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

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171–180 of 396 posts

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

#171

For most people, a 1 hour moderate run is only about 1-2 cookies worth (and only half a Crumbl cookie). Even a marathon run might only burn 2000 calories . a chipotle burrito is 1600 . In other words, for 95% of people doing activity, they shouldn't eat any surplus if their goal is to maintain or lose weight. It's actually best to do most of your activity undernourished, as it helps develop true intuitive nutrition f…

You're right that it's easy to out-eat the running you can sustain as a regularly fit person, but there's no "only" about 2000 calories

2000 calories is pretty near the daily calory requirement for a healthy weight human. If you are of healthy weight and eat appropriately, you pretty much have to eat twice as much to compensate for that marathon

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

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The sample dataset explicitly excluded 'athletes', so would exclude people that _are_ outrunning a bad diet. You can't outrun a bad diet. This is such a myth and I have no idea where it's coming from. Perhaps it's a nice lie one can tell himself to continue eating junk and not feel guilty about it. Athletes, especially body builders require a lot of calories but their diet is surprisingly healthy. They eat plenty o…

> This is such a myth and I have no idea where it's coming from. For people that are merely trying to lose weight, it's effectively true. When you're out of shape, you won't have the strength or endurance to exercise long and hard enough to actually burn significant calories. For athletes that are running marathons or doing powerlifting, yes, it's certainly false. Massive bodybuilders that are already deadlifting hun…

Powerlifting does not take as many calories as you'd think. In fact, lifting in general is surprisingly easy on the calorie requirement, so most powerlifters and bodybuilders incorporate cardio as part of their routine. You will burn a lot more calories by walking 10,000 steps a day for 1 month than you would doing an intense lifting session each day.

The reason you're probably thinking as to why lifters eat a huge amount is precisely because they're already large and muscular. Just 5% less bodyfat at the same weight results in roughly 200 more calories at maintenance for someone that is around 93kg.

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

#173
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…

The most effective exercise for weight loss is fork put-downs.

[citation needed]

That is not what any of the studies I have read find, particularly not past the short term: past calorie restriction diets is one of the factors associated with developing obesity.

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

#174
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intensity of the workout matters. When I go wakeboarding with my wife I build up a nice big appetite. When I go to muay thai I get pretty severe appetite suppression and sometimes have to force myself to eat. The other thing is that if you track >>performance Nothing keeps me honest about my diet like performance

That's the point of the study though. If you workout harder than your baseline, you will burn more calories than your baseline. But if you do that workout often enough, for various reasons you will return to baseline calorie expenditure. This means that if you want to lose weight consistently, working out is useless in that sense. You might see benefits for 1 month or 3 months or 6 months, but eventually your body ad…

How exactly can your body adjust that much though? There is some minimum baseline level of calorie burn to stay alive and keep your body temp etc.

If you workout enough calories that exceeds the minimum baseline to keep you alive, the body can't adapt below that or adapt into the negative.

For a 200 lb man, jogging for 2 hours burns like 2000 calories, so that's 12,000 a week for 6 times a week.

What's the lowest a body will adapt to slow it's baseline metabolic rate? I am reading that the BMR can only reduce by like maybe 15-20% due to body adaptation.

This would put their baseline calorie burn at around 1500, and then if they are burning ~1700 a day from their jogging, they can eat 3200 a day to maintain or 3000 to even slowly lose weight over time, which is a decent amount that you can have a pretty fun "diet" of what you consume IMO.

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

#175
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…

The most effective exercise for weight loss is fork put-downs.

And plate push aways

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

#176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The sample dataset explicitly excluded 'athletes', so would exclude people that _are_ outrunning a bad diet. You can't outrun a bad diet. This is such a myth and I have no idea where it's coming from. Perhaps it's a nice lie one can tell himself to continue eating junk and not feel guilty about it. Athletes, especially body builders require a lot of calories but their diet is surprisingly healthy. They eat plenty o…

> This is such a myth and I have no idea where it's coming from. For people that are merely trying to lose weight, it's effectively true. When you're out of shape, you won't have the strength or endurance to exercise long and hard enough to actually burn significant calories. For athletes that are running marathons or doing powerlifting, yes, it's certainly false. Massive bodybuilders that are already deadlifting hun…

I'm 5'6", 165lbs, I bike 6-8 miles every day and do resistance training 6 days/week. I also have limited myself to 1800 cals/day and at least 130g protein. For two years I was biking 6-8 miles every day, doing resistance training and maintaining 210lbs which, at my height, is bordering on clinical obesity. If you could be healthy just by training and eating what you want I would have done it twice.

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

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is such a myth and I have no idea where it's coming from. For people that are merely trying to lose weight, it's effectively true. When you're out of shape, you won't have the strength or endurance to exercise long and hard enough to actually burn significant calories. For athletes that are running marathons or doing powerlifting, yes, it's certainly false. Massive bodybuilders that are already deadlifting hun…

My anecdata: - a year of busting my ass on the bike almost daily: -15kg - a year of restricting calories to ~1200/day and not doing much else: -40kg - 2 years of sitting in my apartment being afraid of COVID and drinking too much: +50kg Conclusion: booze is a really great way to put on a lot of weight quickly

my anecdata aligns with yours. A year of cardio every day and resistance 6 days a week bought me no weight loss, 2 years of limiting myself to 1800 cals/day on top of that stripped me of 25% of my body weight.

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

#178

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…

> The sample dataset explicitly excluded 'athletes', so would exclude people that _are_ outrunning a bad diet. You can't outrun a bad diet. This is such a myth and I have no idea where it's coming from. Perhaps it's a nice lie one can tell himself to continue eating junk and not feel guilty about it. Athletes, especially body builders require a lot of calories but their diet is surprisingly healthy. They eat plenty o…

For high level endurance athletes, eating enough can be a difficult task. I wouldn’t quite categorize diets like the one described in https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/23/sports/olympics/cross-cou... as “a bad diet”, but it’s certainly a quantity and density of calories that would make it a bad diet for most people with a normal energy expenditure.

An anecdote from my experience with long trail hiking is that essentially everybody loses weight hiking long trails for months. Turns out when you’re hiking 25-30 miles / day, it’s awfully hard to not be in a calorie deficit (especially when you’re also trying to optimize for lightweight food)

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

#179

Something my doctor has told me on more than one occasion, be he was also quick to add a statement about the importance of exercise for overall fitness. But.. want to lose weigh, change your diet.

To add: Exercise builds strength, including cardiovascular. Just having a low bodyfat % isn't the epitome of health, there's plenty of facets to focus on.

I have a friend with a heart condition, prior to surgery he couldn't even walk 100 ft or stand for more than a minute. He put on significant weight, partially due to lifestyle changes when his heart was failing. Now he _has_ to walk a lot to strengthen his heart again, and he's working on his diet to lose weight as a whole separate component. The walking has nothing to do with weight loss for him, it's purely about strength. I think a lot of people fail to make any kind of distinction there, and they just think of exercise as a way to lose weight.

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

#180
post #169

Any athlete really knows this to be true. You don't lose weight running/lifting/biking, you lose it in the kitchen. Multi-day hiking forces the issue as you have to carry the kitchen on your back.

Yep. This has been pretty much common knowledge as long as I've been alive. As someone who lifts, it's been ingrained in my mind "abs are built in the kitchen, not the gym."

Sleep is also a commonly overlooked but incredibly important aspect. You could be busting your ass in the gym, have your diet on point, but not be making gains if you don't sleep or sleep poorly. For hypertrophy focused folks, muscle isn't built in the gym, it's built while you sleep - you tear it down in the gym so that it can rebuild during recovery.

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