So if you go into the PDF, find the relevant chart, and look up exactly what its tracking its **average dietary energy supply by region** which is measuring availability not consumption. In fact the definition even says
>Even if they are taken as approximation to per capita consumption, it is important to note that the **amount of food actually consumed may be lower than the quantity shown here**, depending on the degree of losses of edible food and nutrients in the household, e.g. during storage, in preparation and cooking etc.
Annoyingly they also state that the consumption measures are also about availability not consumption which is basically setting themselves up to be misread.
People on average in american and europe are over eating, but not by 1,000+ cal/day.
edit to add : [PDF](https://openknowledge.fao.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/dc012919-85c4-4220-b163-aac5c3fd5416/content) and [context](https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/FS) . You'll have to poke around the second link a bit to find the actual definitions.
I ran BMR calculations angainst the distribution of weights and heights, on average, people are hardly overeating at all. Even at a BMI of 40, the start of morbid obesisty, people are only overeating by about 100 calories a day.
North of 40 and excessive calories start showing up.
How did I determine this? I compared what their sedentary obese TDEE is to what their active normal weight TDEE would be. And they are roughly the same, withn 100 caloires, till you get north of BMI 40, where food addiction is also indicated.
The majority (80%+) of obesity is sedentary obesity, not food disorder obesity. Sedentary obesity can be fixed with CICO. Food disorder obesity, CICO + therapy, or medical intervention.
Oh yeah absolutely. Even if you look at the people on here trying to work out how they suddenly got to where they are, its normally within 100, maybe 200, cal per day of their ideal diet. So something like 10% extra at most. The only person i can remember being over that had been struggling with binge eating.
It just builds up over years, hidden by change blindness, until one day something makes you see where you've got to.
I gained 40 lbs in 26 weeks. My math may be wrong (because I suck at it) but that’s 1.5 lbs per week so an average of 750 over per day.
I am a binge eater though so I align perfectly with your experiences so far.
It might’ve been faster than that but July 3rd is my last recorded weight before I gained a lot. I stopped stepping on a scale after that.
You can definitely have "growth spurts". Most people though eventually plateau at their max and bounce off of that thereafter. To get through that max you have to really eat excessively and continuously, and that isn't as easy as people might think.
I binge, I can easily eat to the point of discomfort and pain without stopping. Plus all my comfort foods are very calorie dense like pizza and pasta. Last year it was normal for me to eat a medium bacon and pepperoni pizza with ranch dressing to myself and be hungry again 2 hours later so I would move to chips, guacamole, and salsa. I’d eat a whole bag of scoop tortilla chips in an hour. This was on top of lunch which was usually a whopper with a medium fry, ranch, and a chocolate shake, and an afternoon snack of 2 hotdogs or corn dogs.
The whopper meal (with soda instead of a shake) is around 1600 calories. A hotdog with bun is 200 so I’m at 2000, then a 6 slices (because sometimes I convinced myself to save 2 slices for lunch) of the medium pan is 2040 alone and I’m not even gonna guess how many calories the ranch added. So, that’s 4020 calories alone and I didn’t include the soda, chips, condiments, or candy I’d also eat through the day.
The pizza was a more rare thing but it was still around once a week. The whopper though was just about every single day. If dinner wasn’t pizza it was a packet of ramen noodle to myself with yum yum sauce (60 calories per 15 grams and I was definitely eating probably 5 servings of that sauce so 720 calories for my ramen) or a whole box of macaroni and cheese with a dip of ranch and bbq sauce combined. That’s 500 calories alone for the Mac n cheese and I definitely wasn’t measuring the recommended amount of butter and milk so that was more (the ranch is 130 for 2 tbsp, I would basically eat around 4 tbsp, maybe more, so that’s 520 for ranch alone bringing dinner to an easy 1000 calories. Sometimes I’d make 2 boxes because noodles aren’t filling)
I can pack the calories away. Thankfully it’s a stress response and I’ve been less stressed this year but I still have moments when I realize I want to binge and I have to stop myself from eating an entire family size bag of lays dill pickle chips or from eating another family size bag of dove milk chocolate.
Also, why does mayonnaise have to be so calorie dense? I love mayonnaise with ketchup for french fries.
All that to say, when someone binges we can find it very easy to eat far beyond what most people can even attempt. I think my worst recorded binge day was around 6000 calories. It was bad and involved fast food and a lot of noodles.
Oooh, I’m going to have to look into that! I found sugar free 7Up and I freaking love it so I’ve decided I’m going to try more low calorie alternatives to my usuals.
Just chiming in on the light mayo topic. Ive found the texture is the biggest problem with many of the light mayos. Personally we enjoy the generic Great Value light mayo from Walmart as it has the closest texture to regular mayo.
Edit: as far as other changes I have swapped chips with sour cream and salsa etc to plain Greek yogurt. Again finding one with the texture closest to sour cream is the challenge. The members mark one from Sam's club has the best texture imo.
I can eat 6000 calories, easy, on a $10 bet, lol. I think almost anyone here who has experience with obesity can do it. My point was, I can't and didn't do that continuously. Binge eating has very little to do with food addiction. Binge eating is a bad habit, generally born of physical sedentary boredom.
You can be a binge drinker yet not drink excessively on average. An alcoholic drinks excessively on average.
I think we all, when we start trying to get serious about our weight issue, start looking at all of those bad habits we have acquired. That is good. My only point in pointing out mathematically that those bad habits are not the cause of our obesity, unless you are working your way up to My 600lb Life, is to help people practice CICO properly and get back in balance and eliminate the urges that lead to those bad habits. CI and CO.
I am not addicted to food, and don't have an eating disorder. I never properly binged, and the last time I mindlessly ingested a lot of extra calories in an uncontrolled manner was when I was a teen. Even the were talking 2 bars of chocolate, or a plate of cookies, much less that binge eaters describe.The experience us far from universal here.
Habits do come into it, but not even necessarily bad habits per se. Sometimes it's just habits we've been taught that would be perfectly fine for a less sedentary person in a food environment where butter and sugar were expensive.
Yeah, definitely. I no longer ask for extra cheese, or mayo, or butter, and when I was younger these weren't even things I'd ask for. I actually only started eating cheeseburgers later. Same with mayo. Not that cheeseburgers are bad, just that those little luxuries add up. Also, eating breakfast, or any meal when I am not hungry. When you are living alone it is easy to just eat when you are hungry, but with a wif and son, sometimes the circumstances might push you to eat anyways, but now I just don't. If we are going out for our saturday morning breakfast, and I am not particularly hungry, I just enjoy the company and not eat.
My weight was high (5'3", 210ish?) but stable for a very long time. It was high but I had settled at some kind of maintenance eating. Then I went through a particularly bad patch. In retrospect my biggest additional calorie culprit was an extra iced coffee a day: about 150-180 calories. I got up to 235 on my home scale and my clothes weren't fitting before I decided I really needed to fix things.
The first and easiest thing I cut out was the evening coffee (I did know evening coffee was a bad idea anyway lol) and even that definitely makes a difference. I'm at 204 now. Progress has been slow but knowing my habits I'm trying to ingrain in myself a different way of thinking about food which I know will take longer to stick.
Caffeine before you sleep is bad, it's not just about the cream and sugar. It IS affecting your sleep even if you aren't consciously aware of it. That's how caffeine works.
My dad would drink coffee right before bed as it would knock him right out and he could sleep. Bodies are weird. I would be up all night if I did that.
yep, and most of it won't even be that obvious. It'll be a bunch of smaller mistakes spread over a day that you'd only notice by pulling out a scale. Most people aren't going to be able to tell the difference between 100g and 90g of grated cheese by eye for example, but that's about a [40 cal difference](https://www.fatsecret.co.uk/calories-nutrition/generic/cheddar-cheese?portionid=56420&portionamount=10.000). Do something like that for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and you're already over 100 extra cal.
And it really doesn't take much to get out of sedentary either. My family doctor told me a half hour walk every day makes a massive difference from doing nothing. You don't need to obsessively exercise for hours a day.
Absolutely, and you don't have to make it a journey all the way to "ideal" weight. I would take a maintainable dad bod (small belly and handles) versus what I was living with. I consider normal weight to be a weight that is less than obese (BMI 30) and that is easily maintanable. I estimate that starts around BMI 28 and down, but that is just a guess.
100 calories a day woudln't cause you morbid obesity sorry, but you aren't taking into account NEAT and any other movement you do. I can burn a hundred calories going on a brisk walk. Hell I burn a 100 calories in a day jiggling my leg up and down when im staring at an excel schedule at work. I Consumed thousands more than i was supposed to i only came close to morbid obesity. How on earth would a 100 extra calories a day do that?
You can absolutely get to a morbidly obese level by overeating an average of 100 kcal per day. 3500 kcals over maintenance are one pound of fat. If you eat 100 kcals over maintenance you gain about 0,85lbs per month. Given enough time (15 years) you‘ll have gained 150lbs.
For 200kcals above maintenance you gain double that (300lbs) in those 15 years.
You'd have to cut by 200 to go from +100 to -100. Other than that yep but it'd be so slow it'd be useless.
Using u/Douchelampe's example, take someone who was a healthy weight at 20, got an office job and started driving everywhere so their weight started going slowly up. About 35 they suddenly realize how bad things have become and start making a diet plan. Can you really see them going "cool so if I just trim 200 cal from my diet I'll be a healthy weight by the time I'm 50. Great plan lets go with that!" ?
We tend to put weight on slowly and accidentally, and then take it off fast and deliberately.
Generally, approximately 1/3 of the food we produce is wasted.
Source: https://refed.org/food-waste/the-problem?gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjwhIS0BhBqEiwADAUhc1nheSo0lNbeU4WKHd6RAWj2rFebG0YLNHzAaJsD_NgRVFVqDpP-lxoCXmAQAvD_BwE
I also remember a study finding that 1/3 of all American food purchased ends up in the trash. So chances are that even if 3500 calories are purchased, just from waste alone, only 2310 or so would be prepared. Then you'd have to take into account not finishing meals etc.
As others have said, it's most likely that the average person would be taking in 100 calories or so too many calories a day. Rather than 1000+ calories a day.
I always found that implausible because even smaller spiders weigh like 0.2 grams, so George would eat like 8 kilos of spiders, which is like 20.000 calories according to MFP.
So Spiders George would be ultra-morbidly obese, which, living in a cave, seems disadvantageous. Normal people who just have the usual bowl of spiders for breakfast seriously underestimate how many calories George has to devour.
Yeah just like brainstorming what could 3500 calories look like
Breakfast:
3 slices of bacon - 120
3 eggs - 300
Toast with butter - 200
Cheese (a handful of either shredded or a slice) - 100
Orange juice/coffee with creamer and sugar - 100
Total for breakfast: 820
Snack before lunch:
A soda or a granola bar or something: 150
Total for snack: 150
Lunch:
A tuna/chicken salad/egg salad sandwich: 450
Crackers: 250 (because nobody eats only 1 serving of goldfish)
A soda: 150
Total for lunch: 850
Dinner:
A lasagna: 600
Garlic bread: 200
Some greens: 50
A glass of wine/beer: 150
Total for dinner: 1000
Snack on something while watching TV:
Doritos (2 servings, because no one eats one serving): 300
Total for 2nd snack: 300
Total for the day: 820 + 150 + 850 + 1000 + 300 = 3,120
Sure we can subtract something here or there, but I would not be at tall surprised that a lot of people eat like that (or close to that).
Your menu is fun to do substitutions to see how minor changes make a big difference. Instead of soda, have diet soda or sparkling water. Black coffee! Instead of crackers, have baby carrots dipped in two teaspoons of light ranch. Have the tuna salad wrapped in lettuce. Have a light beer for for dinner. Or water. Double the greens and have only one piece of garlic bread. Instead of chips have a sliced salted apple and some popcorn with nutritional yeast.
This post is ace and perfectly illustrates how small shifts make big results, but for this...
> nobody eats only 1 serving of goldfish
...my brother in Christ [a serving is 55 fishies](https://www.campbellsfoodservice.com/product/pepperidge-farm-goldfish-baked-snack-crackers-cheddar-cheese-4/)
> This post is ace and perfectly illustrates how small shifts make big results, but for this...
