A pound is equal to 3,500 calories. That mean if you are maintaining your weight right now, cutting your intake by 500 calories a day will cause you to lose a pound a week or at least in theory that should work.
Unfortunately, that math doesn’t always work inside your body. That is because your body has all sorts of mechanisms to adapt that kick in to defend your body’s weight and hold on to as many calories as possible. Due to past times of feast and famine in the history of man, our bodies are designed to maintain weight when food is scarce and gain weight when food is abundant. This is a problem in our current society where food is almost always plentiful and supersized.
If you cut too many calories your body reacts by slowing down your metabolism so that it can operate on less fuel. So if you started off eating 2000 calories a day and cut back to 1500 calories, you should lose a pound a week, but if your body shifts gears and starts to run just fine on 1,750 a day then it is going to take you two weeks to lose that pound.
Exercise can further complicate the diet picture. When a person starts an exercise program the body begins to compensate to make up for the calories lost to exercise. A natural tendency is to eat more. Even if you stick to your diet, the body still finds ways to steal calories back. Once you start exercising your body becomes more efficient, so you might burn off 100 calories per mile jogging now, but as your body adapts to the exercise you may only burn 85 calories per mile.
Another problem occurs when you start losing weight and your body becomes smaller thereby requiring fewer calories to operate. After losing some weight you will likely need to cut even more calories because your baseline caloric needs or your baseline metabolic rate has shifted downward.
All of this sounds like a losing battle but really it is an argument for why crash diets don’t work. For most people cutting calories to lose ½ pound to 1 pound a week is a modest change and your body won’t go into starvation mode. Lifting weights can also increase your muscle mass and thereby increase the calories you burn in normal daily activities. Perhaps exercising enough to burn 250 calories a day and reducing your caloric intake by 250 calories a day would be the best method for trying to “trick” the compensatory mechanisms that kick in to defend your body against weight loss.
ACTIVITY TIME TO BURN 250 CALORIES
WALKING 4.5 MPH 37 MINUTES
TENNIS – MODERATE 35 MINUTES
SWIMMING – CRAWL 30 MINUTES
DOWNHILL SKIING 27 MINUTES
JOGGING 5.5 MPH 22 MINUTES
BIKING13 MHP 18 MINUTES
Unfortunately, that math doesn’t always work inside your body. That is because your body has all sorts of mechanisms to adapt that kick in to defend your body’s weight and hold on to as many calories as possible. Due to past times of feast and famine in the history of man, our bodies are designed to maintain weight when food is scarce and gain weight when food is abundant. This is a problem in our current society where food is almost always plentiful and supersized.
If you cut too many calories your body reacts by slowing down your metabolism so that it can operate on less fuel. So if you started off eating 2000 calories a day and cut back to 1500 calories, you should lose a pound a week, but if your body shifts gears and starts to run just fine on 1,750 a day then it is going to take you two weeks to lose that pound.
Exercise can further complicate the diet picture. When a person starts an exercise program the body begins to compensate to make up for the calories lost to exercise. A natural tendency is to eat more. Even if you stick to your diet, the body still finds ways to steal calories back. Once you start exercising your body becomes more efficient, so you might burn off 100 calories per mile jogging now, but as your body adapts to the exercise you may only burn 85 calories per mile.
Another problem occurs when you start losing weight and your body becomes smaller thereby requiring fewer calories to operate. After losing some weight you will likely need to cut even more calories because your baseline caloric needs or your baseline metabolic rate has shifted downward.
All of this sounds like a losing battle but really it is an argument for why crash diets don’t work. For most people cutting calories to lose ½ pound to 1 pound a week is a modest change and your body won’t go into starvation mode. Lifting weights can also increase your muscle mass and thereby increase the calories you burn in normal daily activities. Perhaps exercising enough to burn 250 calories a day and reducing your caloric intake by 250 calories a day would be the best method for trying to “trick” the compensatory mechanisms that kick in to defend your body against weight loss.
ACTIVITY TIME TO BURN 250 CALORIES
WALKING 4.5 MPH 37 MINUTES
TENNIS – MODERATE 35 MINUTES
SWIMMING – CRAWL 30 MINUTES
DOWNHILL SKIING 27 MINUTES
JOGGING 5.5 MPH 22 MINUTES
BIKING13 MHP 18 MINUTES
Tags: 3500 calories equals one pound of weight, baseline metabolic weight, dieting and weight, maintaining weight, why can't I lose weight
