1. Not all overweight/obese people are "leptin resistant".
The overweight/obese who see maximum results from their weight loss treatments are those with intact leptin sensitivity. These are the people who actually get to lean, even from morbid obesity. They aren't common as weight loss treatments fail for most people. There are many things that affect leptin sensitivity in the long term. This is still being researched, so there are no definitive answers to the riddle yet, but we have found out that fat cells have fantastic memories. We also know that people who ruin their leptin sensitivity tend to all have one or more of the following histories in common:
- Overweight/obesity that started in childhood.
- Overweight/obesity that was mostly caused by fructose consumption (e.g., sweetened beverages).
- Long term sedentary lifestyles (e.g., never having been active even in youth).
- History of "yo-yo" or fad dieting.
- History of starvation protocols (e.g., chronic caloric restriction, extended fasting, eating disorders).
What is the common theme in all of the above? Chronic disruption of their blood glucose regulation. The longer this has been happening, the more difficult to reverse. Remember, obesity is an metabolic adaptation. If you have been disrupting your blood glucose for decades, your metabolism is pretty much adapted to continue on its trajectory.
All of these people seem to develop intractable "leptin resistance". That is when doctors will pull out the big guns of bariatric surgery. These people are also massively obese. It is amazing the amount of fat they can put on while still maintaining "non diabetic" blood glucose levels. Not normal glucose levels, just non diabetic ones. This means their metabolisms adapted to disruptions in blood glucose that did not necessarily reach clinical hyperglycemic levels. It's as if their body has evolved to put on massive amounts of fat with seemingly no detriment to their health. At least, in the short term. Like I said before, fat cells have great memories and they can be honed and primed to hold on to fat and store more until they literally explode.
So, it's unfortunate but the reality is that without leptin, there is no fat loss and leptin comes from these suicidal fat cells. How leptin changes with time is not fully understood. For example, the leptin sensitive, like myself, who lost enormous amounts of weight, are not necessarily out of the woods. Any challenge to fat mass decreases leptin sensitivity over time, so the fact that we can lose so much weight, might also be what can make us put on weight much more easily in the future.
Only time will tell how successful anyone is in the battle of the bulge since the war is not with the bulge itself, but with obtaining and keeping your leptin sensitivity.
2. You only store fat from food if you are in a consistent surplus of calories, regardless of whether it's protein, fats or carbs.
You can store fat from food even at a deficit. In fact, being at a deficit ramps up the body's ability to store more fat, than at any other time, since this is when it most needs this reserve. This has been seen consistently in starvation studies and obesity research. Like I wrote above, fat cells have a long memory when it comes to starvation and they will do everything possible to prevent it in the future.
For the fat cell, real prolonged starvation that ends in death is the only breaking point. That death might come from malnutrition before it gives up a pound. This is why the fat cells of concentration camp victims did not have the ability to store fat during their ordeal as there was literally no food for a very long time and they were not obese to begin with. We do not recommend this unhealthy way of trying to lose weight because if it doesn't end in death, it will end in more obesity. Calorie proponents, on the other hand, seem to deem this just fine because for them, as long as you aren't losing weight, you aren't starving enough.
I have explained before that in the short term a caloric surplus will cause "weight" gain, just like a deficit would cause "weight" loss. All weight loss and gain is mitigated through overall calories due to their effect on insulin. But in the long term this effect wanes as the body adapts to its nutrient availability.
The body also uses and allocates calories differently, depending on where they come from. The body doesn't only guide itself by nutrient availability as a whole (leptin), but by what nutrients are available (insulin). So whether the calories come from protein, fats or carbs matter. They matter a lot.
3. Homeostasis in the body relies on overall energy, not what substrate the energy is derived from.
There is no such thing as pure "energy homeostasis" in the body, except at the mitochondrial level. There is only metabolic homeostasis and metabolism uses much more complex metrics to acquire this homeostasis than just overall energy information. If the body only uses overall energy information, it would starve very easily and none of us would be here as famine has been a threat to us since our beginning.
The body's output of energy varies depending on many factors. The body does not use its energy in a "general" manner. It partitions energy in different ways according to what substrate the energy is derived from. This allows it to know what type of energy it is and what it would be best used for. That is why it has a separate storage compartment for fat, than it does glucose, and they are both used differently. The body also uses the calories from protein in a very different way than it does fat or glucose.
4. If our bodies didn't burn fat daily, where would the dietary fat go?
The body burns both fat and glucose daily but it burns them at different rates depending on activity type, not level, and other factors. This is why I said in the reply above that the body does not use its energy in a "general" manner and why general energy should not be used to determine "energy homeostasis". That has been the failure of calories in/calories out which is a measure of general energy.
