Calories in, calories out.

"Calories in vs calories out" is a grossly simplistic comment. It's simplistic to the point of misleading. And I'm starting to believe this one witticism is the root of virtually all dietary confusion.

Elsewhere in this blog I talked about my progress on a purely carnivorous diet. I dropped thirty pounds in one month. I felt great. My mind was sharper than ever. I was on top of the world.

But apparently that was all a hallucination. Because I've been told by an internet guru that it is impossible to lose weight while eating a caloric surplus. He even invoked the laws of thermodynamics. While it is certainly true that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, the "calories in, calories out" crowd continues to ignore the fact that energy can be changed in form. And that is the hugely important fact that makes all the difference.

What the "calories in, calories out" crowd ignores is all the different ways calories get used. One hundred calories of protein and one hundred calories of carbohydrates are not the same thing. The protein will get used to build tissue and hormones. The carbohydrates will only be used for fuel or stored as glycogen to be used as fuel later. So out of that hundred calories of protein you may only have forty calories available for fuel. And the body can't burn protein directly. It has to either convert it to fat or sugar first. Either of those processes takes additional energy. This means you end up with even less than forty calories being stored.

But the biggest thing the "calories in, calories out" crowd continues to ignore is that a significant portion of our calories go "out" through the indoor plumbing. The human body does not store energy when it senses a surplus because storing energy is not always the best survival plan. Instead, the body gets rid of the excess to keep us light and agile so we can hunt and evade predators. So if you are eating right you can easily eat an excess of calories and still lose fat because the excess will pass right through.

So what is "eating right"? I'll have to save that for another post. Suffice to say that I have a theory that ties everything together. And it explains why low-carb, high fat diets and high-carb, low-fat diets both work.