www.lesswrong.com/posts/Xmnw3t2XvxS8FxxE7/delicious-boy-slop-boring-diet-effortl...
1 correction found
one hundred extra calories a day is about ten pounds of weight gained in a year!
This overstates how fast small calorie imbalances change body weight. Modern NIH/NIDDK models estimate that a permanent 10 kcal/day change leads to about 1 pound of eventual weight change, with only about half of that change happening after one year.
Full reasoning
The article is using the old 3,500-calories-equals-1-pound shortcut as if weight change were linear over time. NIH/NIDDK researchers say that is not how human body weight actually responds.
Kevin Hall's NIH/NIDDK model found that 10 kcal/day corresponds to about 1 pound of eventual body-weight change, not 1 pound within a single year. The same research says about half of the total change happens after ~1 year and about 95% after ~3 years. So a persistent 100 kcal/day surplus is better understood as leading to about 10 pounds eventually, with only about half that change after one year, not 10 pounds gained in the first year.
NIH also explicitly says its findings challenge the commonly held belief that body weight changes linearly according to the old 3,500-calorie rule. That directly contradicts the post's statement that 100 extra calories per day is "about ten pounds" of gain in a year.
3 sources
- Research Behind the Body Weight Planner - Integrative Physiology Section - NIDDK
This research was published as part of The Lancet Series on Obesity... Quantification of the effect of energy imbalance on bodyweight... A prototype was created to show how health professionals can use it to more accurately plan, track, and update personalized weight management interventions by accounting for changes in human appetite, metabolism, and calorie expenditure over time.
- NIH research model predicts weight with varying diet, exercise changes | NIH Intramural Research Program
The findings challenge the commonly held belief that eating 3,500 fewer calories—or burning them off exercising—will always result in a pound of weight loss.
- Predicting How Diet and Exercise Affect Weight | National Institutes of Health (NIH)
For every pound you wish to lose, permanently cut 10 calories from your current intake per day. At that rate, it will take about a year to achieve half of the weight loss, with 95% of the total weight change within about 3 years.