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High-fiber diets tend to have this effect generally, as soluble fiber binds a small amount of protein and fat in the stomach carrying it out without digestion. So if you jack up soluble fiber intake, you end up absorbing less of the calories that went into your mouth; more are lost in your poop. There is also some evidence that based on differences in the bacteria in the gut, there may be small differences in how well or poorly people extract energy from food during digestion, the most recent paper Ive seen suggests that this can vary by roughly 100 calories per day. So thats another place where the equation might be modified for any given individual. Id mention that, currently, no-one knows how to modify this in any useful fashion (although weight loss per se appears to cause the gut bacteria to shift to a different type) but that technology (through the use of preor pro-biotics) will likely come through in a few years. Please note: This doesnt deny the validity of the energy balance equation, it just means that its more complicated than people realize.
A Mid-Article Review
So Ive looked at some of the factors that can modify both the energy in and energy out part of the equation. Now we can rewrite the equation a bit more usefully as: Energy In (corrected for digestion) = (BMR/RMR + TEF + TEA + SPA/NEAT) + Change in Body Stores Even thats not complete and there are other things that can go on the energy out side of it, various inefficiencies in biochemical pathways (that basically waste calories through heat) and such things. Id note that most of these dont appear to contribute terribly significantly to the energy out side of things but they are worth noting since they modify the overall equation. Id also note that people often make comments about the above equation which shows just how utterly clueless they are about it. For example, people will point out that replacing carbs with protein leads to greater weight loss although they have the same calories; ergo the equation is wrong. What they fail to realize is that protein has a higher thermogenic effect and this modifies the TEF value of the equation; the energy OUT side of the equation changes if you replace carbs with protein. But they seem to try to treat the sides of the equation independently in this case; which is wrong. Now, even with the above, a commonly made argument that the energy balance equation is wrong is that, invariably, changes in either intake or expenditure dont seem to scale with predicted or expected changes in body mass. That is, armed with the above, if you know intake and output, you should be able to know exactly how much body mass will change, right? Put differently, its commonly stated that if you reduce food intake by 500 calories/day you will lose one pound per week. Yet when people do that very thing, this never happens in the real world. Or if you add 500 calories/day of food, you should gain a pound, and that pretty much never happens either in the real world. Hence the equation is invalid, right? Wrong. There are three different reasons why the expectations of most people in terms of changes in the energy balance are incorrect and, again, its based on their own simplistic understanding of whats going on. Those three reasons are 1. Water balance 2. Muscle and fat are not identical 3. The fact that the energy balance equation is not static Lets look at each.
Water Balance
This is the easiest to explain so Ill tackle it first. First note that water contains zero energy and zero calories. I can add a billion gallons of water to either side of the equation and it doesnt affect the equation
itself (quick note: some work suggested that ingestion of water, or cold water, could increase energy expenditure so that is an indirect way that water might impact on the equation, but this is not what Im talking about). However, water balance issues completely screw up expectations about changes in body mass. Every woman reading this knows that she can swing some amount of body weight (could be a couple pounds, could be 10 pounds) across a menstrual cycle and carbohydrate intake has a massive impact on water balance. But those changes dont mean anything in terms of the energy balance equation. Early studies of very-low carb diets (all discussed in detail in my first book The Ketogenic Diet) reported water loss ranging from like 1-15 pounds in the first few days. Im fairly little and I can drop 7 lbs of water in 3 days of carbohydrate restriction (it comes right back with carb-loading). Similarly, if you add a bunch of sodium to someones diet after a period of low -sodium intake, they will gain several pounds of water. But it doesnt affect the energy balance equation in any way because water has no caloric/energy value. Ive talked about this on the site in various contexts, in the article Of Whooshes and Squishy Fat, I talk about how water retention can mask true fat loss in some people. The deficit is there, the activity is there and nothing is happening. Then boom, overnight, 5 pounds drops off. Its not a thermodynamic miracle, nor does it defy the energy balance equation, water shifts just screw things up. I discussed this in a different context in the article Not Losing Fat at a 20% Deficit, What Should I Do?, some people seem prone to retaining water (they tend to be a little bit tightly wound mentally in my experience), they overproduce cortisol (which shows cross-reactivity with the mineralocorticoid receptor) and this causes water retention, especially when they diet and train too hard. They maintain a nice deficit, etc. but nothing is happening. Energy balance equation is wrong, right? Nope, its just water. The same thing works in the other direction, early studies (invariably lasting 4-7 days) on very low carb diets found greater WEIGHT loss for the lowcarb vs. high-carb diets. Aha, theres a metabolic advantage. Nope, its just water loss (due to a variety of mechanisms) and water doesnt have calories on either end of the equation. So this doesnt disprove the energy balance equation because water has no calories. So thats reason one while the expected change in body mass often doesnt scale with the deficit or expectations: water loss throws everything off. This doesnt invalidate the energy balance equation though, because water doesnt have energy on either side.