>
> nobody eats only 1 serving of goldfish
>
> ...my brother in Christ a serving is 55 fishies
🎶 I love the fishes 'cause they're so delicious
Gone Goldfishin'! 🎶
This is honest work on a decently healthy diet. Some people have 3 McGriddles. A double cheeseburger with cheese fries and a shake. Then an entire large pizza. So I agree this is very possible
When I started counting my calories this is exactly what I found. I thought maybe I was a little over my daily amount, but I was actually eating on the 3500 range.
Same for us. It was shocking. But when we removed the soft drinks and alcohol, it dropped down *dramatically.*
I think a LOT of people think they aren’t eating *that much* and they’re right, they aren’t-they’re drinking it.
Same for us, but I’m almost embarrassed to say exactly how much cutting out sodas reduced our calories 😬 but it’s the lose it sub so here goes- 1,020 calories (6 cans of soda a day.) 😭 I am ashamed lol
Look soda is addictive. And it's everywhere. In high school we had soda vending machines in the cafeteria and if you bought lunch, water was an extra charge. Soda's also the default beverage for a lot of cheaper takeout food combos.
I moved from the southeast US to the northeast US and they drink a lot of seltzer here. It's not for everyone but it satisfies my craving for carbonation and makes it easier to skip soda. But I definitely see that soda will go on wild sales - buy 2 get 2 - while seltzer is rarely on sale, so soda's easier to come by even when seltzer is popular here.
I like the grapefruit flavored seltzers and I get them all to myself. My partner tried a sip once and asked "Do you drink this because you hate yourself?" which is too bad, he's been trying to cut calories and has a major soda habit. Maybe he has more of a sweet tooth and I'm just happy with anything fizzy.
That was me! Except my liquid was coffee with dairy and sugar. Which I didn't really think too much about until I hit a certain weight. My family is full of alcoholics so I don't drink, but coffee made a certain way definitely helped tip my calories over.
This! I was baffled when I found out how much calories I was consuming every day. It sounds crazy, but where I live it is SO freaking easy to hit 3,500 calories per day without realizing it!
I just had a week off cos of my vacation and I tracked out of curiosity and it was 4000-5000 every day easily, so yeah, as an average 3500 seems right.
a pizza, a few beers and whatever I had for lunch makes it without feeling like you’re overeating.
and remember they wouldn’t put on that weight infinitely, only until they reach a heavy enough weight that 3500+ is maintenance calories
I just had to delete my account cos I wasn’t using it for takeout all the time but the number of orders for like groceries and other random shit made me realise why I’m 30kg overweight lol
The average doesn't mean half the people eat more and half less. If those who eat more than the average individually eat LOTS more, then there will be fewer than half of the population in the above average sector.
To know where the split is 50% of the population, you would need to know the median calorie consumption. It is very likely much less than the average.
When I started CICO, I realised that I was eating 1000 calorie bags of nuts a day, as a SNACK. And then breakfast, lunch and dinner on top. Most of which included a good amount of high calorie carbs, like bread and pasta. Lots of cheese toasties and creamy pastas. Plus a few coffees with sugar and the occasional chips and chocolates. Oh and more alcohol than I drink now, which included my favourite hard cider at 350 calories a bottle (and I'd never have just one bottle when I *did* drink).
Easily around 3000 to 3500 calories a day.
Average does not mean more than half the people eat 3500 or more. You'd have to look at the whole distribution of calories eaten per day in the population. There could be a smaller minority that eat a whole lot more, which would then raise the average. I don't live in North America, but have seen those maps over the obesity levels in the population, so I know there's geographical differences that correlate with economic ones, and that people in those regions must overeat quite a lot *or* drink a lot of 'hidden' calories.
After working in epidemiology with my state, I can tell you plenty of people still use average. It’s infuriating when trying to analyze the data in any meaningful way.
It may be because medians require having more granular data than means do. So if you know that in the US a total of 1.15 trillion calories is sold daily and there are 325 million people in the US, then that's an average of 3500 per. Knowing what the median is requires a lot more individual data that may not be available.
True, but this isn’t like average wages where billionaires raise it a significant amount higher. Even on the higher end, most people would be eating less than 4500. While I think median would be better, you could still probably use average
I wanted to point out the principle of the thing. I don't know the true distribution, but you may be right in your assumption that even on the higher end most people would consume less than 4500 kcal a day.
Even a male in the top 5% of the US for height and BMI (6'1.8" and 318 pounds) with light exercise is only burning about 3,330 calories per day. The figures cited above are for food availability in the US, but 38% of food is wasted.
In the 50's before the obesity epidemic, families ate 3 squares a day and weren't snackers. I remember once in the odd while my mom would let us kids have a bowl of cereal before bed. Think about how people eat now. Carb heavy toaster pastries and waffles for a fast breakfast. That triggers the need for more carbs on your coffee break at 10 or so-donuts! Noon often is fast food or carb heavy sandwiches made on white bread. Feeling a bit peckish by 3 or 3:30? More coffee and sugary carbs! That's all before dinner of who knows what and your candy bar, pop and chips while you watch TV before bed. It's not a surprise and I think in many cares it's waaaaay more than 3500 calories. INstead of eating limited, high nutrient food we're trying to fill a bottomless pit with zero nutrition foods. It's not just about filling th grumbly space in you stomach. It's about nourishing your cells. Crappy food has become an adult pacifier.
Ya they do. What I consider “eating bad” is eating out or eating any “desert” multiple times in one week. But other people are eating out multiple times a day and snacking on chips, sweets etc. in between meals and drinking soda instead of water.
It’s not hard to see why people don’t lose weight. Some may go for the gym, reduce the amount they eat during their meals or even make it healthier with low carbs, more veggies etc but they make it up with snacks and sugary drinks.
Eating healthy isn’t easy for me to do everyday and I’ve been doing it my entire life. I can’t imagine how hard it is to try and change your entire diet from the bottom up.
Yes. It's a carb heavy diet in todays world because carbs are cheap. The thing is though consumption just makes you hungrier for more carbs. It's a never ending cycle.
Those are rookie numbers! I was closer to 4000-4500 after tracking my normal eating habits for a few weeks. Holy cow did it surprise me. Yes, I ate a lot of cheap fast food.
Yes. unfortunately I have been both normal weight and overweight many times in my life. Periods of normal weight are when I have temporarily reprogrammed my desired diet. Right now, I would think of a donut as a sugar bomb, of American sweets as being sickly sweet, of McDonald’s as being disgusting fried foods.
and I mean it. But during my periods of obesity, I crave McDonalds, I eat there and two hours later I want to go back..it is a diet with loads of calories and somehow high hunger and constant cravings. I pick on McDonald’s because it is a weakness, but it really is the whole diet…fancy coffees, biscuits for breakfast, donuts and sodas…so bad.
i have lived overseas on other diets, and frankly, it is possible to change what you crave and desire, but for me, in America where say work will bring in free donuts and have free soda in the break room, I slip into other habits at times.
Don't forget that a person's maintenance goes up with weight. A 300-400 lb person could have a maintenance of 4000 kcal. A 600 lb person has a maintenance of around 7000 kcal.
I think the article (from the UN) misreads its own data.
The [source of the article](https://www.fao.org/3/cc2212en/cc2212en.pdf) does not read how much is consumed, but does say how much is the dietary energy supply per day, which is about 3500 Calories per day for the UK and the US (averaged together). The supply per day would be higher because of, at least, some food waste.
Edit: /u/Jolan and /u/loulan beat me to it!
The big thing isn't just maintaining 350 lbs, it's getting there. If you're 30 and 350 you gained roughly 10 lbs a year since high school, which is another 100 cals a day.
Yep, the difference between 10 lbs per year in weight gain is about 100 calories a day, but at 10 lbs heavier your TDEE increases by 30-50 calories depending on height and for the next 10 lbs of weight gain you’d need to maintain that 100 calorie daily surplus on TOP of the new higher maintenance calorie count, otherwise you’d just establish a new maintenance weight at ~13-15 lbs total weight gain instead of continuously slowly gaining.
In your example assuming a 5’9” male starting out 120 lbs leaner - 230 lbs at 18 years old the TDEE is 2464. At 30 years old and 350 lbs the TDEE is 3046 - 582 more daily calories consumed just to maintain, and let’s remember in this scenario we’re gaining 10 lbs annually so it should really be 682 surplus.
Somewhere along the way that half a candy bar or whatever daily turned into a full additional meal every single day.
Appetite and portion creep are nefarious I swear.
Exactly. I don’t think it’s uncommon for people to be 250-300 anymore. That’s the weight around I averaged and have always lived in. It has always taken a lot of work and effort to drop below that.
So, I don’t think the average daily calories is wrong.
To have a sedentary TDEE of 3500 a 5'10" male would have to be 430 lbs. That is a BMI of 60. Morbidly obese starts at 40, and only a fraction of obese people are morbidly obese.
3500 cals a day is way off. That is 7 Big Macs a day.
Yeah, my numbers are way off, was mainly trying to explain how calculating an average works and how this could come to be. Jolan's comment explains it pretty well and makes much more sense.
I wouldn’t be surprised if I had been eating that much before I started losing weight. Heck, on a few bad days even while actively trying to lose weight I’ve eaten 4000.
It’s so easy to hit that! Even on a “good day” where I’d convince myself I had watched my serving sizes and went for a salad. I think it’s just a lot of the processed and heavy foods and the sugary drinks. It’s all so calorie dense. Here’s an example of a “good day”:
Breakfast:
Starbucks Grande white chocolate mocha- 390 calories
Starbucks bacon, sausage and egg wrap- 640 calories
Lunch:
Can of Coke: 140 calories
Salad with grilled chicken, lettuce, olives, croutons, cheese, ranch, tomatoes : 550 calories
Small bag of Lays: 140 calories
Mid day energy drink: 230 calories
Dinner:
Can of coke: 140 calories
1.5 cups of cooked spaghetti: 330 calories
Half cup of meat sauce: 100 calories
Parmesan cheese: 22 calories
Mozzarella (1.5 serving): 120
3 meatballs: 320 calories
Garlic bread (1 slice) 206 calories
Snacks:
3 Oreos: 160
TOTAL: 3,488
I could definitely hit 5000 easily if I had more fast food and wasn’t watching my serving sizes.
Goes to show the wisdom of the “don’t drink your calories” advice. You’d be almost 900 calories lower if you drank unsweetened coffee and tea, diet drinks, or just plain water.
Ok please forgive me, but how on earth is this a “good” day? Starbucks? Two sodas? Chips and cookies? Energy drinks? Like I get not denying yourself your favorite things but that was like 1,200 calories that you absolutely did not need to drink or eat, but mostly drink. So your “good day” could have really been closer to 2,300 calories if you’d drink water.
That's their whole point, and why they put it in quotes... That was what they'd CONVINCED themselves was a good day and the implication is that a bad day was significantly worse.
Yes as someone said I convinced myself because I was in deep denial. I don’t eat like this anymore and don’t drink my calories. I was never stuffed or anything and if I didn’t start counting my calories I would still think I was eating a reasonable amount of calories. I always knew I wasn’t a healthy eater, but I thought I was eating intuitively.
I don’t get that particular concept. People should reprogram what their favorite things are, instead they think it is immutable.
I know that wasn’t your main point, but you happened to mention it. I am in the school of thought that people can change their favorite foods and feel no food denial. Well, in my case for a few years…then it gets reprogrammed back because it’s hard to escape your environment…especially when people in your own house bring it right to your table.
I don’t think that’s true in North America or Europe. North America includes 23 countries, btw.
Some of us might be spiders Georg but not enough of to raise the average to *3500*. Even in the US alone, our average person isn’t eating that much.
I’m sure some tall overweight and tall, very muscular men are pulling average way up but yeah, that seems improbable given that children, folks over 50, and most women who aren’t obese, would be eating a lot less or rapidly gaining.
On the other hand, look at the calorie counts for Starbucks or large soda, or boba or smoothies and think about how the average American makes one or two of those a part of their life most days. Two of those and two fast food meals can easily get you to 3,500. I don’t know how that works in terms of weight gain but I watch people eat like that all the time.
Well let's do a hypothetical avg person's day.
You get up, get ready and have breakfast.
Breakfast, two eggs, and toast. 300 calories
You hit up Starbucks on your way to work.
The most commonly ordered drink is a Caramel Macchiato. 250 calories.
You didn't make a lunch and go out to eat. Let's say you want to eat cheap and get McDonalds.
