Overweight Adolescents Eat Less

Here's another neat study that shatters the fallacy that overweight people eat more.  This study looked at Greek adolescents and monitored their energy intake and energy expenditure. 

The authors reported that the energy intake of overweight adolescents was lower than the energy intake of their normal weight peers.  It also mentions that overweight adolescents ate more junk food, but that might be expected. 

The finding that jumped out at me was that "overweight children had a higher energy negative balance."  According to the calorie theory, if you are negative energy balance (calorie intake less than calorie expenditure) you should lose weight.  Yet this study does not show this to be true. 

Both this study and the one I blogged about recently show that just eating less is not the path to weight loss.  The key is instead to live at a high energy flux - eating a good amount of calories and expending a good amount of calories through exercise.  When a person is sedentary, the body's weight-regulating mechanisms do not work properly, and it is easier to gain weight.