A strict view of calories in, out is silly. I see it repeated here over and over. In a way it's true - if you take in less than you "burn", you will eventaully

A strict view of calories in, out is silly. I see it repeated here over and over. In a way it's true - if you take in less than you "burn", you will eventaully starve and die. But really your hormonal response to food cannot be represented so simply. Think about it more, why can a type 1 diabetic eat thousands and thousands of calories in a day but still lose weight? They can take in 5000+ calories, they lose weight. Type 1 diabetics without insulin replacement will waste away no matter what they eat sitting around all day. Whats going on with the "simple" in/out theory here? On the flip side, someone with insulin resistence can eat a bunch of oats and will have insulin response that takes triple the time for insulin to fall back to baseline compared to a healthy person without resistance. They will also produce 2 or 3 times as much insulin compared to whats considered a healthy response. And their fasting insulin could also be elevated. And they will be hungrier, not satiated. And they gain weight no matter how much they try to "move more" and "burn it off". Insulin in this effect is a storage hormone, a growth hormone. Insulin prevents your body from making ketones bodies from your body fat ("burning fat"). It makes sense - if food is coming in we don't need to access our fat stores, we need to use the new food for energy to move around or new storage or thermogenesis. and get the incoming glucose into cells and out of the blood. Fat triggers an insulin response that is a fraction of what proteins or carbs would. Insulin above a fasting baseline causes an anabolic state in the body. Insulin at a low fasting base line causes a catabolic state. Fat has more calories per gram but will not spike someone's insulin and cause it to remain excessively and chronically elevated. Anytime insulin is elevated you cannot burn your fat stores. Carbohydrates are more likely to cause increased hunger and energy storage. Fat will not have this same effect. The rise in obesity runs in lock step with the history of the USDA guidelines declaring your energy intake should be 40-60% carbohydrates (hundreds of grams of carbs per day), the food pyramid, long term decreased fat consumption per capita, and the rise of ultra processed foods. Ultra processed foods that are: designed to be addictive, loaded with refined carbohydrates and/or added sugars, absent of fiber, and have a long shelf life for transportation and shelf storage. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6082688/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6082688/