How can the new standard paradigm, of eat less and sweat more, be wrong? Never mind what kind of low fat and what kind of high carbs they tell us to eat -- is the theory behind it valid? Because if it's not, the implication is that we might, somehow, eat an unlimited amount of calories and not gain weight. Why, that way lies insanity! Calories have to go somewhere. It's physics, the conservation of matter/energy. Either exercise it away or store it as fat. Right? It makes sense.
If triglyceride fat, blubber, can only be formed in the presence of glycerol, what happens to excess calories without glycerol? Well, after general vitality is seen to, and the immune system, and recovery and repair from physical activity -- you know, the reason we eat -- the surplus, since it doesn't go to matter, must go to energy. Heat. That's science.
The simplistic thermodynamic analogy is not valid. True, calories must go either to matter or energy. But a calorie is not a calorie. The caloric value of food is identified by actually burning that food in a crucible in a laboratory. The heat generated is measured, and that's how many calories the food has. Never mind that we cannot digest fiber. That's confounding in only an incidental way. The point is that metabolism is not a crucible, for all that we make heat. It's not a simple energy in-out equation. There are various pathways that lead to multiple outcomes dependent on a number of variables. Well that didn't say a lot, and is quite obvious.
Calories are not about heat. Calorie is another of those misleading-therefore-useless words. What calories are actually about are raw materials, out of which possibilities are made. Thinking in terms of calories is like thinking in terms of carbon -- coal is the same thing as diamonds. Well, yes. And no.
Calories are not just a sort of element, that might happen to manifest as certain allotropes -- incidental forms -- like fats or carbs, as carbon has graphite or diamond, which are both pure elemental carbon. Protein, carbs and fat differ in their fundamental, their elemental nature, and that they burn as calories is as meaningful as the fact that they are made out of matter. Meaningful only because reality is what it is. Protein is as different from carbs as nitrogen is different from, well, carbon. Of course they do not behave the same in the body -- not even as calories.
Absent glycerol, then, triglycerides are not made. Fat would be present in the blood as free fatty acids. Maybe in the liver, maybe in cells, muscle or adipose, but not bundled up for storage. That's not such a good thing, having NO stored bodyfat. We may end up looking sort of skeletal, all hollow-eyed and sunken-cheeked. Heroin chic. It's a look. Like the burlap-bag-full-of-yogurt look is a look, at the other end of the continuum. Somewhere between these two looks is a healthy compromise. But even given an excess of calories, absent glycerol there would be no overweight. You could eat until you just got too hot. Maybe you'd fall into a fevor coma. Maybe you'd spontaneously combust. It's science. But what studies do show is that diets of even 10,000 calories a day do not lead to excess bodyfat, when industrial carbs are limited. Industrial carbs -- those that lead to excess glycerol and chronically or acutely raised insulin.
Gracious. So much science. It's so hard. But if you are one of those nerdy geeks, or would like to be, all skinny, say, but somehow brawny too for purposes of this analogy and rather long and awkward sentence, well, then you are interested in answers both interesting and true.
Be excellent.
Here: CrossFitBurbank.com
FW
CrossFit Burbank
Gracious. So much science. It's so hard. But if you are one of those nerdy geeks, or would like to be, all skinny, say, but somehow brawny too for purposes of this analogy and rather long and awkward sentence, well, then you are interested in answers both interesting and true.
Be excellent.
Here: CrossFitBurbank.com
CrossFit Burbank
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