Skinny Girl's Quest for Muscle

Skinny Girl's Quest for Muscle
Thermic Effect of Food -- Like Boxes in Storage

I recently wrote up this response to a message board -- I liked my analogy so much that I've posted it here as well:

Different macro nutrients (macro nutrients are: fats, proteins, and carbohydrates) are all processed differently in the body. This is a relatively new concept that suggests that a calories, is not a calorie, is not a calorie.

Some foods require much more energy to process than others. For example, fats you eat can be converted to body fat quickly and easily by the body. However, protein takes much more energy (therefore, you burn more calories when you eat protein than when you eat fat--because you burn more to convert the protein to fat storage.)

Think of it like this:

You have 3 boxes, they are all exactly the same size. One is "Fat" and it weighs nearly nothing (it's empty), the second is "Carb" and it's about 5 pounds, and finally the last box is "Protein". The "Protein" box weights 20 pounds. Even though each box is exactly the same size, it takes much more work to put the "Protein" box in the closet for storage than the "Fat" box.

For more reading on TEF, check out these articles/sites:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermic_effect_of_food

http://www.tmuscle.com/free_online_article/sports_body_training_performance_nutrition/harness_the_power_of_tef

http://www.nature.com/ijo/journal/v27/n5/abs/0802270a.html

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9356527?dopt=Abstract