The myth of outrunning your diet • Hacker News Board

Re: The myth of outrunning your diet

#11

Post by lovich » Thu, Oct 23, 2025, 5:14 AM UTC

preommr wrote: post #8

colechristensen wrote: post #2

God, 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…

I'm not understanding your math?

3-4 times that would be 7200-9600 calories a day, already more than your example of the Rock.

Regardless

> 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.

Yes, if you eat more calories than you expend, because you spend your time eating while driving, instead of exercising, you wont expend more calories than you consume.

That doesn't change the fact that a human can exercise enough that they have difficulty maintaining weight even after eating significantly more calories than necessary for normal maintenance weight.

Nothing about the human metabolism circumvents thermodynamics

Re: The myth of outrunning your diet

#12

Post by solatic » Thu, Oct 23, 2025, 5:16 AM UTC

colechristensen wrote: post #2

God, 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…

> someone who has struggled to eat enough to maintain and build weight

There's a big difference between someone who feels satiated too quickly and someone who has a lot of difficulty feeling satiated. It has nothing to do with how much exercise someone gets. It's also much more difficult to eat large quantities of clean calories (for putting on muscle) compared to eating large quantities of dirty calories (putting on fat).

Re: The myth of outrunning your diet

#13

Post by esseph » Thu, Oct 23, 2025, 5:33 AM UTC

colechristensen wrote: post #2

God, 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…

It's expected the US Army soldier expends somewhere around 5400 cal in high intensity environments like Combat or even Ranger School. 6,000 calories a day or beyond for the same level of exertion in a cold weather, high stress, high intensity environment.

You can absolutely burn more calories that you take in, especially if stressed and not eating right. Or if simply... overtraining because of various psychological issues. Most people are not overtraining, nor are they in combat. Most.

Re: The myth of outrunning your diet

#14

Post by grebc » Thu, Oct 23, 2025, 5:39 AM UTC

colechristensen wrote: post #2

God, 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…

Your one anecdote definitely invalidates the article. Lol.

Re: The myth of outrunning your diet

#15

Post by weird-eye-issue » Thu, Oct 23, 2025, 5:39 AM UTC

preommr wrote: post #8

colechristensen wrote: post #2

God, 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…

> 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.

You literally can. You just need to burn more calories than you take in. It would be difficult but not impossible and is simple math and thermodynamics.

Re: The myth of outrunning your diet

#16

Post by taeric » Thu, Oct 23, 2025, 5:45 AM UTC

I don't understand the angle here? Go check out the cross country running team of your local high school. They will literally have to have carb loading parties for the kids so that they are able to do the run the next day. The article even largely acknowledges this with working with kids and exercise.

So if the myth is simply "we are fat because we don't exercise more", agreed. But the effectiveness of the new drugs is already enough to underline that point pretty heavily.

It seems that the idea really getting flirted with here is that the kind of exercise you have to do to lose weight is hard. And we seem to make it harder by loading it in such a way that people that do a crap job out there running think they "must not be a runner." Statistically, nobody is a runner on their first few years. It takes time. And is hard. Just like a lot of other skills.

This is true for the self control it takes to not lay in bed with your phone scrolling. Once you have built that habit, it is flat out hard to kick for a lot of us. It isn't that you are just missing that one trick to make it work. It is a type of hard work.

Re: The myth of outrunning your diet

#17

Post by watwut » Thu, Oct 23, 2025, 5:50 AM UTC

solatic wrote: post #12

colechristensen wrote: post #2

God, 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…

> someone who has struggled to eat enough to maintain and build weight There's a big difference between someone who feels satiated too quickly and someone who has a lot of difficulty feeling satiated. It has nothing to do with how much exercise someone gets. It's also much more difficult to eat large quantities of clean calories (for putting on muscle) compared to eating large quantities of dirty calories (putting on…

Exercise definitely affects apetite and in both ways - it can make you eat more or less.

Calories are calories, neither dirty or clean.

Re: The myth of outrunning your diet

#18

Post by sa46 » Thu, Oct 23, 2025, 5:51 AM UTC

esseph wrote: post #13

colechristensen wrote: post #2

God, 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…

It's expected the US Army soldier expends somewhere around 5400 cal in high intensity environments like Combat or even Ranger School. 6,000 calories a day or beyond for the same level of exertion in a cold weather, high stress, high intensity environment. You can absolutely burn more calories that you take in, especially if stressed and not eating right. Or if simply... overtraining because of various psychological i…

Weight loss in Ranger School is additionally “aided” by limiting students to 2 MREs per patrol day (2400 calories) to increase stress.

Anecdotally, I lost 26 lbs in Ranger School.

Re: The myth of outrunning your diet

#19

Post by watwut » Thu, Oct 23, 2025, 5:52 AM UTC

appreciatorBus wrote: post #4

colechristensen wrote: post #2

God, 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…

If you look at united states you find awful lot of people who are extremely sedentiary. Not just in the "sport", but they drive everywhere and sont have that baseline physical movement you get if you walk or kids go to playground.

Re: The myth of outrunning your diet

#20

Post by Caliban_Fathom » Thu, Oct 23, 2025, 5:52 AM UTC

A great point to expand on here is the challenge, and huge benefits of finding activities we love. Sometimes it might be an obscure sport that is hard to discover or awkward to find locally, but when we find the activity we love to do great things happen, not just weight loss.