The myth of outrunning your diet
williamjbarry.substack.com
The myth of outrunning your diet
1–10 of 97 posts
Re: The myth of outrunning your diet
#2God, that's a lot of writing.
One, you absolutely can "outrun" a diet. If you've known anyone a little bit too much into fitness then you've known someone who has struggled to eat enough to maintain and build weight.
I had a friend who would drink a gallon of whole milk a day to maintain weight because he did so much at the gym.
I'm not saying it's healthy, but saying it isn't possible to exercise so much it's difficult to keep weight on is stupid.
Any beyond this, with tiny homes in dense neighborhoods and social norms that require parents to literally be watching their children 24/7 usually in their tiny home... yeah... the children are fat and depressed.
Lock kids in cages their entire lives and they have emotional problems and weight problems. Then you talk about physical activity like it's "training" and something that has to be scheduled and measured and doled out in just the right doses.
Normalize children having safe space to be by themselves outside in the world without constant surveillance and maybe they won't have so many dopamine addiction social media problems and obesity.
Re: The myth of outrunning your diet
#3God, that's a lot of writing. One, you absolutely can "outrun" a diet. If you've known anyone a little bit too much into fitness then you've known someone who has struggled to eat enough to maintain and build weight. I had a friend who would drink a gallon of whole milk a day to maintain weight because he did so much at the gym. I'm not saying it's healthy, but saying it isn't possible to exercise so much it's diffic…
Some people maybe can but most cannot. Even running like 5 miles a day is completely undone by a large frapachino. The difference in an active adult's normal day, like a teacher walking around, and a completely sedentary worker at their computer can be undone with a cream cheese bagel.
And in the US, a bunch of the food that's convenient to buy and eat is "hyperpalatable". You're going to be really hard pressed to lose and keep weight off without deliberately adjusting your diet to support it.
Re: The myth of outrunning your diet
#4God, that's a lot of writing. One, you absolutely can "outrun" a diet. If you've known anyone a little bit too much into fitness then you've known someone who has struggled to eat enough to maintain and build weight. I had a friend who would drink a gallon of whole milk a day to maintain weight because he did so much at the gym. I'm not saying it's healthy, but saying it isn't possible to exercise so much it's diffic…
Just because it’s possible to outrun a diet it doesn’t mean it’s an accurate or helpful description of what most people are struggling with. If you look at the population of the United States as a whole, and the percentage of people who meet the criteria for obesity, it seems obvious that for the vast majority of people today, the problem is food, both quality and quantity.
As for your swipe at people in cities, I don’t know what to say - the fastest way to lower the amount of “diet outrunning” you and your kids do, is to move to a place where every daily activity requires a car and because everyone drives everywhere all the time, it’s not safe to let your kids roam.
Re: The myth of outrunning your diet
#5God, that's a lot of writing. One, you absolutely can "outrun" a diet. If you've known anyone a little bit too much into fitness then you've known someone who has struggled to eat enough to maintain and build weight. I had a friend who would drink a gallon of whole milk a day to maintain weight because he did so much at the gym. I'm not saying it's healthy, but saying it isn't possible to exercise so much it's diffic…
> ... then you've known someone who has struggled to eat enough to maintain and build weight.
I'm not trying to strawman here, but I've never met a person like that who was ever overweight at any point in their life.
It seems pretty obvious to me that saying "some people can't eat enough to put on weight / get fat" is a distinct thing from saying "someone who cannot stop putting on weight / getting fatter will almost never be able to lose the weight without adjusting their diet". Do you agree or am I missing something?
Re: The myth of outrunning your diet
#6God, that's a lot of writing. One, you absolutely can "outrun" a diet. If you've known anyone a little bit too much into fitness then you've known someone who has struggled to eat enough to maintain and build weight. I had a friend who would drink a gallon of whole milk a day to maintain weight because he did so much at the gym. I'm not saying it's healthy, but saying it isn't possible to exercise so much it's diffic…
> ... then you've known someone who has struggled to eat enough to maintain and build weight. I'm not trying to strawman here, but I've never met a person like that who was ever overweight at any point in their life. It seems pretty obvious to me that saying "some people can't eat enough to put on weight / get fat" is a distinct thing from saying "someone who cannot stop putting on weight / getting fatter will almost…
You're missing something.
More or less anyone can get to the point of being active enough where their body's ability to absorb calories is a limiting factor. It's not genetic or "some people" kind of thing, everybody has this limit and can hit it and people who are really excited about exercise and do a tremendous amount of it have to have strategies about how to get enough calories in their body on a day to day basis.
It's a lot of activity to get to this point, but some folks have magical thinking about eating.
