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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

#31

Post by RankingMember »

Barrin92 wrote: post #19

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.

Starbucks did an impressive job of convincing people they love coffee when a lot of them actually just like morning/mid-day dessert with some trace coffee flavoring.

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

#32

Post by Delphiza »

Unsurprisingly, the title is sensationalist and not representative of the study. The study compares energy expenditure across different economic groups i.e. western people sitting in offices versus hunter-gatherers in Africa, and found that difference in energy expenditure does not account for differences in obesity, so points to consumption as the likely reason.

The sample dataset explicitly excluded 'athletes', so would exclude people that _are_ outrunning a bad diet. We know that a little weekly jog around the park doesn't mean you can eat a cheesecake every day, but anyone who has done extensive 'athletic' physical activity knows that if you don't up your calorie intake that you will lose weight. The study does not conclude, at all, that you cannot outrun a bad diet. Instead, it suggests "that dietary intake plays a far greater role than reduced energy expenditure in obesity related to economic development."

Edit: My point is specifically not about running. I am merely pointing out that if you read the study you will find that it is more of a study on economic development, and not really useful for personal or localised health advice. It observes that economically developed population groups may be more sedentary, but do not expend significantly more energy - so a hunter-gatherer picking berries all day does not burn significantly more energy than an office worker (at least not enough to explain why the office worker is obese). Therefore, the link between economic development and obesity is likely related to food (dietary intake) than daily activity.

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

#33

Post by goda90 »

BJones12 wrote: post #6
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…

> That's why you can have competitive eaters that can eat a weeks worth of food and not be overweight. Nope, they do gain weight, or avoid gaining weight by counting calories [0] [0] https://youtu.be/SVS0ioOdfuE?t=225

That's exactly the point the grandparent comment was making though. Because they aren't chronically eating at competition levels is the reason they aren't overweight. They have a high calorie moment, followed by low calorie stretches.

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

#34

Post by snapcaster »

testing22321 wrote: post #8

I’ve been thinking about writing a book on this topic: “No overweight person eats well”. By very definition of a person is overweight, they got there by eating poorly, and are continuing to do so. They have eaten more energy than they use, this energy storage in fat.

I think there are an infinite number of true statements you could make about unhealthy or overweight people. What makes for a good book or article is finding the true statement you can say that actually sways behavior. I'm skeptical your message would succeed in this

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

#36

Post by palmfacehn »

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…

I can confirm the same from my messenger days. On days when deliveries were sparse, we found ourselves moving from cafe to bakery, eating more pastries than a doctor would recommend. Regardless of the day's activity levels we would generally drink large amounts of beer after work and sometimes during. Maintaining weight and satisfying our appetites was always a more pressing concern.

I'm not a dietician, but when I read things like this NPR report, I wonder how much of it is motivated reasoning. "It is not your fault", is always a good come-on for a sales pitch. This report seems like something people would like to hear, especially if they haven't come to enjoy strenuous exercise.

That said, I've always had a bias against highly processed foods.

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

#37

Post by _Wintermute »

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…

Yep, at one point in my life I was consistently cycling for 30 hours a week and eating enough became a chore. So it's definitely possible, but it requires enough exercise that's essentially a full time job.

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

#38

Post by mvieira38 »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #20

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 t…

You're trying to eat clean instead of lean/volumous. Why care about palm oil or salt in peanut butter if it's still like straight fat that you're passing on your bread every day? The actual diet move would be to switch that to some fruit and low fat yogurt. Same thing with whole grain bread, you just got some more fiber and vitamins but the calories are mostly all there still, especially if it's sandwich bread.

Clean/natural/unprocessed is an independent variable from fattening. There is correlation in that processed foods are sometimes highly palatable, but there is no causation. To illustrate, you could top your toast with either honey or Mrs Butterworth's Sugar Free syrup. Honey will add like 10x more calories, but is unprocessed, while the syrup is as processed as there can be

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

#39

Post by kingstnap »

Everyone in bodybuilding or adjacent crowds already knows this.

How fat you are is entirely a function of how much you eat. If you want to put on weight, you bulk by eating more. If you want to lose weight, you cut with reduced calories.

The idea you could instead bulk by doing less cardio and cut by doing more sounds completely crazy. In reality, you do more exercise on a bulk because, duh, you can recover from more volume when eating a surplus.

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

#40

Post by ch4s3 »

bluedino wrote: post #21
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…

You were also younger. I used to house whole pizzas for lunch. Now I only eat 2 slices and weigh the same.

The difference in metabolic activity as you age is relatively small until you are quite old, like a single digit percentage difference. You can go look at any TDEE calculator and see this.
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