The First Law of Thermodynamics and Weight Loss: Why Calorie Calculations Fail

According to the first law of thermodynamics, energy can be converted into different forms, but its total value remains constant. Applying this law to our bodies means that if you consume more energy than you expend, you will gain weight. This is self-evident; it's like a room full of puppies-if some puppies run out of the room, the number of puppies in the room will decrease. The key to weight loss is figuring out how to make your fat "get out of the room and not come back."

Many people try to create a calorie deficit by reducing their calorie intake and increasing their calorie expenditure. This method might work in the short term, but constantly starving yourself disrupts your metabolism and is not a long-term solution. Even if you were willing to starve yourself every day to lose weight, you would still face various temptations and feelings of frustration. Only people with extraordinary willpower can lose weight using this method.

Furthermore, calorie restriction can have consequences far more serious than starvation. In Chapter 1, we saw numerous studies demonstrating that calorie restriction makes mice and humans highly susceptible to obesity (if you have mouse friends, please share these findings with them). One of the key findings of the Minnesota starvation experiments was that people became depressed and experienced low moods when calorie intake was too low. Using this method to alter the body's natural state goes against its inherent nature, and the body will naturally react. Our goal is not to stop eating so much (calorie counting), but to understand why we eat so much-both physiologically and psychologically-and how to change this situation.

The truth about weight loss

Food can be divided into three categories: whole foods, ultra-processed foods, and all other foods in between. The truth about keeping weight loss "as simple as possible" (not "too simple") is that ultra-processed foods are the main reason we gain weight and fail to lose it successfully.

Ultra-processed foods can be broken down into carbohydrates, fats, calories, and other substances, which is where the problem lies. We gain weight not because of any one of these substances, but because of all of them combined with nutritional deficiencies, inflammation, and low satiety. Therefore, we cannot oversimplify the statements that "ultra-processed foods make us fat" and "unprocessed whole foods help us lose weight." If you (like many people) draw broad conclusions based solely on the calories or macronutrients of processed foods, you are mistakenly including many high-fat, high-calorie, or high-carbohydrate foods that are actually healthy and helpful for weight loss.

Next, let's talk about macronutrients and then look at calories.

The battle of macronutrients

Much of the current discussion about weight loss revolves around macronutrients (carbohydrates, fats, and proteins), with the American Heart Association, for example, advocating for low-fat diets for years. This is a terrible situation.

This is how it all started. In the mid-20th century, scientists were eager to find out why obesity and heart disease rates were rising rapidly in the United States. In 1955, then-President Eisenhower suffered a heart attack, which further fueled the scientists' enthusiasm for research.

Later, nutritionist Ancel Keys convinced us that dietary fat was the culprit, as he studied dietary habits and heart disease data from seven countries and found a strong correlation between fat intake and heart disease. Some argue that Keys only selected countries that supported his hypothesis, ignoring countries like Norway and Chile. Norwegians have a high-fat diet but a low rate of heart disease; Chileans have a low-fat diet but a high rate of heart disease.

Nevertheless, the low-fat diet revolution was born. Food industry professionals loved this revolution because they had a completely new marketing point: low-fat foods. They only needed to solve one problem: fat makes food taste better. To improve the taste of low-fat foods, they added more sugar. The taste problem was solved, but people also became fatter. In recent years, more and more people have begun to believe that fat is not entirely useless, while sugar (and all common carbohydrates) are under rigorous scrutiny from experts and nutritionists across various fields.

Few people realize that the bigger problem is that people are focusing on macronutrients.

Many people have shifted from demonizing fat to demonizing carbohydrates. We now have a "war on fat and carbs" and a "war on macronutrients and calories," but both wars are wrong!

Which is the cause of our weight gain and inability to lose weight: fat or carbohydrates? Neither. There are fats that promote weight loss, and fats that do not; there are carbohydrates that promote weight loss, and carbohydrates that do not.

Macronutrients are neither the problem nor the solution. The "macronutrient-only" theory equates boiled potatoes with French fries, a pile of sugar, and brown rice because "these are all carbohydrates." Similarly, it equates coconut oil with lard, trans fats, saturated fats, unsaturated fats, soybean oil, and fish oil because "these are all fats." This is utter nonsense.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but...

What would happen if the processed food industry could shift the focus of the weight loss debate from healthy versus unhealthy foods to macronutrients versus calories-I'm joking about this, but it's meant to make you think-?