> 4000 calories when they were skinny, and now they can't lose weight on 1500 calories when their maintenance intake is 2600.

4000 is a conservative estimate. Four pop tarts, an entire large pizza (all you can eat buffets FTW), two liters of soda, and an entire large bag of chips was, like… a totally normal day for me. There’s probably also be some cookies or hostess donuts in there, too.

> If you couldn't lose weight on 1400 calories then where exactly was the energy coming from?

No clue, but I didn’t cheat once and ate fixed meals of pre-measured calories every day. So.