What Happens When a Person Is in a State of Positive Energy Balance?

December 29, 2025 •

5 min read

According to the fundamental law of conservation of energy, the body cannot create or destroy energy; it can only convert or store it. Therefore, when a person is in a state of positive energy balance, meaning they consume more calories than they burn, the surplus energy is stored within the body.

Quick Summary

When energy intake exceeds expenditure, a positive energy balance occurs, storing surplus calories, primarily as body fat. This leads to weight gain and can trigger hormonal and metabolic changes, increasing the risk of chronic diseases over time.

Key Points

Storage of Excess Energy: When energy intake exceeds expenditure, the body stores the surplus calories primarily as adipose tissue (body fat), leading to weight gain over time.
Increased Risk of Chronic Disease: A prolonged positive energy balance is a major risk factor for developing metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes due to increased body fat and related metabolic dysfunctions.
Metabolic and Hormonal Adaptations: The body attempts to compensate for a calorie surplus by increasing energy expenditure and releasing hormones like leptin, but chronic overfeeding can lead to leptin resistance, making it harder to feel full.
Inflammation and Cellular Dysfunction: Sustained excess energy contributes to a state of chronic, low-grade inflammation (meta-inflammation), which can disrupt cellular function and increase disease risk.
Context Matters for Growth: While chronic positive energy balance is linked to obesity, a temporary surplus is necessary for specific physiological processes like growth in children and muscle gain in athletes.
Complex and Individual Variability: The energy balance equation is not perfectly linear. Factors like genetics and physical activity levels influence how efficiently the body stores or dissipates excess energy, creating significant individual differences.

The Core Principles of Energy Balance

To understand what happens in a state of positive energy balance, one must first grasp the basics of energy balance itself. The body's energy balance is a dynamic concept governed by the relationship between energy intake and energy expenditure. Energy intake comes from the calories we consume through food and beverages. Energy expenditure, or the calories our body burns, has three main components: basal metabolic rate (BMR), the thermic effect of food (TEF), and physical activity.

Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR): This is the energy your body needs to maintain basic, vital functions at rest, such as breathing, circulation, and cell production. It accounts for the majority (60–75%) of your daily energy expenditure.
Thermic Effect of Food (TEF): This is the energy required to digest, absorb, and process the food you eat. TEF accounts for about 10% of total daily energy expenditure and varies based on the macronutrient composition of the meal.
Physical Activity: This includes both structured exercise (EAT) and non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT), which is the energy burned during all daily movements that aren't formal exercise, like walking, standing, and fidgeting.

The Immediate Response to a Calorie Surplus

When a person consumes more energy than their body needs, the resulting energy surplus triggers a series of physiological responses. The most obvious and immediate outcome is weight gain. The body stores this excess energy in two primary forms:

Glycogen: Excess carbohydrates are first converted into glycogen and stored in the liver and muscles. However, glycogen stores are limited, and once they are full, the body must find other ways to store the energy.
Adipose Tissue (Fat): The body's capacity for storing energy as fat is virtually limitless. Excess calories, regardless of whether they come from fat, protein, or carbohydrates, are ultimately converted into triglycerides and stored in fat cells (adipose tissue). This leads to an increase in overall body fat percentage.

Long-Term Consequences of Sustained Positive Energy Balance

A prolonged state of positive energy balance can have significant and serious health consequences. As the body accumulates more adipose tissue, it enters a state of chronic, low-grade inflammation, known as meta-inflammation, which can trigger a cascade of metabolic dysfunctions. Over time, this systemic inflammation and increased body fat can increase the risk of developing several chronic diseases.

Key long-term health risks include:

Metabolic Syndrome: A cluster of conditions that includes increased blood pressure, high blood sugar, excess body fat around the waist, and abnormal cholesterol or triglyceride levels, which occur together and increase the risk of heart disease, stroke, and type 2 diabetes.
Cardiovascular Disease: The storage of excess energy as fat can lead to high blood pressure (hypertension) and dyslipidemia (abnormal lipid levels in the blood), which are major risk factors for heart disease and stroke.
Type 2 Diabetes: The constant state of overfeeding can cause insulin resistance, where the body's cells stop responding effectively to insulin, leading to high blood sugar levels.
Certain Cancers: Obesity has been identified as a causal factor for several types of cancer, including colorectal, breast, and pancreatic cancer.

The Body's Complex Compensatory Mechanisms

The relationship between energy intake and expenditure is not a simple, linear one. The body has evolved complex and highly adaptive mechanisms to regulate its energy balance. These can lead to a "ratchet effect," where small, consistent surpluses cause gradual weight gain over time, despite the body's attempts to compensate.

