re: Gary Taubes: ‘Obesity isn’t a calorie problem, it’s a hormone problem’

At the end of the day, the answer is calories. Are you going to lose more weight if you eat whole foods instead of junk, yes, but it ultimately still comes down to calories.

Whole foods are more difficult to digest and your body expends more calories to digest them. It can take up to 30% of the calories in protein to digest it, so you get this extra benefit by eating protein that not only is it extra satiating, your body has to work harder.

At the end of the day though, even though you don't see that process, it is still calories in calories out, but eating whole foods can optimize that process even further.

At the end of the day though, if someone ONLY focused on staying in a calorie deficit instead of carefully choosing foods, they would lose weight. People get so far away from this idea that they end up fricking up. A nutrition label calorie deficit is 90% of the battle. The last 10% of that is if you want to optimize that and get into macros and calm down on processed foods.