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Daily energy expenditure through the human life course

research.brighton.ac.uk

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Re: Daily energy expenditure through the human life course

#151
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over my life I’ve been close to a small handful of perpetually skinny people who thought they had high metabolisms. In every case, when I watched them closely, I realized they barely ate anything. My ex-gf was one of these people and would routinely tell people about how she could eat anything and not gain weight. But when I would go on a severely calorie-restricted diet I was still eating more than she did on a norm…

One individual, Michael Rea, weighed (at the time of publication) 115 lbs at 6-feet and subsisted on a diet of 1900 calories a day [0], which he tracked meticulously. It's hard to convey with words how incredible this is. To put this in perspective, Ansel Key's subjects had to diet down to 1,500/day to get almost as thin. Super-fast metabolisms that cannot be explained by undereating or pathology do exist. [0] https:…

In my early to mid 20s. I had to go on intentional ingest nearly 5k a day just to gain 10 lbs. As soon I returned to my regular diet, I lost it all. In my early 40s, I dare not even eat half ass much as I did say 25, I will blow up like a balloon. My own lived experience makes me doubt the universality of that "metabolism doesn't change with age".

Maybe metabolism doesn't change, but my ability to convert what I put into my mouth into weight gain has definitely changed for me. As a young man, I used to eat way much more and poop way much more. It was like the food was just passing through, without really getting in my body. No matter how much i ate Just came right out

Re: Daily energy expenditure through the human life course

#152
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

activity levels almost certainly. uni it's not impossible you were walking over 12k steps a day. that's 3-400 calories over the average american's daily steps of 4000.

That's also completely canceled out by enjoying a single 32oz soda. Walking a lot and having a bad diet rarely even each other out. And it's so easy to cancel it out I don't think most people realize. A brisk 2km walk burns less calories than are consumed when eating two regular Oreos.

32oz is a ton of soda tho.. Even when I was a teen at 6'4", 32oz of soda would be a sickening addition to a meal.

Re: Daily energy expenditure through the human life course

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdata: I ate 3500-4000 calories a day of mostly junk in high school and college. I lifted weights some. I (barely) “had a six-pack”. No sports, only incidental cardio. Around age 21 or so, I decided to try to drop a couple pounds and make it a really cut six-pack. I ate a strict 1400 calorie diet (packaged food to make it easy, no cheating at all) for about three months. I started running a couple times a week. I’…

I don't buy your anecdote. Those are the figures people always estimate. Always the same story: 4000 calories when they were skinny, and now they can't lose weight on 1500 calories when their maintenance intake is 2600. Then you make them log their food for a week and they are eating 3000 calories when they swore they ate no more than 2000. In my 20s I worked at a personal trainer in a gym that made people log their…

> 4000 calories when they were skinny, and now they can't lose weight on 1500 calories when their maintenance intake is 2600.

4000 is a conservative estimate. Four pop tarts, an entire large pizza (all you can eat buffets FTW), two liters of soda, and an entire large bag of chips was, like… a totally normal day for me. There’s probably also be some cookies or hostess donuts in there, too.

> If you couldn't lose weight on 1400 calories then where exactly was the energy coming from?

No clue, but I didn’t cheat once and ate fixed meals of pre-measured calories every day. So.

Re: Daily energy expenditure through the human life course

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's also completely canceled out by enjoying a single 32oz soda. Walking a lot and having a bad diet rarely even each other out. And it's so easy to cancel it out I don't think most people realize. A brisk 2km walk burns less calories than are consumed when eating two regular Oreos.

32oz is a ton of soda tho.. Even when I was a teen at 6'4", 32oz of soda would be a sickening addition to a meal.

Perhaps you're not American, but Gallup reports that among those who drink soda in the USA the average daily amount is 31.2 oz

Re: Daily energy expenditure through the human life course

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's also completely canceled out by enjoying a single 32oz soda. Walking a lot and having a bad diet rarely even each other out. And it's so easy to cancel it out I don't think most people realize. A brisk 2km walk burns less calories than are consumed when eating two regular Oreos.

