I get that food/calories don’t have the same effect on everyone.
For me, its a lot easier to gain than to lose weight.
It’s very easy to overeat. In fact, I suspect the energy partition hypothesis is correct and even small amounts of simple carbohydrates make me gain weight fast.
Nothing new here.
But I was thinking:
What is the relationship between gaining and losing weight?
What is the ratio? Linear to sublinear or worse. Is it 1:0.8 or 1:0.5, probably.
Meaning, for a given target number of calories (e.g. 2000) and a fixed calorie surplus or deficit (e.g. 500), I will gain more than I lose in a fixed interval (e.g. 1 month) and the ratio of gain to lose is 1 unit increase to about 0.7 units decrease.
That is really clumsy. Let’s see if an LLM can clean up the description.
Grok3:
In the scenario, assume a person with a maintenance Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) of 2,000 calories consumes a 500-calorie daily surplus (2,500 calories/day) or a 500-calorie daily deficit (1,500 calories/day) for 12 weeks. A 500-calorie surplus leads to linear weight gain of approximately 5.45 kg (0.454 kg/week, as 3,500 calories/week ≈ 0.454 kg fat). Conversely, a 500-calorie deficit results in sub-linear weight loss of about 4.0 kg (0.454 kg/week for weeks 1–4, then 0.273 kg/week for weeks 5–12 due to a 10% TDEE reduction from metabolic adaptation). The ratio of gain to loss is ~1 : 0.735, meaning for every 1 kg gained in a surplus, only ~0.735 kg is lost in an equivalent deficit over the same time.
Okay, so grok reckons the ration is 1:0.735.
That this hypothetical human with a 500 calorie surplus would gain 5.45 kg in month and with a 500 calorie deficit would lose 4.0 kg.
And: 4.0/5.45 = 0.733
This is all best case. E.g. sticking to the surplus/deficit. In reality, there are massive swings because we’re not robots and live in a dynamic world.
And this assumes a fixed ratio. It’s probably not. Gainers gain faster (fat mass taking precedence for new calories or something) would be my guess and losers lose slower (diminishing returns or something).
LLMs always agree with me, which means it’s probably wrong, but here’s an updated scenario:
In a 12-week scenario with a 2,000-calorie daily maintenance TDEE, a 500-calorie surplus (2,500 calories/day) leads to slightly super-linear weight gain of ~5.7 kg, as the effective surplus grows due to a modest TDEE increase from added body mass. Conversely, a 500-calorie deficit (1,500 calories/day) results in sub-linear weight loss of ~3.64 kg, with the rate slowing over time (from 0.454 kg/week to 0.182 kg/week) due to progressive metabolic adaptation reducing TDEE (e.g., from 2,000 to 1,700 calories). This creates a non-fixed ratio of ~1 : 0.638, where weight loss is only 63.8% of weight gain, reflecting the body’s efficient fat storage and increasing resistance to fat loss over time.
It feels like 1:05 in practice, e.g. twice as long to lose than to gain, at least for me.
This is all to remind myself that in practice it is way easier to gain to lose and that it will take twice as long to get back down to a preferred weight than it did to increase to a less preferred higher weight.
Stay focused.