Urine, feces, body heat released into the atmosphere, transpiration via skin and lungs.


Every other thing that has ever lived on the face of this planet wastes energy. That's kind of the definition of "life", actually.


WE DISAGREE.


REDUCE CARBOHYDRATE INTAKE.

I wish I had my copy of GCBC with me. I'm relying on Google books for this quote which is on p. 300 of GCBC.

"Just as we will decrease energy expenditure in response to caloric deprivation, we will also increase expenditure in response to caloric surplus. ... It has since been encapsulated in a German word, Luxuskonsumption, which means a spendthrift metabolism that wastes excess calories as heat or superfluous physical activity."

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."

Having BTDT (atkins and VLC with and without exercise for YEARS)

I got to goal by sitting on my butt and eating ZC. So did my hubby. We both look like we hit the gym hard.

I also eat far more calories on ZC than I did on LC or VLC, so does my hubby.

Call it anecdotal or unscientific, the results speak volumes to me and many others who drop the exercise and eat ZC and get the result they want.

click here for my own unscientific photographic proof

Another quote from GCBC, p. 300:

"This drive to become fat can be inhibited or even temporarily reversed by restricting calories--just as a child's growth can be stunted by starvation or malnutrition--but in neither case will the caloric deprivation address the metabolic and hormonal forces at work." [emphasis added by me]

This is why I have a hard time going along with low-carbers who decide - once they stall - that they need to cut calories or exercise more to continue their weight loss.

I'm in a stall, not because CI=CO - although that may be net effect. I'm in a stall because of "the metabolic and hormonal forces at work."

In my own case, I increased food and decreased exercise, and started losing again.

So from outside the body system, it looked like CI > CO. IF you only think of CO as "exercise" as in "eat less or exercise more."

Where did the extra calories go? They were protein and fat calories, and they went to enzymes and metabolic catalysts, which helped increase metabolic rate and the rate of lipolysis from fat stores. I hadn't been eating enough fat previously which down-regulated my ability to burn fat.

Simultaneously, stopping the exercise I had been doing, also increased the rate of lipolysis. I had too much cortisol which can suppress lipolysis. So that was another way I "removed the damper" from metabolism - by removing one kind of exercise.

So obviously from looking at results, within the body system, CI had to be less than CO. But it was more from removing the impediments to CO than increasing CO if you get the difference.

Every macronutrient coming in has to go one of four places: burned as energy, stored as energy, wasted as heat, or used in body structures.

When you say "if not used, it gets stored as fat" are you also thinking of structural uses? For instance, if omega 3 fat molecule goes into a cell membrane, it is not burned for energy or stored as adipose tissue; so its "calorie" property becomes irrelevant, even though it is mass.

More obfuscation. No, every function of life requires energy. There's no purpose to wasting energy so the body doesn't do it. Instead the body stores it as fat. Everything that you list is not waste, it's part of CO.

You could argue that cow shit is wasted energy. When dry it burns nicely, giving up its calories as heat. But inside the cow everything that can be metabolized will be. The function of manure is to carry toxins out of the system. If calories are in the manure it's a tradeoff for necessary homeostatis. But we aren't herbivores so the argument would be spurious.

Getting back to the OP, you suggest eating fewer carbs. I suggest eating fewer calories.

Yes, we're in agreement. Thanks for providing a good example.

Actually the OP was Wyvrn who suggested EXERCISE. But if I understood her correctly she suggested exercise not because of the simple-minded idea that it would burn calories. Rather she suggested it for a metabolic reason.

I'm currently testing whether eliminating artificial sweetners while break my stall. I'm making a list of other things to try if it doesn't work. Wyvrn's suggestion is on my list, and I'll be interested to see if it works for her.

You're not very convincing! Can you direct us to anyone else who supports your assertions?

The purpose of wasting energy - as reflected in the quotes I posted from GCBC - is to help the body maintain its weight (i.e., not gain) during times of overnourishment.

Oh no! Not again! People, it's not even worth talking about calories anymore. We quite simply won't agree. I give up.

Patrick

Also, for those of us who do high intensity training, the Cori cycle, in which excess lactate from anaerobic glycolysis is converted back into glucose (gluconeogenesis) in the liver. This process consumes twice as much energy as the original glucose produced via glycolysis for a net loss of 100% energy of glucose entering this pathway. It also means glucose used in anaerobic metabolism is not all consumed but is reconstituted back through the liver and used to help refill glycogen stores. This would not be the case in low intensity "exercise", because in that case the glucose continues (in the form of pyruvate) into the aerobic cycle where it ends up excreted as H2O and CO2.

Why would the body conserve glucose at such a high cost of energy? Maybe dietary glucose was a rare and precious commodity when these mechanisms evolved, whereas "energy" was a much less precious commodity and could be freely spent (or even wasted, if there was a surplus). This assumes energy homeostasis mechanisms aren't fubared by long-term adherence to an unsuitable diet.

ED: it's a net loss of 200% not 100%. I miscounted the ATPs.

That's a very underwhelming argument, to say the least. The body doesn't waste energy because you think it doesn't make sense that it should?