Energy balance
Energy balance is the difference between the calories you take in from food and drink and the calories your body spends over the same period; a negative balance means fat loss, a positive one means gain.
Energy balance is the accounting identity underneath every diet that has ever worked. Eat less energy than you spend and the shortfall comes out of stored fuel, most of it body fat. Eat more and the surplus is stored. Nothing about a food's source, timing or reputation exempts it from that arithmetic.
What makes it harder than it sounds
Both sides of the equation move, and neither is a fixed number you can look up.
The intake side is under-reported by most people, usually by a fifth or more, and not on purpose: cooking oil, sauces, the milk in tea and the bites taken while cooking are the usual leaks. The expenditure side is not a constant either. It falls a little as you get lighter, because a smaller body costs less to move, and it falls further because people unconsciously fidget and walk less when they are eating less.
Why it still matters if the numbers are approximate
You do not need the true value. You need a number that is wrong by the same amount every week, so the change in your weight tells you which direction to adjust. That is the whole job of a food log: consistency, not precision.
Energy balance describes the direction. It does not describe how you will feel, how much muscle you keep, or whether you can stick with it — which is why protein, sleep and training get their own pages.
स्रोत
- 1.Weight management — NIDDK, National Institutes of Health
- 2.Body Weight Planner — NIDDK, National Institutes of Health
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