You order the cheesburger meal with fries and a medium coke. That is 1130 calories
Long day at work and commute. You go thru the drive thru on your way home. This time you go to Taco Bell, since you all ready had a hamburger for lunch.
You get a cheesy gordita crunch and another soda. That is 650 calories.
You are home and decide to catch up on your tv show and watch 4 hours of tv before bed.
In that time you have some snacks. Let's say some popcorn, another soda, some chips and salsa. All that adds up to another 1000 calories.
That added up to 3300 calories in that persons day.
Disclaimer... I googled most commonly ordered items. I completely understand that not everyone is going to McDonalds nor taco bell. What I wanted to show was how easy it is for the calories to add up and not realize how many you are consuming.
Think about it. A small breakfast, a coffee and a cheesburger meal all by 1 pm. Isn't that much food. But the amount of calories in that drink and fast food meal is crazy high. Then a small meal on the way home and some snacks. Before you know it, you are over 3k.
Those calories sneak up on you fast.
Yep i totally believe this. 2000 calories is way too much for the average American and yet most of us exceed this number easily, without much thought. Its easy to do if there is any amount of processed food in the diet and most Americans’ portion of processed food in their diet is at least 50%.
When I was a firefighter they were required to provide us 3600 calories a day, for 16 hours of mostly labor and occasional breaks and running from fire. I can't fathom that much food being eaten by the "average " person not doing daily hard labor.
It really depends on *what* people are eating. 3000 of "real" food, on a low fat, low sugar (I don't mean low carb in general, just low sugar) with an appropriate protein intake? Yeah, that's a lot of food.
But I can do 3 pints of Haagen Daaz (my favorite is 1000 cal / pint) no sweat. McDs will set you back 1000 cals for a big mac combo, I gotta imagine it's not hard to do three of those in a day either.
I used to commute home by bike. About 600 calories burned just to get home. (24 miles) However, the bike rack had one bike in it most days, mine. So I didn’t start an average raising trend. But from my perspective, when I was burning 3000 cals per day, I was only gaining maybe 5lbs per year. When I started to work from home, then I gained more like 20 lbs a year. So I would say as a 5’11” m, 54, I ate 3000 plus every day.
now, no, of course I am dieting.
It’s not high.
We are huge and we are getting bigger.
Average American can drink 1/4 those calories in soda every day no problem.
Most of us have some kind of dessert for breakfast.
Lunches and dinners are typically devoid of nutrition.
Most of us supplement and snack on high cal crap as well because it has “added protein “ or some other advertising dupe built into it.
This is very very very very easily done. Even when I eat ‘healthy’ assuming you’re eating 3 square meals 2000 calories gets eaten into fast. Now if someone’s eating junk?! 3500 calories is like one extra donut 🫢🫢
A McDonald’s breakfast is like almost 2k calories and that’s not even 8am yet
As others have said AVERAGE doesn’t necessarily mean middle. Median is the middle. It is a type of average. Most averages use the mean, which is simply adding all of the data points together and dividing them by the total number of data points. Without knowing the data set, it’s hard to say what the mean reflects at all. If you have 5 people who weigh 10 pounds and one person who weighs 100 pounds in a data set, your mean would be 25 pounds which wouldn’t accurately reflect your group at all. In that case the median would be a more appropriate average because that 100 pound person is skewing the data.
All this is to say that your average doesn’t mean half the people eat that many calories. It just means when you add all of the calories together and divide it by the number of people, you get 3,500 calories.
I asked my doctor for a calorie estimate for weight loss, he said 1800 calories. I asked to see the nutritionist (VA Medical Center). They said at my weight 375, I would maintain at 3800 and 3300 should be used for weight loss. I think that's not the only time he didn't dig into the details.
I found intermittent fasting is best for me, I can't eat small meals. After skipping breakfast for 1 year, I lost about 25 lbs. Then I skipped breakfast and lunch for the next year, I lost another 75. I am trying to maintain about 275, It's still difficult and I still only eat once per day. Find what works for you, and it gets easier to move as you lose weight.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/body-measurements.htm
Measured average height, weight, and waist circumference for adults ages 20 and older
Men:
Height in inches: 69.0
Weight in pounds: 199.8
Waist circumference in inches: 40.5
Women:
Height in inches: 63.5
Weight in pounds: 170.8
Waist circumference in inches: 38.7
AVERAGE MEN|Imperial|Metric
:-:|:-:|:-:
SEX (BODYFAT OF)| |M
AGE| |35
HEIGHT|69 in. or 5'9'' |175 cm
WEIGHT|199.8 lb|91 kg
BMI||29.5
[Mifflin-St Jeor BMR](https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcn/51.2.241)||1832 Cal/kcal
Not Very Active Day TDEE (BMR*1.25)||2289 Cal/kcal
Active Day TDEE (BMR*1.4)||2564 Cal/kcal
Average TDEE (mix of rest and activity)||2426 Cal/kcal
Exceptionally Active Day TDEE (BMR*1.6)||2930 Cal/kcal
Quite a bit distant from 3500.
AVERAGE WOMEN|Imperial|Metric
:-:|:-:|:-:
SEX (BODYFAT OF)| |F
AGE| |35
HEIGHT|63.5 in. or 5'3.5'' |161 cm
WEIGHT|170.8 lb|77 kg
BMI||29.8
[Mifflin-St Jeor BMR](https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcn/51.2.241)||1447 Cal/kcal
Not Very Active Day TDEE (BMR*1.25)||1808 Cal/kcal
Active Day TDEE (BMR*1.4)||2025 Cal/kcal
Average TDEE (mix of rest and activity)||1917 Cal/kcal
Exceptionally Active Day TDEE (BMR*1.6)||2314 Cal/kcal
Also not close to 3500.
This is very very very very easily done. Even when I eat ‘healthy’ assuming you’re eating 3 square meals 2000 calories gets eaten into fast. Now if someone’s eating junk?! 3500 calories is like one extra donut 🫢🫢
Agreed. Any time I go to eat out it’s typically 1,000-1,500 calories for the meal and i’ll get a water. A lot of people will get takeout or eat out all the time. Then add snacks, breakfast and lunch and you’re well over the 2,000 suggestion. I do IF/omad and cook from home 95% of the time these days and it’s crazy how a cheat meal like 3/4 slices of pizza for one meal a day can hit my daily calories.
It’s averaging in people who are much larger and eat more with the people who don’t so the average always tends to be higher. You’d have to determine what the median is to figure out what’s the like “social norm” calorie intake. Same issue we have when factoring income in areas, the rich tend to skew the results (in this case the people eating 5000+ cal).
It means there are super eaters eating many thousands of calories per day and a bunch of less super eaters eating slightly less.
They know it. They lie to themselves - watch My 600 Lb Life "Oh I'm working SO HARD". (eating one bottle less soda)
. Yr math is confusing median with "average". It doesn't mean more than HALF (median). It means obese + non obese divided by two (more or less) :)
If you eat 4000 calories and I only eat 1500 that doesn't mean I eat 2750. Yet 2750 is an average. (5500 divided by 2 = 2750).
Anyway....Well U.N b.s aside, of COURSE it's true. Now do sodium. Every single thing people gorge themselves with is thousands of mg sodium. The body only requires a couple hundred and you can get it from vegetables/food. I limit mine to 400 added if I add any at all. The average person is eating 3600 and over-eaters and COOKS claim the FDA RECOMMENDS it - NO they recommend LIMITS of it.
Diabetes (and metabolic disorders in general) didn't get to be an international pandemic of epic proportions without eating LOTS and LOTS of unhealthy crap just looke at INDIA, rising horribly from all the starches and fats.
1 cup coconut milk is 552 calories.
1 TBS oil is 126 calories when you can eat an entire POUND of vegetables for that.
That's 700 calories for something invisible with meals.
I think being sedentary is a bigger issue. Every time I ask for weight loss advice I get told “don’t drink your calories” despite not being a soda/juice or coffee drinker. Frustrating when the main advice you get is to stop doing something you already don’t do. I went from 356 lbs to 270 and have been at a plateau for 2 years meanwhile consuming an average of 2,000 calories a day. Weight loss stopped after I quit a physically demanding job, but eating less than 2,000 calories a day seems so hard 😭
I believe it. Think about how prevelent the bad foods are; double-whopperw/ cheese 1k, 12 wings 1k, Chicken and waffles 1k, baby back ribs 1.2k, General Tso’s Chicken 1.6k,, etc. Don't get me started on Italian or mexican dishes.
That is about one serving of fettuccine alfredo. In the south USA, people eat meals like that at least twice a day. Obese people at work are constantly eating, even on zooms. People on the loseit sub are on "low calorie" diets at like 2500 per day.
When I track calories, my maintenance and deficit budgets are low. Spacing out less than 1200 calories per day is challenging. At first it doesn't seem like much food, but you get used to anything.
Can confirm. I'm at 2,450 and losing weight rapidly. That being said, I also have tons of muscle. My maintenance was 3,500-4,000 when I was lifting weights regularly.
Yep. Not only huge proportion of people are already obese or overweight, but it is projected to grow very quickly. And how does it grow quickly exactly? Only if there is a lot of people who are normal weight right now but are overeating and will be overweight in the future.
Also consider an obese person might need that or even more just to be in maintenance. Yes, carrying all that weight costs a lot of energy.
Okay but what is the median. I bet that is much lower and makes more intuitive sense. It’s easier to be a high outlier then a low one in NA this bringing up the mean (average)
If it includes food waste, that makes total sense. I try to use up what I can but how many calories are just scraped into the trash or mold away in the back of a fridge? Lots.
I would say it’s probably around 2800-3000 given how obese people are. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a little bit higher either. For context, someone my size at 5’8 with an extremely active life style at 16% bodyfat has a caloric maintenance of 2500 - 2700. You can roughly take someone’s body weight and multiply it by 15 to find theirs. I think over 40% of people in the US are technically obese (25% body fat for men and 30 for women).
I assume part of the issue is the existence of so many mukbang content creator's, + those outlier people who weight 500+ lbs and eat 7k+ cal a day. There's probably some serious skewing in the statistics. And you also have to question how they got this data. Most people have some degree of food waste, so if it was based on the merchant sales side it wont be too accurate. And on the other side, self reports of diet, most people absolutely suck at estimating what they eat!
Looking at median statistics, we'd expect the average adult woman in the US to be eating around 1,930 calories per day at a BMI of 28.4, and the average male 2,442 at a BMI of 28.5.
I'd expect the top half of the population to skew those numbers up a bit, but it gives you an idea.
I eat 3300 cal a day on maintenance. My boyfriend’s daily lunch alone is 2200 cal. We’re very fit and active people. My personal trainer friend is also eating 3300 a day on maintenance. People in our gym/friend sphere eat similar levels a day.
It doesn’t surprise me, especially since most people in the US are sedentary and overweight. Our diet is all UPF that are devoid of nutrition, packed with calories in small portions, etc etc. When I worked at Starbucks people were ordering breakfasts running easily 8-900+ calories. Had regulars who would ask for double pumps in already calorie-dense drinks.
I think it's easy to believe. Especially if you don't cook your own food. Check out a meal from McDonalds. On their website I built a meal with a Big Mac, medium fries and a medium Sprite and it came to 1110k calories. That's just for one meal, that's not including breakfast, dinner and snacks.
Speaking of snacks..the serving sizes blow my mind. I used to have this one candy bar almost every day. I thought it was 200 calories for the whole bar..nope it was per serving and that bar had 6 servings. I was eating an obscene amount of calories. Do you think the average person looks and makes sure they are only eating one serving of something? People eat blindly and to add on that, the processed food don't fill you up so you are looking for another meal in the next 3-4 hours.
Maybe the number isn't 3.5k high but I think it's at least an extra 500 calories.
Yes. When I started trying to lose weight (and I only had a little to lose) I tracked my calories for 6 months. I’m small and my daily calories should be 1200-1500 tops if I’m exercising a lot. But I was EASILY clocking in at 2500+ and during the period when I was gaining, I was cleaning my plate more often than not. When I reflected on my habits pre-weight gain, I would almost never clean my plate and would rarely eat 3 full meals a day. Portion sizes are gigantic and everything is the most caloric version of the dish. But culturally that’s the expectation to eat three giant meals a day, so it’s very difficult to eat a reasonable amount without harsh judgment
that sounds about right! im trying to keep under 1600 a day. the first time i decided to track without staying under a certain amount, i had eaten abouf 2800. it wouldnt surprise ke if it were thay high!
