Live data from Hacker News

Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

science.org

341–350 of 753 posts

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#341
I couldn't finish the article due to the excessive fluff! Reading the comments, I'm glad I wasn't the only one.

How about summarizing the main points at the top for those who are interested in real information instead of the height and weight of the scientist?

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#342

Last thing I saw was "The son of two high school English teachers, Pontzer grew up on 40 hectares of woods in the Appalachian bla bla bla..." You know that sentence. So many articles have that sentence. The one where it veers off course to talk about the (usually uninteresting) person who found the thing the article is ostensibly and nominally about. Am I alone in being perfectly happy reading about science for the d…

You’re not alone. This reads like one of Grandpa Simpson’s stories about onions.

I also like the way they’ve broken my browser’s reader mode too.

I was once advised to read the opening and the last 2 paragraphs of articles like this. If there’s no actual content there then move on without reading.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

I just plugged a 300 pound person in to a calculator for a “moderate” walking speed, and that’d burn nearly 500 calories in an hour.

You are severely overestimating the physical abilities of a severely obese person.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#344

The conclusion is almost certainly wrong: 1. From a simple sniff test, if this were true, then athletes wouldn't need a lot of calories. This obviously isn't true, eg Phelps eats 8-11K calories a day. I personally eat around 3.5K calories a day. If exercise didn't impact caloric burn I assure you I'd be a lot fatter... 2. The only plausible mechanisms for why exercise wouldn't result in more overall caloric burn is t…

Swedish speed skater Nils Van Der Poel drinks cream and eats crisps, LOTS of it, while training just to get enough calories in his body to continue training so number 1 is faulty.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#345
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…

Thank you for the TL;DR! I started this extraordinary life history article and after the first "n" paragraphs I forgot why I was reading it ...

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#346

Last thing I saw was "The son of two high school English teachers, Pontzer grew up on 40 hectares of woods in the Appalachian bla bla bla..." You know that sentence. So many articles have that sentence. The one where it veers off course to talk about the (usually uninteresting) person who found the thing the article is ostensibly and nominally about. Am I alone in being perfectly happy reading about science for the d…

I was thinking the exact same thing. I stopped reading after three sentences and couldn't find the scientific paragraph right away so I just when to the HN comment section to see if some could give me the gist of the story.

Many of these articles are written to increase volume, but its my take that no one really cares about who ate what this morning. Scientific papers often do the same thing

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#347

I feel like this is already known? I watched some anime Netflix years ago where the main character played a board game. Eating candy to account for the energy expenditure of the mentally taxing game was in the script. I read an article about Magnus Carlsen exercising and eating a strict diet so he could cope with the energy expenditure of high level chess for long periods. It's weird to see it now framed as like a re…

I don't know if it's the mental difficulty or the stress associated with the task that is causing the energy to be burnt. I'd like some clarity on that if anyone has studies.

> I feel like this is already known?

I'm not sure about that. I heard a lot of people say "exercise doesn't help you lose weight because you eat more", not "exercise doesn't help you lose weight, because it doesn't really burn calories.".

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#348

Last thing I saw was "The son of two high school English teachers, Pontzer grew up on 40 hectares of woods in the Appalachian bla bla bla..." You know that sentence. So many articles have that sentence. The one where it veers off course to talk about the (usually uninteresting) person who found the thing the article is ostensibly and nominally about. Am I alone in being perfectly happy reading about science for the d…

I didn't know this about myself, but apparently I feel the same because I exited there after finding out very little about the claim in the title of the article.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#349
post #192
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 o…

Congratulations! I would be happy to lose "only" 10 kg (hell, 5 kg would be good for a start), but since Covid and home office my weight has been (slowly, but steadily) going in the wrong direction. Yeah, you can and do burn calories by exercising, but it's depressing how little it is. And it's also depressing if I look at the graph that some 40 to 50 year olds seem to still have the metabolism of a toddler - I'm definitely not one of those! OTOH, you can feel superior by thinking these people would be in big trouble if there was a famine, but that's (fortunately) not the world we live in (although it's pretty fucked up if you consider that we are complaining about these first world problems while in other countries people are starving)...

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#350
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…

Counting and estimating calories is a skill that should be taught in schools.

The public health benefits are unparalleled.

Post reply on HN