obviously,
Absolutely nothing.
No sane scientist would try (or get funding for) an experiment like this with just one person who has to be fed and paid over a long time frame.
It goes against thermodynamics, so it would be a ridiculous attempt to disprove centuries of established science with a sample size of 1.
So whoever does it is already outside of the scientific community. No paper would publish their results, and everyone would simply assume they’ve smuggled food in somehow (which has happened in the past and is the only realistic explanation).I can’t stress enough how ridiculous it would be to try to disprove thermodynamics at this point.
You’d have to throw out literally everything we’ve learnt in the past 400 years along with it.We would rewrite our laws of thermodynamics is guess?
Or conclude that they were accumulating mass some other way, such as
- Accumulating water
- Being severely constipated
- Some obscure bone disease that causes them to accumulate absurd amounts of minerals
My bet would be on (1) and/or (2).
I prefer my theory, even though yours make sense lol
Accumulating water
Is there a condition that accumulates water like that where weight goes up consistently over a long period of time?
In addition to failing kidneys, stuff that messes with the lymphatic system. Everyone’s cells and bloodstream is slightly leaky, and whatever leaks out gets picked up by the lymphatic system, filtered through lymph nodes, and returned to the circulatory system. A break in that chain due to injury/disease can cause fluid to accumulate upstream. Look up elephantitis.
Also, liver/heart failure can create ascites, which is fluid accumulation inside the abdomen (looks more like pregnancy belly than obesity belly).
Similarly, malnutrition in kids in poor areas often results in kwashiorkor, which makes them have big bellies but really skinny arms and legs. Its basically a protein deficiency from eating only corn or whatever.
Borked kidneys
Supplementing creatine does this.
That’s mostly a step up in water weight, but it doesnt keep increasing.
Yes, for example hypothyroidism
We would have to ask them where they hid the water bottle.
Well, you can’t be in a verified calorie deficit and gain weight, outside of extreme water retention. Thats the definition of a calorie deficit.
But there are vanishingly small numbers of people who gain weight eating a very small amount of food who have hormonal imbalances that make that happen. Theres a much larger number of people who forget to count the handful of crisps or nuts or chocolates in their diet.
Hormone imbalances can’t overcome thermodynamics. In people with hypothyroidism, the set point of their resting metabolic rate is lower, leading to fatigue and often being too cold.
So it’s not that they gain weight despite a deficit, it’s that a deficit for them would be less calories than someone with more activity who isnt cold all the time.
In a perfect world, calorie needs match with hunger, so with decreased calorie needs, you would naturally eat less, but it’s not always perfect so some people with hypothyroidism have “normal” hunger when they actually need less food. It ends up with 1/4-1/2 of people with hypothyroidism experiencing weight gain.
Yes, I wasn’t clear. Hormonal imbalances make it seem they’re beating thermodynamics, but thermodynamics wins.
And of course, let’s not forget the people that outright lie about being a lardass.
I’m big boned.
Lead tire balancing weights have zero calories.
If you ate a tub of crisco you wouldn’t gain weight equal to the caloric surplus. Your ass would never be the same, but you wouldn’t gain a ton of weight. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t have those calories.
Depends on the deficit amount, accuracy of the scales, and accuracy of the record keeping.
People tend to overestimate the Kj they burn while underestimating the amount they eat.
Same thing that would happen if someone proved in a lab they’re filling a cup while removing more water than what they’re putting in. I.e. it won’t happen.
In reality the body is a lot more complex than a cup of water, and it’s possible you gain weight on calories deficit by accumulating water or feces. But you WILL be losing fat and/or muscle, otherwise we will use you as an infinite source of energy.
They might be increasing in weight due to absorbing more water into their body
He would just have proved he was drinking water with something salty.
Your description of circumstances are lacking, but what you imply is impossible and ridiculous.
By definition, that wouldn’t be a deficit. You could have a “predicted” calorie deficit that ends up being off by some percentage. The models for energy expenditure typically just use pretty simple demographic info like BMI, sex, age, and activity level. If someone burned less calories than predicted, that basically means that they are less fit than the average person of their demographic cohort.
