Diet, not lack of exercise, drives obesity, a new study finds • Hacker News Board

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

#381

Post by ericmcer » Fri, Jul 25, 2025, 7:39 PM UTC

_Wintermute wrote: post #37

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.

I had a similar situation in my early 20s.

My conclusion was that past a certain point you need to use liquid sugar (soda especially) to get your body to put on weight past a certain point.

Even with absurd amounts of fat, carbs and proteins I could not process enough food to put on the weight I wanted too. Sugar is the backbone of massive weight gain.

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

#382

Post by darksaints » Fri, Jul 25, 2025, 8:12 PM UTC

swat535 wrote: post #109

Delphiza wrote: post #32

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…

I have personal experience outrunning a bad diet as a division 1 swimmer. I was on a 7000 calorie a day diet, which was actually difficult to pull off, and I specifically had to supplement my diet with things like snickers bars and peanut butter cups just to stop losing weight. In fact, my dietary habits formed during this period of my life, where I was consistently below 10% body fat, continue to cause me trouble today in my less active state. Only by eating dramatically healthier have I been able to approach 20% body fat today.

Even beyond myself, I think you’re romanticizing how healthy the diets of extreme athletes are. I’ve been coached by and trained alongside Olympic athletes and most of them (not all of them) don’t give a single shit about things like healthy fats or micronutrients. Protein definitely, but everything else is noise. When burning that many calories, you are getting more than enough micronutrients, and it doesn’t really matter if the energy you end up burning is from fats or carbs, because it’s in and out the same day and never has a chance to be stored in the first place.

Body builders aren’t judged on athletic performance but aesthetics. It would make sense they care a lot more about diet, but it should be noted that they aren’t athletes and their entire regime is about building muscle, not using energy. It’s a completely different type of optimization.

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

#383

Post by post_break » Fri, Jul 25, 2025, 8:56 PM UTC

SirMaster wrote: post #89

post_break wrote: post #26

Having lost 40lbs in the past couple of years, diet and walking have been key. It's just so much easier to burn fat by not eating it, than it is to try to burn it off with exercise. You'll find that burning 500 calories on a treadmill feels like an eternity, but eating one chocolate chip muffin? You can do that and gulp down a big glass of milk in 5 minutes like it's nothing.

>You'll find that burning 500 calories on a treadmill feels like an eternity That's because you are doing it on a treadmill... Try doing a more fun activity outside in the world and in nature. Like cycling. I can cycle for 120 miles outdoors in about 6 hours in a single day and have a positive experience and memory of doing it and that burns about 8200 calories according to a calculators for my weight.

I live in Houston. Cycling is too dangerous.

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

#384

Post by ch4s3 » Fri, Jul 25, 2025, 10:48 PM UTC

audinobs wrote: post #358

ch4s3 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're drinking beer or wine it is certainly very calorie dense. You're looking at 208 kcal per pint of beer or 123 kcal for a 5oz pour of wine. A pound of fat takes about 3,500 excess calories, or 16 pints of beer. So if you drink 2 a day all else equal you could gain nearly 1 lb a week.

This is just pointless ceteris paribus because genetics are the biggest variable. If someone has a predisposition to diabetes they can't drink alcohol and hold things ceteris paribus because of the way alcohol effects the liver and then effects insulin. Insulin sensitivity gets worse, blood sugar is all over the place and then the person is on a rollover-coast of over consuming calories to try to stabilize blood suga…

Did you mean to reply to me? I'm simply pointing out that beer is calorie dense.

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

#385

Post by dtdynasty » Sat, Jul 26, 2025, 1:01 AM UTC

mritterhoff wrote: post #146

benabbott wrote: post #127

Whenever the topic of weight loss comes up, I always make the same recommendation: Lift weights. Lifting weights increases your muscle mass. Muscle burns calories, even at rest, which raises your TDEE. (A bodybuilder will burn more calories sitting on the couch than someone who doesn't lift weights). For most folks (myself included) cardio sucks. You _could_ jog for an hour every day and burn x-hundred calories due t…

I'm a fan of weightlifting, and agree that there are numerous health benefits to doing so, but I think the extra calorie burning is over-hyped. From what I've read you get 6-10 calories per pound of muscle per day, at rest. Not nothing, but for folks who aren't looking to body build I'm not sure it makes much of a difference. Or maybe over a long enough time span it does, I dunno.

I think there are a couple of underlooked points for weightlifting's contribution to sustainable weight loss.

- the weight that you are gaining with a surplus diet turns into muscle instead of fat. You can take diet breaks and just gain muscle faster which will help when returning to a deficit.

- the increased 100-200 calories from lifting can make a 100 calorie deficit easier to adhere to as it's a smaller proportion of your total.

- weightlifting reduces stress which is a common cause for over eating.

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

#386

Post by 42772827 » Sat, Jul 26, 2025, 3:49 PM UTC

>"For decades we've been telling Americans that you're lazy, it's your fault, you're not moving enough, you're eating too much," Mozaffarian says. "And I think what this study shows is that there's really complicated biology happening and that our food is driving this."

The industry that invented the bliss point [0] has every reason to blame the individual and not the system they created.

One quibble: the article blames ultraprocessed foods, but that's not a category of foods with a stable definition. What we do know is that food has been engineered to be more delicious and less filling, so staying away from those foods is a better way to think about it.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bliss_point_(food)

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

#387

Post by 42772827 » Sat, Jul 26, 2025, 3:50 PM UTC

stouset wrote: post #183

Delphiza wrote: post #32

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…

> anyone who has done extensive 'athletic' physical activity knows that if you don't up your calorie intake that you will lose weight. Anyone who has done extensive athletic physical activity knows that you will up your calorie intake unless you take explicit and intentional effort not to.

>that you will up your calorie intake unless you take explicit and intentional effort not to.

Correct, and the "eat less, move more" crowd will tell you, "ignore your hunger. Control yourself. You're a failure because you can't ignore one of the most basic and fundamental biological signals."

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

#388

Post by 42772827 » Sat, Jul 26, 2025, 3:51 PM UTC

Mawr wrote: post #322

red-iron-pine wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

literally get on a tredmill, angle it, and walk for an hour or two

I don't wanna sound too daring, but going outside is also an option.

This is why walkable cities are important!

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

#389

Post by slantaclaus » Sat, Jul 26, 2025, 6:55 PM UTC

This is not a new finding

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

#390

Post by robertlagrant » Sun, Jul 27, 2025, 1:00 PM UTC

const_cast wrote: post #362

rgoulter wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> men burn more calories than woman just right out of the gate Sure, but parent's point is that the energy input from sugary snacks like chocolate roughly equates to a significant amount of exercise. (Over an hour of walking). -- Maybe the caloric equivalent amount of walking is a little longer or shorter for different bodies. How might you take action from this understanding, though. Gaining an extra 100 pounds of m…

You don't need 100 pounds of muscle to reap the benefits. My point is, yes eating a sugary snack takes 1 hour of walking. But it doesn't take 1 hour of weightlifting. It can take 0 hours of weightlifting, if you've already been weightlifting. Even with walking and running, you do build muscle. When the treadmill says 100 calories, you didn't actually burn 100 calories - you burned 100 plus the increased rate from the…

Sure, but if you hadn't eaten the bar in 15s you'd have burnt other calories that are now being stored instead.

Not that this applies to people with loads of muscle in general; the saying isn't particularly for people who focus massively on fitness. It's for people who don't do anything and think going for a walk a day will sort out their health goals.