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Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

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Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#191

Post by QuercusMax »

taeric wrote: post #79
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Riding a bicycle? It's roughly 5x more efficient than running or walking. If you want to lose weight from cycling, you're going to have ride significantly further than 50 miles a day.

I successfully lost weight at only twenty miles a day. Now... For a time, that also included Queen Anne Hill, in Seattle. So a decent amount of climbing. Still, I could lose weight easily while biking.

I lost weight on 15-20 miles per day as well.

Also have lost a bunch of weight (or at least replaced fat with muscle) from just doing 10-15 minutes of PT exercises (strength training, stretching, and yoga) plus walking an extra mile or two per day.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#192

Post by ajuc »

dahart wrote: 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…

Yes counting calories is essential, I had very similar experience (walk 10 km on the weekend ~= burn 600 kcal, then buy a 1000 kcal snack on the way back and wonder why I'm not losing weight), but still the exercise makes a big difference.

Last year in march I started counting calories, recording my weight and all exercises I did and walking/biking every day.

I lost 30 kg, walked 2100 km, biked 1000 km, and the sum of calories burned by all exercise was about 160 000 which is about 20 kg of fat loss, so naively the remaining 10 kg was diet. Of course you cannot divide it like that - if I wasn't counting calories I would eat the 20 kg back easily. But if I wasn't walking I wouldn't be able to restrict the calories as much. I've been eating on average 2000 kcal and had average deficit of about 500 kcal. Without exercise I would have to eat 1500 on average which for me feels much worse than 2000. Also walking helps for a lot of unrelated things.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#193

Post by wolverine876 »

_9omd wrote: post #65
dahart wrote: 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…

I think a big part of the issue is that popular fitness and weight loss advice has perpetuated the wrong way to exercise to loose weight. When most people think about exercise for weight loss, they imagine long exhausting sessions on the treadmill, dripping with sweat, and a high calorie burn number. While the short term results may seem great based on the immediate calories burned, it's actually a terrible strategy…

> a terrible strategy

It may be less effective for losing weight, but exercise, including and especially cardio, is a great and essential strategy for other health reasons.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#194

Post by copperx »

kinghtown wrote: post #113
KennyBlanken wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few hours on my bike can be 2,000-3,000 additional calories over base metabolic rate. That's not based on made-up calories but actual work from a power meter on the bike. "You can't exercise your way out of a bad diet" - literally not true for a fuckton of endurance-sport athletes for whom the challenge is eating enough calories. It's 100% true for people who think exercising for 30 min means license to eat whateve…

I always feel there are some methodology issues in sports science studies like small sample sizes or strange metrics. While I do agree with you that sustained, high level activity requires and burns more calories, I think that the advice coming out of there, exercise is less efficient than diet for weight loss, is going to absolutely be true for the majority of gym goers who quite frankly are phoning it in whenever t…

If I remember correctly, Olympic swimmers are NOT spending 4 hours a day in the pool, and certainly not 6.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#195

Post by parineum »

dahart wrote: post #52
taeric wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah... I don't know that it is that simple. In the summer when I bike twenty miles a day, I am eating far more, and still losing weight. Don't get me wrong, I know that the easiest way to lose weight is to limit calorie consumption. I also know that a buffet of 1800 calories going to a bike ride helps a ton.

I agree, maybe you got me a little wrong. I’m more or less talking about the good ol’ adage calories in, calories out. It’s never that simple, amen, but measuring and matching output with intake is a pretty good proxy and works in practice. When calories out is higher, calories in can be higher too (and should be for big exercises). My problem was unregulated calories in, and a tendency to overcompensate a bit.

> It’s never that simple

The details might differ some but the overall advice is the same.

If you want to lose weight, eat less.

If you want to be in better shape, exercise.

If you want to improve your health, change your diet (and probably exercise).

A big issue is that people conflate those three objectives.

Being skinny doesn't mean you're healthy and exercising doesn't mean you'll lose weight.

I exercise quite a bit and have always had an extra 10-15 lbs up until semi-recently when I put those three things together and quit eating so much. I still eat plenty of junk food and I've lost about 20 lbs and kept it off.

If you're unhappy with your weight, eat less. If that doesn't work, eat less. Some people might have an easier or harder time with that because we're all different but the advice is the same.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#196

Post by aidenn0 »

dahart wrote: 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…

You can keep weight off with exercise; it's just a lot more than you would think.

I have a friend from high school who struggled with his weight and he hikes and runs extreme amounts to keep the weight off. As in ultra-marathons extreme amounts.

Maybe the average person's knees can't keep up with this, but it's an existence proof at least.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#197

Post by Dylan16807 »

_9omd wrote: post #129
waterhouse wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> measuring calories out is extremely difficult unless you're willing to live in a sealed room that monitors your exhaled CO2 24/7 Is even that sufficient? Like, would you be able to tell the difference between "oxidation done by the body to generate energy for human cells" and "oxidation done by bacteria that feast on calories your human cells didn't get"? Maybe you could tell by the mixture of other gases, but I su…

Yeah, that's a very good point. This is kinda getting off into the weeds from the original point, but interesting weeds nonetheless :). This study[0] says that measuring CO2 is not enough, and that indirect calorimetry is the gold standard for measuring energy expenditure (EE). "Calculated EE based on CO2 measurement was not sufficiently accurate to consider the results as an alternative to measured EE by indirect ca…

> At that point though are we kinda arguing semantics? While our microbiome isn't composed of human cells, you can still argue it's a part of our functioning organism.

It's not semantics, because when more calories are used up by bacteria they only sustain the amount of bacteria inside you, which then die and leave your body on a relatively quick timescale.

It's like if your fat cells could only store fat for a month before it gets discarded.

So it's important to know how much is each, if they can both vary.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#199

Post by soheil »

dahart wrote: 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's even worse than that. It's about eating the same thing every day, that's how you lose weight. Most people give up because you have to know what's in different food and then track it somehow. Counting calories is a herculean task, but if you already know the same exact food has 80% of daily calorie intake then you never have to count calories and there is literally no work involved in losing weight.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#200

Post by dahart »

nsxwolf wrote: post #36

This is very depressing. I find it incredibly difficult to lose weight dieting. And now it's telling me I just wasted all this money on a treadmill (and the effort it took to get it down into the basement).

> I find it incredibly difficult to lose weight dieting

Me too, and so many people do. I hope the treadmill helps, because it can.

FWIW, the article is making intentionally controversial statements and implications. Don’t let it convince you that exercise is wasted; it’s not.

Building a new habit, whether exercise or diet, is the hardest & most important port. I think it’s 90% mental, figuring out how to not give up and not let myself get depressed.

Might not work for you at all, but some tricks that helped me… I resisted counting calories for decades while I exercised a lot. Then I finally tried counting calories, and somehow managed to hold it and it worked. A coworker had lost a lot of weight and when I asked him about it in passing, without stopping to talk, he flashed his phone and mumbled “counting calories, man”, as if it was the easiest most obvious thing ever. That hit me a bit hard and stuck with me. So, it took time, many months. I set my calorie goal to my goal weight, not below. This meant it took longer than necessary to lose weight. I was interested in making sure I knew what it felt like to eat the right amount every day, forever. It helped me mentally to save room in my budget for a small treat snack at the end of the day. Starting with tracking but not restricting calories is a good way to put together your tools (e.g. a phone app) & daily workflow without worrying about being hungry. Calorie counts don’t have to be perfect, just doing it for a while and trying to be accurate, and you’ll get a very good sense for how many cals things have.

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