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Comment by icu | Hacker News Reader

Yes, 100%! No word of a lie.

At 7,500 calories per kg you would therefore lose 82,500 calories in one month to lose 11kg. Assuming a generous 31 day month this is 2,661 calories per day. Therefore the required caloric deficit for the day is larger than the total calorie intake meaning no calories would have to consumed to achieve this weight loss.

So how could this have been achieved? It could partly be inaccuracies in weighing, difference in body weight from food contents in digestive tract, water contents etc. The alternative is an increased energy expenditure which could partly account for it. Of note, generally consuming less than 1200 calories a day regularly is thought to be harmful on the basis that it is difficult to get minimum necessary nutrients in this time.

If I have made a mistake in my calculations, someone let me know.

This is assuming it's all fat. Guaranteed at least 30% of that was water weight and fat free mass, depending on whether he was weightlifting and how intensely.

I might have misunderstood what you meant, but it seems like you're saying his problem is that the required deficit to lose that amount of weight in that time is more than a typical daily intake?

If that's the case, it could just mean that his starting intake level was 2*(that deficit), for example. Lots of people just overeat. Apologies if that's not what you meant though.

Ah sorry, I think I see now. Do you mean that his baseline amount he uses every day is less than the deficit, so even if he consumed nothing, it still wouldn't be enough?

If they were eating 5,000 calories a day every day before starting the diet (without being a serious athlete), their starting BMI/weight would have been much higher.

I started measuring results 27/05/2019 when my weight was 104kg, BMI 29.43 (I think I started a day or two earlier). 03/06/2019 102kg. 25/06/2019 97kg. 28/06/2019 96kg. 08/07/2019 94kg. 26/08/2019 82kg.

I didn't measure myself at the same hour, and obviously, the measurement dates aren't spaced out equally. When I saw that this approach was working I stopped measuring all together.

Granted it might have taken slightly longer than 2 months to lose the 22kg, I don't really know, but I remember my weight stabilised so I wasn't worried about losing too much weight.

I calculated a similar deficit in another comment, although the "x calories in a kg/lb" number is just a guideline.

Any explanation involving water weight, digestive tract contents etc. would be nullified by the time period. It's not a week or two, it's two months.

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