Everything You Know About Fitness is a Lie • Hacker News Board

Re: Everything You Know About Fitness is a Lie

#241

Post by oostevo » Fri, Mar 04, 2011, 6:52 PM UTC

jerf wrote: post #165

jasonkester wrote: post #42

If you really want to get fit, there's one easy thing you can do that actually works: Take up a sport that gets you fit as a side effect. I have two obsessions in life: Rock Climbing and Surfing. I'm pretty good at the first, and borderline hopeless at the other, but I'm committed to the point where I've arranged my life so that I can travel for months at a time to pursue one or the other each year. When I'm working…

Every time there's an article on exercise or diet, there's a pileon of people promoting their own beliefs, with no apparent sign that they read the original link. How do you address the fact that your point is actively contradicted by the article? Did you even know your point is actively contradicted by the article? I'm not even saying that proves you're wrong; what bothers me is that you just ran off to post your ow…

I don't think the two are _necessarily_ contradictory.

The article says, essentially, that a basic strength and conditioning program is the way to go. The GP says that picking a sport that makes you fit is the way.

To add another opinion, that ties the two together, to the mix: think of the fittest people you know. To a person, they're probably obsessed with their chosen sport (which may be soccer, or bodybuilding, or weightlifting, or running, or ...). These people live and breathe their sport, and when they're not doing it or training for it, they're thinking of how to get better at it.

At some point, thinking of how they can get better at it is probably going to lead them to doing, well, a basic strength and conditioning program. That's because squats and presses and the rest of what the article outlines are still about the best the exercise world can come up with for almost all the athletes out there.

(For what it's worth, I'd strongly second the recommendations of the article for Starting Strength and Olympic-Style Weightlifting. They're both fantastic books.)

Re: Everything You Know About Fitness is a Lie

#242

Post by mcdowall » Fri, Mar 04, 2011, 6:54 PM UTC

jasonkester wrote: post #216

mcdowall wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having travelled both Indonesia and Thailand I am surprised you mentioned Thailand as a good spot for Surfing. I just found a lot more surfers in Bali and on the Gili Islands. Food was probably comparable in price, but a Bintang being slightly more expensive than an 80Baht Chang :)

Not sure how you got that from what I wrote. As you correctly noticed, Thailand has roughly the same surf potential as Iowa. Possibly Montana. Unless you hit it on just the right day in 2004. It does, however has some truly amazing rock climbing on the beaches in Krabi Provence. That's why I spend every other winter there.

"I have two obsessions in life: Rock Climbing and Surfing. I'm pretty good at the first, and borderline hopeless at the other, but I'm committed to the point where I've arranged my life so that I can travel for months at a time to pursue one or the other each year."

I think I took from your original post that you do both, hence my confusion. Regardless, congrats on the pursuit, its something I am very envious of!

Re: Everything You Know About Fitness is a Lie

#243

Post by melissamiranda » Fri, Mar 04, 2011, 6:55 PM UTC

jerf wrote: post #165

jasonkester wrote: post #42

If you really want to get fit, there's one easy thing you can do that actually works: Take up a sport that gets you fit as a side effect. I have two obsessions in life: Rock Climbing and Surfing. I'm pretty good at the first, and borderline hopeless at the other, but I'm committed to the point where I've arranged my life so that I can travel for months at a time to pursue one or the other each year. When I'm working…

Every time there's an article on exercise or diet, there's a pileon of people promoting their own beliefs, with no apparent sign that they read the original link. How do you address the fact that your point is actively contradicted by the article? Did you even know your point is actively contradicted by the article? I'm not even saying that proves you're wrong; what bothers me is that you just ran off to post your ow…

More people would read the article if it wasn't a solid block of text. Good typography makes all the difference.

For paragraph comparison:

NYTimes: font-size: 15px; line-height: 22px; width: 600px;

Men's Journal: font-size: 12px (small); line-height: 15px (tight); width: 800px (I lose which line I'm on);

Re: Everything You Know About Fitness is a Lie

#244

Post by ciupicri » Fri, Mar 04, 2011, 6:58 PM UTC

jasonkester wrote: post #217

ciupicri wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eat rice and what else? Rice alone is not enough. It doesn't provide vitamins like A, C and E and fats.

