3, 500 calories to gain or loose a pound? How does that work? I'm not sure I understand.?

Question

I just now heard about this.

Answer 1

there's 3500 in a pound. So lets say ur body is automatcally burning about 1700 Calories. Than if u eat 3500, u will gain weight..So

if u want to gain a pound in a day..assuming ur body is burning 1500calories a day by doing nothing. U wil have to eat 5000Calories a day to gain a pound.

confusing but yes..loll

Answer 2

I calorie is how much energy it takes to raise water a degree or something really odd like that. It doesn't make sense unless you understand calories. A pound of fat, to my understanding, consists of 3500 calories. If you burn that much, you loose a pound. If you eat that much without burning it off, you will gain a pound.

How about this. Think of it as a credit card. We all like a balance of zero, or even better, getting money back after a overpayment or something.

Every calorie you eat it $1 of debt. We all eat so you're going to put some debt on that card. Get into $3500 of debt equals a pound. Now exercising is paying off the card. If you burn 400 calories, you just paid $400 towards your debt.

So your goal is to keep an overall balance of zero. But if you pay more than your debt was, you'll get that money back (or loss of calories). Over pay (exercise) $3500 (calories) over a period if time, you'll loose a pound. This is all a balancing act, just like a credit card. It's all about what's on the statement at the end of the month, not day. So everyday of a 30 day month you burned 300 more calories than you ate, you burned 9000 calories, or about 2.5 pounds  

Answer 3

on paper that's how it works.  

say your maintenance calories are 1,800 calories a day for you to stay at your current bodyweight at your current daily level of activity.  an increase in 3,500 calories over your maintenance calories would cause you to gain 1 lb.

now the reverse is not so simply as the body is always using energy from proteins, carbohydrates in fats never just one source in the body.  so a caloric deficit of 3,500 calories will cause the loss of 1 lb but that lb will water, muscle and fat.

Answer 4

First you have to calculate your maintenance calories, that is, eat so you dont gain or loose any weight....then from there if you want to loose weight, eat 500 calories less a day..if you want to gain weight, eat 500 calories more a day

Answer 5

haha its very confusing how your body does everything and eating 3,500 calories a day will probably make you gain a pound- its very confusing though because you use about 1500 of the calories so then how do you gain a whole pound? its very confusing and also with diet and exericse you should eat 500 calories less than recommend daily and also exercise a lot. Then if I go a week and limit myself 500 calories less- why did I lose 4 lbs? 500times 7 equals 3,500 so why didn't i lose just an lb?

Answer 6

A Calorie is a measurement of energy, usually used to determine how much energy is in the food you eat. One pound of fatty tissue contains ~3,500 Calories of usable energy. Therefore, to gain or loss that amount of fat, you need to either eat that much more or less than what your body needs over a period of time. You can do this by adjusting your intake or exercise level. (Suggested 'normal' intake is about 2000 Calories for an adult woman, and 2500 for an adult male; obviously this varies greatly based on age, activity level, and weight)

For example, by eating 500 less Calories than you burn every day for one week, you would lose one pound. If you ate 500 Calories less than normal, and burned 500 more Calories than normal in exercise (every day), you would lose 2 pounds a week.