Here's how the body tries to adapt:

Increased Resting Energy Expenditure: A higher body weight requires more energy to function, so the BMR naturally increases to some degree.
Increased Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT): In response to overfeeding, some individuals may unconsciously increase their daily movements, like fidgeting or pacing, to burn more calories.
Adaptive Thermogenesis: The body may also increase heat production through brown adipose tissue (BAT) to dissipate excess energy. However, this response is highly variable among individuals.
Hormonal Changes: Leptin, a hormone released by fat cells to suppress hunger, increases in a positive energy balance. However, prolonged overfeeding can lead to leptin resistance, where the brain becomes less sensitive to the signal, perpetuating increased food intake.

Despite these internal controls, the compensation for an energy surplus is often weaker than the body's defense against a deficit, which is why consistent overeating leads to weight gain for most people.

The Role of Positive Energy Balance in Health vs. Disease

It's important to distinguish between beneficial and detrimental positive energy balance. The context and duration of the energy surplus determine its overall impact on health.


Feature	Healthy, Short-Term Positive Energy Balance	Unhealthy, Chronic Positive Energy Balance
Purpose	Supports growth during childhood, muscle building in athletes, or recovery from illness.	Leads to weight gain beyond a healthy range.
Associated State	Active and deliberate process, often paired with resistance training.	Passive state resulting from overconsumption relative to a low activity level.
Body Composition Change	Primarily targets muscle mass accretion.	Accumulation of adipose tissue, leading to increased body fat percentage.
Health Markers	Metabolic health is generally maintained or improved, with proper training and diet.	High risk of metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes.
Duration	Short, controlled periods.	Sustained over months or years.

Conclusion

When a person is in a state of positive energy balance, the body’s primary response is to store the excess energy, leading to weight gain and increased body fat. While this process is necessary for growth or muscle development in specific scenarios, a chronic energy surplus has detrimental consequences. It contributes to obesity and increases the risk of serious metabolic and cardiovascular diseases, driven by factors like insulin resistance and systemic inflammation. The body's complex and often imperfect compensatory mechanisms attempt to restore balance but are frequently overwhelmed by consistent overconsumption and sedentary behavior. Managing energy balance effectively requires an understanding of its contributing factors, highlighting the importance of both nutrition and physical activity for long-term health.

How to Achieve a Healthy Energy Balance

Focus on Nutrient-Dense Foods: Choose whole, minimally processed foods to enhance the thermic effect of food and provide better satiety signals.
Increase Physical Activity: Engage in both structured exercise and elevate your daily NEAT to increase total energy expenditure.
Practice Mindful Eating: Pay attention to your body's hunger and satiety cues to avoid overconsumption.
Optimize Sleep: Sufficient, high-quality sleep helps regulate hormones like leptin and ghrelin that control appetite and energy metabolism.
Manage Stress: Chronic stress can disrupt hormonal balance and drive overeating.
Monitor Progress: Track your weight over several weeks or months to assess your energy balance accurately, as daily fluctuations can be misleading.
Create Small, Sustainable Changes: Incremental adjustments to diet and activity levels are often more effective and easier to maintain long-term than drastic ones.

For further reading on the complex dynamics of energy balance, check out the following resource from the National Institutes of Health: The Importance of Energy Balance - PMC.

Frequently Asked Questions

Positive energy balance is when energy intake (calories in) is greater than energy expenditure (calories out), leading to weight gain. Negative energy balance is when energy intake is less than energy expenditure, resulting in weight loss.

Yes, in certain contexts. A controlled, positive energy balance is necessary for specific physiological goals, such as supporting growth in children, building muscle mass in athletes, or recovering from illness.

The body first refills its limited glycogen stores using excess carbohydrates. Once these are full, any remaining energy from calories, regardless of source, is converted into triglycerides and stored as body fat.

The body has several mechanisms to increase energy expenditure and suppress appetite, such as increasing basal metabolic rate and releasing hormones like leptin. However, these mechanisms are often weaker than the drive to eat, especially in a modern food environment.

Yes. A consistent, small positive energy balance over time can lead to a gradual, significant weight gain. This is often referred to as the 'ratchet effect,' where a small surplus accumulates consistently over months and years.

The most effective way to assess your energy balance over time is to track your body weight over an extended period (weeks or months). If your average body weight is steadily increasing, you are in a state of positive energy balance.

Higher levels of physical activity increase overall energy expenditure, making it easier to match intake with output. Sedentary individuals operate in an "unregulated zone" where appetite signals and expenditure are less coordinated, increasing the risk of a positive energy imbalance and weight gain.