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Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin

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Re: Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin

#51

Post by dkarl »

ghshephard wrote: post #42
dkarl wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self-restraint is a hackable psychological phenomenon in one's brain. I agree that it is not an innate moral power, but I disagree that it is a distinct human quality that can be strengthened. Self-restraint boils down to optimism. People can put themselves through anything if they have faith that it will pay off in the end. Rational knowledge doesn't help, and it isn't a matter of simply being harsh with oneself, ei…

I'm not really able to comprehend what you are trying to get at here, though I recognize you are putting a lot of effort into trying to explain your worldview. By "improving Self-Restraint" I mean "Making changes so one is not motivated to eat". o Stomach Stapling o Avoiding High Glycemic/Carb Rich foods o Not going out to the Gym for 60 minute work outs. Trying to rely on some moral-superiority is pretty much going…

You frame it as an opposition between two opposing forces, a person's appetite for immediate reward and his self-restraint. The strength of one's restraint is measured against the strength's of one's desires. You improve results by strengthening restraint and weakening appetite.

I see self-restraint as a limited amount of discretion that a person has to override his natural tendency to maximize emotional reward. As the article says, self-restraint is tiring and unnatural; it's a stopgap measure at best. The primary conflict is in your emotional brain's cost/benefit analysis of the situation. You have to hack your emotional reward system so you don't have to employ as much self-restraint. When you naturally derive satisfaction from eating well, because you have faith in the ultimate payoff, your natural tendency will not be as strongly tilted in favor of overeating.

Your subconscious/emotional/whatever brain is smarter than most people think. You aren't doomed to have an out-of-touch brain that fills you with irresistible, self-destructive impulses to overeat. We may have evolved on the savannah, but if you can stand on a subway platform, surrounded by strangers whose personal feelings about you are unknown, waiting for a huge steel structure to come whizzing by you at high speed, without feeling scared, you can learn to leave food on your plate. You just have to program your brain properly (cultivate faith) so that you feel, subconsciously, that limiting your eating leads to well-being and happiness (and, according to the highly publicized recent study, more sex if you're a man.)

Re: Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin

#52

Post by calcnerd256 »

The article mentioned the energy gap. Energy gap is the only metric that matters for weight loss. Anything else is just a means to that end, and the wrong abstraction can lead to the wrong medium-term goals and short-term decision biases ("Should I do this right now or this?").

Re: Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin

#53

Post by calcnerd256 »

sachinag wrote: post #24

Now I know why I can't hack it as a radio talk show host or freelance writer. I just don't have the ability to stretch a single sentence - "Losing weight requires a calorie deficit." - into four pages.

Nor can you come to the wrong conclusion at the end.

Re: Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin

#54

Post by kreneskyp »

jzdziarski wrote: post #35

Hmm I exercise daily and have been more tempted to eat healthier foods, rather than undo all the work my body has put in exercising. I'm down 30LB in the past 45 days. Time can suck it.

agreed.

The title is misleading. Of course, just exercise, or just diet, is not going to get you very far. It has to be both together.

Re: Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin

#55

Post by nico »

dkarl wrote: post #27
mr_luc wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bloops -- changed to "a few". At a leisurely 10 minutes per mile, that's 1.3.. hours of running. Well, overeating by a thousand calories is a lot. But even assuming you burned 0 other calories, still, the argument holds. You can, indeed, get thin by exercise. If one stubbornly insisted on ONLY getting thin by running, and steadfastly refused to take responsibility for what went into one's piehole, STILL -- it would b…

Running an hour a day is a dicey proposition because of the possibility of injury. I would say it's impossible for the vast majority of people who are overweight, no matter how carefully they worked up to it. You'd have to be skinny, have excellent form, and not have any unfixable pre-existing injuries or weaknesses.

You can ride a bike instead of running.

Re: Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin

#56

Post by mr_luc »

gaius wrote: post #46
codahale wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1,000 calories, considering the modern possibilities, isn't that much. I mean, that's a bit less than two slices of toast with Nutella. Weight loss programs have to focus on preempting and managing appetite. There's a wealth of studies connecting exercise to increased appetite (c.f. OP), especially focused, running-at-the-gym, doing-penance-for-those-donuts exercise. (Low-level activity—walking around, say—doesn't se…

1,000 calories, considering the modern possibilities, isn't that much. I mean, that's a bit less than two slices of toast with Nutella. Yes, it is VERY difficult to out-train a bad diet. There is an example I use with friends, which is if you drink 5 pints of beer, you'll need to run 10 miles to burn that off (really). Have a pizza or a kebab on the way home, another 10 miles. Have a fry-up for breakfast, another 10…

I agree that it's difficult to out-train a bad diet. But

1) Remember, we're counting the difference between what you need to eat and what you do eat. So although crazily irresponsible people doubtless are regularly eating 5000+ calorie diets, day in and day out, the amount they need to burn off to zero out would then be around 2000+ calories.