Rice and Thai Food. So add lean chicken and some vegetables to that if you want to be literal.

My intention wasn't to be literal. I was really curious what kind of food is available over there and what would you recommend eating. Not everyone eats Chinese, Thai, Mexican or other foreign cuisines.

Re: Everything You Know About Fitness is a Lie

#245

Post by btilly » Fri, Mar 04, 2011, 7:01 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #176

ghshephard wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Numerous studies (See the first chapter of "Why we get Fat, by Taubes) have shown that Obesity is a disease of poverty. The food that keeps you lean (protein/fats) is expensive. Carbs are cheap. Poor people eat carbs. Rich people eat steak, chicken, fish. There is no significant research that shows adding exercise to an overweight person's lifestyle will significantly reduce their weight - typically just increases th…

If obesity is a disease of poverty, then how come truly poor people (e.g., the poor in India or China) are skinny? Lack of money for food is not a cause of obesity. If your goal is to obtain 2500 calories (assuming that is what you need to maintain a healthy weight) for a little money as possible, you will consume 2500 calories of carbs. You will not become obese. If you instead consume 3500 calories and become obese…

What you say is perfectly logical, but subtly flawed when it comes to the USA.

If you're poor, odds are that you're eating fast food. The primary cost of fast food is not the cost of the raw ingredients, it is the time and effort to make the fast food. Furthermore many of the customers there see large portions as a value. Therefore fast food places have found it worth their while to offer large portions at a low price, and to inflate those portions with the cheapest foods that they can - french fries and soft drinks.

As long as fast food places do that, there is no real cost difference between 2500 calories and 3500 calories. Given how addictive most people find food that is high in sugar, fat and salt (which describes soft drink + fries), people tend to finish the portions that they are given. That will make you obese fairly fast, even if you don't "supersize" your portions.

Food banks often offer similar foods to fast food places because it is cheap and what their clientele is used to. This causes similar consequences. So in the USA even if you have no money at all, it is easy to get fat.

If there were cheap, convenient places to eat that made you pay according to calories and were willing to give realistic but smaller portions for significantly lower prices, then your reasoning would be absolutely correct in the USA.

Now you can argue that the underlying cause that makes this possible is that the country is rich enough that we can afford to be wasteful even on poor people. This is absolutely correct. But for practical purposes that detail doesn't matter. If you personally have little money and live in the USA, it is really easy to become fat.

An incidental note on exercise. Exercise burns calories. Obviously. However it takes very little extra food to offset the calorie expenditure from moderate amounts of additional exercise. Luckily exercise also affects appetite for many people, and muscle mass increases your basal metabolism. Therefore exercise is a win, but for moderate amounts of exercise not mainly because it directly burns off calories.

Re: Everything You Know About Fitness is a Lie

#246

Post by bane » Fri, Mar 04, 2011, 7:02 PM UTC

gigamonkey wrote: post #208

bane wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just imagine what primitive man would eat. He would spend most of his days eating what grew from the ground and when they finally hunted down meat, they would eat their catch as a group Ugh, I hate this concept. Primitive man also died in their 20s and 30s. No thanks.

I'm pretty sure this is false. As I understand it hunters and gatherers lived about as long as we do. It was only with the invention of agriculture and the kind of societies (and diseases) it enabled, that our average lifespan took a nosedive which we are pulling out of now, thanks to modern medicine.

It's relatively easy to test though. You can look at life expectancy figures of hunter gathering cultures (which are a useful proxy for pre-agricultural cultures) that don't deal with modern issues, or didn't deal with them at some point that we have pretty good data on. For example the life expectancy in Papau new Guinea was flat lined at just over 30 until about 1940.

You can see similar trends in other non-agrarian societies.

http://www.gapminder.org/world/#$majorMode=chart$is;shi=t;ly...,

There are studies that go along with your POV

http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/faculty/gurven/papers/GurvenKaplan2...

but they are, to date, very much in the minority of research in the area.

