It probably acts as a 24-hour disincentive to actually doing exercise. Since walking, cycling, or climbing stairs is that much more unpleasant for them (more tiring, more sweat-producing, makes them more out of breath), they'll avoid it. They'll walk slower, take more breaks, etc. They might unconciously reduce the # of times they get up from their desk and walk around.

Example: Whenever possible, I take the stairs to my 7th-floor office at work. But a bigger guy would probably take the elevator every time. That's about 30-90 calories per day (depending how many trips up and down I make) difference to my advantage. There's probably lots of little things like that that add up.

I've always wondered what would happen if there was a pain-free, no-recovery-needed way to just zap all the fat off an obese person, what kind of athletic performances they could do. A 6ft 400lb guy suddenly weighing 160lbs would probably be in amazing muscular shape.

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STAC Zero Trainer - Zero noise, zero tire contact, zero moving parts. Suffer in Silence starting fall 2016

I suspect this is something along the lines of "you can't out-train your mouth," or perhaps also related to the fact that someone that weighs that much extra likely can't exercise as intensely or for as long as someone not carrying around all that weight. Also, BMR is based on muscle mass, so simply being alive at that weight won't cause you to burn more calories. Or maybe not. Those are just my theories.

I too am curious. I don't see this question as being offensive, but I'm also not grossly overweight.

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I tweet!

As you lose weight your "workout" becomes less effective. If calories remain the same your weight goes back up. Then your effort rises and weight goes down. It keeps pin ponging back and forth. Coming from a former fat person. Fat people are fat because they eat too much.

Most people who are obese consume A LOT more calories than their engine could ever burn. There are NO good medical reasons for obesity. "Slow metabolism" (ie, low thyroid) is NOT an appropriate reason to justify obesity. Their basal metabolic rate could never match the enormous appetite.

There was a documentary about morbidly obese folks and they were asked how many calories they consumed each day. Most said "2,000 to 3,000 calories per day". The producers of the show secretly kept a diary of each person's daily food consumption and found these folks were actually eating 12,000+ calories each day. A few were eating 16,000 calories per day. yet, every one of them grossly underestimated the amount.

This is easy to do. Before I lost 60 pounds, I never paid attention to calories per day. I started adding up my daily diet and was shocked at my intake. A dinner at a restaurant (Outback Steakhouse) could easily add up to 3,000+ calories at one meal. A little bit of snacking here and there also adds up but most people do not even realize they are snacking. I didn't.

The more you weigh, the more calories you burn at rest and during activity. Muscle burns more calories than fat does. At rest, it's about 7-10 calories per pound of muscle vs. 2-3 calories per pound of fat (per day). So if you were 40 lbs overweight, you would burn an extra 100+ calories a day simply by existing. Moving that extra weight around does, indeed, burn more calories than if you weren't carrying the extra weight. But most overweight people will more than compensate for the extra calories burned by eating more, thus staying the same weight.

I suspected it was something along those lines... 40lbs extra is difficult, 20lbs not so much -- so the trend reverses.

And just to be clear: I don't mean "fat" in a pejorative sense -- I just wanted a short subject line. Choose whatever adjective best fits: overweight, fat, plump, hefty, obese, etc....

For anyone, whether skinny or fat, fit or out of shape, diet remains the most important factor in weight loss or gain. Also, people have a tendency to vastly overestimate their caloric needs. The number of people I see at the gym walking on the treadmill for 10 minutes or swimming a couple of laps only to then rush to snack bar always amazes me.

Fat people don't lose wait because if they did, they would be skinny people and hence your question is invalid.

If you ever find yourself in the company of heavy recreational offshore fisherman (think big beer guts), check out their legs. Huge.

Humans living in the modern world can get by with almost no calorie burn from physical activity so adding 15 calories to what little movement they do is not going to make any impact.

Even when you start looking at the calories burned during excercise, once you get out of the realm of 2 hour+ bike rides and daily 10 mile runs, any typical workout an average person is likely to do is about equal to one large of Coke in terms of calories burned. That is true even for fit active people not involved in endurance sports.

For the vast majority of people, even ones who are "active," calorie burn is never going to be the answer. You have to eat less to lose weight.

http://www.theonion.com/...ose-weight-no,32770/

Very existential of you. Thank you for shedding light on this often-overlooked Catch 22.

This doesn't even come close to the dumbest question ever asked on ST.