Strava tells me I burned 3,3000 calories this morning on my (4 hour)100km bike ride. About the equivalent of drinking 2 cups of melted butter, or eating 50 pounds of lettuce. When I'm doing exercise like that regularly it's hard to eat enough.

Humblebrag? Almost 100% of humans are incapable of doing a four hour 100km bike ride without a lot of prep and training. Nevermind doing this daily.

Re: Daily energy expenditure through the human life course

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition to activity levels, you probably just weren't eating that much food. It was similar for me when I was a teenager: some days I would binge on a ton of junk food, but other days I would forget to eat breakfast, and the latter happened often enough that I stayed skinny.

No I legit ate way much much more in my 20s. I'm not misremembering. I ate more

I had to supplement with calorie shakes for workout guys in my 20's, just to maintain weight. I ate trash, and a shit load of it. And that's not considering the amazing levels of calories I would've consumed from alcohol.

Same activity level now as then. But now if I think too hard about a candy bar I gain weight that never goes away.

Re: Daily energy expenditure through the human life course

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition to activity levels, you probably just weren't eating that much food. It was similar for me when I was a teenager: some days I would binge on a ton of junk food, but other days I would forget to eat breakfast, and the latter happened often enough that I stayed skinny.

No I legit ate way much much more in my 20s. I'm not misremembering. I ate more

Yeah, but likely you walked more. Cycled more. Ran more. Stuff like that.

Re: Daily energy expenditure through the human life course

#158
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strava tells me I burned 3,3000 calories this morning on my (4 hour)100km bike ride. About the equivalent of drinking 2 cups of melted butter, or eating 50 pounds of lettuce. When I'm doing exercise like that regularly it's hard to eat enough.

25km/h is the regulatory max speed of e-bikes around here and you averaged that. Most people would take years of training to get to the point of being able to exercise like this.

Really depends on the bike. It's way easier to achieve this on a racing bike than on a trekking/city/mtb

Re: Daily energy expenditure through the human life course

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strava tells me I burned 3,3000 calories this morning on my (4 hour)100km bike ride. About the equivalent of drinking 2 cups of melted butter, or eating 50 pounds of lettuce. When I'm doing exercise like that regularly it's hard to eat enough.

Humblebrag? Almost 100% of humans are incapable of doing a four hour 100km bike ride without a lot of prep and training. Nevermind doing this daily.

While true, the energy expense doesn't really scale with speed, so if a couch potato got up and decided to do 100k in, say, 8 hours, that's around the same amount of energy.

NB nobody would be able to do this without ingesting a substantial amount of food during. If you didn't start eating hourly after about 1-2 hours in, you'll "bonk" or run out of glycogen.

Re: Daily energy expenditure through the human life course

#160

I've always been curious about my own metabolism. When I was a teenaeger / in university I ate pretty badly. Chocolate bars every day after lunch, loads of carbs, not to mention alcohol, etc etc. I was rail thin. I once got a body fat assesment when I joined a gym (I did no exercise at all and this was a brief attempt to get buff) and the person doing the test was shocked and couldn't pinch anything to measure. I had…

I understand that as a healthy body sustains lifestyle damage, the effects begin to stack up, and then the effects become more noticeable, but it's not age based because it's reversible. So look to your unhealthy lifestyle's accumulated effects in your body, atherosclerosis, obesity, pre-diabetes, hypertension, specific nutritional deficiencies, physiological mental health... And make a robust effort to improve your…

Would love to hear what sort of things you did as part of your intervention?

Def noticing amongst my friends a few new allergies/intolerences manifesting as we get older

For some context am reasonably healthy and actually had to increase my sodium intake because I had over corrected on reducing salt consumption and was getting hyponatremic after training

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