Continuing to respond to doctorK's question: how does one waste calories?

From GCBC, p. 302:

"We have thrifty metabolisms when we are undernourished and so need to use efficiently every calorie we consume, and we have spendthrift metabolisms when we are overnourished, so as to avoid excessive weight gain and obesity."

Edited to add:

From GCBC, p. 302:

"According to Voit, overeating leads to an increase in the available energy for cells, tissues, and muscles, and so perhaps to what the clinical investigators studying obesity in the first half of the century called the 'impulse to physical activity' or the 'impulse to move.' That feeling of restlessness, they believed, is the manifestation of cells and tissues, literally, having energy to burn."

The idea of the "impulse to move" was driven home to me a few months ago in church. I was behind a family of five - mom, dad, and three teens - all of them extremely lean. The youngest, a girl of about 15, was directly in front of me. Every time we knelt, she was in constant motion, swaying or rocking back and forth. She was making me so dizzy I wanted to ask her to stop. "Impulse to move," indeed! This is what this genetically lean girl does to "waste" extra calories - probably completely subconsciously.

Edited to add:

This whole topic also reminds me of that study a few years ago that showed that lean people fidget more. So they advised us fatties to fidget our why to weight loss!

They got the arrow of causality pointed in the wrong direction again. The lean people weren't burning calories because they were fidgeting. They were fidgeting because they were burning calories!

Here's one article on the subject:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/ar...ing.html?cat=51

"It has been shown that people with higher metabolisms fidget more than those with low metabolisms."