Help! I’ve been locked in a room for some time now. Mad scientists have poked, prodded, and maniacally laughed as they determined that my daily caloric expenditure is exactly 2,500 calories. Further, through monitored adjustments of People Chow, they have established that my body metabolizes one pound of fat every 3,500 calories.
These (and more) baselines established, they have changed my daily routine such that I’m now expending an additional 250 calories per day; my ration of People Chow has been decreased by 250 calories per day. There is no additional exercise per se, in that no muscle-building takes place. It is primarily a mild cardiovascular expenditure of calories spread out over the course of a day, accompanied by a slight caloric restriction.
What happens, physiologically-speaking?[sup]*[/sup]
[sup]* I hope I have the term correct. I mean the bio-mechanical/physical interactions that occur—hormone levels signalling fat cells to do their thing, mini-aliens bursting out of fat cells’ chests, that sort of thing.[/sup]
So you will be burning 3,000 counting the extra burn and reduced intake. You don’t say how many calories you take in so calculating the outcome is not possible. If you were already losing weight, you should lose an extra pound per week (500*7=3500). If you were gaining weight, you will gain less or maybe lose some. Without your weight and intake, I can’t say more.
What I can say is the there is more going on then raw numbers. A person can plateau for many days while seemingly taking in less than burned. All of a sudden when the plateau is broken, you can shed more than the deficit. Breaking a plateau can be tricky. Sometimes it requires eating MORE calories. All I know is that it works. In my own case I have found that certain foods put on weight more than others regardless of the calorie count. Chocolate milk adds weight for me and it seems to be rather lean too, which should be a good thing. If I don’t drink chocolate milk I tend to lose 2# per week eating anything else I want until I’m ready to bust. I suggest to you that experimentation could pay big dividends when you discover those trigger foods for you.
You’re right about everything (AFAIK), but these Mad Scientists have already done all the legwork. Through much poking and prodding, and by keeping me on a completely controlled diet of People Chow, they know all the end results.
The additional exercise component is very mild. All movement has been strictly controlled. For months now, a light would go on and I need to walk across the room or up the stairs to turn it off (yay operant conditioning!). Through meticulous calculation of energy expended (via heart rate monitors, oxygen sensors and magic doohickies), they were able to determine exactly how much to move the walls by in order to increase my caloric output. They carefully spread things out such that I only expend an additional 15.6 calories per hour (over my 16-hour day).
The People Chow never varies. Except that when this phase of the experiment began, the calorie count of the three portions per day decreased by a little over 83 calories per meal.
These are mad scientists we’re talking about—well versed in the Cube movies and big fans of Skald the Rhymer. They have controlled for everything, they know the expected results.
I’m asking about what’s going to happen on the physical level. What triggers the fat cells to … to … to what, exactly? And what happens to the product of whatever they do? I know (or pretend to know) how weight loss/gain happens at the macroscopic level, I’m wondering what’s going on under the hood.
Hormones react to the energy deficit. Insulin goes down, cathecholmines go up. Together that triggers a cascade that results in an fat cell (adipocyte) enzyme, called hormone-sensitive lipase, moving from the adipocyte cytosol into the fat globule. There it cuts off one of the three fatty acids that are the “tri” of triglycerides. After that other lipases are at the ready to cut off the other two. The fatty acids travel through the blood to cells that need energy and get into the mitochondria where they are oxidized. You can read the details of the biochemistry here if you want.
The fat cell with less in it now produces less leptin (a hormone produced by fat cells). That causes less energy expenditure. Your mad scientists will need to increase your activity to keep you burning the same amount. In addition to leptin fat tissue also produces the hormones acylation stimulating protein (ASP) and adiponectin (see here for details about all three) which work to maintain fat stores.
Hopefully the scientists have enough muscle building built in to off set the muscle that is broken down for energy along with the fat. (Losing gradually like your scientists have you doing it should not need be much.)
I am convinced that there are certain things that can happen in the body chemistry, which will cause the body to burn up a larger or smaller number of calories for the same amount of activity. This is commonly referred to as a “higher metabolism” (where the same amount of activity causes the body to burn more calories) or as a “lower metabolism” (where the same amount of activity causes the body to burn fewer calories).
Can someone explain to me how this works? It sounds like a perpetual motion machine to me.
How can it be that a person burns 2000 calories doing a certain amount of activity, while another person – or even the same person on another day – can do the exact same activity and burn only 1000 calories? Doesn’t this violate the Law of Conservation of Matter and Energy? Where does the extra activity come from, without burning extra calories?
Nope, no violations. More a consideration of the Second Law - which crudely means that every machine coverts energy into work with varying degrees of inefficiency. Think along the lines of how two models of the even the same exact car, same exact weight, can have different gas mileage, depending on factors like tire pressure, recent tune up, accessories on the hood, etc. One car might run a little faster while stopped at lights (have a higher resting metabolic rate). One driver might have different habits that they do not even realize that decrease efficiency.
The machines that are our bodies do that and adjust themselves all the time. Resting metabolic rate changes. We add in little movements just sitting there that burn calories without realizing it as well (Non-exercise activity thermogenesis - NEAT). We burn calories just processing our food and can even do that with different levels of efficiency.
I wish I could say I remember all those biochemical steps (although I did have them memorized for a test once a few decades ago! :)) or completely comprehended the hormonal interplays - especially the newer emerging understanding of the importance of adipose tissue as an endocrine gland, and its hormones interactions with other fat, metabolism, and appetite regulating hormones like ghrelin. But hey, so long as those mad scientists laughing manically do, that’s all that matters.
For your further reading pleasure, more about NEAT and about how non-obese individuals automatically increase it in response to overfeeding and how much fidgeting is a part of it.
Sorry for the doublepost, but you two will definitely find this article interesting. It appears that your mad scientists really exists:
(EE = Energy Expenditure)
Not even People Chow … “only a liquid formula for months at a time” … whoa.
What did they find?
IOW someone who was an obese adult loss who has lost weight MUST make a commitment to have both fewer calories and more activity than others their size and fat percent do in order to maintain their weight loss.
I was looking to see if I could find an article showing that leptin levels renormalized to a new weight norm after a while … apparently no such luck. It is still unclear to me if changing the macronutrient composition of the diet would have some effect. Anecdotally I have seen that help get through weight loss plateaus.