Eli5: Calories. How do they work with weight? Would 100 calories of sugar be the same as 100 calories of protein? How many would result in gaining or losing a inch off your waist?

Question

Eli5: Calories. How do they work with weight? Would 100 calories of sugar be the same as 100 calories of protein? How many would result in gaining or losing a inch off your waist?

In: 1

Answer 1

For a calorie as a unit of measure, it doesn’t matter if it’s sugar or fat or protein or gasoline. For how our bodies react to, digest, and store that calorie, it matters somewhat. Sugar is “easy energy” the calories arrive in spike and are likely to be stored as fat if they aren’t used up. This put the Krebs cycle into “fat storage” mode. Fats are also easy energy, but the Krebs cycle is in “fat usage” mode. Protein is harder to convert to energy, so it tends to be a more spread-out energy supply rather than a spike. It also doesn’t convert to fat, so you can have “rabbit starvation” where a person eats a ton of protein with no fat or cards and slowly starves (if a person only eats rabbits).