Body composition and energy intake: do overweight women overeat and underreport?

The relationship between energy consumption and body composition was evaluated in 63 women by use of energy-intake values that were precisely measured in a metabolic unit and corrected for deviations from energy balance. Energy requirement for the maintenance of body weight was not significantly correlated with adiposity expressed as percent body fat. However, energy requirement was positively associated with lean mass (p less than 0.0001) whereas fat mass added no predictive value to the same multivariate regression equation. Self-reported energy intake (before the experiments) was not correlated with lean mass and was underestimated by lean subjects at least as much as by obese subjects. Discrepant findings in the literature concerning relationships between obesity and energy intake may be explained by reporting error and by the relative lean mass of obese vs nonobese women but not by systematic underreporting unique to obese subjects.