How Did You Gain Weight?
As an adult male, your life used to be fairly active where your
body used up about 2000 Calories per day to do all its necessary
processes and another 200 Calories per day to power some exercises,
for a total of 2,200 Calories of food energy used each day.
During that day, you ate an assortment of food which contained
a total of about 2,200 Calories of food energy.
But then you SLIGHTLY INCREASED the amount of food energy you ate, up to
2,300 Calories per day. You didn't notice that small difference.
But now your body was taking in 2,300 Calories and only using up 2,200
Calories. The result is that you were adding 100 Calories of food energy
each day. It turns out that about 3,600 Calories of food energy becomes
one pound of human bodyfat. So, after you had added that 100 Calories
per day on each of 36 days in a row, you added one pound of bodyfat
to your body. In a year of this minor change, you will have
added enough food energy to become TEN POUNDS of bodyfat! In five
years, you would have gained 50 pounds, and never even realized why.
There is a second way this can happen. Say that you no longer exercised
as much as you used to. Maybe more TV or computer games. But instead
of burning up 200 Calories each day for exercise, that now drops to
100 Calories per day. So now you are still eating the original
2,200 Calories of food energy each day, but now you are only using
up 2,000 for Metabolism plus 100 for exercise, or 2,100 Calories each
day. The result is like before, where you would be gaining about
100 Calories of food energy every day. Again, after 36 days of that, your
body will have gained one pound of bodyfat. After a year, the gain would
be about 10 pounds.
How can you keep track of this? Nearly everyone thinks that using a
bathroom scale will do it. No it won't! If you ate an extra
hundred Calories of food content each day, that only creates about
1/36 pound of bodyfat! After 36 days, you would only notice having
gained ONE pound of bodyweight! The same effect is true if you
either went on a careful diet of 100 Calories LESS than usual (EVERY
day!) or did significant exercise workouts where you were able to
burn up that 100 Calories or 1/36 pound of body fat. In both cases,
a bathroom scale is not nearly accurate enough!
(There ARE exceptions to the common result of a good workout burning
off 100 or 200 Calories!
Researchers in Antarctica generally need to eat around 6,000 Calories
each day to maintain their body weight because their bodies radiate
immense amounts of heat due to the constant sub-zero temperatures.
Olympic-level athletes need to eat impressive amounts of Calories
each day. I understand that Michael Phelps, the swimmer with many
Olympic Gold Medals, needs to eat around 12,000 Calories every
day, which is partly due to constant physical exertion but is also
partly due to his body having to radiate and conduct large
amounts of heat to the cool water which he is nearly always in.
When professional football players retire, many continue to
eat the large quantities of food that they had to eat during their
career, and they often rapidly gain huge amounts of weight, which they
then have great difficulty getting rid of.)
There are cheap and silly devices which are sold which claim to be
able to monitor bodyfat content. The two most common are Bodyfat
Calipers and devices which measure the electrical resistance of your
body. Both can give you numbers that can make you feel happy, but the
fact that both are commonly WRONG by up to 15% of bodyfat, they
become useless. If you get a reading from such a device that says you
are at 20% bodyfat (a healthy number) the reality could be either
that you are actually at 35% (morbidly obese) or 5% (which few
professional athletes can accomplish).
However, there IS a way to accurately measure bodyfat content. The
one that is most proven is called Hydrostatic Weighing. Unfortunately,
the process is complicated, taking close to an hour to do, expensive,
commonly $35 each measurement, and potentially dangerous! We developed
a far simpler, quicker (one or two minutes), cheap (generally free),
and without any danger at all! It is even fun and competitive for
kids, and we think it might aid in correcting the National childhood
obesity epidemic. It is described at
Accurate and Easy Bodyfat Determination
Bodyfat Analysis Weights - Pepsi Bottles and Pennies
Bodyfat Percentage - Determining Accurate Bodyfat Easily An Automatic Calculator for the above system
Bodyfat - Combating Childhood Obesity Through Motivation
This presentation was first placed on the Internet in February 2010.
Other Health-Related Web-Pages in this Domain
Do you want to lose some weight RIGHT NOW?
Bodyfat, Weight Loss, the Physics of Body Weight Control
How Did You Gain Weight?
Bodyfat - Accurate and Easy Determination
Bodyfat - Combating Childhood Obesity Through Motivation
Bodyfat - Simple and Accurate Measurement - PSA Storyline
Bodyfat Percentage - Determining Accurate Bodyfat Easily
Dieting for Weight Loss - The Physics
Medical Anesthesia Can be Much Safer
Pure Water Supply for Third World Villages
Pure Desalinated Seawater for Third World Villages
Safe Drinking Water for a Third World Village
Calf Muscle Strength Development
Common Cold, Value, Importance, Cure
Muscle Cramp Warning?
World Hunger - A Unique New Solution
Horses Sleep in Two Completely Different Ways
Human Being - Thermal Efficiency - the Physics Scientific Analysis
Lumbar Lower-Back Support Device
Burger Promotion For Charity - Taste Buds in the Mouth
Diet Food, Lower-Calorie Aerated Foods
Diet Method, Intermittent Eating Diet
Dieting Method - Maybe an Odd Approach
Dieting - A Physicist's Weight Loss System A Sleeping Weight Loss System!
Sports Situations - Physics Analysis
Brain Research From Sleeping Dolphins
Human Brain Functionality Our Brains and Artificial Intelligence
Bodyfat Analysis - 20-Compartment Percentage Formula
Improving Bad Heartburn, GERD, Reflux
Tobacco Negotiations Concerns The Tobacco, Cigarette Industry (1995)
Tobacco Negotiations - Update (2001)
Blue Streak Optical Phenomenon A Strange Visual Sensation
ESP, Extra-Sensory Perception. A Possible Mechanism
Exhilaration, Happiness, Vacations, Thrill Seekers
Déjà vu and other Unusual Phenomena - Deja vu
Suggestibility
Conflict Resolution - A Unique New Approach
Learning Right And Wrong
GMO - Genetically Modifying Foods - The Physics, the Safety
Life Choices - Practical Discussion for Teens
Bodyfat - Modifying your Breathing (Respiration) May Reduce Your Bodyfat
IQ Test - Possibly a More Accurate Approach
A Partial Explanation of the Obesity Epidemic
This page - -
- - is at
This subject presentation was last updated on - -
Link to the Public Services Home Page
index.html
Link to the Public Services Main Menu
index.html
E-mail to:
cj@mb-soft.com
Carl W. Johnson, Theoretical Physicist, Physics Degree from Univ of Chicago