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The myth of outrunning your diet

williamjbarry.substack.com

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Re: The myth of outrunning your diet

#61

Post by taeric »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #55
taeric wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is 500 calories of movement a lot? Googling says that is running for about 45 minutes? Or walking for 90 minutes. Doing housework would only need about 2 hours to hit that.

500 calories excess is significant. Burning 500 calories in 2 hours doing housework is only an excess of ~300 calories, since you'd burn 100 calories an hour just sitting.

I only mentioned the housework because it was listed on the google result. And I'm fairly confident most of us have far more than 2 hours of house work that needs to be done.

Re: The myth of outrunning your diet

#62

Post by colechristensen »

rkomorn wrote: post #32
colechristensen wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 basi…

> It's a lot of activity to get to this point Yes. Like multiple hours a day lot. That's why it's a "myth". It takes an amount of time, effort, and focus, that isn't particularly reasonable for I'd say almost all people. Fundamentally, I agree with you that it's possible: I pretty much did it myself with ~12 hours of hard cycling a week, but I just think your take is wrong because it basically boils down to nitpickin…

We live in an age where some people will say they're not lying as long as what they said has the vaguest association with the truth. Let's not contribute to that.

People in these threads are arguing aggressively this "myth" is not at all possible when the truth is lots of people experience it, including yourself.

Let's not dilute the meaning of the word "myth" to mean "its somewhat difficult".

A unicorn is a mythical creature from fairy tales, this doesn't mean the same thing as "the zoo with a unicorn exhibit is a few hours away and pretty expensive".

This isn't some nitpick of a minor detail better described with slightly different wording. It's people passionately arguing a common experience is impossible.

Re: The myth of outrunning your diet

#63

Post by rkomorn »

colechristensen wrote: post #62
rkomorn wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a lot of activity to get to this point Yes. Like multiple hours a day lot. That's why it's a "myth". It takes an amount of time, effort, and focus, that isn't particularly reasonable for I'd say almost all people. Fundamentally, I agree with you that it's possible: I pretty much did it myself with ~12 hours of hard cycling a week, but I just think your take is wrong because it basically boils down to nitpickin…

We live in an age where some people will say they're not lying as long as what they said has the vaguest association with the truth. Let's not contribute to that. People in these threads are arguing aggressively this "myth" is not at all possible when the truth is lots of people experience it, including yourself. Let's not dilute the meaning of the word "myth" to mean "its somewhat difficult". A unicorn is a mythical…

It's not "common".

Go ahead and die on this hill if you want but you're doing it alone and without convincing anyone you're fighting the right crusade.

Re: The myth of outrunning your diet

#64

Post by instagib »

James Smith, a fitness influencer on YouTube, had a video showing what it took for him to burn 5,000 calories then eat 5,000 calories. He set it to private for some reason recently but I liked to reference it for how long and painful both steps were.

A few other people have done the same feat or tried to: 5,000 or 10,000 calories challenge.

I don’t have the time to outrun a large blizzard (1300 calories) as a 90min session usually burns 700-900 calories according to my watch. I don’t feel like doing two sessions per day which is what Jay Cutler said he would do when cutting for Mr. Olympia. I think if I did, I wouldn’t be able to maintain it.

Re: The myth of outrunning your diet

#65

Post by red-iron-pine »

fcpk wrote: post #26

Almost all of the comments here seem to miss a point. Weight lods can be extremely difficult because : 1. your body metabolism will adapt really fast to caloric restrictions 2. losing weight is easy, not regaining it is a challenge in adapting your body set point 3. having enough time to exercise to the point where calories are a deficit is a luxury many can't afford 4.the psychological state of many people is a prim…

> 4.the psychological state of many people is a primary cause of their obesity, and fixing this is also a lot harder.

when you're miserable and need a dopamine hit, food is often the only option.

made worse by highly addictive, heavily marketed, "bliss point" sorts of foods.

Re: The myth of outrunning your diet

#66

Post by red-iron-pine »

grebc wrote: post #14
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.

2/3 of the US is fat as shit, but hey I'm good at fitness, so clearly its a you problem and not that I'm a freak

Re: The myth of outrunning your diet

#67

Post by watwut »

taeric wrote: post #50
watwut wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My thinking and experience went kind of the opposite way. We are focusing so much on making it effective and hard ... that we removed all pleasure from exercising and sport. Of course it takes a lot of self control to go do it, when the whole experience actually massively sux and no matter what you do, it is not enough. And of course then you will give up on that once you are under pressure or stressed or have a lot…

My experience is that liking something is basically unrelated to it being hard. Being good at it, on the other hand, requires putting in hard work. No matter what it is. Note that you can build a ramp up process such that you don't immediately punish yourself for not being good at something. Essentially the early levels of any video game. But, that is the point. Later levels are harder. By definition. But early level…

You dont need to be good in sport to have health benefits out of it. Or to spend calories. If the goals are health and aesthetic, there is zero need to become actually good or competitive.

Including as a beginner you domt have to push yourself uncomfortably hard unless ypu actually want to. Especially as a beginner, you will get improvements and benefit from just dabbling in it.

Re: The myth of outrunning your diet

#68

Post by invalidptr »

If you're a hobbyist runner, this equation very quickly gets flipped on its head. It's very difficult to make up the calorie deficit from a 20 mile long run every week. Throw two big races a year into the mix, and maintaining weight and muscle mass is the challenge. When I trained for ultramarathons, I sometimes ran two mountain long runs back to back. That put me 5000 calories in the hole every single weekend. I used to eat an entire large pizza by myself (2000 calories) and still be hungry 30 minutes later. There is an upper limit to how fast you can digest food, and that quickly becomes the limiting factor. I was not a professional. I ran as a hobby, rarely exceeding 50 miles a week. There are thousands of others who run at this level.

Re: The myth of outrunning your diet

#69

Post by swat535 »

DLeyland wrote: post #46
Synaesthesia wrote: post #23

I exercise a fair bit, and I still struggle to lose weight, I'm doing about 500 calories of movement a day, which means my maintenance diet is about 2500 calories. Trust me, it's really easy to go over that. So yes if you want to lose weight, it's just a fact that you need to look at your diet primarily.

I'm naturally skinny and trying to gain weight (muscle mass) and also do around 500 calories a day of movement so aiming for 3000 calories. It just goes to show what a big influence baseline appetite and food choices make because I find it really hard to eat that much and always wonder how people manage it in just three meals

By the way, if you are skinny (or worse, skinny + fat), you have to gain weight by eating healthy food, otherwise you will just gain more fat.

The best approach I've been able to follow has been protein shakes with body building diets.

Julian from HN has a great guide on this: https://www.julian.com/guide/muscle/intro

Thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12618223

Re: The myth of outrunning your diet

#70

Post by zargon »

invalidptr wrote: post #68

If you're a hobbyist runner, this equation very quickly gets flipped on its head. It's very difficult to make up the calorie deficit from a 20 mile long run every week . Throw two big races a year into the mix, and maintaining weight and muscle mass is the challenge. When I trained for ultramarathons, I sometimes ran two mountain long runs back to back. That put me 5000 calories in the hole every single weekend. I us…

If you’re a hobbyist runner who finds it challenging to eat an extra 5000 calories in a weekend, you’re in the socio-physiological upper 0.1%. It’s great for you, but not a very relevant anecdote to the majority of people seeking help with weight management.
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