I was wondering about this recently. My fitness tracker estimates seemed just a bit high for months now, that you'd think those extra burned calories (500-1000 per day) would result in less weight. But no, the only weight I lost was in the time periods I was actively skipping meals or snacks.
Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories
221–230 of 753 posts
Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
Intermittent fasting can help repair a lot of things in your body, make you live longer, etc. Vegans live on average 10 year longer! The hunger you feel the first day btw is not "real" hunger, it's just your stomach growling and you being used to eat. After you ignore hunger for 3 days, your body stops wanting food. That's if you want to do a cleanse. (I've never done one though)
Is it known if the meat causes people to die sooner, or is it just that people who are vegan are correlated with people who care about their health so they do other things that cause the 10 year effect? I feel like a non-lethal poison like a flea killer or something would cause a 10 year lifespan drop, so it would be surprising if meat were as deadly as flea killer poison.
I'd guess the lack of processed foods is a big part of it. Until recently if you were vegan you pretty much had to make everything from scratch. I'd also guess that the average vegan is more health conscious than the average meat eater.
Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
>A lot of people know this already, so it’s not busting everyone’s myths It is still worth mentioning - because it is so easy to overlook. Some simple math: if I go all out on a row machine for 30 minutes, I'll burn 300 calories. If I eat 2 extra slices of pizza, it is easiely 300 calories If I swap a turkey sandwich with healthy options, I can reduce my linch calories by 300 - and I can save even more during dinner…
> if I go all out on a row machine for 30 minutes, I'll burn 300 calories. A stationary bike at a steady 20mph pace is about 500 calories in 30 minutes. That's really significant. An hour will erase about a third of a normal person's diet. When I used to do heavy training (long distance running, weight training) I would eat close to 8k calories a day and I was in fantastic shape. Eating more was necessary to survive,…
>A stationary bike at a steady 20mph pace is about 500 calories in 30 minutes
It is also something at most a tiny minority of the obese population can do.
Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories
#224> “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 we have fitness wrong in this side of the world. I grew up seeing 60 year olds that were as fit as youths in the west.
They didn’t have a treadmill or did keto diets.
My take away was fitness should be a lifestyle and to avoid lots of western food (sugar, processed, empty calories, I drink only water, etc).
I don’t count calories and can eat twice in the morning. If I counted, both morning meals are less than 600 calories.
I don’t go to a gym, but have maintained a For me, being in shape doesn’t need to be complicated.
Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories
#225The 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.…
> The thing is, exercise still reduces appetite.
Not for me. I work out about 3 times a week, never felt like my appetite got smaller on workout days.
Intermittent fasting is nice however. There are pangs of hunger occasionally, but if I power through them, they go away after 1 hour usually.
Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories
#226> “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 we have fitness wrong in this side of the world. I grew up seeing 60 year olds that were as fit as youths in the west. They didn’t have a treadmill or did keto diets. My take away was fitness should be a lifestyle and to avoid lots of western food (sugar, processed, empty calories, I drink only water, etc). I don’t count calories and can eat twice in the morning. If I counted, both morning meals are less than…
What kinds of things do you do to make your entire day active?
As a developer my self, I find this part the hardest.
Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories
#227This is interesting. However I would love to learn more about the “doubly labeled water method”. For example, how accurate is the test result? What’s the individual variance? Do animals and humans react the same way to it? It’s important because all the findings seem to be based on it, but the specifics are not discussed.
I got curious and did a bunch of research.
It relies on the fact that carbon dioxide is transmitted from tissues to lungs in blood as carbonic acid. The carbonic acid is formed by water and carbon dioxide.
It seems extremely accurate as long as you believe the distribution of labeled water equalizes in the body. You can readily see exactly how much labeled oxygen was lost via CO2 (via the carbonic acid reaction).
As long as metabolism and blood transport works the same in all animals, seems reliable.
Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories
#228If your only goal is weightloss, then yes - but just weighting 50kg doesn't mean it is healthy. You can have fat at 50kg, just in the wrong places. Activity provides many positive effects, such as better immune system, better distribution of nutrients in the body etc. Trying to loose just weight without a training plan is not productive.
Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories
#229> “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’m not so sure it is understating, at the risk of projecting out from a sample size of 1 (my personal experience). I’ve been quite active for a couple of decades with a semi-regular gym routine and multiple marathons (and all of the running required in between). Holidays and other things would interrupt schedules from time to time, I might lapse for an extended period, but for the better part of 20 years I’ve weighed 76kgs +/- 3kgs. Stop running and eat bad for a few months I hit the top end of that range. But I revert back very quickly.
Then a few years ago my wife was having what seemed to be some food intolerance issues. As morale support I joined her on a very strict diet. I lost over 10kg in 6 weeks. That was without much training. When I started running again I was suddenly back to setting new personal pace records, unsurprising given I was 10ths lighter.
It’s not that I’d been eating especially poorly before. The biggest change was probably a complete elimination of wheat. I definitely felt much healthier than I had in a long time. And a diet change had a much bigger impact than years of exercise in making that happen.
Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories
#230> 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…
Where are you getting those numbers for Everest climbers? I have a very hard time believing them. High altitude suppresses appetite in general and your body does not get enough oxygen to meaningfully process food above about 25,000 feet. Everest summit day via the South Col starts at about that altitude. Plus it’s freezing cold and everything takes forever to do. I don’t think there is much eating at all on Everest s…
Napkin math: 20,000 calories is 36 Big Mac burgers
In vegetable oil it would be about 4.8lbs of oil - that’s probably not at all plausible for digestion or bowel control