&gt; Similarly, as I said in a message above, there is a lower limit for how much energy your body must burn in order to maintain body temperature. You will find if you look at the rate at which corpses lose heat to ambient temperature that it is very, very close to what is listed on those base metabolic rate charts.<p>Do you happen to know a typical range for this?   For caloric maintenance level, there is:<p>* Body temperature maintenance  
* Operating bodily functions (pumping blood, breathing, etc)  
* Basic &quot;non-exercise&quot; movements<p>For all of these, calories consumed (eaten) must take into consideration:<p>* caloric extraction (basically, net of calories remaining in excrement)    
* caloric consumption efficiency (of those retained, how efficiently are they converted into heat &amp; kinetic energy)<p>There are actually two sets of numbers for the first three points: actual literal calories required, and then the set that takes into account the last two points.  How different are these numbers?  I wonder, assuming this &quot;weight plateau&quot; while still in <i>what is thought to be</i> caloric deficit is actually real, could the general understanding of the last two points not be correct in all situations?<p>As discussed, it seems some people extract more calories from the same food (for whatever reason), although how true is that?  The other alternative is that they have similar bodily behavior as someone with a thyroid problem (calories are uptaken (I think?) but not stored as fat - not sure how this works then, are they excreted?), but if on a strict diet, the body could change causing a plateau.<p>I don&#x27;t think I&#x27;m doing a very good job of explaining myself.