A very basic question

[Steelhead]

1 pound of mixed lettuce equals about 100 or so calories while 1 pound of butter equals about 4086 calories. It takes 3500 calories to gain one pound of fat.

But the calorie numbers don't lie.
And I suppose using my untuition I should gain a pound when I eat a pound of lettuce too!!
Regards,
Brent

A calorie ingested is not necessarily a calorie retained or burned — it may well merely be excreted.

Bob S.

In fact, I was reading some articles pointing out that whole grains, for example, have a portion (non-fibre) that is not digested. Also, the body expends around 23% calories digesting carbohydrates while only about 3% digesting and storing fat. The human body is a miracle indeed.

[Steelhead]

But the calorie numbers don't lie.
And I suppose using my untuition I should gain a pound when I eat a pound of lettuce too!!
Regards,
Brent

Yes they (i.e. calorie numbers) do. The 4086 calories comes from the very rough value of 9cal/gram of fat — it is good to only one significant figure, so the 4086 is quite consistent with the only slightly more precise value of 3500cal/ pound of fat. The point about the body retaining more water which is needed to metabolize the fat (and the carbohydrates as well) is valid enough, but it is not a large amount and it is only temporary.

As far as lettuce and other leafy vegetables are concerned, they can be as much as 95% water and at least part of the remainder is fiber which is not metabolized, merely passed. There are only about 32cal in a pound of leafy lettuce and this may include the fiber.

Which brings up a point. How many of a person's caloric intake is actually utilized and how much is passed? The dried droppings of grazing animals (specifically cattle, bison, and yaks) have enough caloric content left in them that they have been used for fuel for centuries and still are in some areas. Humans are probably more efficient at metabolizing the kinds of food that they eat, but I remember an article in "Chemical and Engineering News" many years ago which reported on a NASA project to determine whether or not it was feasible to get usable power from a mixture of some sort of oxidant with human waste. It has also been observed that humans, as well as cows, produce methane, one of our major industrial fuels. A calorie ingested is not necessarily a calorie retained or burned — it may well merely be excreted.

Bob S.

Bob,
We have two golden retrievers, five cats and three humans.......you mean we could be practically self-sufficient if I just burned the dried droppings in the fireplace!!!
Brent

While hiking in Nepal, I noticed a lot of yak dung being burned for fuel; it has a lot of fibre in it and an unpleasant smell, but it does burn quite well.

[icomefrombirmingham]

Yes they (i.e. calorie numbers) do. The 4086 calories comes from the very rough value of 9cal/gram of fat — it is good to only one significant figure, so the 4086 is quite consistent with the only slightly more precise value of 3500cal/ pound of fat. The point about the body retaining more water which is needed to metabolize the fat (and the carbohydrates as well) is valid enough, but it is not a large amount and it is only temporary.

As far as lettuce and other leafy vegetables are concerned, they can be as much as 95% water and at least part of the remainder is fiber which is not metabolized, merely passed. There are only about 32cal in a pound of leafy lettuce and this may include the fiber.

Which brings up a point. How many of a person's caloric intake is actually utilized and how much is passed? The dried droppings of grazing animals (specifically cattle, bison, and yaks) have enough caloric content left in them that they have been used for fuel for centuries and still are in some areas. Humans are probably more efficient at metabolizing the kinds of food that they eat, but I remember an article in "Chemical and Engineering News" many years ago which reported on a NASA project to determine whether or not it was feasible to get usable power from a mixture of some sort of oxidant with human waste. It has also been observed that humans, as well as cows, produce methane, one of our major industrial fuels. A calorie ingested is not necessarily a calorie retained or burned — it may well merely be excreted.

Bob S.

Bob,
We have two golden retrievers, five cats and three humans.......you mean we could be practically self-sufficient if I just burned the dried droppings in the fireplace!!!
Brent

While hiking in Nepal, I noticed a lot of yak dung being burned for fuel; it has a lot of fibre in it and an unpleasant smell, but it does burn quite well.

I will see if I can get my wife to replace the cats with yaks.....do they curl up on your lap and purr by any chance?
Brent

[tbartman]

In response to the original question, I think Steelhead said it best - "until it passes through your system".

If you weigh youself, and then immediately drink a pint (one pound) of water, and step on the scale again, you will weigh one pound more, but later in the day you'll lose that water, and be back to where you started. If you eat a pound of lard, you'll immediately gain a pound, and it'll stick (mostly). If you eat a pound of salt, you'll hold onto a ton of water, but all things being equal, eventually you'll lose the salt and the retained water too and be back where you started.