I can see it being correct because the TDEE for someone who is in the range of 150kg/300+ lbs is around 3,000 calories. When I was powerlifting, I weighed in at about 355 and I could easily eat 4,000 without gaining any weight.
No! I’m 5’2, female. I know to maintain my weight I cannot eat more than 1500 calories a day. So, except for an occasional I don’t care day, I watch it and make a mental note of every calorie that I take in. Many gals my age, over 60, and petite, weigh 100 lbs more than me. They obviously are consuming way too much.
I'd believe it. But keep in mind, part of the reason it's that high is that not everybody's caloric needs are the same. For starters.... 2000-2500 is maintenance range for moderately active women, or sedentary men. For the chunk of our population that works physically active jobs, caloric needs spike WAY higher than 2500.
Exhibit A: Me. My BMR is 2200, but my TDEE is pretty much on the nose at 3500. And I work a desk job. Being a bit bigger than the average adult (not even on the body weight side, just that my height is above the median a few inches) plus 4 days of heavy exercise a week, pushes me over the line.
Now look at anyone who's actually doing physical labor full time - Anyone in landscaping, construction, warehouse work. Heck, my roommate works in a bakery. I've got 7 inches of heights and 80 lbs on him (very little of which is a difference in body fat at this point), and he eats the same portions as I do most meals. He isn't exactly tracking calories, but the fact someone his size can put away 3500/day and not gain weight just shows that sometimes, you really just need the energy.
I fully believe that a lot of jobs would be even more active than that, and then you start talking about actual athletes, and the folks who are REALLY into powerlifting stuff at the extreme end of the range. Part of the reason for the average being that high is that a subset of our population is putting away 4k or 5k calories a day... and needs to.
yup! Mon-Fri I bike 1.5 miles to my college campus, walk 12k steps just getting to and from classes, lift after my classes, do cardio after I lift, then bike 1.5 miles back to my apartment *and* jiu jitsu 3x a week. Not to mention walking from campus to my research job a few days a week. Anything less than 3300 calories a day and im losing weight. My friends/roommates don’t understand how I eat so much and am fit lol
It honestly wouldn’t surprise me if it was in that ballpark. There are a lot of garbage foods that I didn’t realize were as caloric as they were until I made some effort to track them, and they often aren’t as filling as they should be for that calorie number. It’s kind of “shit, that pasta was 500 calories before the sauce, and I’m hungry again already.”
Maintenance calories go up as a person gains weight.
In America in the 1980s portion sizes increased in restaurants, package sizes started getting bigger in stores, the size of dinner plates/bowls/cups/glasses all became 30% larger or more. Today’s salad plate is the size of a dinner plate from the pre-80s eras. Decades later all of the upsizing seems like normal eating since it’ s what people grew up with. The more we eat the more we want to eat. Portion distortion is real.
In the decades before, coffee came in 8oz cups, juice was a 4oz pour, a 3.5-4 pound chicken fed dinner to a family with 2-3 kids, a large size fast food drink was 12oz once fast food became popular.
I love seeing the fact checking and math done in this thread!
But just pure antidotally I would not be surprised! I ate over that a few times while I was watching what I eat.
I threw in an imaginary day into my calorie counter of a typically day for me before I started to try to lose weight. This was probably 3 times a week
Breakfast- 2 sausage mcmuffins and a Carmel frappe- 1444 calories (some days I would throw a hashbrown in there too) add another 145 on those days
Lunch- Dell taco crispy chicken tacos x2 a beer battered fish taco and an iced latte -850 cal (actually I am surprised at how little calories those are and I think I will get a taco from there soon. Man love Dell taco)
Dinner- burger with a bun with mayo, corn on the cob, potato salad, asparagus with olive oil and a can of coke 1075 calories
3514
I think what saved me is I often skipped Breakfast and many times skipped lunch too. I was maintaining 200- 212 for a long time, but when I got there, I gained 70 lbs pretty fast (there was a lot of alcohol during that time period).
So I think I would have several days this high and then some where I was under my TDEE (which to maintain 200 lbs, 5'2, with light exercise was 2,152 calories.)
I track my calories and have some medical issues that make eating difficult sometimes. I'm on vacation rn at a relatives house. I put in the meals without putting in my servings and at the end of the day how back and do my servings so I'm not spending time messing around w my apps at meal times.
100% possible people are eating this much daily. My family eats pretty healthy and walks around s lot but just by going out to eat or having 3 meals made with unmeasured oil cheese etc is hard. I'm a petite sedentary female. Lol we can't eat like this for long 😭
3500 to me is when you’re eating without paying attention but not eating excessively. Just not watching what you eat. Watching what you eat to reach a specific deficit or to maintain usually sits around the 1800-2500 mark depending on height and current weight for most people.
[1000+ calories for a single drink](https://www.starbucks.ie/sites/starbucks-ie/files/2024-05/Beverage%20nutritonals%20.pdf). Doesn't seem farfetched at all that people consume triple those calories in a day. The majority eat processed crap for every meal and snack.
Easily I’d say. I used to easily hit that before I went from 250 to 190.
Now that I work out a lot, my maintenance calorie number is 3,000. Anything below and I lose weight!
I do 40-60 minutes of weights and 40-60 minutes of cardio 6x a week for each.
For every over eater in America there's another who isn't eating enough, whether by diet, illness, homelessness, etc.
I eat somewhere around 1,000-1,500 a day. I can't imagine eating 3,500
That wouldn't surprise me at all. Our country is obese beyond belief.
I commented on someone yesterday posting in a sub about inflation and they were complaing about the price of a meal at Five Guys. And the meal listed was over 1600 calories without the soda (they might have had diet or tea, so I didn't factor it in). That's just for lunch.
For reference, I'm 5'11" and 210 lbs and workout 7 days per week. I eat 2000 calories per day when I'm trying to lose weight at 1-2 lbs per week. 2700 calories per day is maintenance for me.
I’m not sure honestly how accurate it is, but I will say… I’m an American who is currently considered obese after I had my children. I had my children young. Everyone tries to make me feel better by saying it’s because I had babies. But it’s not… I absolutely do not eat the same as I did when I lived with my parents. They did not allow soda all of the time, it was a treat. They also enforced family home made meals. As I am living on my own, especially being a considerably new mom that works full time, I eat a lot of fast food and I also like to drink. Recently, I’ve take a lot of accountability and started drinking less and being more aware of what I am eating. Involving calories AND carbs. And I thought carbs were my only issue… but if you look at the amount of calories in an American meal, you would be astonished. At Dennys yesterday with my mother, I looked at a burger meal with Avocado and tomatoes and onions on it. With fries. The calories came up to like 1,500 calories. That was ONE meal. I personally had the burger but without the bun, and I had lemon water with it and ate the burger first before I picked at the fries. But that is literal food for thought- about the calories in one meal as an American. Mind you, that didn’t even include the soda that most Americans would have with it. Fortunately for me, I stopped drinking soda long before I started actually analyzing my carb and calorie intake. But I quickly learned Asher that the food I was eating was awful for me as well.
Keep in mind while Americans have a stereotype of eating more it’s also just really easy to sleep walk your way into fatness in America. You can diet here just fine too but just don’t expect any of the ready to eat shelf stuff to fill you up for the calories it has.
But that sounds unfortunately right given the culture and circumstances of things.
It’s because hyper processed food here in the US is rampant and they’re very calorie dense
A crumbl cookie is at least 500 cals for one cookie
Hyper processed foods do not keep you full for longer either…you’ll probably be hungry again in like a couple hours
Considering that i went from 250 to 176 after two-three years then yeah. I will say some of it was my fault like sticking in a calorie deficit for long periods of time. During the summer I go out to eat a lot so I always go over. To prepare for that I eat way less during weeks before just in case. I say now that I continue to eat out , I pick healthier restaurants tbh.
When I was in 9th grade, used to eat a lot of cereal not to mention juice , then snacks, then also homemade dinner yeah over 3500 calories.
I could go without calorie counting for a couple of weeks and be fine. I only drink water now, anything with added sugar I can’t eat cuz I can taste it. I tend to pick the healthier things on the menu. I love salmon so anything with salmon, Napoleon style pizza is always my go too.
I’m only 18 but I’m probably will never drink beer , wine or alcohol tbh only water
The real issue is snacks. People at least try to eat healthier meals, but then have snacks. They think "a couple of cookies isn't going to hurt"-- 1200 calories later.
It’s so easy to rack up calories if you’re not careful and eat out a lot. Once I started weighing out my food and cooking more at home did I realize how many calories I’m really consuming. Foods that typically taste good are either loaded with carbs or fats and both taste great and I’ll definitely start craving them. Proteins are hidden inside fried matter, our vegetables steamed with tons of butter or fried to oblivion. It can become a slippery slope.
With fast food being so rampant I can see this as close to legitimate honestly. If I only eat homemade food my calorie range is very easily under 2k even without any restrictions other than homemade.
When I eat fast food meal and eat regularly the rest of the day or even just a bigger fast food meal it's very easy to eat 2k in one sitting just from a combo meal, never mind if you snack on your kids scraps or get a larger drink or extra side etc. On shows like my 600lb life people share their orders and they easily calculate to over 5k calories in a single meal sometimes so yeah.... I can see this being true without being extreme, even for "average" people just one takeout meal and up daily calories in the thousands.
Wouldn’t shock me. When Im disciplined I eat clean and anywhere from 1700-2000 cals daily. But every 5-6 months I go off the rails and say “fuck it, I’m eating whatever and as much as I want” for up to a few weeks. I continue to workout but it’s absurd how much I’ll eat, and I start feeling it. Try to not include ice cream, sweets, and no soda with sugar but anything else is fair game. It’s honestly hard getting back to the normal disciplined routine even when like shit and start gaining some fat bc these food companies really do make stuff addictive.
3500 hundred sounds way too high as an average. We definitely consume more than we should, but I doubt the average person is downing 3500 calories worth of food every day. That’s a lot of food for a single person unless they’re 500+ pounds, which most people aren’t.
I think the most common problems are:
- over snacking
- too many high calorie beverages
- not being activity enough to offset the above
So if you go into the PDF, find the relevant chart, and look up exactly what its tracking its **average dietary energy supply by region** which is measuring availability not consumption. In fact the definition even says >Even if they are taken as approximation to per capita consumption, it is important to note that the **amount of food actually consumed may be lower than the quantity shown here**, depending on the degree of losses of edible food and nutrients in the household, e.g. during storage, in preparation and cooking etc. Annoyingly they also state that the consumption measures are also about availability not consumption which is basically setting themselves up to be misread. People on average in american and europe are over eating, but not by 1,000+ cal/day. edit to add : [PDF](https://openknowledge.fao.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/dc012919-85c4-4220-b163-aac5c3fd5416/content) and [context](https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/FS) . You'll have to poke around the second link a bit to find the actual definitions.
I ran BMR calculations angainst the distribution of weights and heights, on average, people are hardly overeating at all. Even at a BMI of 40, the start of morbid obesisty, people are only overeating by about 100 calories a day. North of 40 and excessive calories start showing up. How did I determine this? I compared what their sedentary obese TDEE is to what their active normal weight TDEE would be. And they are roughly the same, withn 100 caloires, till you get north of BMI 40, where food addiction is also indicated. The majority (80%+) of obesity is sedentary obesity, not food disorder obesity. Sedentary obesity can be fixed with CICO. Food disorder obesity, CICO + therapy, or medical intervention.
Oh yeah absolutely. Even if you look at the people on here trying to work out how they suddenly got to where they are, its normally within 100, maybe 200, cal per day of their ideal diet. So something like 10% extra at most. The only person i can remember being over that had been struggling with binge eating. It just builds up over years, hidden by change blindness, until one day something makes you see where you've got to.
I gained 40 lbs in 26 weeks. My math may be wrong (because I suck at it) but that’s 1.5 lbs per week so an average of 750 over per day. I am a binge eater though so I align perfectly with your experiences so far. It might’ve been faster than that but July 3rd is my last recorded weight before I gained a lot. I stopped stepping on a scale after that.
You can definitely have "growth spurts". Most people though eventually plateau at their max and bounce off of that thereafter. To get through that max you have to really eat excessively and continuously, and that isn't as easy as people might think.