Re: Everything You Know About Fitness is a Lie

#247

Post by nollidge » Fri, Mar 04, 2011, 7:10 PM UTC

xiaoma wrote: post #118

desigooner wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's precisely why the "nature intended us to" argument doesn't really work for me when I hear people trying to convince me to try the Paleo diet. Whatever the benefits might be (besides making the author of those books a good chunk of money), they can be garnered by other means. What I hate even more is when a few devotees of such diets go on a slant about vegetarianism/veganism etc. etc.

Not only that, but our "nature" has changed considerably since those times. Evolution has been far faster, likely 100 times faster the past several thousand years than it was before civilization. 15,000 years ago, nobody was lactose tolerant, nobody had blue eyes and who knows what else was different.

Actually, everybody was lactose intolerant 15,000 years ago: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactose_intolerant#History_of_g...

Re: Everything You Know About Fitness is a Lie

#248

Post by ubercore » Fri, Mar 04, 2011, 7:15 PM UTC

bane wrote: post #246

gigamonkey wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure this is false. As I understand it hunters and gatherers lived about as long as we do. It was only with the invention of agriculture and the kind of societies (and diseases) it enabled, that our average lifespan took a nosedive which we are pulling out of now, thanks to modern medicine.

It's relatively easy to test though. You can look at life expectancy figures of hunter gathering cultures (which are a useful proxy for pre-agricultural cultures) that don't deal with modern issues, or didn't deal with them at some point that we have pretty good data on. For example the life expectancy in Papau new Guinea was flat lined at just over 30 until about 1940. You can see similar trends in other non-agraria…

Doesn't infant mortality greatly skew life expectancy? I thought I remembered reading that it's the single biggest thing we've done to increase life expectancy, meaning if a hunter-gatherer reaches adulthood, they don't have an especially short lifespan compared to a developed country.

Re: Everything You Know About Fitness is a Lie

#249

Post by nollidge » Fri, Mar 04, 2011, 7:16 PM UTC

JoelMcCracken wrote: post #139

xiaoma wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that, but our "nature" has changed considerably since those times. Evolution has been far faster, likely 100 times faster the past several thousand years than it was before civilization. 15,000 years ago, nobody was lactose tolerant, nobody had blue eyes and who knows what else was different.

That isn't evolution, it is a diversification of our genetics. There are lots of things that many humans are intolerant to which would have probably been a really big weakness in the past. Humans are no longer subject to natural selection. There needs to be significant culling pressure for real evolution to happen.

Natural selection is just one component of evolution. Genetic drift and, especially, artificial selection are certainly in full swing.

And anyway, I completely disagree that we're no longer subject to natural selection. We're always subject to natural selection. We're not immune to everything.

Re: Everything You Know About Fitness is a Lie

#250

Post by jdminhbg » Fri, Mar 04, 2011, 7:34 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #176

ghshephard wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Numerous studies (See the first chapter of "Why we get Fat, by Taubes) have shown that Obesity is a disease of poverty. The food that keeps you lean (protein/fats) is expensive. Carbs are cheap. Poor people eat carbs. Rich people eat steak, chicken, fish. There is no significant research that shows adding exercise to an overweight person's lifestyle will significantly reduce their weight - typically just increases th…

If obesity is a disease of poverty, then how come truly poor people (e.g., the poor in India or China) are skinny? Lack of money for food is not a cause of obesity. If your goal is to obtain 2500 calories (assuming that is what you need to maintain a healthy weight) for a little money as possible, you will consume 2500 calories of carbs. You will not become obese. If you instead consume 3500 calories and become obese…

">>There is no significant research that shows adding exercise to an overweight person's lifestyle will significantly reduce their weight - typically just increases their appetite.

>Increasing exercise and holding consumption constant will reduce body fat."

I'm not sure you read the sentence you're responding to: "typically just increases their appetite."

Yes, if you lock a person in a room with the exact same meals every day, exercise will reduce their weight. A real world person who exercises though typically eats to compensate.

I'm not sure what your problem with Taubes is; your discovery of his 'incredible dishonesty' doesn't pass the smell test -- surely someone eating 7.5 extra strips of bacon per day would notice? There's a shot at his thesis being 'buy my book'; why is it more unreasonable to buy his cheap Kindle book than e.g. Tyler Cowen's to get the full scientific background? It's not like he's hawking some diet empire.