No food has more than 3500 calories per pound, once you account for amount retained (excreted), calories consumed in digesting, transporting, and storing, etc. So no, you can't eat a dinner that weighs one pound on your *** DELETE - SPAM *** scale and, once equilibrated, add two pounds of body mass (muscle or fat) to your frame.

[icomefrombirmingham]

In response to the original question, I think Steelhead said it best - "until it passes through your system".

If you weight youself, and then immediately drink a pint (one pound) of water, and step on the scale again, you will weigh one pound more, but later in the day you'll lose that water, and be back to where you started. If you eat a pound of lard, you'll immediately gain a pound, and it'll stick (mostly). If you eat a pound of salt, you'll hold onto a ton of water, but all things being equal, eventually you'll lost the salt and the retained water too and be back where you started.

No food has more than 3500 calories per pound, once you account for amount retained (excreted), calories consumed in digesting, transporting, and storing, etc. So no, you can't eat a dinner that weighs one pound on your *** DELETE - SPAM *** scale and, once equilibrated, add two pounds of body mass (muscle or fat) to your frame.

Thanks tbartman,
But....I was just looking at the calorie value of sugar....9 calories per cube....and a cube is 2.3 grams. There are therefore 197 cubes...or 1777 calories in a pound of sugar.
So, if I did nothing different in the way of diet and/or excercise from one year to the next....i.e. if I lived a groundhog day kinda life.....EXCEPT that one year I sat down and ate 1lb of sugar on January 1st....I would not gain more than one pound of weight/mass after I had equilibriumed?

I started the thread thinking that it couldn't be possible to gain more weight than the weight of the food consumed. Now, I am thinking it must be possible with calorie dense foods!!
Help!

Brent

[hjs]

I have one basic questions about weight loss that has been bugging me, perhaps someone here can shed some light:

Q: Can one gain more weight than the weight of the food consumed?
e.g. can a lb. of beef or a lb. of chocolate consumed produce a weight gain in a human of more than one lb. (all other things remaining constant...no additional excercise, no other changes to diet)?

Thanks,
Brent

If you assume you store the food as fat. The answer is no.
Everything you eat is made of fat, carbs and protein. If you eat more then your body needs you will store it as fat.
In the short term carbs will make you hold water but in the long run that isn,t important.

[tbartman]

... 1777 calories in a pound of sugar.

You just proved it yourself. Measuring 1 lb of sugar on the *** DELETE - SPAM *** scale and eating it will be converted into about 1/2 lb of fat on your body. Whatever you eat will have some undigestible mass (not a lot for sugar, much higher for other foods), which will get flushed. Otherwise, metabolism of the food (conversion of the sugar to fat) will result in the production of water (which will also get flushed) and carbon dioxide, which will get breathed out.

In it's simplest, if you wonder "where does the weight go when I exercise?", the equation is

C6H12O6 + 6 O2 + 36 ADP + 36 Pi ---> 6 H2O + 6 CO2 + 36 ATP
(sugar plus oxygen ---> water plus carbon dioxide plus energy)

That sugar molecule turned into water, which you sweated or will eventually pee, and you breathed in an oxygen, added a carbon mass to it, and breathed it out. There's your weight loss.

So no, you cannot eat 1 pound of anything and gain more than one pound. If you could, Einstein, Newton, and all those other guys would have some explaining to do.

(aside: the purists may disagree because if you ate a pound of protein and could convert it entirely to a pound of muscle, you would gain more than a pound, but only because muscle has associated water with it, so your dry body mass would increase about one pound, but total mass would increase because you would have more water saved on your body).[/quote]

[icomefrombirmingham]

... 1777 calories in a pound of sugar.

You just proved it yourself. Measuring 1 lb of sugar on the *** DELETE - SPAM *** scale and eating it will be converted into about 1/2 lb of fat on your body. Whatever you eat will have some undigestible mass (not a lot for sugar, much higher for other foods), which will get flushed. Otherwise, metabolism of the food (conversion of the sugar to fat) will result in the production of water (which will also get flushed) and carbon dioxide, which will get breathed out.

In it's simplest, if you wonder "where does the weight go when I exercise?", the equation is

C6H12O6 + 6 O2 + 36 ADP + 36 Pi ---> 6 H2O + 6 CO2 + 36 ATP
(sugar plus oxygen ---> water plus carbon dioxide plus energy)

That sugar molecule turned into water, which you sweated or will eventually pee, and you breathed in an oxygen, added a carbon mass to it, and breathed it out. There's your weight loss.

So no, you cannot eat 1 pound of anything and gain more than one pound. If you could, Einstein, Newton, and all those other guys would have some explaining to do.

