) will have a much greater metabolism stimulating effect than isolation exercises (concentration curls, calf raises, etc)
The weight training is extremely important in cases of “metabolic damage” because this is the stimulus to keep the muscle you have and begin rebuilding new muscle tissue, which is the engine that drives your metabolism.
The men don’t usually have a problem with the weight training, but I still hear women say they don’t want to lift weights as part of their fat loss programs. Well, people who wont lift weights can expect a very, very long metabolism “repair process” if they achieve it at all.
Consistency is the key.
Nothing will undermine the “re-building” of your metabolism like inconsistency. If you stop and start, or skip meals and workouts often, you will not even get off the ground.
After your metabolism is back up where it should be, it takes continued “stoking” of the metabolic furnace to keep it there. Once you get your metabolic engine running, you’ve got to keep feeding it fuel or the fire will die down.
Picture an old fashioned wood burning stove…
Imagine you’re in a cabin up in the mountains in the winter. It’s cold in there and you want to keep the cabin warm. Can you achieve this by feeding the fire once or twice per day? Nope. Not enough fuel to burn, so not much heat is generated.
What if you just toss an entire pile of wood in the stove all at once? Will that work? Nope. Lots of fuel, but can’t all be used at once… it just smothers the fire and the excess just sits there.
How about if you throw some tissue paper or crumpled newspaper in the stove, will that work? Nope - too quickly burning.
You have to keep putting small amounts of wood (the right type of fuel) on the fire at regular intervals or the fire burns out.
It’s also difficult to get the fire lit again. In the case of metabolism, it’s like going through that initial few weeks of overcoming inertia all over again.
Your goal is to get your metabolism burning hot and keep it burning and this cannot be achieved by missing meals, missing workouts or with sporadic, infrequent training.
I have only seen a handful of cases where all these things were done properly and there was still a longer “repair” process.
For example, one case was former ballet dancer. At 5′ 5″, she was previously 110 lbs and had increased to about 145 or so. She didn’t want to reach her previous 110, but find a happy medium of about 125 lbs.
I figured with 20 lbs to cut, this would be a simple and predictable process, but she had a challenging time (and I didn’t know why at first).
I later found out that she had been anorexic and bulimic for many years. This had caused a lot of damage, and although she did reach her goal, it took about twice as long as we had anticipated.
The good news is, even in this extreme case, the same nutrition and training principles worked! It just took a little longer. And by the way her program included some serious training with free weights and she ate a lot more (clean) food than she had ever eaten before. No “starvation!”
That’s the power of burning the fat and feeding the muscles… Trying to starve the fat with crash diets is what causes the metabolic damage in the first place!
If you’re interested in the healthy, sensible way to take off the fat, while keeping all your muscle and actually increasing your metabolism in the process, then my Burn the Fat, Feed The Muscle program can teach you how. No gimmicks or false promises. Just the truth - you have to work at it and you have to be patient. burnthefat.com
About the Author:
Tom Venuto is a natural bodybuilder and author of the #1 best selling e-book, “Burn the Fat, Feed The Muscle,” which teaches you how to burn fat without drugs or supplements using the little-known secrets of the world’s best bodybuilders and fitness models. Learn how to get rid of stubborn fat and turbo-charge your metabolism by visiting: burnthefat.com.
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