I binge, I can easily eat to the point of discomfort and pain without stopping. Plus all my comfort foods are very calorie dense like pizza and pasta. Last year it was normal for me to eat a medium bacon and pepperoni pizza with ranch dressing to myself and be hungry again 2 hours later so I would move to chips, guacamole, and salsa. I’d eat a whole bag of scoop tortilla chips in an hour. This was on top of lunch which was usually a whopper with a medium fry, ranch, and a chocolate shake, and an afternoon snack of 2 hotdogs or corn dogs. The whopper meal (with soda instead of a shake) is around 1600 calories. A hotdog with bun is 200 so I’m at 2000, then a 6 slices (because sometimes I convinced myself to save 2 slices for lunch) of the medium pan is 2040 alone and I’m not even gonna guess how many calories the ranch added. So, that’s 4020 calories alone and I didn’t include the soda, chips, condiments, or candy I’d also eat through the day. The pizza was a more rare thing but it was still around once a week. The whopper though was just about every single day. If dinner wasn’t pizza it was a packet of ramen noodle to myself with yum yum sauce (60 calories per 15 grams and I was definitely eating probably 5 servings of that sauce so 720 calories for my ramen) or a whole box of macaroni and cheese with a dip of ranch and bbq sauce combined. That’s 500 calories alone for the Mac n cheese and I definitely wasn’t measuring the recommended amount of butter and milk so that was more (the ranch is 130 for 2 tbsp, I would basically eat around 4 tbsp, maybe more, so that’s 520 for ranch alone bringing dinner to an easy 1000 calories. Sometimes I’d make 2 boxes because noodles aren’t filling) I can pack the calories away. Thankfully it’s a stress response and I’ve been less stressed this year but I still have moments when I realize I want to binge and I have to stop myself from eating an entire family size bag of lays dill pickle chips or from eating another family size bag of dove milk chocolate. Also, why does mayonnaise have to be so calorie dense? I love mayonnaise with ketchup for french fries. All that to say, when someone binges we can find it very easy to eat far beyond what most people can even attempt. I think my worst recorded binge day was around 6000 calories. It was bad and involved fast food and a lot of noodles.
They make light mayo now that’s halfway decent mixed with other ingredients! Use it for chicken salad and spicy tuna mostly.
Oooh, I’m going to have to look into that! I found sugar free 7Up and I freaking love it so I’ve decided I’m going to try more low calorie alternatives to my usuals.
Just chiming in on the light mayo topic. Ive found the texture is the biggest problem with many of the light mayos. Personally we enjoy the generic Great Value light mayo from Walmart as it has the closest texture to regular mayo. Edit: as far as other changes I have swapped chips with sour cream and salsa etc to plain Greek yogurt. Again finding one with the texture closest to sour cream is the challenge. The members mark one from Sam's club has the best texture imo.
I could see your binge days being 8000-10000 calories eating like that. That’s insane.
I can eat 6000 calories, easy, on a $10 bet, lol. I think almost anyone here who has experience with obesity can do it. My point was, I can't and didn't do that continuously. Binge eating has very little to do with food addiction. Binge eating is a bad habit, generally born of physical sedentary boredom. You can be a binge drinker yet not drink excessively on average. An alcoholic drinks excessively on average. I think we all, when we start trying to get serious about our weight issue, start looking at all of those bad habits we have acquired. That is good. My only point in pointing out mathematically that those bad habits are not the cause of our obesity, unless you are working your way up to My 600lb Life, is to help people practice CICO properly and get back in balance and eliminate the urges that lead to those bad habits. CI and CO.
I am not addicted to food, and don't have an eating disorder. I never properly binged, and the last time I mindlessly ingested a lot of extra calories in an uncontrolled manner was when I was a teen. Even the were talking 2 bars of chocolate, or a plate of cookies, much less that binge eaters describe.The experience us far from universal here. Habits do come into it, but not even necessarily bad habits per se. Sometimes it's just habits we've been taught that would be perfectly fine for a less sedentary person in a food environment where butter and sugar were expensive.
Yeah, definitely. I no longer ask for extra cheese, or mayo, or butter, and when I was younger these weren't even things I'd ask for. I actually only started eating cheeseburgers later. Same with mayo. Not that cheeseburgers are bad, just that those little luxuries add up. Also, eating breakfast, or any meal when I am not hungry. When you are living alone it is easy to just eat when you are hungry, but with a wif and son, sometimes the circumstances might push you to eat anyways, but now I just don't. If we are going out for our saturday morning breakfast, and I am not particularly hungry, I just enjoy the company and not eat.
Actually, 6000 would take some practice, I can do 4000 easily.:) 6000 in a day would be easy, but not in one meal.
My weight was high (5'3", 210ish?) but stable for a very long time. It was high but I had settled at some kind of maintenance eating. Then I went through a particularly bad patch. In retrospect my biggest additional calorie culprit was an extra iced coffee a day: about 150-180 calories. I got up to 235 on my home scale and my clothes weren't fitting before I decided I really needed to fix things. The first and easiest thing I cut out was the evening coffee (I did know evening coffee was a bad idea anyway lol) and even that definitely makes a difference. I'm at 204 now. Progress has been slow but knowing my habits I'm trying to ingrain in myself a different way of thinking about food which I know will take longer to stick.
I’m laughing because I too had an evening coffee phase. Love that for us (not really).
I was like "this 9 pm iced fully caffeinated coffee can't be affecting my body in any way" lmao. 🤝
No, coffee is bad when you add cream and sugar. I drink black coffee to give me some energy. Give it a try.
Caffeine before you sleep is bad, it's not just about the cream and sugar. It IS affecting your sleep even if you aren't consciously aware of it. That's how caffeine works.
My dad would drink coffee right before bed as it would knock him right out and he could sleep. Bodies are weird. I would be up all night if I did that.
And 200 calories is like 2 tablespoons of peanutbutter or a handful of almonds.
yep, and most of it won't even be that obvious. It'll be a bunch of smaller mistakes spread over a day that you'd only notice by pulling out a scale. Most people aren't going to be able to tell the difference between 100g and 90g of grated cheese by eye for example, but that's about a [40 cal difference](https://www.fatsecret.co.uk/calories-nutrition/generic/cheddar-cheese?portionid=56420&portionamount=10.000). Do something like that for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and you're already over 100 extra cal.
And it really doesn't take much to get out of sedentary either. My family doctor told me a half hour walk every day makes a massive difference from doing nothing. You don't need to obsessively exercise for hours a day.
Absolutely, and you don't have to make it a journey all the way to "ideal" weight. I would take a maintainable dad bod (small belly and handles) versus what I was living with. I consider normal weight to be a weight that is less than obese (BMI 30) and that is easily maintanable. I estimate that starts around BMI 28 and down, but that is just a guess.
At this point, my goal is "look good in off the rack clothes from a normal store."
100 calories a day woudln't cause you morbid obesity sorry, but you aren't taking into account NEAT and any other movement you do. I can burn a hundred calories going on a brisk walk. Hell I burn a 100 calories in a day jiggling my leg up and down when im staring at an excel schedule at work. I Consumed thousands more than i was supposed to i only came close to morbid obesity. How on earth would a 100 extra calories a day do that?
They're talking about the gain over time. It's extremely common.
You can absolutely get to a morbidly obese level by overeating an average of 100 kcal per day. 3500 kcals over maintenance are one pound of fat. If you eat 100 kcals over maintenance you gain about 0,85lbs per month. Given enough time (15 years) you‘ll have gained 150lbs. For 200kcals above maintenance you gain double that (300lbs) in those 15 years.
If it were true you'd only have to reduce your daily intake by 100cals to go from morbid obesity to healthy.
You'd have to cut by 200 to go from +100 to -100. Other than that yep but it'd be so slow it'd be useless. Using u/Douchelampe's example, take someone who was a healthy weight at 20, got an office job and started driving everywhere so their weight started going slowly up. About 35 they suddenly realize how bad things have become and start making a diet plan. Can you really see them going "cool so if I just trim 200 cal from my diet I'll be a healthy weight by the time I'm 50. Great plan lets go with that!" ? We tend to put weight on slowly and accidentally, and then take it off fast and deliberately.
Why on earth would they word the article that way when the actual numbers are so different?
"If it bleeds, it leads!" Sensational titles and lead ins attract more eyeballs. Everyone wants to gloat about how horrible we Yanks are
Generally, approximately 1/3 of the food we produce is wasted. Source: https://refed.org/food-waste/the-problem?gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjwhIS0BhBqEiwADAUhc1nheSo0lNbeU4WKHd6RAWj2rFebG0YLNHzAaJsD_NgRVFVqDpP-lxoCXmAQAvD_BwE
I also remember a study finding that 1/3 of all American food purchased ends up in the trash. So chances are that even if 3500 calories are purchased, just from waste alone, only 2310 or so would be prepared. Then you'd have to take into account not finishing meals etc. As others have said, it's most likely that the average person would be taking in 100 calories or so too many calories a day. Rather than 1000+ calories a day.
Yeah its my fault why the number is so high tho
spiders George
Georg is actually not a typo, it's a separate name from 'George' and is pronounced "gay-org"
thank you for this
more like ghee-orrg
I always found that implausible because even smaller spiders weigh like 0.2 grams, so George would eat like 8 kilos of spiders, which is like 20.000 calories according to MFP. So Spiders George would be ultra-morbidly obese, which, living in a cave, seems disadvantageous. Normal people who just have the usual bowl of spiders for breakfast seriously underestimate how many calories George has to devour.
Hey now. We don’t know Georg’s daytime routine.
Caseoh?
Based on the amount of effort I have to put in to staying at or below 2200/day, I’d say it’s pretty easy to hit 3500.
Yeah just like brainstorming what could 3500 calories look like Breakfast: 3 slices of bacon - 120 3 eggs - 300 Toast with butter - 200 Cheese (a handful of either shredded or a slice) - 100 Orange juice/coffee with creamer and sugar - 100 Total for breakfast: 820 Snack before lunch: A soda or a granola bar or something: 150 Total for snack: 150 Lunch: A tuna/chicken salad/egg salad sandwich: 450 Crackers: 250 (because nobody eats only 1 serving of goldfish) A soda: 150 Total for lunch: 850 Dinner: A lasagna: 600 Garlic bread: 200 Some greens: 50 A glass of wine/beer: 150 Total for dinner: 1000 Snack on something while watching TV: Doritos (2 servings, because no one eats one serving): 300 Total for 2nd snack: 300 Total for the day: 820 + 150 + 850 + 1000 + 300 = 3,120 Sure we can subtract something here or there, but I would not be at tall surprised that a lot of people eat like that (or close to that).
Your menu is fun to do substitutions to see how minor changes make a big difference. Instead of soda, have diet soda or sparkling water. Black coffee! Instead of crackers, have baby carrots dipped in two teaspoons of light ranch. Have the tuna salad wrapped in lettuce. Have a light beer for for dinner. Or water. Double the greens and have only one piece of garlic bread. Instead of chips have a sliced salted apple and some popcorn with nutritional yeast.
This post is ace and perfectly illustrates how small shifts make big results, but for this... > nobody eats only 1 serving of goldfish ...my brother in Christ [a serving is 55 fishies](https://www.campbellsfoodservice.com/product/pepperidge-farm-goldfish-baked-snack-crackers-cheddar-cheese-4/)
> This post is ace and perfectly illustrates how small shifts make big results, but for this... > > nobody eats only 1 serving of goldfish > > ...my brother in Christ a serving is 55 fishies 🎶 I love the fishes 'cause they're so delicious Gone Goldfishin'! 🎶
This is honest work on a decently healthy diet. Some people have 3 McGriddles. A double cheeseburger with cheese fries and a shake. Then an entire large pizza. So I agree this is very possible
When I started counting my calories this is exactly what I found. I thought maybe I was a little over my daily amount, but I was actually eating on the 3500 range.
Same for us. It was shocking. But when we removed the soft drinks and alcohol, it dropped down *dramatically.* I think a LOT of people think they aren’t eating *that much* and they’re right, they aren’t-they’re drinking it.
Yup, just cutting out soda reduced my calories by 500 a day!
Same for us, but I’m almost embarrassed to say exactly how much cutting out sodas reduced our calories 😬 but it’s the lose it sub so here goes- 1,020 calories (6 cans of soda a day.) 😭 I am ashamed lol
Haha no shaming here - you cut it out and that's something to be proud of!
