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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

#211

Post by bsder »

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…

> I always feel there are some methodology issues in sports science studies like small sample sizes or strange metrics.

The calorie stuff is from both oxygen and deuterated water studies. You burn the same amount of calories and your system just shunts them around. The science on this is one of the few things in nutrition that is quite solid.

This has the effect, for example, that if you exercise a lot, this actually suppresses your immune system making you more likely to get sick.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#212

Post by cassandratt »

e40 wrote: post #186
urthor wrote: post #114

The thing is, exercise still reduces appetite. It raises the blood sugar levels as the body supplies the muscles with carbohydrates, and triggers a complementary response in appetite hormones. Finally, and most importantly: Exercise releases dopamine. Dieting is universally a mood killer, because kilo-joule deficit equals starvation. So whilst it does not directly impact weight loss. It still makes it (a bit) easier.…

Fasting isn’t a mood killer, it actually has the opposite effect. IF gives me an energy boost and associated euphoria.

While I don't experience any euphoria, I agree that intermittent fasting doesn't affect my mood negatively. After the first few weeks, you don't even think about it anymore. And being able to go out, eat a normal meal at a restaurant without worrying about math, or 'cheating on a diet', is pretty positive mentally when you can still fit into a size 6 dress.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#213

Post by thetadot »

copperx wrote: post #194
kinghtown wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

https://www.reference.com/world-view/michael-phelps-training...

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#214

Post by LouisSayers »

onethought wrote: post #131
nu11ptr wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you fall into a routine CICO isn't that difficult in practice. First, while sleep/stress definitely impact the equation unless you are at an unusual life crisis, the ups and downs mostly balance out over time. Second, I don't recommend counting calories, at least not in the traditional way. Instead, eat a fairly standardized diet at least on a weekly basis, so roughly the same meals (doesn't have to be exact). Eat…

> Now, to lose weight simple subtract 500 calories per day from what you eat I appreciate you are trying to be helpful. But most of what you said assumes a certain level or privilege (resources time/money/ableness) that the vast majority of people don't have. People working long hour jobs, or double jobs, or balancing kids/parent responsibilities. Often fast food is the only obvious option, and people aren't buying i…

> assumes a certain level or privilege (resources time/money/ableness) that the vast majority of people don't have

Unless you're talking about extremes (e.g. non first-world country, homeless, or disabled people etc) I'm going to call BS on this.

Everyone eats, and everyone has 24 hours in a day.

I don't know about the rest of the world, but in Australia you can buy a 800g can of tomatoes for $1.50, a 185g can of tuna for $1.60 and 1kg of rice for $1.40.

You could cook that up on a stove (with just a couple portions of rice) in about 30min, giving you two nutritious meals for (I'm going to be generous) let's say about $4. That's $2 per meal. 3 meals a day gives you a total of $42 for food per week.

So are you telling me that fast food costs less than $50 per week, that 23 hours isn't enough time left in the day to do everything else, or am I missing something here?

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#215

Post by dpark »

throwaway09223 wrote: post #201
dpark wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was measuring women who were sedentary and trained for half marathons. For someone who was previously sedentary, 3.4 miles/day is an enormous amount of exercise. It’s certainly far more than the average American gets. It’s not that much in terms of calories. It is a lot of physical activity for a modern human in a developed nation.

Yes, but "the tiny amounts of exercise typical overweight Americans engage in won't help" is a very different statement than "you can't exercise your way out of obesity" or "you can't outrun a bad diet." The latter is categorically false.

They are in practice true. When people imagine exercising to lose weight, very few imagine that this implies running at a moderate pace for nearly 4 hours per week (while also holding diet to maintenance levels) to lose just 1 pound per week.

The real kicker is that an unchecked diet will offset virtually any amount of exercise. An unchecked diet means people will feel hungrier after exercise and thus eat more. It takes a lot of exercise to reach the point that it manages to outrun appetite and bad eating habits. There are a lot of fat people who work physically demanding jobs.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#216

Post by 0x640x6D »

JackMorgan wrote: post #44
themodelplumber wrote: post #2

> Exercise doesn’t help you burn more energy on average; active hunter-gatherers in Africa don’t expend more energy daily than sedentary office workers in Illinois; pregnant women don’t burn more calories per day than other adults, after adjusting for body mass. I love this intro. > His message that exercise won’t help you lose weight “lacks nuance,” says exercise physiologist John Thyfault of the University of Kansa…

Some friends and I are currently doing a thru hike of the Appalachian Trail, and only ten days in the four of us clocked 7, 8, 10, and 17 pounds lost... But we're hiking 6+ hours a day with heavy packs. We've been eating easily ~3000kcal each daily. I think at the extreme edges, nutrition science is a lot less well understood. We were very surprised to see we'd lost anything at all, as we're stopping to eat 300 calor…

Seems early to start the thru hike. How many people are on the trail?

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#217

Post by DangitBobby »

emodendroket wrote: post #177
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2) Your hunger will increase to compensate for the calories burned and you'll subconsciously eat more if not carefully tracking. This is also a oft-made claim that doesn't have much backing. Part of the point of the research described in TFA is that humans who face specific periods of energy expenditure during the day may often simply reduce energy expenditure during the rest of the day so that TEE remains roughly…

I know this isn't rigorous but it definitely matches up with my personal experience -- I'll be hungrier, often ravenously so, after strenuous activity.

After a long bike ride, apart from being much hungrier than usual, food tastes better. Mediocre food becomes good, good food becomes the best thing you've ever eaten.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#218

Post by 14 »

I came up with a diet to lose weight. I was approaching 200lbs and wanted to get it under control so made a simple diet that helped me lose 50lbs. I call it the half and half. You take your meal and plate it. Then take a second plate and split everything exactly down the middle. Eat your first plate and then you wait half an hour. If after half hour you want to eat again you can go back to your second plate. What ends up happening is some times you would go back for more but other times you would get busy. Or just not feel hungry. It wasn't long before my stomach started to shrink and I would eat smaller and smaller amounts of food. This worked incredibly well. I could eat anything type of food I wanted just needed to wait half hour before going to my other half of my food. I eventually stopped splitting my plates and just made very small plates because I realized I would be full off a little amount. The only other rule I followed was never finish food once I feel full. That last bite of a burger just toss it if you feel full.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#219

Post by rolisz »

copperx wrote: post #194
kinghtown wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A couple of years ago I took swimming lessons from the Swiss butterfly swimming champion and he said he trained about 20 hours a week and that to get to Olympic levels, he'd have to train even more. For swimming it's possible to train much more than in other sports, because it doesn't do as much joint damage, because you're in water.
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