If you get fatter while eating the same amount, doesn't that mean your body is now "burning fuel" *more* efficiently? Before, you used up all the energy; now, you have to spare (and it becomes a spare, around your midriff)... That means you're getting *more* mileage out of every cal^H^H^HJoule in your food.

Too bad efficiency is not what we *want*, in this case...

Some of it is "being efficiently converted into a form convenient for long term storage", yes, where before it wasn't. Before it was *all* used up for day-to-day "burning", and now you're getting by with "burning" LESS of it for, presumably, the same effective energy output by your body (assuming you didn't suddenly become a heck of a lot more of a couch potato).

That means *the rest of it*, the portion that *is* "burned", must apparently be being burned MORE efficiently than it was being when you *didn't* have any "fuel" left over to convert and store -- the same energy output, only USING LESS "fuel", so (given the same fuel intake) you get some "fuel" left over to "efficiently convert into a form convenient for long term storage".

You'd sure hafta explain to me again, in very very small words, how *using less "fuel"* to maintain the same daily output can be a sign of anything other than a MORE efficient "burning process".

(If you still feel like arguing, please ponder the definition of efficiency first.)