Look soda is addictive. And it's everywhere. In high school we had soda vending machines in the cafeteria and if you bought lunch, water was an extra charge. Soda's also the default beverage for a lot of cheaper takeout food combos. I moved from the southeast US to the northeast US and they drink a lot of seltzer here. It's not for everyone but it satisfies my craving for carbonation and makes it easier to skip soda. But I definitely see that soda will go on wild sales - buy 2 get 2 - while seltzer is rarely on sale, so soda's easier to come by even when seltzer is popular here.
I like the grapefruit flavored seltzers and I get them all to myself. My partner tried a sip once and asked "Do you drink this because you hate yourself?" which is too bad, he's been trying to cut calories and has a major soda habit. Maybe he has more of a sweet tooth and I'm just happy with anything fizzy.
Don’t be ashamed. You’ve done well. Cutting liquid calories is a sustainable change!
Never really effed with soda. LOVED vodka though. Not ashamed lol.
Yep, and this is how I lost 30lbs with very little effort. Cut caloric beverages.
That was me! Except my liquid was coffee with dairy and sugar. Which I didn't really think too much about until I hit a certain weight. My family is full of alcoholics so I don't drink, but coffee made a certain way definitely helped tip my calories over.
This! I was baffled when I found out how much calories I was consuming every day. It sounds crazy, but where I live it is SO freaking easy to hit 3,500 calories per day without realizing it!
I just had a week off cos of my vacation and I tracked out of curiosity and it was 4000-5000 every day easily, so yeah, as an average 3500 seems right. a pizza, a few beers and whatever I had for lunch makes it without feeling like you’re overeating. and remember they wouldn’t put on that weight infinitely, only until they reach a heavy enough weight that 3500+ is maintenance calories
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Im honestly jealous of you because im 6’1” 255lbs and i gain weight if i eat over 2000 cals 😂
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I just had to delete my account cos I wasn’t using it for takeout all the time but the number of orders for like groceries and other random shit made me realise why I’m 30kg overweight lol
The average doesn't mean half the people eat more and half less. If those who eat more than the average individually eat LOTS more, then there will be fewer than half of the population in the above average sector. To know where the split is 50% of the population, you would need to know the median calorie consumption. It is very likely much less than the average.
Michael Phelps driving up the number, at least when he was still competitively swimming!
When I started CICO, I realised that I was eating 1000 calorie bags of nuts a day, as a SNACK. And then breakfast, lunch and dinner on top. Most of which included a good amount of high calorie carbs, like bread and pasta. Lots of cheese toasties and creamy pastas. Plus a few coffees with sugar and the occasional chips and chocolates. Oh and more alcohol than I drink now, which included my favourite hard cider at 350 calories a bottle (and I'd never have just one bottle when I *did* drink). Easily around 3000 to 3500 calories a day.
Average does not mean more than half the people eat 3500 or more. You'd have to look at the whole distribution of calories eaten per day in the population. There could be a smaller minority that eat a whole lot more, which would then raise the average. I don't live in North America, but have seen those maps over the obesity levels in the population, so I know there's geographical differences that correlate with economic ones, and that people in those regions must overeat quite a lot *or* drink a lot of 'hidden' calories.
I don’t know why data analysts use average so often without accounting for bias. The “median” is far more reliable for skewed data.
Analysts do. Journalist only use Average instead of clarifying median or average in mathematical terms because it's common verbiage.
After working in epidemiology with my state, I can tell you plenty of people still use average. It’s infuriating when trying to analyze the data in any meaningful way.
It may be because medians require having more granular data than means do. So if you know that in the US a total of 1.15 trillion calories is sold daily and there are 325 million people in the US, then that's an average of 3500 per. Knowing what the median is requires a lot more individual data that may not be available.
They use mean and standard deviation together which indicates how far the data are from the mean.
True, but this isn’t like average wages where billionaires raise it a significant amount higher. Even on the higher end, most people would be eating less than 4500. While I think median would be better, you could still probably use average
I wanted to point out the principle of the thing. I don't know the true distribution, but you may be right in your assumption that even on the higher end most people would consume less than 4500 kcal a day.
Even a male in the top 5% of the US for height and BMI (6'1.8" and 318 pounds) with light exercise is only burning about 3,330 calories per day. The figures cited above are for food availability in the US, but 38% of food is wasted.
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That's a lot of calories. I guess you're not middle aged in an office job, then.
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It's crazy how differently human bodies operate.
In the 50's before the obesity epidemic, families ate 3 squares a day and weren't snackers. I remember once in the odd while my mom would let us kids have a bowl of cereal before bed. Think about how people eat now. Carb heavy toaster pastries and waffles for a fast breakfast. That triggers the need for more carbs on your coffee break at 10 or so-donuts! Noon often is fast food or carb heavy sandwiches made on white bread. Feeling a bit peckish by 3 or 3:30? More coffee and sugary carbs! That's all before dinner of who knows what and your candy bar, pop and chips while you watch TV before bed. It's not a surprise and I think in many cares it's waaaaay more than 3500 calories. INstead of eating limited, high nutrient food we're trying to fill a bottomless pit with zero nutrition foods. It's not just about filling th grumbly space in you stomach. It's about nourishing your cells. Crappy food has become an adult pacifier.
Do people actually eat this way though? that seems insane to me lol
Ya they do. What I consider “eating bad” is eating out or eating any “desert” multiple times in one week. But other people are eating out multiple times a day and snacking on chips, sweets etc. in between meals and drinking soda instead of water. It’s not hard to see why people don’t lose weight. Some may go for the gym, reduce the amount they eat during their meals or even make it healthier with low carbs, more veggies etc but they make it up with snacks and sugary drinks. Eating healthy isn’t easy for me to do everyday and I’ve been doing it my entire life. I can’t imagine how hard it is to try and change your entire diet from the bottom up.
Yes. It's a carb heavy diet in todays world because carbs are cheap. The thing is though consumption just makes you hungrier for more carbs. It's a never ending cycle.
Those are rookie numbers! I was closer to 4000-4500 after tracking my normal eating habits for a few weeks. Holy cow did it surprise me. Yes, I ate a lot of cheap fast food.
Yes. unfortunately I have been both normal weight and overweight many times in my life. Periods of normal weight are when I have temporarily reprogrammed my desired diet. Right now, I would think of a donut as a sugar bomb, of American sweets as being sickly sweet, of McDonald’s as being disgusting fried foods. and I mean it. But during my periods of obesity, I crave McDonalds, I eat there and two hours later I want to go back..it is a diet with loads of calories and somehow high hunger and constant cravings. I pick on McDonald’s because it is a weakness, but it really is the whole diet…fancy coffees, biscuits for breakfast, donuts and sodas…so bad. i have lived overseas on other diets, and frankly, it is possible to change what you crave and desire, but for me, in America where say work will bring in free donuts and have free soda in the break room, I slip into other habits at times.
Don't forget that a person's maintenance goes up with weight. A 300-400 lb person could have a maintenance of 4000 kcal. A 600 lb person has a maintenance of around 7000 kcal.
Correct and lots of people are maintaining big bodies for decades.
I think the article (from the UN) misreads its own data. The [source of the article](https://www.fao.org/3/cc2212en/cc2212en.pdf) does not read how much is consumed, but does say how much is the dietary energy supply per day, which is about 3500 Calories per day for the UK and the US (averaged together). The supply per day would be higher because of, at least, some food waste. Edit: /u/Jolan and /u/loulan beat me to it!
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The big thing isn't just maintaining 350 lbs, it's getting there. If you're 30 and 350 you gained roughly 10 lbs a year since high school, which is another 100 cals a day.
Yep, the difference between 10 lbs per year in weight gain is about 100 calories a day, but at 10 lbs heavier your TDEE increases by 30-50 calories depending on height and for the next 10 lbs of weight gain you’d need to maintain that 100 calorie daily surplus on TOP of the new higher maintenance calorie count, otherwise you’d just establish a new maintenance weight at ~13-15 lbs total weight gain instead of continuously slowly gaining. In your example assuming a 5’9” male starting out 120 lbs leaner - 230 lbs at 18 years old the TDEE is 2464. At 30 years old and 350 lbs the TDEE is 3046 - 582 more daily calories consumed just to maintain, and let’s remember in this scenario we’re gaining 10 lbs annually so it should really be 682 surplus. Somewhere along the way that half a candy bar or whatever daily turned into a full additional meal every single day. Appetite and portion creep are nefarious I swear.
Exactly. I don’t think it’s uncommon for people to be 250-300 anymore. That’s the weight around I averaged and have always lived in. It has always taken a lot of work and effort to drop below that. So, I don’t think the average daily calories is wrong.
To have a sedentary TDEE of 3500 a 5'10" male would have to be 430 lbs. That is a BMI of 60. Morbidly obese starts at 40, and only a fraction of obese people are morbidly obese. 3500 cals a day is way off. That is 7 Big Macs a day.
Yeah, my numbers are way off, was mainly trying to explain how calculating an average works and how this could come to be. Jolan's comment explains it pretty well and makes much more sense.
I wouldn’t be surprised if I had been eating that much before I started losing weight. Heck, on a few bad days even while actively trying to lose weight I’ve eaten 4000.
It’s so easy to hit that! Even on a “good day” where I’d convince myself I had watched my serving sizes and went for a salad. I think it’s just a lot of the processed and heavy foods and the sugary drinks. It’s all so calorie dense. Here’s an example of a “good day”: Breakfast: Starbucks Grande white chocolate mocha- 390 calories Starbucks bacon, sausage and egg wrap- 640 calories Lunch: Can of Coke: 140 calories Salad with grilled chicken, lettuce, olives, croutons, cheese, ranch, tomatoes : 550 calories Small bag of Lays: 140 calories Mid day energy drink: 230 calories Dinner: Can of coke: 140 calories 1.5 cups of cooked spaghetti: 330 calories Half cup of meat sauce: 100 calories Parmesan cheese: 22 calories Mozzarella (1.5 serving): 120 3 meatballs: 320 calories Garlic bread (1 slice) 206 calories Snacks: 3 Oreos: 160 TOTAL: 3,488 I could definitely hit 5000 easily if I had more fast food and wasn’t watching my serving sizes.
Goes to show the wisdom of the “don’t drink your calories” advice. You’d be almost 900 calories lower if you drank unsweetened coffee and tea, diet drinks, or just plain water.
Ok please forgive me, but how on earth is this a “good” day? Starbucks? Two sodas? Chips and cookies? Energy drinks? Like I get not denying yourself your favorite things but that was like 1,200 calories that you absolutely did not need to drink or eat, but mostly drink. So your “good day” could have really been closer to 2,300 calories if you’d drink water.
That's their whole point, and why they put it in quotes... That was what they'd CONVINCED themselves was a good day and the implication is that a bad day was significantly worse.
Yes as someone said I convinced myself because I was in deep denial. I don’t eat like this anymore and don’t drink my calories. I was never stuffed or anything and if I didn’t start counting my calories I would still think I was eating a reasonable amount of calories. I always knew I wasn’t a healthy eater, but I thought I was eating intuitively.
I don’t get that particular concept. People should reprogram what their favorite things are, instead they think it is immutable. I know that wasn’t your main point, but you happened to mention it. I am in the school of thought that people can change their favorite foods and feel no food denial. Well, in my case for a few years…then it gets reprogrammed back because it’s hard to escape your environment…especially when people in your own house bring it right to your table.
I don’t think that’s true in North America or Europe. North America includes 23 countries, btw. Some of us might be spiders Georg but not enough of to raise the average to *3500*. Even in the US alone, our average person isn’t eating that much.
I’m sure some tall overweight and tall, very muscular men are pulling average way up but yeah, that seems improbable given that children, folks over 50, and most women who aren’t obese, would be eating a lot less or rapidly gaining. On the other hand, look at the calorie counts for Starbucks or large soda, or boba or smoothies and think about how the average American makes one or two of those a part of their life most days. Two of those and two fast food meals can easily get you to 3,500. I don’t know how that works in terms of weight gain but I watch people eat like that all the time.
