[Retric]

The perceptual differences between different energy sources are one thing, but in the end energy is energy. Take a perfectly healthy and balanced diet without weight gain or weight loss, then add just 100 calories per day of extra protein and you will gain weight.

[yawaworht1978]

But the body does not work like that. Metabolism is an ongoing mechanism with very fast adaptions and it cares a great deal about macros. Sugars will cause blood sugar spikes and release many hormones to trigger hunger soon again. In the strictest sense, a calorie is a calorie, but you can't expect that someone who eats a protein scoop a day and the remainder comes from oil and beer will have the same results and body composition as someone who eats mostly protein, some rice and a bit of fats and no junk food at all, then that's wrong.

There is a reason why olímpica athletes have special diets.

[Retric]

> a calorie is a calorie

See that voice in the back of your head is a little cognitive dissonance. People’s behavior changes based on their diet, but outside of starvation metabolism doesn’t speed up with extra calories they just result in weight gain.

Look all kinds of stuff happens when you go to extremes. But, the human diet has a lot of flexibility which is why we don’t have the one true diet despite a lot of research. At the middle of the healthy range +/- a few percent doesn’t do anything. That’s why so much nutrition research is inconclusive we can’t optimize for an ideal peak of perfect nutrition because close enough gives identical results.

Which is what I am talking about. Take a perfectly reasonable heathy diet that wouldn’t result in long term weight gain or loss and then toss in 100 calories of protein and you get weight gain the same way adding 100 of any other macronutrients or even an even split of all three. That’s true because a perfectly reasonable diet is far from the limits on how much protein you can digest per day.