If fat is stores of energy, then why aren’t fat people more energetic than skinny people?
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lol I am more energetic than them… throw us both on a deserted island and see how long it takes them to start degrading physically mentally emotionally from lack of food lol i be over here chillin
why don’t fuel tankers drive faster than ferraris?
In a starvation situation, people with more fat reserves will be more energetic as their reserves will last longer than someone with less body fat.
Your question presents a false premise, that body fat makes you energetic. It’s stored energy, not magic energy sauce.
Fat has more than twice the number of calories per gram as carbohydrate or protein does which makes it very energy dense, however it’s hard to burn. Think of it like a big log of wood. you can’t just hold a match to a log and light it on fire. It takes time to either chop it down, or build up kindling around it to get a fire going. Fat is the same way, it is great for long term energy storage, but it takes time for the body to make use of that energy, so you can think of it as ‘slow but steady’ where as carbohydrates are more ‘fast energy that lasts half as long’.
When you fast for long periods, the body starts out with a normal fat storing/carb burning metabolism but as the liver and muscles are depleted of glycogen and fast energy, and no new carbohydrates are digested to replace them, eventually your energy levels sag and you feel very lethargic starting about day 2. During this time your body starts to break down the fat into ketone bodies, which your body and brain are able to use as energy. Just like splitting a log into pieces to fit in your fireplace.
The longer the body is in fat burning mode, the better it gets at it and eventually your energy levels return to something approaching normal only the body is getting energy from burning fat instead of carbohydrates.
Ironically once in fat burning mode, if you eat carbs, the body tries to go back to carb burning, and it can make you feel MORE tired and temporarily reduce your energy level until fat burning ramps up again.
This may be a helpful way to think about it: If cars run on gasoline, then why don’t cars with bigger gas tanks go faster? Speed/energy efficiency has more to do with other systems than just the storage tank.
The very reason the fat gets stored in the first place is because they aren’t in need to use the energy they are otherwise consuming, as well as what others have said about the (slower) speed at which fat can be consumed for energy.
There’s a few things to consider here. First, how exactly are we defining energetic. If its who has the most energy stored in their bodies, and could go the longest without eating, then the fatter person is more energetic. If it’s about being very bouncy and moving around a lot, psychology plays a much bigger role than total fat stored would.
Second, and probably more to the point, is the fact that there’s a cause and effect in play. Energetic people gravitate towards more physically active work and hobbies, leading to less total weight gain. Its not a perfect predictor, as I’ve met some fat construction workers that could have kicked my butt in any physical activity, but its a general rule of thumb.
The body is very efficient at using energy (ie it can go a long way on relatively little energy), and every body (except those suffering extreme starvation) has sufficient energy reserves to go for a few weeks. So storing a bit of extra energy won’t make you more energetic, it will just weigh you down and make it harder to move.
As you get even fatter though, the situation can worsen for another reason. The body tends to store fat when you overeat carbohydrates. The way it does this is that it uses insulin to convert excess blood sugar to fat. But when the body is awash with insulin it cannot access its fat stores for energy. People can get into a vicious cycle where they snack on carbs all day, so their blood sugar keeps spiking, so their insulin is permanently raised, so they can not access their fat stores, so they get hungry trying to provide their body with some immediate energy they can use, so they snack on more carbs, and so on. Ie despite all the extra energy they are storing, they can’t actually access it easily so feel less energetic.
Your body can burn sugar/carbs at a much higher rate per hour compared to fat. If I were to base it on my personal experience, I can burn 600 calories per hour when I eat normally, but doing 250 – 300 an hour on my keto diet is nearly impossible
Being energetic has to do with how much energy you can expend over a ~short period of time. Fat is stored energy but having that energy in storage doesn’t mean you can expend it any faster.
A metaphor that might work: imagine a huge, giant jug filled with water compared to a smaller jug. Over a short period of time, it’s hard to get that much water out of the giant jug, because it’s hard to carefully tip over and pour. But overall, there’s more water in the bigger jug, and you can go for longer without needing to refill it.
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