Anyone absent a significant disability can be active enough to lose weight regardless of diet.
I'm not saying the "go insane and spend most of your free time exercising" is the best course of action, but far too many people have magical thoughts about changing diet or changing activity levels being ineffective for changing body composition.
Getting sat down in a doctors office and being told to do this isn't particularly effective, but that's different from actually doing it being effective.
Re: The myth of outrunning your diet
#7God, that's a lot of writing. One, you absolutely can "outrun" a diet. If you've known anyone a little bit too much into fitness then you've known someone who has struggled to eat enough to maintain and build weight. I had a friend who would drink a gallon of whole milk a day to maintain weight because he did so much at the gym. I'm not saying it's healthy, but saying it isn't possible to exercise so much it's diffic…
> I had a friend who would drink a gallon of whole milk a day to maintain weight because he did so much at the gym.
That honestly might be an absorption issue, not an intake issue - you can hit aerobic limits enough for your body to skip digesting stuff & just shove protein directly out of the stomach instead of bothering to break it down.
My experience with this was a brief high altitude climb above 5km in the sky, where eating eggs & ramen stopped working and only glucon-d kept me out of it.
The way I like to think of it is that the fat in your body can be eaten or drank, but needs to be breathed out as CO2 to leave it.
The rate at which you can put it in and the rate of letting it go are completely different.
Re: The myth of outrunning your diet
#8God, that's a lot of writing. One, you absolutely can "outrun" a diet. If you've known anyone a little bit too much into fitness then you've known someone who has struggled to eat enough to maintain and build weight. I had a friend who would drink a gallon of whole milk a day to maintain weight because he did so much at the gym. I'm not saying it's healthy, but saying it isn't possible to exercise so much it's diffic…
> I had a friend who would drink a gallon of whole milk a day to maintain weight because he did so much at the gym.
That's around 2.4k calories.
That's like three slices of costco pizza and a large coke. I can do that like 3-4 times and I am not even that fat.
And that's like half to a third of the absolute peak. Like the rock who basicaly works out all day, eats 5-7k calories.
The point is there are people that are eating large fries and triple thick milkshakes as snacks driving from place to place because it makes them feel happy instead of just eating to feel full. And you just can't outrun that.
Re: The myth of outrunning your diet
#9God, that's a lot of writing. One, you absolutely can "outrun" a diet. If you've known anyone a little bit too much into fitness then you've known someone who has struggled to eat enough to maintain and build weight. I had a friend who would drink a gallon of whole milk a day to maintain weight because he did so much at the gym. I'm not saying it's healthy, but saying it isn't possible to exercise so much it's diffic…
> ... then you've known someone who has struggled to eat enough to maintain and build weight. I'm not trying to strawman here, but I've never met a person like that who was ever overweight at any point in their life. It seems pretty obvious to me that saying "some people can't eat enough to put on weight / get fat" is a distinct thing from saying "someone who cannot stop putting on weight / getting fatter will almost…
> I'm not trying to strawman here, but I've never met a person like that who was ever overweight at any point in their life.
This is an extremely common story for anyone who does through hiking on the Appalachian Trail (or Pacific Crest Trail, Continental Divide Trail, etc.). Quite a lot of people start overweight (although I have no idea what the percentage looks like). Almost everyone ends up losing a very significant amount of weight along the way. It is very difficult to stay overweight on the trail. People are intentionally choosing the absolute most calorie-dense food they possibly can, gorging themselves at every opportunity, consistently eating integer multiples of the standard recommended caloric intake, and are still losing large amounts of weight.
This is definitely an outlier case though.
Re: The myth of outrunning your diet
#10God, that's a lot of writing. One, you absolutely can "outrun" a diet. If you've known anyone a little bit too much into fitness then you've known someone who has struggled to eat enough to maintain and build weight. I had a friend who would drink a gallon of whole milk a day to maintain weight because he did so much at the gym. I'm not saying it's healthy, but saying it isn't possible to exercise so much it's diffic…
Just because it’s possible to outrun a diet it doesn’t mean it’s an accurate or helpful description of what most people are struggling with. If you look at the population of the United States as a whole, and the percentage of people who meet the criteria for obesity, it seems obvious that for the vast majority of people today, the problem is food, both quality and quantity. As for your swipe at people in cities, I do…
>The myth of outrunning your diet
Let's not move goalposts and continue to argue.
I'm responding to the title and the article.
>Just because it’s possible
So I'm right and you'd like to change the stakes so you can continue to argue the incorrect point of the author. Just stop. It's possible, it's not a myth, the author's thesis being basically incorrect invalidates the rest of the rambling post, try again next time.