How Many Calories Equal One Pound of Fat?
It is common knowledge that losing and gaining fat has something to do with the amount of calories that your body consumes. However, what most people don’t realise is just how many calories really equates to one pound of fat. Once you understand this basic arithmetic of weight loss, you will realise that losing weight cannot be an overnight fix, it really does take time and is definitely an ongoing process.
So, How Much Is It?
In reality, 1 pound of fat is equivalent to 453.6 grams, while 1 gram of fat would contain 9 calories. Thus, one fat pound would contain 4082 calories. This is the approximate amount of calories that you gain every time your body consumes a pound of fat.
However, when talking about getting rid of 1 lb of body fat, you must get your body to burn 3500 calories. Obviously, 3500 calories is definitely not equal to 4,082 calories, right?!
What’s With The Difference?
So, what’s with this big difference? Actually, the reason is that fat cells in your body actually contain other materials, like water and protein. Hence, they’re not really made up of pure fat, unlike what you consume. In consequence, when you lose one pound of body fat, you really burn only about 3500 calories and not 4082calories.
Gaining Or Losing Weight
If you wanted to gain one pound in weight, you would have to add 3,500 calories to your diet. On the other hand, you would have to take off 3,500 calories so that you could get rid of one pound of your weight.
What’s The Implication?
As you can see, this simply answers the question as to why some diet programs are impossible to succeed. How come? Remember, everyone has to take in a ceratin amount of calories just to survive and maintain their weight. The average calorie intake of a person in a day to supply vital functions and maintain their weight would usually fall into the 2000 calorie or 2500 calorie diet. So, if you wanted to lose one pound in a day, you would have to go to the extent of not getting any kind of calorie intake plus burning another 1,000 or 1,500 calories.
This basically means torture to your body. Also, it would be difficult to execute a plan like this since your body is wise enough to detect what is happening. Hence, there is no such thing as easy instant dieting or instant weight loss.
Do not be fooled by all those advertisements of weight loss products that say you can get an instant one pound off your scale as soon as you use their product for just a few minutes or an hour. Promises like that are definitely impossible to achieve. It would take burning more than your daily calorie need just to get that pound off in a day!
Taking It Slow
Nevertheless, it is still possible for you to get rid of that pound. However, it will take you some time and you have to undergo a process. You should understand that there are no shortcuts with losing weight.
Sad but true, it takes a lot more time for you to drop pounds compared to what it takes to gain them. A majority of dieters tend to feel that they’re not getting any progress, especially when they come into the phase where slow rates of weight loss occurs, such as when they get stranded on the infamous weight loss plateau.
Achieving Your Way To Victory
If you are really determined to lose weight, you can still take advantage of this information. What you’ll have to do is set a realistic goal and create a diet plan that you think you have the guts to stick to until the end.
For example, you want to lose one pound in a week. This is something more achievable than losing a pound in a day. Hence, divide 3,500 calories by 7 (there are 7 days in a week) and you’ll get 500. Thus, you would have to cut 500 calories from your daily diet. So, if you’re eating a 2,500 calorie diet, you would have to cut down to a 2,000 diet so that you can lose 1 lb in 7 days.
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