Taubes says,

“the energy we consume
and the energy we expend
are dependent on each other….

These are dependent variables, not independent variables.
Change one, and the other changes to compensate.

To a great extent…the energy we expend from day-to-day
and week-to-week will determine how much we consume,
....while the energy we consume and make available to our cells…
will determine how much we expend.

The two are that intimately linked.
Anyone who argues differently is treating an extraordinarily complex
living organism as though it were a simple mechanical device.”

A 2007 article by the dean of Harvard Medical school and his wife,
who specialized in obesity research said

“An animal whose food is suddenly restricted
tends to reduce its energy expenditure
both by being less active
and by slowing energy use in cells, thereby limiting weight loss.

It also experiences increased hunger
so that once the restriction ends,
it will eat more than its prior norm until the earlier weight is attained.”

Taubes says  that the diet advice
given by our Health Authorities is wrong;

“eating less and/or exercising more
is not a viable treatment for obesity or overweight
and shouldn’t be considered as such.

It might have short-term effects…
Eventually, our bodies compensate.”

I believe Taubes is correct in his statements here,
and I know that, in my own body,
my food-intake and physical activity are connected.

After a day, or days, of little food-intake
I feel more tired and sleepy,
and I don’t feel energetic enough to accomplish my normal tasks,
let alone add in extra physical activities
I find that I can “push through these physical feelings&rdqu...

Taubes starts out

“The very notion that we get fat because we consume more calories
than we expend would not exist without the misapplied belief
that the laws of thermodynamics make it true.
…
Obesity is not a disorder of energy balance,
or calories-in/calories-out or overeating,
and thermodynamics has nothing to do with this.”

There are three laws of thermodynamics.

“The first one…is known as the law of energy conservation:
all it says is that energy is neither created nor destroyed
but can only change from one form to another.”

He goes on

“All the first law says is that if something gets more or less massive,
then more energy or less energy has to enter it than leave it.
It says nothing about why this happens.
It says nothing about cause and effect.

It doesn’t tell us why anything happens;
it only tells us what has to happen
if that thing happens.
A logician would say that it contains no causal information.”

As an example,
Taubes suggests that instead of talking about why we get fat,
we could talk about why a room gets crowded.
In this example the energy we’re discussing is energy in entire people,
rather than just their fat.

So, we want to know why this room is crowded and so overstuffed with energy (people).

If I said, “the room is crowded because more people entered than left,”

You’d say…”Of course…But Why?”

If I then said, “rooms that have more people enter than leave
will become more crowded. There’s no getting around
the laws of thermodynamics”.

You’d say…”...

Taubes says

“Where on our bodies we get fat,
and even when it happens,
are important questions”

He says we’ve known since the 1930s
that there is a large genetic component in obesity,
That body types run in families.
similarities in body types between parents, children, and siblings
are "as striking as facial resemblance".

Taubes gives examples to show that genes that determine relative adiposity
don’t have to do with appetite or physical activity,
but rather, what the body does with its calories.
He points out how men and women fatten differently.

“when boys become men, they become taller, more muscular, and leaner
…when a girl enters puberty as slender as a boy, and leaves it with the
shapely figure of a woman, it’s not because of overeating or inactivity,
even though it’s mostly the fat she’s acquired that gives her that womanly
shape and she had to eat more calories than she expended to accommodate that fat.”

Taubes talks about how animals are bred for different fat content.
He talks about a disorder known as Lipodystrophy, where a person’s fat distribution
moves over time. Like thin on top half and obese on bottom half.
He says they didn’t lose fat on their upper bodies because they underate,
or gain fat on their lower half because they underate,
and asks:

“But why is it that when fat loss and fat gain are localized like this—
--when the obesity or extreme leanness covers only half the body,
or only a part and not all—they clearly have nothing to do with how much
the person ate or exercised; yet when the whole body becomes obese or lean,
the difference between calories consumed and expended supposedly explains it? “

Taubes talks about how HIV drugs cause a loss of fat in some body areas
and a gain of fat in other body areas, and says

“If we can’t blame..(this)…on calories-in/calories-out,
maybe we shouldn’t blame ours, either.”

 I think most everyone knows Genetics is involved in obesity, and
body types running in fam...

Taubes begins with the Theory that 1 lb of fat = 3500 calories.
Based on this, one only needs to overeat an average of 20 calories a day
to gain 2 lbs a year, and get from a lean 25 year old to an obese 50 year old.

20 calories is less than a bite of a hamburger,
3 potato chips, or 3 small bites of an apple.
He says that under this Theory..

"One or two bites or swallows to many (out of the hundred or two
we might take to consume a day’s worth of sustenance) and we’re doomed.

If the difference between eating not too much and eating too much
is less than a hundredth of the total amount of calories we consume,
and that in turn has to be matched with our energy expenditure,
to which we are, for the most part, completely in the dark,
how can anyone possibly eat with such accuracy?

To put it simply, the question we should be asking
is not why some of we get fat,
but how any of us avoids this fate.”

Taubes quotes a leading 1936 US authority on nutrition and metabolism,
who said

"We do not yet know why certain individuals grow fat.
Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that we do not know
why all the individuals in this over-nourished community do not grow fat.
…..there is no stranger phenomena that the maintenance of a constant body weight
under marked variation in bodily activity and food consumption.”

Taubes surmises--perhaps we maintain our energy balance by watching the scale
or how our clothing fits,
but he points out that animals don’t do that.

He asks

“if eating in moderation means we consciously err on the side of too little food,
why don’t we all end up so lean that we appear emaciated.?
The arithmetic of calories-in/calories-out doesn’t differentiate
between losing and gaining weight;
it says only that we must match calories consumed to calories expended.”

Taubes ends the chapter with

"Surely so...