And yeah, some friends and I have tested on ourselves eating 4,000 calories without significantly altering exercise levels, and anecdotally have not gained weight.
There is a difference between protein calories and carbohydrate calories and how each is processed, but beside that, calories represent energy. Energy that must be used. Otherwise, it will be stored.
Thank you. Much appreciated.
>Just because something works doesn't mean your hypothesis as to WHY it works is true.
But in general, it actually does. This is how science works. You get an idea that doing something will produce a result. If you do that thing and see the expected result, that indicates a successful hypothesis. After that the conversation devolves into existential questions on whether humans can really know.
Well to get initial data, you must have some guidance in the data you decide to collect. There must be structure, a control, standardized values. You can't form a proper experiment without first having a hypothesis. Your goal is not to prove it correct regardless of the results, your goal is to gain insight on your hypothesis base on the results. I never said you must prove your hypothesis correct. But the goal is certainly to assess the accuracy of your estimation.
Your comment is really just a strawman tactic anyway. Thread derailed.
The other issue is a crude engineering rule of thumb (why isn't it a dietary rule of thumb?) is something like one hundred calories per day, every day, equals one hundred pounds of fat per decade, either plus or minus. Very few people get fat (or thin) in a week or a month or even a year. It takes a fairly heroic effort for a woman to just gain baby weight in 9 months. Try four thousand calories per day for a decade and get back to us, if someone can roll you to the keyboard at that time (unless you're all pro atheletes or lumberjacks or something).