How are calories turned into fat?
I know one pound of fat is 3500 calories … but if you drink 3500 calories worth of lard (hardly a pound) … how are the calories in lard converted to 1 pound of fat?
They won’t be. Digestion and metabolism aren’t 100% efficient. You need to eat more than 3500 extra calories to gain one pound of fat. (How much more will depend on your digestive efficiency and your basal metabolic rate, which both differ a bit from person to person.)
Why would you drink lard?! :eek:
There are about 4075 calories in a pound of lard, per the nutritional information here. So 3500 calories in 0.86 pounds. (Have you ever opened a container of lard? I don’t think you can drink it unless you heat it up first.)
Do you mean in general how are calories that we eat turned into fat? Or are you asking about the arithmetic of it?
From the link,
Which is basically what I was going to say: body fat is not stored as pure fat, but rather in the form of fat cells that also contain water (and some carbs and protein that are less calorie-dense than fat.)
That makes it sound like it could be possible to gain more weight than you consume*, if your body needs less than 575 calories to digest and convert the lard into body fat, which sounds likely (if eaten as extra calories in addition to your normal intake).
*Only including the lard, since water and other stuff are needed to make body fat and in the end you will always eat more weight than you gain.