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by dreistdreist 3473 days ago
Why did nobody notify me that the law of thermodynamics changed?

It is not physicially possible to gain weight when you have a caloric deficit. Where would it even come from?

2 comments

The laws of thermodynamics have not changed, but try examining a really-really-really-really-really high dimensional phase without getting tendrils/'tubes' that appear essentially random w.r.t. prior conditions. How would you know the direction of a volume of phase space with fairly significant perturbation across all the variables that can change?

A flippant counter-example: eat only carbohydrates with a 1000 calorie deficit, drink 5 liters of water daily- 0 additional calories. How would you not gain water weight? Doesn't that count also?

I don't think the obesity problem is due to lean body mass (which water weight is)...
They haven't.

The body is not a closed system.

The laws of thermodynamics tell you your caloric equations have to be balanced, but the internal state of the body can alter behaviors such as feeding and moving, so appealing to the laws of thermodynamics is pretty much off-topic. It's a common fallacy, and you're not alone in committing it. Obesity is increasingly seen as a metabolic disease with behavioral consequences rather than the other way around.

Here are two arbitrary papers I've blindly pulled out of the google-scholar hat, both of which discuss aspects of the issue at hand. Much has been written on the subject, and I respectfully urge you to investigate further.

1. http://www.nature.com/nrendo/journal/v2/n8/abs/ncpendmet0220...

2. https://nutritionj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1475-2...

Also, if you're going to be sardonic, you really should make sure you're not missing anything...