ok i love my dad but i have to disagree with him on this one...we went out to dinner on fathers day and i ofcourse i was complaining i ate too much and probably gained weight... well that is when he said you cant gain a pound because you didnt eat a pound of food...well i disagree i have gained weight from eating less then a pound of food...he said it is impossible (Jack maybe you know the true physics of this)anyone know this to be a true fact? i dont think so!!

How many calories you consume is what determines whether or not you gain or lose weight. If you ate a pound of lettuce, it would have far less of an effect on weight gain/loss than if you ate a pound of chocolate. 1 pound of weight gain or loss is equivalent to 3500 calories. Everyone burns a certain amount of calories by just existing and this amount is different for each individual and depends on many factors. The more you exercise the more you burn. Let's say that you burn 1000 calories by just existing (no additional exercise, movement, etc.) and you eat 4500 calories in a day, scientifically speaking you should gain 1 pound... but there are other factors that also play into how much you might gain/lose... if you are retaining Water, you may find that even though you didn't consume enough calories to gain a pound, it may still happen.

All in all, gaining a pound has nothing to do with eating a pound of food. You win this one over dear old dad.

Have a good day.

Sure you can. You have to eat an extra 3500 calories to gain a pound. It all depends on the type of food. A pound of carrots doesn't have many calories compared to a pound of butter.

He's right in the sense that you probably didn't eat 3500 calories worth of food at one sitting. That doesn't equal a pound in weight of food, but a pound in caloric worth I guess you could say.

You have to eat an extra 3500 calories to gain a pound.

Absolutely!

If I ate a pound of See's Candy over a pound of Veggies, you better believe I would gain wieght.

It's physically impossible to gain more in fat or muscle than the weight by volume of the food you consumed.

However, Water throws everything off. Depending on what you ate, your body may retain Fluid temporarily to digest it, causing you to appear to gain more than the weight of the food you ate.

My head is spinning Jack LOL:confused:

Jack you are just too smart!

f you don't eat anything, eat day you will weigh less...

...and if you don't drink anything, you will become incoherent, shrill, irrational and cranky...just like my ex-wife....HAR!

I don't think we have an easy way to measure 'fluid' weight that fluctuates widely...depending on the source, we absolutely NEED ~2-4L /day to maintain essentially normal cellular functioning...which is cycled out via kidney, lung and skin function...and MUST be replaced...

If for this discussion only, we assign 'normal weight' of 5# to a gallon of Water (it's closer to 7 as I recall) then each L weight a bit over a pound...

so if we DRINK a liter of water, have we gained a pound?

but if we take as little as 2T table salt, we retain more water, our body adjusts due to changes in concentration of electrolytic needs, and we 'gain' weight....along with increased Fluid volume in our circulatory system, our blood pressure raises somewhat...our ankles swell, our interstitial spaces may become swollen, our belt gets tighter, perhaps the fluid pressure in our eye increases, our blood sugar concentration changes, etc etc...

If we are SHORT of water, kidney function slows, urine output decreases along with perspiration, but the water vapor in our exhaled breathe remains pretty constant...still, as we dehydrate do we 'loose' a few pounds?

I don't think this is what we normally consider, yet we do fluctuate daily according to water retention....

If we eat enuff calories to 'gain' a pound of fat, we actually grow additional circulatory tubes filled with...yes...FLUID...which weighs additional amount depending on volume....

so that pound of fat generates additional weight along with the fat itself.

The pound of lean muscle we'd all rather gain, still is a pound, yet there is more vascularity and more fluid, if I recall my Guyton's Physiology properly, thereby giving cause for 'muscle weighing more' than fat...

There are other factors than calories that make our weight fluctuate. The way I see it, intake of 1000 calories can not itself make us gain that pound...but depending on other factors, we can gain additional fluids that adds that pound...if we have a salty fatty meal and then drink fluids...yes, we will increase our weight...temporaryily...it doesn't stick until we repeat that action enuff for it to become a 'bad habit' and the Chocholit Jones is upon us...or the chips Ahoy Fever, etc...

I don't know if this answers anything. In fact, it may simply reposition us to appreciate we are still confused, but at a higher state and with greater appreciation of those unknown and unmeasureable factors that obsfucate what we want to be a simple answer...

Huh???

MIchelle You crack me up. "HUH?" LOLOLOL I was thinking the same thing.

UM Jack in laymens terms please.

Jack's answer was quite concise.

I'm off percacets

Okay I am going to try and translate Jack a bit! I just looked up the calories in butter and shortening...and we will assume that those have the highest calories out there. If you ate one pound of butter and immediately stepped on the scale...you would have gained 1 pound. Hopefully we can all see that. If you eat 1 pound of anything the scale will show an increase of 1 pound. However, that does not mean that it will turn into 1 pound of fat. Now 1 pound of butter has 3250 calories. Now that is just 250 calories shy of causing you to gain 1 pound of fat. I am assuming that you didn't eat 1 pound of butter! So to summarize.

1. Our bodies need calories just to exist (this is your basal metabolic rate...the amount of calories needed to do daily functions)

2. Our bodies burn calories when we move (exercise)

3. If we eat 3500 calorie OVER what we have just burned up in #1 and #2 we will gain 1 pound of fat.

4. If you weight 205 pounds... eat 1 pound of food....step on the scale ...it will register 206 pounds. But that does not mean that you gained 1 pound of fat...which is all we should be concerned with. Heck if you put on a very heavy sweater and then step on the scale you will have gained a pound or two...but do we care about that? NO!

So both you and your dad are correct. If you eat 1 pound of food the scale will show an increase in weight because it can not tell the difference between 1 pound of food and a 1 pound sweater! However, once the food is digested and you have burned off the calories that 1 pound will go away.

On the other hand if you eat 1 pound of butter and then go to sleep that pound may not go away because you MAY have not burned off enough calories to compensate for the additional calories.

I guess long story short...don't eat 1 pound of butter!

So many people misunderstand the difference between what your body weighs, and how much body fat you have.

Yes, if you eat a pound of food, and set on the scales, you will likely be one pound heavier. If you drink a litre of water you will be 1 kilo heavier - but that is transient weight - in and out of your body.

The only way you can gain a pound of body fat is to eat 3500 calories more than you use.