If fat is stores of energy, then why aren’t fat people more energetic than skinny people?
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The gas at the gas station doesn’t make your car run if you don’t fill your car up with it
You’ve gotta burn the fat to get the benefits of the energy stored within
Energy and mass are interchangeable, so a lot of fat is technically a lot of energy, but a lot of energy means a lot of mass. A large body of mass is hard to move.
Fatness has nothing to do with being fit. Two people who are equally fit may get to the same speed at the same time, but if one is laden with body fat, then the inertia of the mass prevents them from accelerating as quickly.
Because they’re not using it, they’re storing it. If it was being used then it wouldn’t be accumulating.
Edit: in a little less eli5 extra bit, fat isn’t “stored energy” in that sense. It’s stored fuel/components. It has to be broken down and converted into glucose (eventually, after several other breakdown and use processes) like anything else, and it takes energy to do so. It also takes additional energy to store and carry fat. So an excess of stored fat actually puts you at an energy deficit.
Long term stores. Put the fat guy and the skinny guy on an island with no food and then see who still has energy to keep going a few weeks in.
Fat people have many many times the potential energy than a fit person.
They just can’t access it as fast.
Is your car faster with a full tank of gas weighing it down or half a tank weighing it down less?
There are 2 sources of energy we get from food.
1. Carbs
2. Fat
If you eat both carbs and fat, your body will burn the carbs and keep the fat as storage. Think of it like this as an analogy:
A hybrid car uses both gas and electric battery.
When you drive, the battery is in use and the fuel (gas) is saved – stored
When your car stops or goes over a certain speed, it uses fuel and starts recharging the battery.
Now imagine, that the fuel is not really being burned as the battery charges- but as it charges your car also fuels up. Since car is using more electric battery power, the gas over flows.
This is similar to how our body works.
You eat carbs, and fat – body stores fat while carbs being burned and used as energy. Thus, the more fats you eat while eating carbs, the more it gets stored.
So, a KETO diet is where you use only fats and your body forces itself to burn the fat you acquired, since there are no carbs- additional energy sources, you lose weight quickly.
“Stored energy” vs “metabolised” is completely different.
There are many many factors.
Simple answer is go put a 50kg ruck on and eat 5000 calories worth of highly processed food and go for a run. No PB’s here right.
Also obese people generally don’t move around as much so in that respect aren’t used to moving/exercising. With all the extra weight the burden on the cardiovascular system is ridiculous as well as stress on joints etc etc.
So someone who is “normal” weight might run comfortably at a heart rate of 150bpm.
But for an obese person it might be 200bpm for the same pace etc etc.
Also technically they will have more energy in a starvation scenario than a normal sized human.
This is the point of a calorie deficit right. Say your daily calories are 2000. And you decided to eat 1000 then you body is going to fill the void from “fat” stores.
Also muscle is metabolically expensive for your body to maintain so it will no doubt pillage most of muscle first then fat. Again it’s not a easy to explain without grossly oversimplification of everything.
Yes, the problem is fat people dont access the fat stores because they just continue over eating or eating bullshit to supply the body with energy.
This is how intermittent fasting is so successful. You FORCE your body to get the nutrients from you stores.
Being fat is like driving the same car but with a 2000 gal fuel tank on a trailer. The car’s engine doesn’t become more performant just because you drag a lot of fuel around. But the car becomes much slower because all that extra fuel is so heavy.
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