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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

#51

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…

This time last year I was in Kampala for roughly 4 months. I used to cook at home and I avoided any process food. Zero to little carb. I was walking a lot though and quite regularly (the weather there is just so good). Now, one year later I moved to Dubai and I think I gained around 10kg.

The only difference being the amount of processed food and the lack of my daily walking routines. But granted, I gained 10kg while im on one meal a day.

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

#52

This reminds a little of Usain Bolt famously having chicken nuggets before his final at the Beijing Olympics. Although hardly indicative of a bad diet that he may or may not have had. I think as well there is some difficulty with variability between people that isn't clear or maybe doesn't matter at scale. The article linked study was across 43 nations with 4213 adults. Yet there may still be individuals who can argu…

The chicken nugget thing is to avoid food poisoning though, right? It's because McDonald's food logistics results in hyper-consistent food irrespective of where you're at in the world and the last thing an Olympic competitor wants is to risk getting food poisoning from eating foreign food. I don't think Usain eats chicken nuggets on the reg.

I don't know the reason and think your reasoning is probably sound. Although at the same I wonder if chicken nuggets were really the only option? I'll make a grand assumption that most athletes weren't on the chicken nugget diet.

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

#53

This reminds a little of Usain Bolt famously having chicken nuggets before his final at the Beijing Olympics. Although hardly indicative of a bad diet that he may or may not have had. I think as well there is some difficulty with variability between people that isn't clear or maybe doesn't matter at scale. The article linked study was across 43 nations with 4213 adults. Yet there may still be individuals who can argu…

I do bouldering and I eat fast food multiple times a week, I can definitely outclimb my poor diet... I probably helps that I don't eat breakfast though...

It's well known though that as you build muscle, your rest calorie consumption increases, so probably if you build/maintain enough muscle, then you can just outrun your intake, since you consume more without doing anything to start with...

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

#54

This reminds a little of Usain Bolt famously having chicken nuggets before his final at the Beijing Olympics. Although hardly indicative of a bad diet that he may or may not have had. I think as well there is some difficulty with variability between people that isn't clear or maybe doesn't matter at scale. The article linked study was across 43 nations with 4213 adults. Yet there may still be individuals who can argu…

What's wrong with chicken nuggets?

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

#55

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…

Magnus Midtbo has Kristian Blummrnfelt on his show, who is the Olympic gold medalist for triathlon.

Kristian essentially eats pasta and Nutella and bread all day.

So technically, yes, you can outrun a bad diet..

Though me thinks this article is aimed at the average person.

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

#56
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…

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.

It's a whole lot easier to hit up a drive through or grab a tub of ice cream at the grocery store when you're driving a car.

You're not wrong, though. Walking around doesn't burn a lot of calories (~100/mile), but most people become overweight by only slightly overeating on a daily basis, over a long period of time. One can of soda has 140 Calories. 140 excess daily Calories is an extra pound of fat per month.

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

#57
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…

> The interesting thing is when this breaks down. Obviously if you eat a weeks worth of food every day for a sustained period of time, you will start to gain weight. Or if you run 12 miles every day, you will be in such a deficit that it won't be possible to lower your metabolism enough. Outside of the extremes, I think it's a cliff, where you have to have some kind of shock for some period of time for your body to react.

Objectively, I don't think this is accurate.

Most people who are overweight got that way slowly.

Dr Mike[1]'s theory is that modern processed food is to blame - not because it's unhealthy, but because it's too tasty. Companies that make food are in an evolutionary arms race with other companies to get consumers to choose their products. And one of the best ways to do that is to make the food as tasty as possible.

Another things many companies probably try to optimize their food for is low satiety[2]. That way consumers consume, and therefore buy, more of their products.

---

1. From Renaissance Periodization

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satiety_value

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

#58

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…

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

#59

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…

Have you tried intermittent fasting? There's a lot of controversy around the impacts of fasting, but there's one simple fact involved: it's harder to exceed your calorie needs for a day in 1 or 2 meals than in 3 or more because at some point you are just too full to eat more. If you're focused on getting lots of veggies in your limited meals, the number of calories that "fit in your stomach" will also go down.

Assuming you don't have some metabolic disorders, you'll get used to being hungry for part of the day.

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

#60
post #54

This reminds a little of Usain Bolt famously having chicken nuggets before his final at the Beijing Olympics. Although hardly indicative of a bad diet that he may or may not have had. I think as well there is some difficulty with variability between people that isn't clear or maybe doesn't matter at scale. The article linked study was across 43 nations with 4213 adults. Yet there may still be individuals who can argu…

What's wrong with chicken nuggets?

Perhaps a poorly picked example but generally they're not considered a healthy food item as they exist in the category of both fast and fried food. The implication being that they're more processed resulting in less good fasts and are higher in calorie per gram. Like most foods the dose determines the poison I suppose.
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