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Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

science.org

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Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#471

Post by episteme »

bratwurst3000 wrote: post #465
episteme wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not accurate, weightlifting with a reasonably difficult weight for your strength level is one of the most effective ways to burn calories.

Btw as far as I know the only way to burn bodymass with sports is to have a heart rate of 120-140 for at least one hour. And then it starts. And to loose one gramm of fat one needs to burn 4kcal ( it takes 4kcal to generate the fuel from the body. Fat has usualy 8kcal). Also to loose around 200g of bodyfat a day one has to run at least 2 hours. ( with 500kcal/hour burned)

You burn bodymass by spending more energy than you intake. Lifting something very heavy a few times will take a lot of energy and if you do a few sets the muscles will need repairing before they can work optimally again, which means your body will use energy doing this for the next couple of days. Overall a lot of energy used.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#472

Post by me_me_me »

mantas wrote: post #458
1_player wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's so controversial about it? Your body burns incredibly more energy just "being there" than you burn moving about. Exercise certainly increases your calorific expenditure, but it's much easier to ingest less fuel than to run 5 more miles because you had a portion of fries. There are benefits in exercise, apart from the obvious ones the raising of the baseline metabolic expenditure, because muscles are expensiv…

> Your body burns incredibly more energy just "being there" than you burn moving about. Bullshit. My body goes through 1600-ish kcal on an idle day. If I go out on a 4h steady bicycle ride (= 100km), I go through 2000 kcal on ride alone. That’s much more than my body burns just being there.

I don't get it, how is that a myth or controversial.

Cutting empty calories is the easiest to remove calories from daily total.

Exercise further decreases the ratio of calories in calories out.

Bottom line is: calories in - calories out.

There are caveats there for sure, like increasing muscle mass increases idle caloric burn. Different types of food have different effect promoting or impeding metabolism.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#473

Post by hwers »

rdiddly wrote: post #312

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…

This is a reason we shouldn't feel ashamed about developing a habit of skimming. In many cases it's simply a proper adaption to an incredibly low signal to noise ratio in most articles you're exposed to on the internet.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#474

Post by periheli0n »

rdiddly wrote: post #312

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 could read his papers if you're only interested in the science?

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#475

Post by CJefferson »

jeltz wrote: post #404
1_player wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's so controversial about it? Your body burns incredibly more energy just "being there" than you burn moving about. Exercise certainly increases your calorific expenditure, but it's much easier to ingest less fuel than to run 5 more miles because you had a portion of fries. There are benefits in exercise, apart from the obvious ones the raising of the baseline metabolic expenditure, because muscles are expensiv…

While I agree with that excerice isn't a very efficient way to lose weight I think that you understate how many calories running burns. When I run consistently I need to eat what feels like a lot more food to maintain my weight. Running burns about 700-800 kcal per hour for me (I have a quite small build) which ends up quite a bit over a week (I run 5-8 hours per week).

The problem is, it isn't efficient if you are overweight :)

When I was at my heaviest weight, I could only do a normal-speed walk, which burned relatively little calories.

At my lightest, I was also having to go out of my way to eat extra calories, as I was cycling so much, and a fast 90 minute cycle would leave me light-headed if I didn't eat some extra calories.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#476

Post by Someone »

FTA: Pontzer’s findings have a discouraging implication for people wanting to lose weight. “You can’t exercise your way out of obesity,” says evolutionary physiologist John Speakman of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. “It’s one of those zombie ideas that refuses to die.”

I think that’s true, but have one remark: those studies all scale by fat-free body mass. Exercise can increase that, so exercise that grows your muscles, combined with maintaining the same diet should decrease the derivative of weight over time.

That doesn’t imply you’ll lose weight; if you were gaining weight fast, chances are it will just make you gain weight a bit slower. Even if you’ll lose weight, chances are it will be too slowly to motivate you to continue.

Also note that most obese people already have strong muscles (if you weigh 200kg and can walk, you’re carrying around 100kg or so) and, because of their weight, are injury prone. Becoming stronger through exercise may be very hard for them.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#477

Post by periheli0n »

onion2k wrote: post #331
rdiddly wrote: post #312

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…

Am I alone in being perfectly happy reading about science for the duration of an article, and not particularly caring about the scientist and what breed of dog he has etc.? science.org is like a good quality popsci magazine. People read it for the science, but also for entertainment. The aim is to make science engaging to non-scientists. If you just want the science then you should be heading to Nature or Arxiv.

Actually, both Nature and Science call themselves 'magazines', and they have plenty of pop-science-compatible content, mixed with primary literature.

Arxiv needs to be taken with a huge grain of salt because much of the content is not peer-reviewed.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#478

Post by Hendrikto »

playpause wrote: post #351
rdiddly wrote: post #312

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…

No you’re not alone in it. But yes there are plenty of us who find it a really effective way to get drawn into an article. It works for me through infectious enthusiasm. If I have a sense of a curious mind trying to figure something out, I get interested in the thing they’re trying to figure out too. Bill Bryson’s Short History of Nearly Everything made me interested in tons of scientific areas I never considered int…

> Bill Bryson’s Short History of Nearly Everything

I have read that book multiple times, first when I was 10. It left a huge impression on me. I heartily recommend it.

Bill Bryson in general is a great author. One of my favorites.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#479

Post by periheli0n »

mcv wrote: post #408
rdiddly wrote: post #312

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…

It would be nice if articles actually made use of the possibilities of the Web: show me just the brief summary of what it's about, and let me click links to choose whether to read more about the science, or more about the 40 hectares of woods where the guy grew up.

You could go to the primary literature and read the abstracts.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#480

Post by josefrichter »

1123581321 wrote: post #176
makeitdouble wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The twist is that if you get healthier by changing your eating habits, it will probably be easier for to start/increase exercise, and will continue to make you healthier while you take on exercising. Better eating is I think the most impacting thing you can do, exercising being the close second.

Absolutely. I think starting with either is totally viable, and it sounds like we agree that the only combination that probably won't work is exercising but never getting around to changing a bad diet.

It’s is viable. Just unnecessarily difficult. Change diet, wait a few weeks, start exercising.
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