Aside from using very little glucose, in order to keep glucose dependent cells alive, the body burns glucose during high intensity activity. This activity must be explosive and short term as there is only a very limited amount of this fuel available to it. Glycogen stores are not very large. This is because this type of high intensity activity was not something that occurred often enough, in our history on earth, for the body to evolve large stores for as the demand was low. There has also never been an abundance of carbohydrates in the diet, until recently, for this to even be possible. So large glycogen stores were simply never needed. This is why athletes have to constantly replenish their glycogen stores through diet or "burn out". They have an adaptive glucose dependency.
The body burns fat for all other activity that is not intense. This means that the body is mostly burning fat throughout the day and night. It burns fat while sedentary and while doing steady state low/moderate intensity activity. Low/moderate intensity does not mean lounging around. The body will burn fat while jogging or cycling, two activities that aren't considered "lounging". So it takes a lot to push the body to burn glucose. It just prefers burning fat. It has many ways of burning fat but only one of burning glucose.
Fat is a very efficient and versatile fuel and this is why it is so difficult for metabolically healthy people to gain body fat through the consumption of dietary fat. It is almost impossible to continue gaining weight after they gain their first 20 - 25 pounds, even while eating astronomical amounts of dietary fat. They will just keep burning through it as the body adapts and increases its metabolic rate. If you listen to the stories of people who have tried to prepare themselves by gaining weight, for climbing Mount Everest or spending a couple of months in the wilderness, they can't do it through the consumption of olive oil even at a large caloric surplus. They must turn to carbohydrates. This is also why morbidly obese people can consume copious amounts of fat and still lose weight. At least, until their leptin set point catches up to them.
"Leptin resistance" is the difference between a healthy person and an overweight/obese person. The healthy person can't put on the weight, regardless of what they do and the overweight/obese person can't get it off, regardless of what they do. This is completely modulated through leptin and the hormonal states that affect its function.
5. Because I like to eat large quantities of food, I usually do not eat fats with my meals. Who wants to eat 100 grams of avocado, that has 160 calories, instead of 700 grams of cauliflower which has the same? It is not mandatory to include "healthy fats" with my meals.
Fat is never mandatory unless you are only eating rabbit stew or elk jerky for a prolonged period of time. Then you would be on a protein sparing modified fast which is not a good long term protocol unless you are significantly overweight/obese. The body requires some dietary fat to avoid malnutrition. Fat is widely used by the body and not just for energy but to build cells and produce sex hormones. Of course, you would be hard pressed to find someone in the United States dying of “rabbit starvation” even at very low to "no fat" diets.
Aside from that, I understand that you like to eat large quantities of food, but I am unsure why. Cauliflower is not particularly nutritious nor does it contain adequate protein. The only reason I can think of is you're hoping to ward off hunger. Feeling hungry is usually a sign that something is wrong with your diet, especially if you aren't losing weight nor building muscle. A large bowl of cauliflower is not a proper way to ward off hunger. A steak would be a much better choice. It wards off hunger much better, contains protein and you don't have to eat “large quantities” to achieve satiety. This is where counting calories goes wrong. Yes, cauliflower has less calories than an avocado but they are both basically junk.
You don't want to eat like a cow. Cows have four stomachs so they can continue in-taking large quantities of carbohydrates. The problem with this large serving of cauliflower is not that it’s a particularly malignant carbohydrate because it’s not. It’s just that it’s replacing protein and that's where the malignancy comes in. People do this all the time with carbohydrates, whether it’s cauliflower, avocado, rice or beans. Any carb that replaces protein is a problem carb. Protein should always be the main focus of your meals. Items like cauliflower or avocado are side dishes and/or garnishes only.
So, unless you are a healthy person, I suggest you drop this habit of stuffing yourself with cauliflower. At best, it won’t be of any benefit to you and at worse it will be a detriment.
6. Eating fat builds muscle.
Only protein builds muscle. Fat only builds fat.
The body uses protein to build its lean muscle mass and for this reason it never uses it for any other type of energy requirement, even though it has the ability to do so. If the body is not getting enough energy to meet its energy requirements from elsewhere, like fat, then it will break down its muscle mass and turn it into glucose in order to then convert that into fat. This is what usually occurs during chronic caloric restriction. The person is jumping for joy at the lower scale number, not realizing it was caused by the loss of muscle for the sole purpose of building more fat. This is especially true for the overweight/obese.
For this reason, eating adequate dietary fat can protect your muscles, but the fat itself is not what’s building the muscle. That is always the result of protein coupled with exercise.
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