2) Impractical is not impossible. Even if you OVEREAT by 3000 calories per day, if you spent all day running and resting/drinking water from running, you could do it.

Exercise CAN make people thin. ;) I'm not saying that for a given someone, you couldn't eat enough to take yourself out of contention, but the answer to "Can exercise make you thin?" is "yes."

What I object to most in the article title is the implication that people are working hard, but somehow wasting their effort.

"Oh, the problem is that you've been getting up an hour early every morning to run and run and run, and have been undoing all of your hard work by eating Hardees Thickburgers 3 times a day!"

If you have the self-discipline to run regularly, you have the self-discipline necessary to complement it with the MINIMUM of dietary caution necessary to let it work for you.

Re: Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin

#57

Post by kreneskyp »

absconditus wrote: post #25
pohl wrote: post #12

The first thing that jumped out at me is that weight is the wrong metric in the first place. I'd rather be the same weight but have more, and better proportioned, muscle mass. (Muscle burns calories even when you're resting...it's a much better knob to tweak than the number of calories burnt during exercise.) The author might be better off by giving away his bathroom scale and thinking about his body as a system.

The article does address this to some extent. For example: "According to calculations published in the journal Obesity Research by a Columbia University team in 2001, a pound of muscle burns approximately six calories a day in a resting body, compared with the two calories that a pound of fat burns. Which means that after you work out hard enough to convert, say, 10 lb. of fat to muscle — a major achievement — you wo…

It does not address the fact that when you convert 10 lbs of fat to muscle, you weigh the same but are ultimately in better shape.

This is a problem for a lot of people especially for men, who tend to build a lot of muscle as they exercise. Focusing on weight will mislead you and set yourself up for disappointment. A better solution is to take a front and side photo of yourself once a month to compare physical transformation.

Re: Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin

#58

Post by gaius »

mr_luc wrote: post #56
gaius wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1,000 calories, considering the modern possibilities, isn't that much. I mean, that's a bit less than two slices of toast with Nutella. Yes, it is VERY difficult to out-train a bad diet. There is an example I use with friends, which is if you drink 5 pints of beer, you'll need to run 10 miles to burn that off (really). Have a pizza or a kebab on the way home, another 10 miles. Have a fry-up for breakfast, another 10…

I agree that it's difficult to out-train a bad diet. But 1) Remember, we're counting the difference between what you need to eat and what you do eat. So although crazily irresponsible people doubtless are regularly eating 5000+ calorie diets, day in and day out, the amount they need to burn off to zero out would then be around 2000+ calories. 2) Impractical is not impossible. Even if you OVEREAT by 3000 calories per…

if you spent all day running and resting/drinking water from running, you could do it.

Well, I am a Marathon runner. I know what burning 3000 extra calories in a day feels like. There is no way I could do that every day, and the average person is a LOT less fit than me.

Exercise is important for many reasons, but fat loss is mostly about the diet.

Re: Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin

#59

Post by dasil003 »

Retric wrote: post #49
dkarl wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over forty miles per week with no rest days == too much for most people, way too much if you're overweight. Sure, some people do a lot more, but there are always exceptions. Every running trail and running club is disproportionately populated by people who have better resistance to injury. Steady running is one of the most challenging things you can do to your joints. (I find doing fartlek over a given distance a lot…

"aren't many things you can do by yourself that burn calories as well as running." All activity's at your aerobic limit burn the same number of calories. You can run, dance, row, weigh lift, or just bail hay, and you will encounter the same limit. It's basically a question of how much oxygen you can absorb though the lungs and dump into your blood stream.

It's also a question of motivation. I'm sure I burn more calories mountain biking given the fact that several times I've gotten to the top of a hill and then puked. I've never pushed myself that hard running.

Re: Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin

#60

Post by dasil003 »

dkarl wrote: post #40
kscaldef wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

running an hour at a 10 minute mile (6 mph) is unlikely to lead to injury.

Over forty miles per week with no rest days == too much for most people, way too much if you're overweight. Sure, some people do a lot more, but there are always exceptions. Every running trail and running club is disproportionately populated by people who have better resistance to injury. Steady running is one of the most challenging things you can do to your joints. (I find doing fartlek over a given distance a lot…

Let's not forget the role that Nike has played in this by popularizing the running shoe based on perpetuating the notion that padded soles reduce injury when in fact the effect is the exact opposite.
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