Leucine doesn’t provide 4.6 calories; the actual number is somewhere between 3 and 3.7 calories. That’s because ME doesn’t factor in the thermic effect of food (TEF)—that is, the increased resting energy expenditure after feeding attributed to the digestion and storage of nutrients consumed (ref. 3). It’s the key element of diet-induced thermogenesis (DIT)—a term you’ll become friendly with throughout this book.
