... and as of now, also by hacker news.
Obesity and Fitness Are Revolutionized By Reddit, Not Doctors
131–140 of 207 posts
Re: Obesity and Fitness Are Revolutionized By Reddit, Not Doctors
#132Not surprising that this is an unscientific article. What evidence is presented that "ignoring the fitness advice of doctors" achieves "better results"? Anecdotal evidence, that's what. 1 dude. The author even cites a "completely unscientific, but accurate chart." That says it all.
How strong have you ever known anyone to get by following the advice of doctors?
Given that every single Olympic athlete is advised by doctors I would say, "pretty damn strong".
Re: Obesity and Fitness Are Revolutionized By Reddit, Not Doctors
#133From reading the article I get the impression that the author isn't that familiar with the scientific literature at all. The evidence he presents against the usefulness of cardio for weight loss compares a group of weightlifters against a group of runners who ran only 20km per week and they still lost marginally more weight than the weightlifters! Cardio really should be a minimum of an hour per day, at least 5 days…
>Found that men who ran two or more marathons per year were 41 percent less likely to suffer from high blood pressure, 32 percent less likely to have high cholesterol, and 87 percent less likely to be diabetic than non-marathoners. Isn't it obvious selection bias? People with high blood pressure, high cholesterol and with diabets do not run marathones. >Americans are more into protein and more into weightlifting than…
If you walk into non high-end supermarket a-la Whole Foods or PPC it's just hard, and in some categories impossible, to buy healthy food.
What supermarket are you referring to? I've had no difficulty finding healthy food at Pathmark, C-Town, Supremo, or any other low end supermarket.
Re: Obesity and Fitness Are Revolutionized By Reddit, Not Doctors
#134It's remarkable to me that hackers are against every form of alternative medicine, except regarding nutrition.
If I told you that the American Cancer Society said wearing pendants to protect from electromagnetic radiation was hokum, it would be case closed. But when the ADA says [low carb diets are nonsense](http://www.eatright.org/Public/content.aspx?id=10645#.UCemyU...) it's contentious.
I wonder why?
Re: Obesity and Fitness Are Revolutionized By Reddit, Not Doctors
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
I do, and I don't have a problem finding 20 minutes to run every day. Become better at time management before posting nonsense like that.
Let me guess, your spouse isn't in a medical residency? Before I had kids, I never had trouble finding time to exercise and had little sympathy for people who did. Since I've had kids my ability to exercise has varied with life circumstances. At the moment it is very hard for me because my wife is in a medical residency, so most of the time I'm an only parent to small kids. In particular in periods when I exercised,…
So take the kids to the park and either run with them in a stroller (if small enough) or run around the park while they play (larger kids).
Either way, get them up earlier and out with you while you run. Good for them too!
Re: Obesity and Fitness Are Revolutionized By Reddit, Not Doctors
#136"When it comes to weight loss, creating a caloric deficit is the most important thing that matters; eating less, not moving more, is the most realistic way to do so." What? Please read Gary Taubes "Good Calories, Bad Calories" or "Why we get fat". He is one of the leading thinkers in nutrition and is worshipped by other gurus like Tim Noakes (who wrote the runners bible Lore of Running). Taubes spends the first third…
I have read Christians "refuting" evolution too. I give a guy who doesn't thermodynamics (one does not refute that in a popsci book) the same credit. If he had really discovered something important, he would not be worshipped. He would present evidence to other researchers, who would confirm his experiments, etc.
The first law of thermodynamics only applies to a closed system. The body is not a closed system, and thus conservation of energy does not apply.
There is both input and output of energy/mass, and some efficiency of conversion of food/oxygen to useful energy/body mass, as opposed to sweat, urine, stool, hair loss, exfoliation of skin, etc.
It was probably that kind of refutal: the first law of thermodynamics is just fine, for a closed system.
Re: Obesity and Fitness Are Revolutionized By Reddit, Not Doctors
#137"Reddit’s voting system provides a reliably transparent soundboard for fitness knowledge." Any studies showing that? I find such online discussions interesting, and certainly sometimes they might reveal better information than just going to your doctors office. But these are just people hanging out online - just because they vote something up doesn't mean it is proven, it just means they like to believe it. In fact,…
> because the low carbers accidentally also reduced calorie intake
Accidentally is a loaded word there, because if low carb diets tend to make people eat less, then that is an enormous, critical advantage over competing diets.
