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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

#591

Post by magicalhippo »

neltnerb wrote: post #89
dahart wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re so lucky! I wish exercise made me less hungry. I’ve only felt that when going on very long multi-day hikes… being in severe calorie deficit and having almost nothing sound good to eat. Chocolate was one of the only things that I could stomach. Oh and once I went running about an hour after eating tomato soup, and halfway through starting heaving uncontrollably. But normally, running, gym time, weight lifting a…

For me I lose my appetite for about a half hour, I was taught it's simply blood from your stomach being used elsewhere. After a short recovery period I'm definitely extra hungry.

I used this however to cut one meal per day. I'd eat breakfast late, a bit before regular lunch time, and then get hungry leaving work. Riding the bike home made the hunger go away, and it stayed away for about half an hour, enough time to cook dinner.

The result was that I wasn't superhungry when I started eating. I also tried to eat high protein, high fiber meals so I'd stay full for longer.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#592

Post by g4zj »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #522
mantas wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Did you read the article? because this specific thing is what the science that the article covers explains. tl;dr: your body burns roughly the same amount of calories regardless of exercise. However, it allocates those calories differently: if you don't spend them on exercise then it will spend them on stress (and presumably other stuff). Which totally makes sense as to why my depression & anxiety fade if I run or wo…

> your body burns roughly the same amount of calories regardless of exercise

Can you explain how this makes sense?

Different physical activities (running vs. sitting, for example) require different amounts of energy to perform. Calories are a unit of measurement for this energy. It sounds like you (via referencing the article) are claiming that a human will expend the same amount of energy in a given period of time regardless of their physical activity.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#593

Post by tremon »

saiya-jin wrote: post #446
hnbad wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The practice of indicating kcals as "Calories" always seemed to be an American thing to me. I don't know how widespread this is outside the US but there are plenty of countries that use "kcal" in nutritional tables and such. People will still colloquially confuse calories and kilocalories a lot but that's largely due to bad translations (similar to mistranslating short billions).

People everywhere mix those 2 regularly and nobody is confused. You don't say you go out for a run to burn some kilo calories and so on. Sometimes places like HN are needlessly pedantic

If someone explicitly writes "160 000" calories I'm going to assume they meant 160 kcal.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#594

Post by mrleinad »

artdigital wrote: post #378
rob74 wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 def…

My advise: (as someone who does a lot of working out and calorie control) Write down what you eat for a while and its calories. Weigh yourself daily as well and write that down too. If after a week your weight went up: Your calories are above your TDEE. If it went down: Your calories are under your TDEE. And that's basically it, once you know what your TDEE is, eat under it to create a caloric deficit and you will lo…

I'd love to count calories. I'm just too lazy to measure and research everything I eat, and the alternative is to have only processed foods that are labeled.

It's too bad that we can't just live on Soylent (the actual beverage, not the thing from the book)

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#595

Post by necovek »

csee wrote: post #423
ajuc wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well one obvious adaptation is losing fat = less energy needed to move the body.

We saw a very large reduction in caloric expenditure in people who were already very fit runners. So body weight changes over the course of the experiment are unlikely to explain it.

And in most places in the article calorie expenditure is taken as "corrected for no-fat weight".

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#596

Post by achenatx »

Moru wrote: post #232
emodendroket wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have no apetite at all after biking for two hours. However, if I drink any diet soda or piece of candy with sweetener, I will be ravenously hungry in 10 minutes. Has always been like this so I stay away from that stuff. My exercise is a game called Turf. Mostly played in Sweden where there are a lot of zones close by. I bike quite relaxed for 1-4 minuts and stand still for 20 seconds in the zone, then repeat until…

100% this for me. I do intermittent fasting and my first meal is around 2pm. I do brazilian jiu jitsu around 6-9 and skip dinner. When I come home Im not hungry at all for at least an hour. Ill get a little hungry and if I eat or drink anything, the floodgates open and I cant stop eating. It is better to go to sleep a little hungry.

I try to have a 500 calorie deficit. If I have more than about 500 (say 1000) Im fine that day, but the next day Im ravenous and tend to overeat.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#597

Post by amelius »

rob74 wrote: post #349
ajuc wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 def…

> 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.

Had the same problem. Then switched to intermittent fasting. First two months, nothing happened. Then within a month dropped 10 kg, which got me back to my pre-covid weight. I'm doing 8/16 IF by the way, and eating more than I did before, so I think the CICO theory is stupid :)

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#598

Post by pawelmurias »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #397
pawelmurias wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can totally loose weight by exercising, it's just regular people don't exercise hard enough. If you do pro athlete levels of exercise it will start affecting your weight a lot.

I've never met someone doing pro-athlete levels of exercise that doesn't stick to some sort of regimented diet. Have you? And even if you do meet those folks, chances are they simply don't eat as much as before due to spending more time, well, exercising, and it makes for a caloric deficit, albeit accidental. And that's the thing: Once you start changing your diet - the stuff you eat or the timing of your food - to d…

Myself when I was doing pro-level amount of brazillian jiu jitsu without really having any regimented diet on days where I wasn't eating candy and ice cream and training for 3+ hours I was could literally see the weight loss in the mirror on the next day.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#599

Post by Tenoke »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #570
artdigital wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My advise: (as someone who does a lot of working out and calorie control) Write down what you eat for a while and its calories. Weigh yourself daily as well and write that down too. If after a week your weight went up: Your calories are above your TDEE. If it went down: Your calories are under your TDEE. And that's basically it, once you know what your TDEE is, eat under it to create a caloric deficit and you will lo…

> Write down what you eat for a while and its calories. Weigh yourself daily as well and write that down too. If after a week your weight went up: Your calories are above your TDEE. If it went down: Your calories are under your TDEE. Not necessarily. It is important to remember that water weighs ~1lb/pt and there are a lot of things that affect how much water your body is carrying at any given moment. Depending on yo…

That's why they are telling you (as is common) to compare the results on a weekly basis which reduces the variance. TDEE calculations from scratch are much much more unreliable than empirically finding out and mostly good for a starting point.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#600

Post by achenatx »

tsimionescu wrote: post #324
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…

Based on your description, I will venture a guess that you are not obese / grossly overweight. There is good evidence from various studies that obese/overweight people are not typically able to achieve this - usually their craving for food is far too powerful to just control simply by falling into a routine; or, the body sometimes finds other ways to adjust (the lipostat model). This is really the problem with CICO -…

the type of food definitely matters. Carbs somehow 1) dont fill you up 2) spike your appetite. When I do low carb I feel so much less hungry on lower calories.

The deficit cant be too large, for me 500 is ok, but 1000 has me ravenous the next day.

Lots of obese people easily lose 2 pounds/week but as you get closer to a healthy weight it gets harder.

CICO was the first time I was able to actively lose weight in my entire life.

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