It sounds like the Hacker Diet is pushing for the magic here. Do extra calories you eat magically become fat? If not, then how do they become fat? If you exercise to burn fat, what's to stop you from becoming cripplingly exhausted rather than burn even a gram a fat?

If we can establish the body's mechanism for building fat or burning it, that is the thread that will unravel most fad diets, exercise regimens, and theories. If you take the time to understand the hormone feedback and homeostasis system involved in fat building/burning, then simplistic "eat less burn more" approach begins to break down. You can see that eating certain foods certain ways actually stimulates your metabolism and triggers fat burning. Also, certain approaches to exercise actually trigger fat building.

> More accurate would be food = energy, exercise = energy expenditure, obesity = prolonged energy surplus stored as fat, and weight loss = prolonged calorie deficit leading to fat reduction.

This view turns the human body into a very simple black box. That's an awfully medieval approach.