Yeah, I've never thought the calories in-out theory really explained what's going on. Of course if you don't eat anything you will use up fat reserves and lose weight, but when you eat food, the body is making choices as to where it does with that energy. So what exercise does, in addition to burning calories, is send a signal to your body that it has to be ready for action, to hunt down a mastodon or whatever. When you're sedentary, you're sending the message that life is easy, so the body says OK, let's save those calories for later, store them in fat.
Also, just talking about calories grossly simplifies what food is and how it's processed. I remember all these Atkins people would say fruit is bad because it has sugar. Others say avocados are bad because they have fat. And I'd reply, "Please show me a person who got fat from eating too many avocados."
Yeah, I've never thought the calories in-out theory really explained what's going on. Of course if you don't eat anything you will use up fat reserves and lose weight, but when you eat food, the body is making choices as to where it does with that energy. So what exercise does, in addition to burning calories, is send a signal to your body that it has to be ready for action, to hunt down a mastodon or whatever. When you're sedentary, you're sending the message that life is easy, so the body says OK, let's save those calories for later, store them in fat.
Also, just talking about calories grossly simplifies what food is and how it's processed. I remember all these Atkins people would say fruit is bad because it has sugar. Others say avocados are bad because they have fat. And I'd reply, "Please show me a person who got fat from eating too many avocados."