Control period was 3,200, starvation was 1560. This seems high. Most dietary recommendations today are structured around a 2000 calorie diet. Wikipedia mentions that this was a healthy weight diet - they must have been very active and/or large.
What calorie deficit is required to obtain 25% weight loss in 6 months?
It says they tweaked it per person, those are just approx amounts. They were measuring weight to make sure it stayed on track for that loss. So I think the deficit varies slightly.
It says they picked people from the CPS(civilian public service) work camps, so I would guess they were doing a lot of physical labor.
The participants were expected to perform manual labor every day and expected to walk no less than 22 miles per week. 1500 calories a day is really low under those conditons, and the 3200 was probably selected to maintain weight given them.
> What calorie deficit is required to obtain 25% weight loss in 6 months?
Depends what you originally weigh, but we can make a reasonable approximation of 3500cal/pound of fat, so ~20 calories per day deficit for each pound lost. So ~800/day if they weighed 160lbs to begin with.
They were very active, that's an important part of the experiment.
What calorie deficit is required to obtain 25% weight loss in 6 months?