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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

#271

Post by watwut »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #72
_9omd wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 think it depends heavily on what you do. When you run, you tend to eat less, me definitely. When you weight lift, do body weight exercises, do anything that builds muscle, you need to eat. Personally I get more hungry about HIIT too.

And that additional eating is not a bad thing either. It is body needing supply to build muscles. For most beginners, that is a good thing.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#272

Post by LouisSayers »

awb wrote: post #108
mannykannot wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 marat…

> exercise suppresses my appetite to some extent This is my experience as well. I also had a trainer confirm this. I used to eat before and after a workout because I bought into the idea of the body needing fuel to power the workout and fuel to recover. I ended up eating when I wasn’t hungry and feeling heavy or sluggish. She said the appetite suppression after a workout could last 30-120min and to only eat when I fe…

Pretty sure this is the same for me, I don't eat before the gym in the morning and if anything feel slightly less like eating after.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#273

Post by [deleted] »

LouisSayers wrote: post #214
onethought wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 tun…

[deleted]

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#274

Post by tsatsawayy »

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).

The reality of exercise and diet is sort of depressing: it is much, much harder to get in shape than it is to stay in shape.

You can spend months with completely different habits, and see almost no difference. Your muscles build up from the inside, and your fat burns off from the outside. Muscle is also denser when you get on the scale.

There is a silver lining. Muscles burn calories faster than other cells in day-to-day life. If you're persistent and patient, you will get there eventually.

Alcohol also trips a lot of people up. It'll run you about 100-200 calories/drink, and it metabolizes like sugar.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#275

Post by ehnto »

pleb_nz wrote: post #138

For years I've heard Gym buffs say 'fitness starts in the gym, weightloss in the kitchen'

Or the related quote, "Abs are made in the kitchen" (edit: oops someone beat me to that). Even someone who's never done a lick of physical training can have visible abs if their bodyfat % is low enough. Meanwhile some of the strongest people I know do not have visible abs.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#276

Post by watwut »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #73
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

some would argue that running a marathon isn't exercise and shouldn't be considered as such. Whether any one in particular subscribed to that school of though or not, marathon running is an outlier event, and isn't what most people would consider as part of a regular, healthy, exercise regime that one might do many times a week.

That's a POV, and you could marshall evidence to defend it. But it's mostly a hand-wavy assertion too, and there's other evidence against it. There are cultures around the world (low populations, to be sure) where repeatedly traversing 26.2 miles a day would not be considered particularly abnormal.

There is no culture in a world that would consider it normal to run 26.2 miles with no breaks. Walking it in a span of a day is massively different. Anyone who does hiking can do it. The same people however can not run that distance.

Even marathon runners run marathons only on competitions. The chance of injury or sickness after is too high in order to make it worthy. And after, you are supposed to rest for multiple days even if not injured. Again, 26.2 miles is 8 hours of hiking and you are pretty much guaranteed to be ok after it.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#277

Post by stkdump »

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.…

For long years I didn't really try to loose weight, because I thought it would require me to work out, which I didn't want to do. I know enough people with joint problems very likely relating to the amount of work out they did/do, even though they never were overweight. Two years back I decided to go against convential wisdom and attempt weight loss without any work out at all. With tremendous success. I understand that working out helps general health, but so does weight loss. So I refuse to feel bad.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#278

Post by makeitdouble »

wyldfire wrote: post #159
makeitdouble wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> losing weight happens by eating less To note, when they refer to "diet" it's probably not about "eating less" or popular "on a diet" interpretation. Good and bad diets also aren't as simple as the "CICO" myth

It seems to me that CICO is less of a myth and more of an "incomplete model." Having a model is an improvement over no model at all, even if it's oversimplified IMO. For very overweight people it probably doesn't matter quite as much. If you had an accurate & sophisticated model for how the foods one eats contribute to their fitness / health / appearance, it probably would be too unwieldy to apply. A daily sum of cal…

To me the sad part is that it's way too easy to accept as a solid model. It's so simple, feels so elegant and powerful, a lot of people have a hard time seeing what could go wrong with such a beautiful model. They then take decades to realize it didn't mean anything really.

Basically, it's way harder to make people accept it's complex and highly variable when they've already internalized a shiny theory of everything.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#280

Post by watwut »

lmm wrote: post #208
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…

I spent years failing to lose weight through diet. I took up endurance cycling and in one day (13 or 20 hours) I burn off a kilo or more, even with the increased eating. Afterwards I'll put that back on in about two months, but as long as I keep doing one or two of these events every month I come out ahead. I don't know how things are for anyone else, but it worked for me, shrug.

I had very similar experience. I lost weight with no much additional effort when I started to do a lot sport. I did not focused on food much, I was doing sport for weight loss unrelated reasons. And it dropped.

Attempts to loose weight by diet only all failed. To make it worst, there is also aspect of most common diet advice being plain wrong. It focuses on calories too much. It completely ignores what your body needs, so you end up in nutritional deficiency - this kind or that kind. And that will affect a lot and eventually you will stop diet and start to feel so much better and healthier after stopping it.

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