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the question I'm asking is are all
calories equally fattening and the
answer is no the calorie of brownies is
not the same as a calorie of kale it's
just not that's just common sense but
yet we tried to pretend that they're the
same so if it's not about calories it's
really about our hormonal response to
those calories which is completely
different depending on the different
foods that we eat but it depends on a
lot of different things calories is a
very simple measure and that's really
what is appealing about it because not
only does it tie together all different
foods in a single measure but you can
also tie in things like exercise and
these sort of things are very appealing
to companies that sell sugary beverages
for example so they can say okay if you
exercise then it's okay to drink sugar
sweetened beverages because you've just
exercised there's a fundamental flaw in
this whole energy balance equation the
energy balance equation says that body
fat equal Cal equals calories and minus
calories out so we what we take from
that is that we assume that if we simply
reduce the amount of calories we take in
that we're going to reduce our body fat
but that's not actually true that's not
actually what the equation says so
there's actually two parts to it the
calories in and calories out so the
question really is if you reduce your
calories taken in does your calories
that your body expends stay stable and
the answer is no and we've known this
for about a hundred years so you can
look at studies done in 1917 where they
take volunteers and they reduced the
number of calories that they eat by
roughly 30% then they measure their
basal metabolic rate which is the amount
of calories that they're burning on a
day to day basis and what you find is
that the body has reduced its energy
expenditure by about 30 percent so if
you're taking 30% less calories in and
your body is using 30% less
then you're not going to lose any body
fat which was the whole point of the
exercise and this is the really the
failure of this sort of calories and
calories out model is that they're not
independent variables the calories in
and the calories that are not
independent of each other they go up and
down together so simply focusing in on
the calories leads you to fail in your
efforts to lose body fat
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