Live data from Hacker News

Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

science.org

21–30 of 753 posts

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#21
It’s sad that majority of people hit the gym or go for a run when they want to lose weight. Without diet it’s pointless. But what’s worse, diet change is also about finding a new balance that fits your body. If you start exercising at the same time, you are throwing your body drastically off current balance and it’s probably much harder to find a new one.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#22
post #4

> “You can’t exercise your way out of obesity,” […] “you can’t outrun a bad diet.” While this article is being a bit dramatic and possibly understating the impact of exercise slightly, I feel a little dumb that I didn’t know this earlier. It took me several decades too long to understand the obvious, that exercise is for building strength, and losing weight happens by eating less. I tried for way too many years to ex…

Anecdotally, I have absolutely ran off a bad diet. I burn ~150-250 calories a mile and have ran off 2000+ calories to eat what I wanted with no discernible increase in weight. Did this for years.

In hindsight, it’s much easier on one’s knees to adjust your diet.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#23
post #4

> “You can’t exercise your way out of obesity,” […] “you can’t outrun a bad diet.” While this article is being a bit dramatic and possibly understating the impact of exercise slightly, I feel a little dumb that I didn’t know this earlier. It took me several decades too long to understand the obvious, that exercise is for building strength, and losing weight happens by eating less. I tried for way too many years to ex…

> it never really worked because I’d unconsciously eat to compensate The wild thing is he’s saying that’s not true either. He’s saying you never burned the extra calories in the first place.

Not sure why you’re getting downvoted. That is literally the thesis here, that calorie expenditure is essentially decoupled from exercise.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#24
post #22
post #4

> “You can’t exercise your way out of obesity,” […] “you can’t outrun a bad diet.” While this article is being a bit dramatic and possibly understating the impact of exercise slightly, I feel a little dumb that I didn’t know this earlier. It took me several decades too long to understand the obvious, that exercise is for building strength, and losing weight happens by eating less. I tried for way too many years to ex…

Anecdotally, I have absolutely ran off a bad diet. I burn ~150-250 calories a mile and have ran off 2000+ calories to eat what I wanted with no discernible increase in weight. Did this for years. In hindsight, it’s much easier on one’s knees to adjust your diet.

Yeah. Cyclists in the Tour de France typically eat 5000 calories a day, often more in particularly difficult stages. Obviously none of them have a weight problem.

"Fun" fact: they also shit themselves on the bike. When you eat that much it's inevitable you're gonna have to poop it out, and it's a race -- you can't stop.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#25
> Exercise doesn’t help you burn more energy on average

I have a problem with this hard statement based on the data because:

> He realized he had to go back to basics, measuring the calories expended by humans and animals walking and running on treadmills.

> He backed this up with a new analysis of data from another team’s study of sedentary women trained to run half marathons

I've always heard that humans, due to our upright posture, are extremely efficient when it comes to walking and running and so if you want to increase you calories usage via exercise you should lift weights as we are much less efficient at this. I have also heard it will would increase your resting calorie usage as well due to repairing/reinforcing the muscle. I will note calorie management has always been heavily emphasized to me: "you can't out-run a fork"

Perhaps that is wrong and a good data based analysis would disprove these common gym tropes I've heard but from my read of this article they only "bust" the morning breakfast channel myths of burning calories.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#26

It’s sad that majority of people hit the gym or go for a run when they want to lose weight. Without diet it’s pointless. But what’s worse, diet change is also about finding a new balance that fits your body. If you start exercising at the same time, you are throwing your body drastically off current balance and it’s probably much harder to find a new one.

> If you start exercising at the same time, you are throwing your body drastically off current balance and it’s probably much harder to find a new one.

This is for sure a [Citation Needed] claim.

Exercise has been shown in numerous studies to be health protective and also to be muscle maintaining.

I would love to know why you think exercising is not a net positive. I expect that greater than 99% off doctors, nutritionists, dieticians, and anyone else involved in human dietary health would agree that you should start exercising now if you are not already exercising, regardless of your diet (and absent specific contraindications).

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#27
post #22
post #4

> “You can’t exercise your way out of obesity,” […] “you can’t outrun a bad diet.” While this article is being a bit dramatic and possibly understating the impact of exercise slightly, I feel a little dumb that I didn’t know this earlier. It took me several decades too long to understand the obvious, that exercise is for building strength, and losing weight happens by eating less. I tried for way too many years to ex…

Anecdotally, I have absolutely ran off a bad diet. I burn ~150-250 calories a mile and have ran off 2000+ calories to eat what I wanted with no discernible increase in weight. Did this for years. In hindsight, it’s much easier on one’s knees to adjust your diet.

It's a question of what your baseline is. It seems OP may have had (say) a 3500 calorie diet as a baseline, then started exercising, perhaps burning an extra 500 calories but now consuming 4000 calories to feel normal. In your case, it sounds like you had a lower baseline--let's say 2500 calories. You may have consumed as much as 2000 additional calories, but you ran it all off--your comparatively lower calorie count was what felt normal to you, and what you made a habit of aiming for.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#28
post #22
post #4

> “You can’t exercise your way out of obesity,” […] “you can’t outrun a bad diet.” While this article is being a bit dramatic and possibly understating the impact of exercise slightly, I feel a little dumb that I didn’t know this earlier. It took me several decades too long to understand the obvious, that exercise is for building strength, and losing weight happens by eating less. I tried for way too many years to ex…

Anecdotally, I have absolutely ran off a bad diet. I burn ~150-250 calories a mile and have ran off 2000+ calories to eat what I wanted with no discernible increase in weight. Did this for years. In hindsight, it’s much easier on one’s knees to adjust your diet.

I’ve done it before too but if you get an injury it gets bad quick.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#29
post #4

> “You can’t exercise your way out of obesity,” […] “you can’t outrun a bad diet.” While this article is being a bit dramatic and possibly understating the impact of exercise slightly, I feel a little dumb that I didn’t know this earlier. It took me several decades too long to understand the obvious, that exercise is for building strength, and losing weight happens by eating less. I tried for way too many years to ex…

This is purely anecdotal, with a sample size of one even if it is right, but it seems to me, personally, that exercise suppresses my appetite to some extent. I can't say that this is even real, but if it is, my best guess as to why this might be is that the exercise subtly stimulates/irritates my gut such that I am de-motivated to eat, either by feeling full or subliminally 'sick to my stomach'. After running a marathon without proper training, it was a couple of days before I felt like eating anything.

I am not intending to dispute the fact that you ate more to compensate - you say you did, and I don't doubt it. Nor am I doubting that weight gain is a function of net caloric intake; it is just a suggestion of another way exercise may affect this.

FWIW most of my exercise is running, hiking or kayaking. I am not sure (or perhaps that should be 'even more doubtful') that kayaking has the same effect.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#30
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, I have absolutely ran off a bad diet. I burn ~150-250 calories a mile and have ran off 2000+ calories to eat what I wanted with no discernible increase in weight. Did this for years. In hindsight, it’s much easier on one’s knees to adjust your diet.

Yeah. Cyclists in the Tour de France typically eat 5000 calories a day, often more in particularly difficult stages. Obviously none of them have a weight problem. "Fun" fact: they also shit themselves on the bike. When you eat that much it's inevitable you're gonna have to poop it out, and it's a race -- you can't stop.

The last part isn’t true, at least unless there has been a grave accident. Many pee on themselves during races, but most of the Number 2 is done at port a potties along the way with an assist from the team car or peloton to get back up to speed and get back into place. You might be surprised at how little someone might need #2 when all their calories are from highly digestible into energy food.
Post reply on HN