[robotresearcher]

Imagine you explained to people in the nineteenth century: the way you do heavier than air flight is to deliver sufficient thrust to overcome gravity and drag. Well, yes, that’s quite true. But how to get that done reliably is the ‘rest of the owl’.

How can people reliably eat a balanced diet despite feeling compelled to smash calories, now that calories are very cheap? The thermodynamic explanation has nothing to say on this.

[LanceH]

Yes, but the huge effort to deny the thermodynamic explanation is straight up harmful.

[emmanuel_1234]

I'd really like to be pointed to someone seriously denying the thermodynamic explanation. I've heard that argument time and time over, it's a strawman.

[maximus-decimus]

I've definitely met people, not even fat people, who deny it. They either think they just don't burn many calories because their body is a "different type" or that their body absorbs more calories.

I guess it doesn't deny the physic principle of thermodynamics, but they deny using thermodynamics is a reliable way to predict if you're gonna gain or lose fat.

[BizarroLand]

Well, if their body chemistry is predilected to create fat over healthy muscle or ramping up their metabolism to burn the excess, then there may be a grain of truth to the claim.

Per the article: Carbs + high circulating Insulin + Low Ghrelin+ a certain amount of fat already on the body = body chemistry that prefers to create fat over using the energy for literally anything else.

If that is the case, then that's a hell of a dilemma. If you eat more than your body will burn by the time the food has processed, the excess will go to fat.

Eat one meal a day but have 1,200 calories in a meal (since most dieticians say that no one should eat less than 1,200 calories a day), well, your body can only process so many calories in a certain amount of time, so everything else goes to fat.

True, if your BMR is higher than 1,200 (which it should be if you're not dead) then you will turn around and burn that back away if you stick rigidly to your diet.

But a normal person not afflicted like this might have a body temperature increase as their body ramped up to process the excess calories instead...

[maximus-decimus]

A body temperature increase... as in a fever? If eating food gives you a fever, you have bigger issues than losing weight.

The problem with saying everything goes to fat if you eat 1200 calories in 1 shot is that if that happens, you'll actually burn the fat during the day when you need it, and you'll lose energy during the conversion, meaning your body will be overall less efficient than using it straight away and you'll lose even more weight. I don't know how inefficient that really is, all I remember from my biology classes is this is a lot more efficient than burning muscle, but it sure doesn't increase the total amount of energy in your system. That would be breaking thermodynamics laws.

i.e. Just because you store fat, doesn't mean you need any less calories per day. Your body won't just starve itself to death while leaving your fat alone.

[edanm]

See Gary Taubes, i.e. the article we are discussing.

[gumby]

Taubes isn’t denying it, merely saying it’s not explanatory. If you prefer: necessary but not sufficient.