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Take a short break from ST and read my blog:
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You can always count on me for counter-productive discussion.

Because they eat more. A fact that has always stuck with me is that a man with a BMI of 40 as compared to one with a BMI of 25 can eat 1000kcal more a day and remain weight stable because we don't digest & absorb all that we eat (so it's effectively something less than 1000 kcal), they have a higher resting metabolic rate, and they have to do more work to move their mass around throughout the day.

It is a very complex issue. There is more to it than calories in / calories burned. Most morbidly obese people have something going on psychologically even if they claim they don't. Usually complex body image issues and feelings of unworthiness. It is very hard to start exercising when you think you are judged every step (although this generally isn't true). It also feels worse to start because of the enormity of extra pressure on muscles and joints making them sore and recovery time is lengthened. A 5k can feel like a 10k.

There is also quality of food eaten. You will absorb more calories from processed crap than veggies and raw foods.

Also there is a toxic hunger problem to overcome. The salt / sugar ratios in processed and restaurant food work as an addiction. It makes you want more. And makes you abnormally hungry when you cut back calories.

All that fat functions as an organ of its own right and screws up hormones levels further complicating the issue.

I won't say that any of this is an excuse to not at least try to better yourself, but I will say that it is complicated and takes a very dedicated and diligent effort that takes a few years when you battle morbid obesity.

You assumption is that "overweight" is muscle. In general, NOT true.

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Some are born to move the world to live their fantasies...

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Its a fascinating question. I remember when my dad became a serious runner he often talked about how lost 40 pounds and it astonished him. He would explain how he would need to strap a bag of cement on his back to simulate putting the weight back. He had no idea how he was even able to get out of a chair, much less run with the extra weight. I think maybe since it is distributed throughout the body and the muscles can adapt to the gradual increase the body compensates for the disadvantage and when you lose the weight your body "detrains" the extra muscle needed to support it. The human body is amazingly adaptable.

Wouldn't it be more accurate to say a lot of factors influence calories in/calories out? By saying "There is more to it than calories in / calories burned." it makes it sound like physical laws of the Universe don't apply to people who are fat :)

My post assumes overweight meant extra fat, not extra muscle. 40 lbs of extra fat burns 100+ calories a day at rest. 40 lbs of extra muscle would burn 2-3x that at rest.

Huh??? This makes no sense to me.

Whether someone is walking or running regardless of speed, the caloric use will be somewhere in the 100 - 150 kCal per mile. So you're telling me that someone who goes out for an hour and walks or runs that they are only using 300 calories?? Sorry, gotta raise the BS flag here.

To really simplify it, it is about calories in vs. calories out. So yes, if you do absolutely nothing, then the only thing you can do is to eat less to drop weight. But if you are active, you simply need to eat less than you are using. Yes, that is difficult to figure out, but there are more than enough "guides" out there to give an idea. And you can always weigh yourself before and after a workout to track your fluid loss and estimate your typical burn rate.

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Rick, "Retired" hobbyist athlete
Trying to come back slowly from acute A-Fib

In some sense, the natural state of the human body is not skinny. The human body is designed to use calories very efficiently and store extra ones as fat.

For most of human history and even currently in many parts of the world, there was no sure timing of the next meal. And, what food was available was not nearly as calorie dense as alot of stuff around today in the developed world. Calories were limited and hard to get. That is what kept people skinny, not some superior attitude towards nutrition and physical activity.

So, fat people may be more "normal" than skinny people living in places with an abundance of food, particularly high calorie food. That is why it is so hard for alot of people to lose weigh. It just ain't natural.

That's why I find it surprising that more of us aren't fat.

I've thought a lot about this theory. And I don't know where I stand on it.

Yeah, we're designed to use and store calories. But we also were designed to wander around LOOKING for those calories, likely doing physical labor along the way to sustain primitive societies and economies. Obviously the boom of "knowledge work" where we sit around all day, earning money to buy primo food, doesn't help.

So I'd argue that even if our bodies stored calories to make up for the uncertainty, our ancestors would only have been able to remain sedentary (saving energy) for so long until they HAD to go searching for food.

There's also a big difference between "skinny" and "not overweight." I'm skinny. I could probably gain 15 pounds (through a combo of muscle and fat) and still be totally normal for my height. But if I gained 30 pounds, I'd be uncomfortable -- even if it was all muscle, I think I'd feel burdened.