Re: Obesity and Fitness Are Revolutionized By Reddit, Not Doctors
#138From reading the article I get the impression that the author isn't that familiar with the scientific literature at all. The evidence he presents against the usefulness of cardio for weight loss compares a group of weightlifters against a group of runners who ran only 20km per week and they still lost marginally more weight than the weightlifters! Cardio really should be a minimum of an hour per day, at least 5 days…
This is a joke right? I almost stopped at the first sentence. There are many studies detailing the inefficacy of cardio for weight loss for various reasons -- from Friedenreich (2010) which actually compares cardio vs. non-cardio groups... to Willbond et. al (2010) which talks about the overestimation of caloric expenditure. Not to mention the meta-analysis from last year: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21787904…
> Guess what, those who drink diet sodas are more likely to be overweight. I guess diet sodas make you fat?
Not the best analogy - because there is some evidence that artificially sweetened beverages have fueled the obesity epidemic (by possibly overriding our typical satiation point for sweet foods).
See:
* http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/32/4/688.short * http://www.nature.com/oby/journal/v16/n8/abs/oby2008284a.htm...
Though not everyone agrees:
* http://jn.nutrition.org/content/142/6/1163s.abstract
Trying to sort out correlation vs. causation is particularly challenging with this debate.
Re: Obesity and Fitness Are Revolutionized By Reddit, Not Doctors
#139It's remarkable to me that hackers are against every form of alternative medicine, except regarding nutrition. If I told you that the American Cancer Society said wearing pendants to protect from electromagnetic radiation was hokum, it would be case closed. But when the ADA says [low carb diets are nonsense]( http://www.eatright.org/Public/content.aspx?id=10645#.UCemyU... ) it's contentious. I wonder why?
Hackers are in favor of following methods that are testable and that work. When it comes to fighting obesity, the medical establishment is obviously clueless - they don't have any advice to give that has a track record of long-term success. It's not clear why their advice doesn't work, but it's clear that it doesn't. Which leaves room for alternative theories that at least might work.
I also think you're overestimating how much hackers approve of mainstream medicine generally. There is quite a lot of bad science in the medical field generally. If we were legally allowed to build our own medical devices and mix our own drugs and practice medicine ourselves, I suspect a lot of us would be inclined to do that. The government hasn't yet made it illegal to give advice on diet and nutrition, so you see more people giving advice on diet and nutrition than you see people giving advice on, say, dealing with cancer.
Re: Obesity and Fitness Are Revolutionized By Reddit, Not Doctors
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
Disclaimer: Anecdotal evidence. Cardio really should be a minimum of an hour per day, at least 5 days a week if weight control is the goal First of all, who the hell has time to do a minimum of five hours of cardio per week? Some people have families or businesses to run. Getting a runner's high may be great for you, but you in no way need to spend an hour doing just cardio for effective weight loss. My reasoning? Th…
That's not how it works. You get different gains from doing sprinting than from long distance. Your muscle fiber composition, your lactate threshold, your VO2 max and your economy of oxygen use are all maximized at different distances. For marathon runners, it's the final variable that becomes huge, and you just won't improve that without a solid base of distance running. Even 5k runners, for whom VO2 max and interva…
The people who say that you shouldnt worry about cardio for weight loss typically mean exactly that, _for losing weight_. Cardio has many benefits, but for the time it involved, it simply does not burn a huge amount of calories! ;f somebody wants to simply lose weight, then it isnt a bad supplement, but if somebody wants to look better naked (not even if a sexual way) then weight lifting is a better addition to cardio because after losing your desired amount of weight you wont end up skinny-fat. If you have the time to do both, then sure, lifting and cardio makes sense, but if your primary goal is to improve how your body looks and dont want to spend 10+ hours a week exercising, then weightlifting is your best bet.
The reason for all of that is diet is the biggest factor BY FAR for weight loss and for most obese people, no amount of cardio will fix their diet. Cardio is not bad by any means, and to achieve true fitness you need strength and conditioning, but for most people trying to lose weight in a busy schedule, its place isnt as important as most assume