Note: WAT = white adipose tissue, the primary type of fat in the human body.
So there ya go, create a 3,500 cal/week deficit and you should lose one pound of fat, right? Again, wrong. There is a built in assumption in the above that turns out to not be necessarily correct but also throws a wrench into expectations about the energy balance equation. That assumption is that 100% fat is being lost when a deficit is created. Now, if you diet correctly (e.g. the way I describe in my books), this is a pretty good assumption but its not universally true. Often people also lose muscle and connective tissue on a diet. And the issue is that muscle and connective tissue doesnt provide as much energy to the body as a pound of fat. Rather than 3,500 calories to break down a pound of fat, a pound of muscle provides about 600 calories to the body when its broken down for energy. Let me put this in mathematical terms, to show you how the identical 3,500 calorie/week deficit can yield drastically different changes in body mass depending on what percentage of tissue youre losing. Im going to use the extremes of 100% fat, 50/50 fat and muscle, and 100% muscle.
Energy Yield Total Weight Lost 3500 cal/lb 1 pound 1.7 pounds 5.8 pounds
See whats going on? The assumption of one pound per week (3,500 cal/week deficit) is only valid for the condition where you lose 100% fat. If you lose 50% fat and 50% muscle, you will lose 1.7 pounds in a week for the same 3,500 calorie deficit. Lose 100% muscle (this never happens, mind you, its ju st for illustration) and you lose 5.8 pounds per week. Id note that I suspect this is why many rapid weight loss centers advise against exercise: exercise limits muscle loss on a diet and the simple fact is that you will lose MORE TOTAL WEIGHT faster if you lose muscle. Finally, Id note that most obesity researchers assume a loss for obese individuals of roughly 25% lean body mass and 75% fat which would put the true expected weight loss somewhere between the 1 lb/week and 1.7 pounds per week. But I dont feel like doing the math. I should note that the above numbers arent the same as for weight gain but there are differences in the amount of energy required to store one pound of muscle vs. one pound of fat. So there are still differences and this means that the predicted weight gain and actual weigh gain wont be identical; the math just isnt quite the same as what I presented above. But the critics say, it still never works out that way. Even if you account for water and the above, the math still never works out. The calorie hypothesis is still incorrect. But they always seem to steadfastly ignore the final factor.
movement that occurred at caloric balance (or surplus) drops. So the expected deficit (and hence change in body mass) is no longer accurate since parts of the energy out equation have changed. Id note that all of this goes for weight gain and overeating as well. All of the components can change, sometimes considerably. So the predicted or expected weight gain in response to a given change in energy intake is rarely exactly what is seen. Thats in addition to water balance issues and the difference in caloric value of muscle and fat. BMR/RMR goes up a bit when people overeat, of course gaining weight raises RMR/BMR because a larger body burns more calories. Since TEF is directly related to energy intake, if you increase food intake, TEF goes up slightly (and this depends on the nutrient in question with protein having the largest effect). Changes in SPA/NEAT can vary hugely and explain most of the discrepancies in expected vs. actual weight gain. In the earliest study, when overfed nearly 1000 calories/day weight/fat gain varied almost 10 fold but this was explained by massive variance in NEAT; some people increased their spontaneous movement by 700 cal/day (making the true surplus 300 cal/day) while one poor person (a woman) had her NEAT go down a little bit (she gained the most fat). This is mostly genetic, unfortunately. The point of all of this is this: When people say that the energy balance equation is invalid, this is simply not the case. The equation is completely valid, what is invalid are the assumptions that people are making about what the equation means or says.
Summing Up
I think when you read articles decrying the energy balance equation as invalid or incorrect, youll find that they ignore (or simply are unaware) of all of the above. The equation is perfectly valid and humans are as subject to the laws of thermodynamics as anything else in the universe. Physics is not just a good idea, kids, its the law. Most claims that the energy balance equation is invalid are due to people simply not knowing what they are talking about. The equation is valid, it has to be, whats invalid are peoples assumptions about how things should work. Final note, Im turning off comments on this article for reasons I think people will find obvious. On that note, dont try to sneak in comments (good or bad) in the comments section of other articles, they will be deleted. And that goes for both positive AND negative comments. I just deleted one positive comment because it would be intellectually dishonest of me to allow positive ones to get through and delete negative ones. None of them are getting through on this piece. Also, if you want a quick review on the topic, Id suggest the following paper: Schoeller DA. The energy balance equation: looking back and looking forward are two very different views. Nutr Rev. 2009 May;67(5):249-54.