3 ms·

There's a thermodynamic upper bound on the energy you can extract from a dietary calorie. In that sense, the physical sense, a calorie is a calorie. In the die

There's a thermodynamic upper bound on the energy you can extract from a dietary calorie. In that sense, the physical sense, a calorie is a calorie. In the dietary sense, calories are NOT equal. It's easy to change a person's body mass by changing their diet while keeping calories the same. Mixing simple carbohydrates with fat is an effective way to get our metabolism to generate body fat. Simple carbohydrates in general, really, since our body is forced to process them into fat quickly or else our blood pH reaches harmful levels. Repeating "a calorie is a calorie" is harmful for people considering their diet, and a truism if you're speaking to a physicist. In either case, not helpful.

Spivak 6y ago
See, I feel this is the exact opposite. Telling people that it’s possible to lose weight without running a caloric deficit one way or another is the most harmful piece of advice to give to anyone who’s on a diet. I do not deny that it is probably possible to min max your diet and exploit some of our bodies weirdness. But on a macro scale none of that shit matters. If you run a caloric deficit it literally does not matter in the slightest what your body does to the food: it can store in fat, it can burn it immediately no matter what your body is still going to have to burn all of its reserves to operate.