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Joseph Anderson wrote:

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If your BMR is 2000 calories a day and you eat 2100 (assuming no added EE) you may or may NOT store the excess calories as fat.

Just to clarify your position- if the extra 100 calories are not stored as fat, what are the other possibilities? Lean tissue synthesis? No storage at all?? Would the extra calories impact body weight, even if not in the form of body fat?

Joe

There are many possibilites including futile cycling. Yes, protein synthesis, cellular regeneration, etc. You can't say exactly. The 2nd law tells us that something can happen - not what will happen.

AShortt wrote:

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Chronic overeating.

It's more complex than that. Overeating what? Obesity is a dosorder of excess fat accumulation. Why do some people store more of the calories they take in as fat? This is the question.

Lincoln wrote:

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And more to the point, why has the percentage of obese people gone up dramatically in the last few decades? Genetics does not change that fast. It is doubtful that the populations at large became more inherently lazy and gluttonous. So what has changed? It's clear to me that the most radical change has been the content of the standard American diets. Americans are not all that different than they were forty or fifty years ago - but their food sure is. The food is radically different. It is now highly processed, loaded with sugar (real and fake), loaded with starches, and low in quality fats.

Good points Lincoln. Right on the money.

Here's why:


Note the increase in carbohydrate over the years.

Lincoln wrote:

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Even that is somewhat simplistic, as not all CHO sources are equal in nutritive value or in nutritive liability. Quality matters.

Here's a valuable trouble-shooting technique I learned back in 1992:

When something that has been working for a long time suddenly breaks, ask this question first, "What changed?" That change is quite likely the source of the problem.

This technique is a simple application of Occam's Razor. In the case of obesity, that change - the biggest change - is diet. Our genetics, our work ethic, our activity levels have not changed nearly as much as our diet. (Although activity levels are also down somewhat over the last few decades and quite a bit over the last few hundred years.)

Yes and what has mainly changed in diet is an increase in carbohydrate intake. And yes the quality matters but the quantity matters more I'd say.

Here is what I am trying to get across - carbohydrates increase insulin. Insulin is the most direct link between diet and fat accumulation. This is in all basic biochemistry books. Insulin of course is not the only thing effecting fat metabolism, but it is the primary regulator. This is not disputable - it's just ignored or forgotten by many experts. The question is not whether the entire process is very complicated as many suggest to side-step the main issue. It is indeed complicated. A question to ponder is whether it's possible to become obese without raising insulin levels specifically without carbohydrates driving the increase. If it were possible to get fat on a carbless diet, then we'd need to look at other issues that effect fat gain - but it's not.

Gary Taubes tells me he has had numerous discussions with researchers about this. He simply asked them if they thought it was possible to make humans fat without raising their insulin levels or making their lean tissue insulin resistant in comparison to their fat tissue. So the question is not whether fat metabolism is complicated, but whether its possible to get fat without insulin being the driver. If insulin is the driver, then that implicates carbs as the obvious environmental cause of obesity. We've known this for decades in fact.

Though anecdotal, I have never once had a client go low carb and not lose significant fat, gain muscle and feel great. The only perosn who was adversely affected was my manager who is a ballerina and VERY lean to begin with. She decided to go VERY low carb - just veggies and fatty protein and after a few weeks she lost strength but also lost more fat. I thin she did not last long enough to become fully fat adapted however.