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Diet, not lack of exercise, drives obesity, a new study finds

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Re: Diet, not lack of exercise, drives obesity, a new study finds

#11

Post by jchw »

com2kid wrote: post #7

This is true to an extent and I'm very fond of the saying, but beyond a certain point you can indeed outrun a bad diet. I used to spend ~4 hours a day training martial arts (kickboxing, BJJ, etc) during which time I could eat almost anything I wanted without gaining weight. I'm sure if I had downed a cheesecake a day it would've been bad for me, but I was able to get away with a level of excess back then that I am un…

Yeah. Sure, your body can adjust how much calories are burned when you're idle, but it can only do so much. If you're burning thousands of calories on daily activity, it's gotta come from somewhere.

Re: Diet, not lack of exercise, drives obesity, a new study finds

#12

Post by coffeefirst »

com2kid wrote: post #7

This is true to an extent and I'm very fond of the saying, but beyond a certain point you can indeed outrun a bad diet. I used to spend ~4 hours a day training martial arts (kickboxing, BJJ, etc) during which time I could eat almost anything I wanted without gaining weight. I'm sure if I had downed a cheesecake a day it would've been bad for me, but I was able to get away with a level of excess back then that I am un…

Yeah, this is a scale problem.

You can hop on a plane and go from a driving-city to a walking city, look around and see the difference. I can't accept that this doesn't matter.

But if you take the common American diet where the bread of your sandwich is shelf-stable because it's packed with sugar and oil, and that's before we even talk about portion size, "more running than most people want to do" quickly becomes "recreate the scene from Forest Gump."

Re: Diet, not lack of exercise, drives obesity, a new study finds

#13

Post by sophia01 »

The title is disappointing: it implies a causal relationship. The study was an observational study.

Indeed, you can outrun a bad diet: we all know that. The study just shows that the lack of activity isn't the main reason for obesity. Both things can be true simultaneously.

Re: Diet, not lack of exercise, drives obesity, a new study finds

#15

Post by schmidtleonard »

ricciardo wrote: post #9
a3w wrote: post #4

The timing of when I eat changes, if I gain weight. Eating pizza after jogging? Fat on belly. Eating as much pizza as I want, but going to bed after on empty stomach after running, or putting the running in the morning while doing about 12 to 16 hour slots of intermitted fasting? Hello, six-pack.

That is a pretty interesting observation. I always thought it was solely on the amount of calories consumed vs burned. For example, you burn ~2500 through just living, if you eat a pizza that contains 3000 calories, no matter the time at which you eat it, will you not still gain fat?

Calorie counting works, but "use this one weird trick to target belly fat and achieve six pack" sells books.

Re: Diet, not lack of exercise, drives obesity, a new study finds

#16

Post by taeric »

Reminds me of a video I saw recently that pointed out the absurd number of calories professional athletes burn. Upshot of that video was that you almost certainly can run to lose weight. Just don't expect it to be an easy task.

At a personal level, I can also say that it is flat out hard to eat large amounts of food if you are staying active. The stereotype of wanting an after meal nap is legit.

It is also somewhat interesting to see other places try and contend with just how much food your average person in the US has at their ready disposal.

Re: Diet, not lack of exercise, drives obesity, a new study finds

#17

Post by boringg »

bko wrote: post #2

> "So if we burn more of our energy every day on physical activity, on exercise, after a while our bodies will adjust and spend less energy on the other tasks that we sort of don't notice going on in the background," Pontzer says. I also think this is true related to food. Your body adjusts its metabolism based on the amount of food you eat as long as it's not chronic. That's why you can have competitive eaters that…

Depends on the goal is. If you life is full of shocks then build for shocks. If you life is not build for shocks it makes sense to optimize for your existence. You certainly don't want to overfit the model as you are describing but you don't want to build a life around expecting shocks when none arrive. As with all things, it is a balance.

Re: Diet, not lack of exercise, drives obesity, a new study finds

#18

Post by robertlagrant »

coffeefirst wrote: post #12
com2kid wrote: post #7

This is true to an extent and I'm very fond of the saying, but beyond a certain point you can indeed outrun a bad diet. I used to spend ~4 hours a day training martial arts (kickboxing, BJJ, etc) during which time I could eat almost anything I wanted without gaining weight. I'm sure if I had downed a cheesecake a day it would've been bad for me, but I was able to get away with a level of excess back then that I am un…

Yeah, this is a scale problem. You can hop on a plane and go from a driving-city to a walking city, look around and see the difference. I can't accept that this doesn't matter. But if you take the common American diet where the bread of your sandwich is shelf-stable because it's packed with sugar and oil, and that's before we even talk about portion size, "more running than most people want to do" quickly becomes "re…

> I can't accept that this doesn't matter.

It's not that it doesn't matter, it's the asymmetry. You can eat a small chocolate bar that costs $1 (or whatever) in about 15 seconds, and it will take you 2 hours of walking to wear off the calories.

Re: Diet, not lack of exercise, drives obesity, a new study finds

#19

Post by Barrin92 »

It ought to be obvious. A chocolate donut, large Frappuccino or pick your unhealthy food of choice are about equivalent to half an hour of running. Given how many people throw in a snack like that several times per day good luck burning that off with exercise.

One of the most straight forward things to lose weight is just limiting yourself to two or three actual meals, black coffee, tea, etc.

Re: Diet, not lack of exercise, drives obesity, a new study finds

#20

Post by JKCalhoun »

I have been, rather lazily I suppose, trying to tweak my diet in such as way as to lose weight; and with little to show for it.

I'm not sure that there is much if any processed food still in my diet (maybe just the English muffin in the morning?). I stopped buying/drinking soda pop decades ago (a low-hanging fruit indeed — I lost almost 10 pounds within a month of making that dietary change alone).

And since I have tried little things like switching to peanut butter that contains only peanuts (no salt, no sugar, not palm oil — sure, I have to stir it when I open it for the first time). I've moved to whole grain bread. Other small changes like that I can't remember right now.

I still have a BMI that's too high.

The only time I have significantly lost weight was when I was prepping for intestinal surgery nearly a decade ago. I was at the time worried that eating too much would literally kill me (I was worried about bursting my intestine) that I ate very small portions for each meal.

I'm not sure why I can't change my habits such that I continue to eat those small portions (now that the fear is gone).

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