We have all heard the weight gain formula: 3500 calories that are not burned off will add 1 pound of fat tissue. So if that’s the case 1 extra cookie that has 60 calories, when consumed daily, will add 0.5 pounds monthly or 6 lbs a year. Now let’s say you eat that cookie daily for a decade….does that mean you will gain 26 lbs, or if you eat it for 4 decades, you will gain more than a hundred pounds? Add to this the distressing fact that our basal body metabolism decreases by about 5% each decade…By now that cookie could make us look like sumo wrestlers before we get to take advantage of Medicare! (The last phrase is not meant to be an ad for Medicare Advantage.)

Well according to a very relevant commentary recently published in JAMA, this is not the cookie’s (nor you body’s) destiny. Weight gain does occur when your caloric intake increases above your energy expenditure, but it doesn’t continue indefinitely. The increased initial weight from that cookie requires more calories for maintenance. (It’s physics again, a heavier body needs more sustenance to stay heavy.) Eventually your weight will stabilize after several years of extra cookie consumption at approximately 6 lbs. But once you are in a steady weight state and you up your cookie consumption to 2 extra cookies, the process will begin over again.

The author of the JAMA commentary brought up some additional weighty information. If a young adult woman adds 1 oz of a sugar sweetened beverage and walks 1 minute less a day, she will have a temporary caloric excess of about 13 calories, leading to a weight gain of 1.4 lbs in one year. If she repeats nutritional and exercise changes of this nature on an annual basis for 28 years she will have a 370 calorie energy gap and a 35 lb weight gain. And she will not be alone in her caloric overage. The estimate is that the average per capita energy intake in the U.S.A since the 1970’s has increased by up to 500 calories. Our readily available food supply and mass encouragement to eat more and sweeter (for less money) has worked and contributed to our ever increasing girth. Obesity will overtake cancer as a cause of premature death! Future health care will have to start with food care, but now I digress.

Here come the “I am going on a diet or at least not eating that cookie” facts. As you loose some of that fat from your body, you also need less fuel to maintain that loss. Your weight recalibrates at a new steady state. Your body also “misses” some of that weight and strives to conserve whatever calories you do consume. So to continue to loose weight you have to further restrict your diet (much more than that cookie) and/ or really increase your energy output (i.e. exercise). Walking one mile a day expends just an additional 60 calories when compared to resting; the minimum to make up for that cookie. But to lose more you have to do more, and consume less. Unfortunately you can’t just rest on early weight loss laurels and resume your old diet and restricted physical routine. If you do the weight you lost will just come back. That New Year resolution has to be one that goes on and on and on…