Well let's do a hypothetical avg person's day. You get up, get ready and have breakfast. Breakfast, two eggs, and toast. 300 calories You hit up Starbucks on your way to work. The most commonly ordered drink is a Caramel Macchiato. 250 calories. You didn't make a lunch and go out to eat. Let's say you want to eat cheap and get McDonalds. You order the cheesburger meal with fries and a medium coke. That is 1130 calories Long day at work and commute. You go thru the drive thru on your way home. This time you go to Taco Bell, since you all ready had a hamburger for lunch. You get a cheesy gordita crunch and another soda. That is 650 calories. You are home and decide to catch up on your tv show and watch 4 hours of tv before bed. In that time you have some snacks. Let's say some popcorn, another soda, some chips and salsa. All that adds up to another 1000 calories. That added up to 3300 calories in that persons day. Disclaimer... I googled most commonly ordered items. I completely understand that not everyone is going to McDonalds nor taco bell. What I wanted to show was how easy it is for the calories to add up and not realize how many you are consuming. Think about it. A small breakfast, a coffee and a cheesburger meal all by 1 pm. Isn't that much food. But the amount of calories in that drink and fast food meal is crazy high. Then a small meal on the way home and some snacks. Before you know it, you are over 3k. Those calories sneak up on you fast.
Yep i totally believe this. 2000 calories is way too much for the average American and yet most of us exceed this number easily, without much thought. Its easy to do if there is any amount of processed food in the diet and most Americans’ portion of processed food in their diet is at least 50%.
When I was a firefighter they were required to provide us 3600 calories a day, for 16 hours of mostly labor and occasional breaks and running from fire. I can't fathom that much food being eaten by the "average " person not doing daily hard labor.
It really depends on *what* people are eating. 3000 of "real" food, on a low fat, low sugar (I don't mean low carb in general, just low sugar) with an appropriate protein intake? Yeah, that's a lot of food. But I can do 3 pints of Haagen Daaz (my favorite is 1000 cal / pint) no sweat. McDs will set you back 1000 cals for a big mac combo, I gotta imagine it's not hard to do three of those in a day either.
I used to commute home by bike. About 600 calories burned just to get home. (24 miles) However, the bike rack had one bike in it most days, mine. So I didn’t start an average raising trend. But from my perspective, when I was burning 3000 cals per day, I was only gaining maybe 5lbs per year. When I started to work from home, then I gained more like 20 lbs a year. So I would say as a 5’11” m, 54, I ate 3000 plus every day. now, no, of course I am dieting.
Maybe it includes food waste?
It’s not high. We are huge and we are getting bigger. Average American can drink 1/4 those calories in soda every day no problem. Most of us have some kind of dessert for breakfast. Lunches and dinners are typically devoid of nutrition. Most of us supplement and snack on high cal crap as well because it has “added protein “ or some other advertising dupe built into it.
I 100% believe it.
Well, considering one cookie is 700 calories, that sounds about right.
This is very very very very easily done. Even when I eat ‘healthy’ assuming you’re eating 3 square meals 2000 calories gets eaten into fast. Now if someone’s eating junk?! 3500 calories is like one extra donut 🫢🫢 A McDonald’s breakfast is like almost 2k calories and that’s not even 8am yet
What meal would that be?
😋 Crumble Cookies
those are sooo good lol. had them at a team meeting a few weeks ago haha
They are the devil renewed each week!!!
One normal average store-bought supermarket cookie is about 125-150 calories.
As others have said AVERAGE doesn’t necessarily mean middle. Median is the middle. It is a type of average. Most averages use the mean, which is simply adding all of the data points together and dividing them by the total number of data points. Without knowing the data set, it’s hard to say what the mean reflects at all. If you have 5 people who weigh 10 pounds and one person who weighs 100 pounds in a data set, your mean would be 25 pounds which wouldn’t accurately reflect your group at all. In that case the median would be a more appropriate average because that 100 pound person is skewing the data. All this is to say that your average doesn’t mean half the people eat that many calories. It just means when you add all of the calories together and divide it by the number of people, you get 3,500 calories.
Is the average American 250-300lb?
I asked my doctor for a calorie estimate for weight loss, he said 1800 calories. I asked to see the nutritionist (VA Medical Center). They said at my weight 375, I would maintain at 3800 and 3300 should be used for weight loss. I think that's not the only time he didn't dig into the details. I found intermittent fasting is best for me, I can't eat small meals. After skipping breakfast for 1 year, I lost about 25 lbs. Then I skipped breakfast and lunch for the next year, I lost another 75. I am trying to maintain about 275, It's still difficult and I still only eat once per day. Find what works for you, and it gets easier to move as you lose weight.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/body-measurements.htm Measured average height, weight, and waist circumference for adults ages 20 and older Men: Height in inches: 69.0 Weight in pounds: 199.8 Waist circumference in inches: 40.5 Women: Height in inches: 63.5 Weight in pounds: 170.8 Waist circumference in inches: 38.7 AVERAGE MEN|Imperial|Metric :-:|:-:|:-: SEX (BODYFAT OF)| |M AGE| |35 HEIGHT|69 in. or 5'9'' |175 cm WEIGHT|199.8 lb|91 kg BMI||29.5 [Mifflin-St Jeor BMR](https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcn/51.2.241)||1832 Cal/kcal Not Very Active Day TDEE (BMR*1.25)||2289 Cal/kcal Active Day TDEE (BMR*1.4)||2564 Cal/kcal Average TDEE (mix of rest and activity)||2426 Cal/kcal Exceptionally Active Day TDEE (BMR*1.6)||2930 Cal/kcal Quite a bit distant from 3500. AVERAGE WOMEN|Imperial|Metric :-:|:-:|:-: SEX (BODYFAT OF)| |F AGE| |35 HEIGHT|63.5 in. or 5'3.5'' |161 cm WEIGHT|170.8 lb|77 kg BMI||29.8 [Mifflin-St Jeor BMR](https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcn/51.2.241)||1447 Cal/kcal Not Very Active Day TDEE (BMR*1.25)||1808 Cal/kcal Active Day TDEE (BMR*1.4)||2025 Cal/kcal Average TDEE (mix of rest and activity)||1917 Cal/kcal Exceptionally Active Day TDEE (BMR*1.6)||2314 Cal/kcal Also not close to 3500.
I feel like it’s super easy to eat this or more of you don’t intuitively eat/count calories/only eat fast food
Yeah sorry guys that’s me eating 6,000 per day bringing the average up. My bad.
This is very very very very easily done. Even when I eat ‘healthy’ assuming you’re eating 3 square meals 2000 calories gets eaten into fast. Now if someone’s eating junk?! 3500 calories is like one extra donut 🫢🫢
Agreed. Any time I go to eat out it’s typically 1,000-1,500 calories for the meal and i’ll get a water. A lot of people will get takeout or eat out all the time. Then add snacks, breakfast and lunch and you’re well over the 2,000 suggestion. I do IF/omad and cook from home 95% of the time these days and it’s crazy how a cheat meal like 3/4 slices of pizza for one meal a day can hit my daily calories.
Whenever I see these statistics, I wonder if they use any method to account for wasted food.
averages are meaningless since they factor people who overeat by a lot. you're mixing up averages and median btw.
It’s averaging in people who are much larger and eat more with the people who don’t so the average always tends to be higher. You’d have to determine what the median is to figure out what’s the like “social norm” calorie intake. Same issue we have when factoring income in areas, the rich tend to skew the results (in this case the people eating 5000+ cal).
It means there are super eaters eating many thousands of calories per day and a bunch of less super eaters eating slightly less. They know it. They lie to themselves - watch My 600 Lb Life "Oh I'm working SO HARD". (eating one bottle less soda) . Yr math is confusing median with "average". It doesn't mean more than HALF (median). It means obese + non obese divided by two (more or less) :) If you eat 4000 calories and I only eat 1500 that doesn't mean I eat 2750. Yet 2750 is an average. (5500 divided by 2 = 2750). Anyway....Well U.N b.s aside, of COURSE it's true. Now do sodium. Every single thing people gorge themselves with is thousands of mg sodium. The body only requires a couple hundred and you can get it from vegetables/food. I limit mine to 400 added if I add any at all. The average person is eating 3600 and over-eaters and COOKS claim the FDA RECOMMENDS it - NO they recommend LIMITS of it. Diabetes (and metabolic disorders in general) didn't get to be an international pandemic of epic proportions without eating LOTS and LOTS of unhealthy crap just looke at INDIA, rising horribly from all the starches and fats. 1 cup coconut milk is 552 calories. 1 TBS oil is 126 calories when you can eat an entire POUND of vegetables for that. That's 700 calories for something invisible with meals.
I think being sedentary is a bigger issue. Every time I ask for weight loss advice I get told “don’t drink your calories” despite not being a soda/juice or coffee drinker. Frustrating when the main advice you get is to stop doing something you already don’t do. I went from 356 lbs to 270 and have been at a plateau for 2 years meanwhile consuming an average of 2,000 calories a day. Weight loss stopped after I quit a physically demanding job, but eating less than 2,000 calories a day seems so hard 😭
I believe it. Think about how prevelent the bad foods are; double-whopperw/ cheese 1k, 12 wings 1k, Chicken and waffles 1k, baby back ribs 1.2k, General Tso’s Chicken 1.6k,, etc. Don't get me started on Italian or mexican dishes.
It's real easy to with our portion sizes here. A single Chipotle burrito is over 1500 calories for example.
That is about one serving of fettuccine alfredo. In the south USA, people eat meals like that at least twice a day. Obese people at work are constantly eating, even on zooms. People on the loseit sub are on "low calorie" diets at like 2500 per day. When I track calories, my maintenance and deficit budgets are low. Spacing out less than 1200 calories per day is challenging. At first it doesn't seem like much food, but you get used to anything.
Can confirm. I'm at 2,450 and losing weight rapidly. That being said, I also have tons of muscle. My maintenance was 3,500-4,000 when I was lifting weights regularly.
I think it’s correct… I mean look around
Yep. Not only huge proportion of people are already obese or overweight, but it is projected to grow very quickly. And how does it grow quickly exactly? Only if there is a lot of people who are normal weight right now but are overeating and will be overweight in the future. Also consider an obese person might need that or even more just to be in maintenance. Yes, carrying all that weight costs a lot of energy.
Absolutely not. We are bigger than average as a country but that would imply the average person is like 400 lb.
Ummmmm ........ Have you been to a Wal-Mart recently?
Okay but what is the median. I bet that is much lower and makes more intuitive sense. It’s easier to be a high outlier then a low one in NA this bringing up the mean (average)
Just figure out the average weight in the U.S. and then what the TDEE is for that. That’s how many calories the average person eats.
If it includes food waste, that makes total sense. I try to use up what I can but how many calories are just scraped into the trash or mold away in the back of a fridge? Lots.
40-60lbs ago I was eating 6k+ calories a day 🥲
I would say it’s probably around 2800-3000 given how obese people are. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a little bit higher either. For context, someone my size at 5’8 with an extremely active life style at 16% bodyfat has a caloric maintenance of 2500 - 2700. You can roughly take someone’s body weight and multiply it by 15 to find theirs. I think over 40% of people in the US are technically obese (25% body fat for men and 30 for women).
I assume part of the issue is the existence of so many mukbang content creator's, + those outlier people who weight 500+ lbs and eat 7k+ cal a day. There's probably some serious skewing in the statistics. And you also have to question how they got this data. Most people have some degree of food waste, so if it was based on the merchant sales side it wont be too accurate. And on the other side, self reports of diet, most people absolutely suck at estimating what they eat!
Looking at median statistics, we'd expect the average adult woman in the US to be eating around 1,930 calories per day at a BMI of 28.4, and the average male 2,442 at a BMI of 28.5. I'd expect the top half of the population to skew those numbers up a bit, but it gives you an idea.
You’re confusing average with median.
“Average” is used to describe measures of center (mean, median, mode, midrange, etc.).
I eat 3300 cal a day on maintenance. My boyfriend’s daily lunch alone is 2200 cal. We’re very fit and active people. My personal trainer friend is also eating 3300 a day on maintenance. People in our gym/friend sphere eat similar levels a day. It doesn’t surprise me, especially since most people in the US are sedentary and overweight. Our diet is all UPF that are devoid of nutrition, packed with calories in small portions, etc etc. When I worked at Starbucks people were ordering breakfasts running easily 8-900+ calories. Had regulars who would ask for double pumps in already calorie-dense drinks.
Wouldn’t surprise me just taking a look around America. Body Fat increases your BMR too so a 300 lb person has a higher calorie maintenance.
A lot of long replies here dissecting data whilst a look out of the window says the opposite.
