If I eat 3500 calories will I gain weight?

I need to lose 10 ibs and know 3500 cal= 1 lbs. Why is it that I can eat what I want and not gain weight? I never keeped track of how many calories I use to eat before dieting but some days I ate alot why iis it that my body never gained?

Thu. Sep 27, 2:16pm

Well obviously it did or you wouldn't have 10 lbs to lose. Just because the scale doesn't reflect it the next morning doesn't mean it didn't have an affect.

Thursday, September 27, 2007, 3:04 PM

Are you a male? It's very common for your weight to stay the same while your body composition (fat v. muscle) changes. At first, your measurements won't even change much. You can get away with this for years, which is why so many guys tend to get paunchy around 30 even though they're not doing anything different. If you're a woman, I don't know - you must be pretty active or genetically blessed. Since we have less muscle mass to begin with, fat gains become visible sooner.

Thursday, September 27, 2007, 5:50 PM

If you eat 3500 calories in a day, and burn off about 2000 (as most people naturally do in a day, then it would take you about 2.5 days to gain a pound.

Thursday, September 27, 2007, 5:58 PM

the trick is to eat the amount of calories that your body uses for basal activity. ie, heart beating and breathing.... it's a principle of energy in vs. energy out. you have to burn more calories than you eat in a day.

i eat 1200, my body uses roughly 1200 just to live, i run 7 miles that's another 849 calories i've burned. so my body is forced to use the stored energy (fat) to accommodate those extra 849 calories. i lose weight!

Thursday, September 27, 2007, 10:22 PM

Your body adjusts to a certain calorie intake. Most people on this board are familiar with this concept, because when you cut your calorie intake to 1400, your body starts telling you to only burn 1400 calories, so weight loss can slow or "plateau" once your body has figured out how to conserve energy. By the same token, if you regularly eat 2800 calories, your body gets used to burning that much. Maybe some days you ate 3000 calories. Over time, like a year, you would slowly gain 10 pounds.

You probably also ate more on some days and less on others, so it balanced out.

Your muscle composition also affects it. If you are very muscular, your body naturally burns more calories.

Friday, September 28, 2007, 8:41 AM

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