(aside: the purists may disagree because if you ate a pound of protein and could convert it entirely to a pound of muscle, you would gain more than a pound, but only because muscle has associated water with it, so your dry body mass would increase about one pound, but total mass would increase because you would have more water saved on your body).

[/quote]

thanks tbartman,
It is starting to make sense to this non-scientist...especially when I figured out Pi meant inorganic phosphate and had nothing to do with waist circumference!
Regards,
Brent

[Steelhead]

... 1777 calories in a pound of sugar.


So no, you cannot eat 1 pound of anything and gain more than one pound. If you could, Einstein, Newton, and all those other guys would have some explaining to do.
.

So . . . if there are about 454 grams in one pound, and 3500 calories equals one pound of fat, then since fat is 9 calories per gram, but protein and carbohydrate are 4 calories per gram, and fiber is zero calories per gram, this must mean that one pound of food of various types will have different results. For example, one pound of olive oil has about (9 x 454) 4086 calories, while one pound of sugar has about (4 x 454) 1816 calories. If 3500 calories will result in one pound of body fat, then what happens when we eat one pound of oil (4086 calories)? All things being equal, would not this result in more than one pound of body fat (particularly since water is attached to the fat molecule)?

[Rhutch]

It's against the laws of physics with regard to the conservation of energy you can not get more energy out of a substance by changing its form.

The other fact is that the human body is not 100% efficent either (nowhere even close) so energy is expend everytime you eat, convert and excrete. So eating one pound of anything will not make you gain more than 1 pound nor will it make you gain 1 pound.

[icomefrombirmingham]

It's against the laws of physics with regard to the conservation of energy you can not get more energy out of a substance by changing its form.

The other fact is that the human body is not 100% efficent either (nowhere even close) so energy is expend everytime you eat, convert and excrete. So eating one pound of anything will not make you gain more than 1 pound nor will it make you gain 1 pound.

Not to turn this thread into a physics thread...but I think you are saying that you can't get more mass out of a substance by changing its form (energy either....but in this context mass).
It's like the pound of feathers and the pound of lead......they both weigh a pound.

Now this is where my confusion comes....you CAN get different amounts of energy out of two things weighing the same.....I think......one pound of fat and one pound of celery. So what we are saying is that in either case I would gain one pound immediately after eating either. But my body will metabolise and excrete the celery much quicker than the fat.....plus the fat will bind with water initially causing me to retain more water..and thus more weight, temporarily.
In neither case can I gain more than one pound once metabolised, but I will of course gain much more from the fat than the celery, all other things being equal.

I think I'm getting it.
Brent

[Steelhead]

It's against the laws of physics with regard to the conservation of energy you can not get more energy out of a substance by changing its form.

The other fact is that the human body is not 100% efficent either (nowhere even close) so energy is expend everytime you eat, convert and excrete. So eating one pound of anything will not make you gain more than 1 pound nor will it make you gain 1 pound.

Not to turn this thread into a physics thread...but I think you are saying that you can't get more mass out of a substance by changing its form (energy either....but in this context mass).
It's like the pound of feathers and the pound of lead......they both weigh a pound.

Now this is where my confusion comes....you CAN get different amounts of energy out of two things weighing the same.....I think......one pound of fat and one pound of celery. So what we are saying is that in either case I would gain one pound immediately after eating either. But my body will metabolise and excrete the celery much quicker than the fat.....plus the fat will bind with water initially causing me to retain more water..and thus more weight, temporarily.
In neither case can I gain more than one pound once metabolised, but I will of course gain much more from the fat than the celery, all other things being equal.

I think I'm getting it.
Brent

I think you are there. It's like comparing the amount of energy in one pound of nitroglycerine to one pound of feathers, or one pound of plutonium versus one pound of lead.

One pound of fat has more energy than one pound of protein for example.

As for weight gain, it is that last pound of food that we are talking about -- the excess calories that are not burned off as energy or eliminated as waste. Plainly, it is better to eat one pound of protein or carbohydrate (forgetting the health arguments against eating one pound of protein for example) than it is to eat one pound of fat: there is simply more energy per gram in fat than in carbohydrate or protein.

As for digestion, I have read that it takes 3% energy to store/convert edible fat as/to body fat, but 23% energy to store/convert carbohydrate as/to body fat.

[icomefrombirmingham]

Yyyyyyuuup, that's what I wrote.

[PaulS]

... what happens when we eat one pound of oil (4086 calories)?

Probably some temporary weight loss, sometime in the next 12 hours.

[icomefrombirmingham]

... what happens when we eat one pound of oil (4086 calories)?

Probably some temporary weight loss, sometime in the next 12 hours.

Teeheeheehee!