They consume more energy than they expend. That's overconsumption.

That's a very clouded view on the situation.

People often forget that the human body was made to survive frequent food shortages. Throughout the millennia we became efficient at saving every bit of energy we can muster, to the point where it's detrimental to our health in times when we do have enough to eat.

The body's metabolism and the body's tendency to store energy as fat are two important variables that you overlooked in your equation. Indeed some people consume calories daily than their body burns. However, if the body already wastes a percentage of those calories by saving them as unused fat to begin with, the person has no other choice than to compensate that with more consumption.

No, they would simply need to eat at a maintenance level and use the stored energy, that is, assuming the way you're describing metabolism is true.



The way you're describing metabolism is inaccurate. There isn't some percentage of energy from food that goes immediately into body fat stores, and thus there isn't one that varies from person to person to be causative of overweight.

http://healthyeating.sfgate.com/body-store-excess-calories-9627.html

It goes into immediately usable energy (glycogen), then further excess is stored in adipose (body fat) once glycogen stores are full.



This doesn't mean much. I'll quote someone else online that I just read talk about this:

"The Thrifty Gene hypothesis (what you're referring to) is the idea that there was selection for genes that help us store fat in the past due to famine. Unfortunately, there isn't actually good evidence that huntergatherers experienced a lot famine. No evidence at all actually, not even from modern hunter gatherer groups. Famine in general began when agriculture began, where crop failure was a devastating thing to happen. So if the Thrifty Gene hypothesis is true, we expect to be able to FIND the genes responsible at some point."



My view isn't clouded. It's hypersimplistic and only might seem strange insofar as it flies in the face of oft-held myths and excuses regarding weight and energy--ones people use to defend themselves and the people they know.

What it really comes down to is hunger-controlling hormones, fillingness versus nutritional content of food and its availability, and eating habits. These things cause someone to overconsume (or underconsume). But ultimately it is about the amount of calories and not some varying function in people's bodies to any appreciable degree.

A few fallacies you make in your post:
- "There is no evidence of famine in the past. This means that genes potentially developed to battle famine do not exist." No further explanation required.
- You're using a strawman against my description of metabolism. Indeed, there is no such percentage, and I never claimed there was. Metabolism is variable and adapts to a plethora of ever-changing things -- each of which can vary as well. Additionally it's defined by genes, which are not variable within one individual person. Metabolism as a concept is often misunderstood, but that doesn't mean the concept doesn't exist or that it doesn't affect how we burn and/or save calories. It does. The evidence is as simple as it gets: try eating 2000 calories a day spread across breakfast, lunch and dinner. After a few months, start skipping your breakfast and start spreading those 2000 calories across lunch and dinner. Your metabolism will adapt to the lack of energy intake in the morning, and will cause you to burn less calories in the long run.
- The quotes you paste/link in general. The "thrifty gene" paragraph is phrased very prettily but adds no new content to the discussion. It's basically you going "Here's someone else who says something similar to what I say, which reinforces what I say".

From what I've seen in other threads you're a quite reasonable, open minded and educated person. This only adds to my confusion as to why you're so determined to defend a prejudgment on a topic you clearly have little knowledge about.

This post was edited by howtodisappearcompletely on May 13 2016 05:18am

41 pages and no one said "we dont already?"

A couple failed reality shows =/= fat acceptance

Then you'd be overconsuming, and it ultimately comes down to how much you consume minus how much you expend.

If, for example, 2000 calories/day was your maintenance, and then you made the drastic change to skip breakfast and spread out calories in lunch and dinner, and you went from being active the whole day to being immobile during the morning, then that would mean you are expending less energy overall, and the 2000 calories/day would make you begin to gain weight. The amount you gain is accounted for in the amount you were less active in the mornings.

This is all accounted for as a relationship between consumption and expenditure.



This isn't something I have little knowledge about. I've dealt with being borderline underweight for much of my life and did a lot of research into weight gain/loss and calorie consumption. I even have hypothyroidism too. I understand the relationship between calorie consumption and weight as it's been part of my life. Even my brother is a personal trainer who has studied this in depth and I've talked to him about this.

At no point have I made judgments about people who are overweight or underweight. Again, it comes down to hunger-controlling hormones, fillingness versus nutritional content of food and its availability, and eating habits. I'm not claiming anyone is "gluttonous" as the user I replied to did.

It's sufficient to just say that (or show why) you disagree without telling me I'd need to be prejudiced or uneducated to believe this.

It's sufficient to just read a couple of Wikipedia articles to invalidate all the strawmen you're creating concerning the concept of metabolism.

In my example I never mentioned anything regarding reduced physical activity in the morning. The example I gave is correct even when your number of calories burned through sheer physical activity stays exactly the same.

I'm at the point where I can explain to you how things work, but I cannot provide you the conclusive proof that it works this way. Part of it is pure common sense anyway, which you seem to be lacking. In fact I'm inclined to believe that you, in your attempts to influence your weight, found that your own personal metabolism is difficult to influence externally, and you concluded that this must be the case for everybody.

This post was edited by howtodisappearcompletely on May 13 2016 06:05am

Then there would have to be a change in basal metabolic rate. Total energy expenditure is not just visible physical activity like exercise, but the total energy used for your body to stay alive.

No, I never ate enough. I have extremely low appetite and sometimes become averse to food after just eating a little bit. Tracking calories and ensuring I got all that I needed throughout the day has helped me gain weight though.

My weight is very easily influenced by simply eating more.

However simply eating more is difficult for me to do.

And your conclusion is that this -- and analogously the inverse -- works this way for everyone because it works this way for you?