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I know several people who eat way less than me and are as fat as ticks. The simple fact that calories in calories out does not explain obesity has been cracking over the head of doctors for decades and doctors have resisted addressing it. It’s like a person ignoring being cracked over the head with an oar — sometimes you wonder how they are able to do it. The drooling idiots… I think you could argue they are responsible for killing people at this point. The negligence is astounding.

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How much do they drink? Alcoholic drinks contain quite a lot of energy: https://medlineplus.gov/ency/patientinstructions/000886.htm

It does explain obesity.

The fact that different people burn different amounts of calories due to genetics and epi-genetics and other environmental factors does not invalidate calories in calories out.

There is also something called lying.

I've seen a study that says that the average overweight person reports around 30-50% underestimation of calories.

There is that British show that shows off exactly how much difference there is.

>I know several people who eat way less than me and are as fat as ticks.

Have you considered that they are more sedentary than you, or perhaps eat more or more often than they tell you?

You don't get fat on 2k calories per day or less, unless you're very small.

I met some people who ate a lot but were super skinny, but I never saw or read about the opposite, obese people eating healthy but gaining weight.p

I live with them. I work at home and one of them does too. I see basically everything they eat. I know how much they exercise. They simply use more of the food they eat to make fat. And yes, calories in calories out is complete bullshit. There is no rule or axiom of biology that says you have to utilize 100% of the food energy that you consume. It’s possible for people to put it all away as fat, none of it as fat, all of it for energy or none of it for energy as illustrated in this case and in African sleeping sickness. People who say that it’s a matter of thermodynamics and that physics demands calories in calories out be true is a belligerent and arrogant fool.

Laws of physics exist. You ingest a certain amount of energy (calories), that energy has to go somewhere. It doesn't just disappear.

Well, there is physical activity, as well as base metabolism.

Plus you could pass more or less food through unabsorbed, depending on gut fauna and maybe other factors.

If you are a physicist then you are an exceptionally dull one. There is no physical law that determines what the human body does with the molecules it ingests. It can turn those molecules into fat or energy, in any ratio, or send the molecules right back out without even using them. This is a matter of metabolics and hormones, not physics. Calories in calories out is bullshit. Not because it isn’t broadly a good heuristic but because it isn’t based on any kind of biological axiom and is very often misused.

> Calories in calories out is bullshit

Usually when people say this, they mean (on behalf of themselves or someone else) "I couldn't lose weight even if I ate less, I am genetically fat". That's not physically possible. All humans have the ability to lose weight by eating less, because calories are not magic, they are bound to laws of physics (particularly conservation of energy). Yes, it will be easier for some people and harder on other people. But there is no human out there who will magically stay fat even though they are eating nothing but water.

Again, you are wrong. It has nothing to do with physics. A human body is completely capable of remaining fat in the event of the cessation of eating. A person can die of starvation while fat and die in a fat body. The metabolic machinery of the human body is not static. It can choose to hang on to fat right up until you die. It can choose to use almost none of the food you eat to create energy. It can do anything no matter how illogical, including kill you. This is an illustration of the fact that the human body is a very precarious and complicated machine and the only reason people aren’t more aware of issues like this is because it is an insanely reliable machine — reliable enough to give us many delusions about certain aspects of ourselves being innate.

It is literally physically possible for it to be true that a person cannot lose weight even if they eat less due to a sudden and extreme metabolic pathology. Again, super bad physics.

Ok, show me 1 documented case where a fat person has died of starvation while remaining fat, despite drinking water and eating at least 500 calories per day of reasonable food (to get some nutrients that you wouldn't be able to extract out of body fat). Show me one documented case and I will change my mind and agree with you that it's possible.

No, just admit that I got you. Show me a single case of a persons skin being green from birth. So are we supposed to think it’s physically impossible for the human body to make its skin green? It is well within the realm not only of physical possibility but also plausibility. A persons cells can manufacture all kinds of molecules, including green ones. Just because something is strange to you and you’ve never heard of it doesn’t mean it’s physically impossible. The machinery of metabolism is very complex and it controls energy and fat utilization. It’s the machinery that drives the metabolic behavior of the human body, not the laws of thermodynamics. I’m right.

You say you want to see a fat person starve. You also need to see the one million other malfunctions of biological pathways that are responsible for the behavior that we are used to seeing in the human body. There are one million things we have never seen because of the astounding reliability of the human body as a machine. Just because you haven’t seen these malfunctions doesn’t mean that there’s nothing under the hood.

If you want to see an example of metabolic disorder that is even more strange, even more bizarre then look at African sleeping sickness. If you think that it’s too weird for a person to not burn fat, how about a person who cannot make energy of any kind out of what he eats?

> No, just admit that I got you.

You make an incredulous claim, I'm asking you to show evidence for it (just a single case). You refuse to show evidence, and you think that you "got me"? How did you get me exactly? You made claims and refused to back them up. As far as I know, you're just talking hot air.

> The machinery of metabolism is very complex and it controls energy and fat utilization. It’s the machinery that drives the metabolic behavior of the human body, not the laws of thermodynamics.

The human body is not magically immune from laws of physics. That said, laws of physics don't prevent the human body from consuming fat during starvation, so you could be right. Then again, if you were right, there would be a documented case of this happening... but I wasn't able to find one.

> You say you want to see a fat person starve. You also need to see the one million other malfunctions of biological pathways that are responsible for the behavior that we are used to seeing in the human body. There are one million things we have never seen because of the astounding reliability of the human body as a machine. Just because you haven’t seen these malfunctions doesn’t mean that there’s nothing under the hood.

Is it theoretically possible that a human - at some point in history - has had this specific malfunction? Sure! You "got me" there. Now, if my neighbor chats me up next to the mailbox and talks about how they are physically unable to lose weight because of their genes, what do you think is the probability of that being true? Sure, theoretically she may have a "malfunction" that only 1/100000000 humans exhibit, sure. But I wouldn't be money on it.

I didn’t just get you, I dunked on you. If your neighbor says he has more trouble losing weight than other people controlling for calories and exercise, this is very plausible. And it certainly isn’t outside the realm of physical law.

> If your neighbor says he has more trouble losing weight than other people controlling for calories and exercise, this is very plausible. And it certainly isn’t outside the realm of physical law.

Now you're just moving the goalposts. I said this exact thing in the beginning of this thread: "Yes, it will be easier for some people and harder on other people." The point of contention was not "is losing weight harder for some people" (because we agree on that), the point of contention was "is losing weight impossible for some people". If you took a survey of every person on earth, grouped the people who said that it's "impossible" for them to lose weight, and then put them on a diet, how many people do you expect to find for whom losing weight is literally impossible? You can't even find a SINGLE example.

> I didn’t just get you, I dunked on you.

If you take pride in "dunking" on people, maybe you should inspect your values.

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