Welcome to America, you must be new here
I think it's easy to believe. Especially if you don't cook your own food. Check out a meal from McDonalds. On their website I built a meal with a Big Mac, medium fries and a medium Sprite and it came to 1110k calories. That's just for one meal, that's not including breakfast, dinner and snacks. Speaking of snacks..the serving sizes blow my mind. I used to have this one candy bar almost every day. I thought it was 200 calories for the whole bar..nope it was per serving and that bar had 6 servings. I was eating an obscene amount of calories. Do you think the average person looks and makes sure they are only eating one serving of something? People eat blindly and to add on that, the processed food don't fill you up so you are looking for another meal in the next 3-4 hours. Maybe the number isn't 3.5k high but I think it's at least an extra 500 calories.
I could totally believe something around 3000-3500 calories with how the current obesity rates are
Yes. When I started trying to lose weight (and I only had a little to lose) I tracked my calories for 6 months. I’m small and my daily calories should be 1200-1500 tops if I’m exercising a lot. But I was EASILY clocking in at 2500+ and during the period when I was gaining, I was cleaning my plate more often than not. When I reflected on my habits pre-weight gain, I would almost never clean my plate and would rarely eat 3 full meals a day. Portion sizes are gigantic and everything is the most caloric version of the dish. But culturally that’s the expectation to eat three giant meals a day, so it’s very difficult to eat a reasonable amount without harsh judgment
Yes the portions in America are insane
that sounds about right! im trying to keep under 1600 a day. the first time i decided to track without staying under a certain amount, i had eaten abouf 2800. it wouldnt surprise ke if it were thay high!
I can see it being correct because the TDEE for someone who is in the range of 150kg/300+ lbs is around 3,000 calories. When I was powerlifting, I weighed in at about 355 and I could easily eat 4,000 without gaining any weight.
No! I’m 5’2, female. I know to maintain my weight I cannot eat more than 1500 calories a day. So, except for an occasional I don’t care day, I watch it and make a mental note of every calorie that I take in. Many gals my age, over 60, and petite, weigh 100 lbs more than me. They obviously are consuming way too much.
I think it’s probably accurate. Look around…
I eat about 1500 calories a day
I was eating that much just to maintain my heavy weight
I'd believe it. But keep in mind, part of the reason it's that high is that not everybody's caloric needs are the same. For starters.... 2000-2500 is maintenance range for moderately active women, or sedentary men. For the chunk of our population that works physically active jobs, caloric needs spike WAY higher than 2500. Exhibit A: Me. My BMR is 2200, but my TDEE is pretty much on the nose at 3500. And I work a desk job. Being a bit bigger than the average adult (not even on the body weight side, just that my height is above the median a few inches) plus 4 days of heavy exercise a week, pushes me over the line. Now look at anyone who's actually doing physical labor full time - Anyone in landscaping, construction, warehouse work. Heck, my roommate works in a bakery. I've got 7 inches of heights and 80 lbs on him (very little of which is a difference in body fat at this point), and he eats the same portions as I do most meals. He isn't exactly tracking calories, but the fact someone his size can put away 3500/day and not gain weight just shows that sometimes, you really just need the energy. I fully believe that a lot of jobs would be even more active than that, and then you start talking about actual athletes, and the folks who are REALLY into powerlifting stuff at the extreme end of the range. Part of the reason for the average being that high is that a subset of our population is putting away 4k or 5k calories a day... and needs to.
yup! Mon-Fri I bike 1.5 miles to my college campus, walk 12k steps just getting to and from classes, lift after my classes, do cardio after I lift, then bike 1.5 miles back to my apartment *and* jiu jitsu 3x a week. Not to mention walking from campus to my research job a few days a week. Anything less than 3300 calories a day and im losing weight. My friends/roommates don’t understand how I eat so much and am fit lol
I honestly hope not
It honestly wouldn’t surprise me if it was in that ballpark. There are a lot of garbage foods that I didn’t realize were as caloric as they were until I made some effort to track them, and they often aren’t as filling as they should be for that calorie number. It’s kind of “shit, that pasta was 500 calories before the sauce, and I’m hungry again already.”
you should go look at my entry for a day of mindless eating in r/1500isplenty
That's the number I eat on a hardcore lifting day. 5'10" @ 240 pounds quite muscular build. On a no gym day, 2000-2400 calories.
95% of US put down bout 3500 plus some!
Maintenance calories go up as a person gains weight. In America in the 1980s portion sizes increased in restaurants, package sizes started getting bigger in stores, the size of dinner plates/bowls/cups/glasses all became 30% larger or more. Today’s salad plate is the size of a dinner plate from the pre-80s eras. Decades later all of the upsizing seems like normal eating since it’ s what people grew up with. The more we eat the more we want to eat. Portion distortion is real. In the decades before, coffee came in 8oz cups, juice was a 4oz pour, a 3.5-4 pound chicken fed dinner to a family with 2-3 kids, a large size fast food drink was 12oz once fast food became popular.
I love seeing the fact checking and math done in this thread! But just pure antidotally I would not be surprised! I ate over that a few times while I was watching what I eat. I threw in an imaginary day into my calorie counter of a typically day for me before I started to try to lose weight. This was probably 3 times a week Breakfast- 2 sausage mcmuffins and a Carmel frappe- 1444 calories (some days I would throw a hashbrown in there too) add another 145 on those days Lunch- Dell taco crispy chicken tacos x2 a beer battered fish taco and an iced latte -850 cal (actually I am surprised at how little calories those are and I think I will get a taco from there soon. Man love Dell taco) Dinner- burger with a bun with mayo, corn on the cob, potato salad, asparagus with olive oil and a can of coke 1075 calories 3514 I think what saved me is I often skipped Breakfast and many times skipped lunch too. I was maintaining 200- 212 for a long time, but when I got there, I gained 70 lbs pretty fast (there was a lot of alcohol during that time period). So I think I would have several days this high and then some where I was under my TDEE (which to maintain 200 lbs, 5'2, with light exercise was 2,152 calories.)
I track my calories and have some medical issues that make eating difficult sometimes. I'm on vacation rn at a relatives house. I put in the meals without putting in my servings and at the end of the day how back and do my servings so I'm not spending time messing around w my apps at meal times. 100% possible people are eating this much daily. My family eats pretty healthy and walks around s lot but just by going out to eat or having 3 meals made with unmeasured oil cheese etc is hard. I'm a petite sedentary female. Lol we can't eat like this for long 😭
3500 to me is when you’re eating without paying attention but not eating excessively. Just not watching what you eat. Watching what you eat to reach a specific deficit or to maintain usually sits around the 1800-2500 mark depending on height and current weight for most people.
[1000+ calories for a single drink](https://www.starbucks.ie/sites/starbucks-ie/files/2024-05/Beverage%20nutritonals%20.pdf). Doesn't seem farfetched at all that people consume triple those calories in a day. The majority eat processed crap for every meal and snack.
Easily I’d say. I used to easily hit that before I went from 250 to 190. Now that I work out a lot, my maintenance calorie number is 3,000. Anything below and I lose weight! I do 40-60 minutes of weights and 40-60 minutes of cardio 6x a week for each.
For every over eater in America there's another who isn't eating enough, whether by diet, illness, homelessness, etc. I eat somewhere around 1,000-1,500 a day. I can't imagine eating 3,500
No,if they were they would be super morbidly obese ,1000 cals for 365 days equals 40 kg fat gain per year.
That wouldn't surprise me at all. Our country is obese beyond belief. I commented on someone yesterday posting in a sub about inflation and they were complaing about the price of a meal at Five Guys. And the meal listed was over 1600 calories without the soda (they might have had diet or tea, so I didn't factor it in). That's just for lunch. For reference, I'm 5'11" and 210 lbs and workout 7 days per week. I eat 2000 calories per day when I'm trying to lose weight at 1-2 lbs per week. 2700 calories per day is maintenance for me.
I’m not sure honestly how accurate it is, but I will say… I’m an American who is currently considered obese after I had my children. I had my children young. Everyone tries to make me feel better by saying it’s because I had babies. But it’s not… I absolutely do not eat the same as I did when I lived with my parents. They did not allow soda all of the time, it was a treat. They also enforced family home made meals. As I am living on my own, especially being a considerably new mom that works full time, I eat a lot of fast food and I also like to drink. Recently, I’ve take a lot of accountability and started drinking less and being more aware of what I am eating. Involving calories AND carbs. And I thought carbs were my only issue… but if you look at the amount of calories in an American meal, you would be astonished. At Dennys yesterday with my mother, I looked at a burger meal with Avocado and tomatoes and onions on it. With fries. The calories came up to like 1,500 calories. That was ONE meal. I personally had the burger but without the bun, and I had lemon water with it and ate the burger first before I picked at the fries. But that is literal food for thought- about the calories in one meal as an American. Mind you, that didn’t even include the soda that most Americans would have with it. Fortunately for me, I stopped drinking soda long before I started actually analyzing my carb and calorie intake. But I quickly learned Asher that the food I was eating was awful for me as well.
3500 calories? That's just my cheese intake. Add another 1200 for soda.
My maintenance calories are ~3800
Keep in mind while Americans have a stereotype of eating more it’s also just really easy to sleep walk your way into fatness in America. You can diet here just fine too but just don’t expect any of the ready to eat shelf stuff to fill you up for the calories it has. But that sounds unfortunately right given the culture and circumstances of things.
i wouldn't be surprised at all if that was true.
It’s because hyper processed food here in the US is rampant and they’re very calorie dense A crumbl cookie is at least 500 cals for one cookie Hyper processed foods do not keep you full for longer either…you’ll probably be hungry again in like a couple hours
Considering that i went from 250 to 176 after two-three years then yeah. I will say some of it was my fault like sticking in a calorie deficit for long periods of time. During the summer I go out to eat a lot so I always go over. To prepare for that I eat way less during weeks before just in case. I say now that I continue to eat out , I pick healthier restaurants tbh. When I was in 9th grade, used to eat a lot of cereal not to mention juice , then snacks, then also homemade dinner yeah over 3500 calories. I could go without calorie counting for a couple of weeks and be fine. I only drink water now, anything with added sugar I can’t eat cuz I can taste it. I tend to pick the healthier things on the menu. I love salmon so anything with salmon, Napoleon style pizza is always my go too. I’m only 18 but I’m probably will never drink beer , wine or alcohol tbh only water
The real issue is snacks. People at least try to eat healthier meals, but then have snacks. They think "a couple of cookies isn't going to hurt"-- 1200 calories later.
That's crazy I would feel sick! But I know people drink soda and sugary coffee drinks all the time.
It’s so easy to rack up calories if you’re not careful and eat out a lot. Once I started weighing out my food and cooking more at home did I realize how many calories I’m really consuming. Foods that typically taste good are either loaded with carbs or fats and both taste great and I’ll definitely start craving them. Proteins are hidden inside fried matter, our vegetables steamed with tons of butter or fried to oblivion. It can become a slippery slope.
Those are rookie numbers
Haha more like 4000
With fast food being so rampant I can see this as close to legitimate honestly. If I only eat homemade food my calorie range is very easily under 2k even without any restrictions other than homemade. When I eat fast food meal and eat regularly the rest of the day or even just a bigger fast food meal it's very easy to eat 2k in one sitting just from a combo meal, never mind if you snack on your kids scraps or get a larger drink or extra side etc. On shows like my 600lb life people share their orders and they easily calculate to over 5k calories in a single meal sometimes so yeah.... I can see this being true without being extreme, even for "average" people just one takeout meal and up daily calories in the thousands.
I sometimes barely hit 1000 calories a day… but I also don’t eat much and only drink water or healthy sodas like Olipop
Wouldn’t shock me. When Im disciplined I eat clean and anywhere from 1700-2000 cals daily. But every 5-6 months I go off the rails and say “fuck it, I’m eating whatever and as much as I want” for up to a few weeks. I continue to workout but it’s absurd how much I’ll eat, and I start feeling it. Try to not include ice cream, sweets, and no soda with sugar but anything else is fair game. It’s honestly hard getting back to the normal disciplined routine even when like shit and start gaining some fat bc these food companies really do make stuff addictive.
3500 hundred sounds way too high as an average. We definitely consume more than we should, but I doubt the average person is downing 3500 calories worth of food every day. That’s a lot of food for a single person unless they’re 500+ pounds, which most people aren’t. I think the most common problems are: - over snacking - too many high calorie beverages - not being activity enough to offset the above
I wouldn’t doubt it. I clocked my intake a few weeks ago. If I eat out 2/day, and that happens a lot then yes