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A pound of body fat equates to approximately 3500 calories. So if you have a calorie deficit of 500 calories (meaning that you burn 500 calories more than you eat each day) you would lose approximately one pound per week:

500 calories x 7 days = 3,500 calories per week

It's easy to see that a calorie deficit of 1000 calories would mean that you'd lose approximately two pounds per week. And that's a good number to remember, because two pounds a week is commonly accepted as the maximum rate of weight loss that is healthy. Losing weight too quickly has other disadvantages, too, and we'll be discussing this in the next topic.

Body Fat vs. Nutritional Fat

It is commonly said that a gram of fat contains 9 calories. But there are 454 grams in a pound:

9 calories x 454 grams = 4086 calories, not 3500

The reason for the discrepancy is that body fat, or adipose tissue, contains not only fat, but also other substances including protein, connective tissue, and water. The dietary fat referred to in the nutritional analysis of food is pure.

Let's look at it another way:

3,500 calories divided by 454 calories = 7.7 calories

A gram of body fat contains only 7.7 calories versus the 9 calories found in pure fat. It's easy to see that there should be a difference when you consider that body fat contains water, which has no calories.

Because of the differences in the two types of fat, we need to use the 3,500 calories per pound figure when discussing fat "burned" by activity, and the 9 calories per gram figure when discussing the nutritional content of food.

For more about your personal activities and potential calorie burning capabilities check out this online Calorie Calculator