You could use more advanced models with more information, but they would still be predictions. Drugs also come into play: uppers like caffeine, nicotine, amphetamines, etc, increase the amount of activity in your body so you are literally warmer from burning more calories, everything else equal.
So you’re saying all I have to do is drink a lot of coffee and take a lot of uppers
Unironically, yes. Lots of off the shelf diet pills are literally just caffeine pills (e.g., hydroxycut). Old school diet pills were literally amphetamines before governments made it so you couldnt get them off the shelf (e.g., obetrol), and technically you can still get it prescribed (desoxyn is methamphetamine).
The problem is, a normal dose of caffeine just makes you a little warmer, and burn a little bit of extra calories, but amphetamines and especially 2,4-Dinitrophenol (other banned weight loss drug) can literally cook you by making you burn so many extra calories.
Then the researchers would record their findings dutifully and continue the experiment as normal.
There are any number of reasons why a person might gain weight temporarily while on a calorie deficit.
Most obviously, some non-caloric material is accumulating in their body, like water. Or poop. Bodyweight can swing 5 kg or more daily depending on these sorts of factors.
It is also possible that the calorie “deficit” is not actually a deficit.
The charts and online calculators that you can find to figure out your daily calorie expenditure are extremely unreliable, as how many calories a person burns per day is highly individual. So if “daily calories burned” is based off a generic calorie calculator, then the most likely explaination is that this person just burns fewer calories than whatever the calculator says.
Even if the person’s calorie expenditure was accurately measured before the experiment, the daily total calorie burn a person experiences is highly susceptible to change - especially in circumstances like intentional calorie restriction. When you restrict calories, you lose weight, which means your body has less tissue to maintain, which lowers BMR. It also means you weigh less, so weight-bearing exercise expends fewer calories. When you eat less food, it takes fewer calories to digest what you do eat. And also, most peoples bodies respond to calorie restricion by reducing non-exercise activity thermogenesis - the random, subconscious movements you do throughout the day that your body does in order to maintain a particular body composition in the presence of excess calories.
But if we suppose that we are conducting this experiment over a long time, and the participant has all their food measured out so we know exactly what they are eating, and their calorie expenditure is tracked continuously in a rigorous way, and they consistently gain weight, then presumably the scientists would request the person stay in the experiment longer, and see if they wanted to participate in further experiments, because they would be an extraordinarily interesting case study that could broaden our knowledge on where a human might gain weight from in the absence of excess calories. Because unless they are secretly inserting steel bars under their skin in the dead of night, gaining weight on a real calorie deficit does not happen, as it would violate the first law of thermodynamics.
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That is achievable…
Work out while very fat.
Fat loss brings less weight loss than acquired muscles, that are much more dense.
And this can happen very well in a calorie deficit diet.
Its a specific situation, but happens all the time when you start exercising, and people get confused, why I am gaining weight?
Just converting fat to muscle (so to speak, ofc)
You won’t gain net weight my that mechanism though, you’ll just grow more dense. Mass is a conserved quantity, so if you’re gaining more muscle mass than you’re losing fat, that extra mass is coming from somewhere. That somewhere is your food.
Care to elaborate on the conserving mass principle? Is that your opinion, a physics principle, or an actual thing related to weight loss and mucle generation on the human body?
Where do you think the extra mass is coming from if not from food or water?
Is that just your opinion?
You exercise, and in doing that you both burn fat and at the same time build muscle.
Assuming you are on a deficit diet, but not so much to prevent your body to build muscle mass (or die), can you elaborate on why you assume fat loss must equal muscle gain in terms of mass?
To me, and without further actual data, it’s perfectly reasonable to assume that you can lose less weight on fat tissue than the acquired weight in muscle tissue.
You could very well be doing a tipe of training that burn little fat while building muscles, for example.
Edit: a few typos
can you elaborate on why you assume fat loss must equal muscle gain in terms of mass?
I’m not making crazy claims that need defending. I certainly didn’t make that claim.
You are claiming it’s possible to gain weight by building muscle on a calorie deficit so any burden of proof is entirely on you
NOT possible.
Water content could be increasing.
