eli5: If I consume a pound of olive oil containing 4010 calories, and a pound of fat is 3500 calories, how would I gain more than a pound of fat despite only consuming a pound?

Question

Water? Idk

In: 0

Answer 1

Let’s split terms to be more technical to make it less confusing

Lipids (food fats) contain 9 calories per gram so a pound of pure lipids could contain up to 4,077 calories. Olive oil is pretty close, even closer than a stick of butter to being pure lipids.

Your body turns 3,500 calories into a pound of adipose tissue(body fat)

Adipose tissue isn’t just olive oil in a thin membrane, otherwise your body wouldn’t be able to access it again. Its made of cells that store large amounts of fat but are still built out of proteins and have water surrounding their nucleus

Your body takes that pound of olive oil, grabs all the lipids, mixes in its supporting structure, and stores it as 1.15 pounds worth of adipose tissue. We happen to use the word “fat” to describe lipids and adipose tissue which makes it really confusing but they’re referring to different things