I totally agree. Metabolism it's complex and not everything is well understood how is connected. It's difficult to measure and more those little contributions where in aggregate can have an effect.
The little contributions don't matter. If you don't consume enough calories, you will not increase body fat and tissue mass. Full stop.
You can retain fluid because of certain conditions that you have (I lost 30 pounds in one hour! Ask me how) but you will not be increasing fatty body mass.
What? If you eat the amount of calories that you are expending every day, you'll operate just fine. That's the way your body was designed to work.
As long as your caloric intake sort of averages out to your calorie expenditure, you're fine. You don't have to balance every minute and every hour.
We're designed to operate at a caloric deficit for hours, if not days at a time. We obviously don't spend all of our time sleeping.
Perhaps what you are explaining is how it works with people who have an efficient/non-defective metabolic system. But hey, those people are not overweight.
Citation? Are you saying that some people are unable to turn fat into glycogen? Unless you're undergoing ketosis, or have a vanishingly rare metabolic disorder, that's just not true.
> Perhaps what you are explaining is how it works with people who have an efficient/non-defective metabolic system. But hey, those people are not overweight.
Most overweight people have efficient/non-defective metabolic systems, as evinced by the increase in obesity rates in the developed world over the past fifty years.
I've since gotten to the point where I can eat one meal a day most days if I want, but hunger headaches are a thing. (I'd still expect to get them if I were to do a multiday fast.)