No fatties allowed...how does the Navy reduce the displacement tonnage of its sailors?

[Spekkio]

@Spekkio mainly boiling it down to men vs women. Individuals can have wide variances in their BMR explained more by body composition, genetics, or age than gender.

Gender plays a large role. You can see this in TDEE calculators (which unfortunately almost universally over-estimate calories burned from exercise).

Like, I'm glad you think it's impressive that influencer can bench my body weight but so can my 14 year old son who started lifting in March. With very rare exceptions, the amount of work (energy) expended by an equivalently trained male will far exceed what is expended by a female.

BMR as a function of body composition vs gender is a chicken or the egg conversation. While individuals of like gender / body composition may vary somewhat, ultimately, there's not enough difference from the average in BMR to matter in people who are not diagnosed with medical disorders by a healthcare professional.

 

[Spekkio]

I 100% guarantee you that I could take a set of identical twins, give them the same average calorie intake over a month but vary their type and time-varying rate of calories given for each (e.g., steady for one, feast-famine other), and they'd weigh differently at the end.

Mostly plays into athletic performance. Eating the right stuff generally makes you feel better, workout harder, and recover faster... effects which get magnified over 30 and definitely over 40. Coincidentally, also why going no / low carb is often counter-productive.

Although there are many, many professional athletes with notoriously bad diets, we shouldn't use genetic freaks as a benchmark.