[BobL]

“In a very fundamental sense, people get fat because they take in more calories than they use.”

I’m with you. A human body burns about 2000 calories per day. With a decent amount of exercise (like walking 4 miles), maybe 2500 calories.

A person can easily eat 3000 calories in a day, even 4000 (trust me, I know). A healthy body will process that food, as it simply doesn’t know if the next meal is in 3 hours or 3 days (or 3 weeks, for that matter).

[Ellendra]

A human body burns about 2000 calories per day. With a decent amount of exercise (like walking 4 miles), maybe 2500 calories.

Minor correction: The average human might need to take in about 2000 calories, but an astonishing portion of that gets excreted without being absorbed. Research is still ongoing to find out exactly what percentage the average person absorbs, but there's a lot of variables to account for.

Just going by memory, I believe it was 26% of calories from protein get absorbed, on average. But I could be remembering wrong.