From 120 Kilos to 100: The Calorie Deficit Debate

From 120 kilos to 100: the debate over the calorie deficit

A person who is 1.70 metres tall and weighs 120 kilos is asking for help: they have been having a terrible time trying to lose weight and can't do it. In their area, they say, there isn't a single professional they trust; the only one available charges 100 euros and puts them on rice with tuna all week. Their conclusion — that the good ones are online — sparks a discussion that, whenever biochemistry and faith cross paths, always ends in the same deadlock.

Why does everyone keep saying you have to burn more than you eat?

Because energy balance is the only law no one disputes. Energy that comes in and isn't burned accumulates. So far, high school maths. The problem appears when that principle becomes the sole explanation for a 120-kilo body: if eating less and moving more were enough, obesity wouldn't have been growing for decades. That argument even leads to irony, invoking imaginary experiments in the Soviet gulags to ridicule anyone who maintains that some metabolisms gain weight without eating too much.

What is admitted with little dispute is the starting estimate: at that height and weight, there are around 30 kilos to lose. The discrepancy is not in how much is excess, but in why it's so hard to remove it.

Insulin and leptin resistance: the argument that breaks the balance

Here the big rift opens. Against the orthodoxy of the deficit, one school of thought holds that thermodynamics doesn't float in a vacuum: it is governed by the hormonal panel. If that panel is out of balance, the body enters protection mode, lowers basal expenditure, increases hunger and translates any restriction into more stored fat. The mechanism pointed to is insulin resistance and, before it, leptin resistance.

This is not a fringe position. Another voice qualifies that the deficit remains necessary, but that depending on the diet, the limit of tolerable calories is very different and far more bearable. In other words: no one denies the subtraction. What's debated is how much the person doing it can endure.

Meat versus vegetables: the head-on clash

The loudest front pits the carnivore and ketogenic diets against plant-based eating. From the first camp it is stated flatly that meat is the optimal human diet and that glucose is the enemy; some even claim that cancer is a metabolic disease and that tumor cells feed only on glucose and glutamine, so cutting carbs would work like chemotherapy. These are claims that lack proven support and are best read with skepticism.

On the other side, the simplest argument: a vegetarian participant maintains that she and the vegetarian people she knows are thin, and that there's no need to stuff yourself with meat to lose weight. It's enough to eat less and cut out soft drinks, pastries, white flours and fried foods. The community splits, but the pattern repeats: short-term results are recounted with enthusiasm; decades-long effects, no one has them.

How much vitamin C does what we eat really have?

The standard recommendation used in the discussion is 90 mg daily for adult men and 75 mg for women. From there, the clash. One side recalls that liver provides about 20 mg per serving and that the bulk of vitamin C comes from vegetables; the other responds with data on origins: 200 grams of potato are around 100 mg, but potatoes, peppers, tomatoes and citrus fruits arrived from the Americas and China relatively recently. For 150,000 years, it argues, humans had none of that at hand.

In the thread, a food-by-food table is laid out, from potatoes to peppers, tomatoes and citrus fruits, without the figures settling the clash between the two sides.

The business: 100 euros for a rice-and-tuna diet

There is an uncomfortable agreement among those discussing the rest: the available professional advice is expensive and weak. The 100-euro prescription and monotonous menu are cited as proof that the problem isn't just information, but supply. The recurring solution is to see a private endocrinologist, with glucose and triglyceride tests, because the suspicion of prediabetes runs through half the debate.

Meanwhile, home tips pile up: 10,000 steps a day, about 90 minutes walking; buy only healthy food so there are no temptations at home; swap white bread for wholemeal and don't overdo it; go for protein that fills you up. Nothing revolutionary. Nothing that solves the specific case of the person who wrote the first message.

The staggering figure isn't any of those. It's the one one participant throws out to justify the urgency: if current trends hold, one in two citizens will die of cancer and more than half will be diabetic. Against that horizon, arguing about tuna and rice almost seems like a joke.