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Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

science.org

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Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#331

Post by onion2k »

rdiddly wrote: post #312

Last thing I saw was "The son of two high school English teachers, Pontzer grew up on 40 hectares of woods in the Appalachian bla bla bla..." You know that sentence. So many articles have that sentence. The one where it veers off course to talk about the (usually uninteresting) person who found the thing the article is ostensibly and nominally about. Am I alone in being perfectly happy reading about science for the d…

Am I alone in being perfectly happy reading about science for the duration of an article, and not particularly caring about the scientist and what breed of dog he has etc.?

science.org is like a good quality popsci magazine. People read it for the science, but also for entertainment. The aim is to make science engaging to non-scientists. If you just want the science then you should be heading to Nature or Arxiv.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#332

Post by tommiegannert »

I wonder if the body is constantly hitting the upper limit of something, like temperature or kidney flow. If the parts of the human body are very elastic in their energy use, then this means we're overall maximizing energy expenditure. I guess that could make sense while there's an excess of available energy in the guts, which would otherwise go to waste.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#333

Post by jdrc »

rdiddly wrote: post #312

Last thing I saw was "The son of two high school English teachers, Pontzer grew up on 40 hectares of woods in the Appalachian bla bla bla..." You know that sentence. So many articles have that sentence. The one where it veers off course to talk about the (usually uninteresting) person who found the thing the article is ostensibly and nominally about. Am I alone in being perfectly happy reading about science for the d…

Yes there is a name i think for that rambling on with insignificant details about the person

At best it should be seen as a warning for possible biases in the science due to the person's background or upbringing, or random life anecdote.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#334

Post by sersi »

Auracle wrote: post #251
tomjen3 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A stationary bike at a steady 20mph pace is about 500 calories in 30 minutes It is also something at most a tiny minority of the obese population can do.

I just plugged a 300 pound person in to a calculator for a “moderate” walking speed, and that’d burn nearly 500 calories in an hour.

Most 300 pound people I know cannot walk for an hour at a moderate walking speed.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#335

Post by csee »

deepnotderp wrote: post #282

The conclusion is almost certainly wrong: 1. From a simple sniff test, if this were true, then athletes wouldn't need a lot of calories. This obviously isn't true, eg Phelps eats 8-11K calories a day. I personally eat around 3.5K calories a day. If exercise didn't impact caloric burn I assure you I'd be a lot fatter... 2. The only plausible mechanisms for why exercise wouldn't result in more overall caloric burn is t…

1. Phelps seems to be guessing: "Maybe eight to ten thousand calories per day," he writes... Also, the research shows there is extreme variation in people's resting BMR (perhaps due to large variation in height, body weight, stress levels, etc), so you eating 3500 calories isn't decisive against the thesis of this article.

2. That is exactly his hypothesis, and he has produced evidence for this hypothesis in a recent experiment. I don't know why you are presenting this as some kind of counter-argument.

3. That blog post isn't a coherent critique. The post's two points are that the drinking solution is also used for measuring energy intake, and that the Hadza actually burn far less calories than Western people until such numbers are adjusted. This first point isn't relevant without further explanation, and the second point only serves to further support the thesis.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#336

Post by jdrc »

dahart wrote: post #4

> “You can’t exercise your way out of obesity,” […] “you can’t outrun a bad diet.” While this article is being a bit dramatic and possibly understating the impact of exercise slightly, I feel a little dumb that I didn’t know this earlier. It took me several decades too long to understand the obvious, that exercise is for building strength, and losing weight happens by eating less. I tried for way too many years to ex…

that s terrible. I thought it would be common knowledge by now, the mixed really does a disservice to people who genuinely want to lose weight. I think the myth is perpetuated by sports goodS marketing

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#337

Post by tomerv »

rdiddly wrote: post #312

Last thing I saw was "The son of two high school English teachers, Pontzer grew up on 40 hectares of woods in the Appalachian bla bla bla..." You know that sentence. So many articles have that sentence. The one where it veers off course to talk about the (usually uninteresting) person who found the thing the article is ostensibly and nominally about. Am I alone in being perfectly happy reading about science for the d…

I hate that, and I usually just skip that part. No point fighting it, I guess.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#338

Post by choeger »

What the article doesn't mention is that the "extra reserves" in the body, i.e., the calories that are currently used and are not burnt when exercising, must be a constant (the body can only skip burning calories that it gets) whereas exercise can be scaled.

Say you are overweight on a 3000kcal diet and start exercising. It is physically impossible to not lose weight if you exercise for more than 3000kcal. You might not lose weight if you exercise a more modest 1000kcal or even just 500 - but the statement that you cannot outrun your diet is trivially false. It might just be much harder than one might naively assume.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#339

Post by [deleted] »

rdiddly wrote: post #312

Last thing I saw was "The son of two high school English teachers, Pontzer grew up on 40 hectares of woods in the Appalachian bla bla bla..." You know that sentence. So many articles have that sentence. The one where it veers off course to talk about the (usually uninteresting) person who found the thing the article is ostensibly and nominally about. Am I alone in being perfectly happy reading about science for the d…

[deleted]

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#340

Post by raldi »

rdiddly wrote: post #312

Last thing I saw was "The son of two high school English teachers, Pontzer grew up on 40 hectares of woods in the Appalachian bla bla bla..." You know that sentence. So many articles have that sentence. The one where it veers off course to talk about the (usually uninteresting) person who found the thing the article is ostensibly and nominally about. Am I alone in being perfectly happy reading about science for the d…

Right? Can someone just list the myths and their refutations so I can move on with my life?
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