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Diet, not lack of exercise, drives obesity, a new study finds

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Re: Diet, not lack of exercise, drives obesity, a new study finds

#61

Post by bsoles »

mvieira38 wrote: post #46
Delphiza wrote: post #32

Unsurprisingly, the title is sensationalist and not representative of the study. The study compares energy expenditure across different economic groups i.e. western people sitting in offices versus hunter-gatherers in Africa, and found that difference in energy expenditure does not account for differences in obesity, so points to consumption as the likely reason. The sample dataset explicitly excluded 'athletes', so…

Would you say Luka, Neymar and others are outrunning their diets? Did Shaq, too? You don't automatically get a good physique by being an athlete, you still have to earn it. People just see that all of the top athletes have earned it and take it for granted, like they don't have world class dieticians and a huge financial incentive to maintain a strict diet

Michael Phelps did outswim his diet. He famously ate a lot of junk food and pizza, and yet remained fit because of his huge daily calorie expenditure. A direct quote from an interview with him, where he states: "I just sort of try to cram whatever I can into my body. It’s pretty much whatever I feel like eating, I’m going to eat".

Re: Diet, not lack of exercise, drives obesity, a new study finds

#62

Post by naikrovek »

palmfacehn wrote: post #36
com2kid wrote: post #7

This is true to an extent and I'm very fond of the saying, but beyond a certain point you can indeed outrun a bad diet. I used to spend ~4 hours a day training martial arts (kickboxing, BJJ, etc) during which time I could eat almost anything I wanted without gaining weight. I'm sure if I had downed a cheesecake a day it would've been bad for me, but I was able to get away with a level of excess back then that I am un…

I can confirm the same from my messenger days. On days when deliveries were sparse, we found ourselves moving from cafe to bakery, eating more pastries than a doctor would recommend. Regardless of the day's activity levels we would generally drink large amounts of beer after work and sometimes during. Maintaining weight and satisfying our appetites was always a more pressing concern. I'm not a dietician, but when I r…

what is "processed" versus "highly processed" versus "ultra processed"?

the way these things are described feels very much like people are using a dowsing rod to find where to dig a well, or something. mumbo-jumbo.

I'm sure even "super ultra giga processed" foods are fine for you so long as you don't eat a lot of them. I'm not even sure that "processed" is bad at all. I don't want to eat raw cashews, I'll die (as will anyone else) I want those processed by cooking. Is pre-cooked food "processed" or "highly processed" or "ultra processed" or something else? all of the above; it depends on who you ask.

I don't know of any level of "processed" which is bad, I just know that if you consume 10k calories per day and only burn 3k, you're going to gain weight, level of "processed" probably doesn't matter. And I think that's all this study is saying: unless you're extremely active, you can't burn 10k calories a day, your body really limits how many calories you can burn in a day unless you are physically working enough to actually turn that amount of energy into physical work.

anyway, yeah. i immediately distrust anyone that starts mentioning "processed" or "highly processed" or "ultra processed" because I don't think those are defined. I think they're speaking entirely on vibes which are not quantitative.

Re: Diet, not lack of exercise, drives obesity, a new study finds

#63

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

stonemetal12 wrote: post #44
ricciardo wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a pretty interesting observation. I always thought it was solely on the amount of calories consumed vs burned. For example, you burn ~2500 through just living, if you eat a pizza that contains 3000 calories, no matter the time at which you eat it, will you not still gain fat?

>solely on the amount of calories consumed vs burned. It is, but CI\CO as advice doesn't take in to account that you aren't a machine and we aren't calculating gas mileage. The system is both adaptive and reactive. CI and CO changes based on the situation, and you have no way to accurately measure.

That's why you don't worry about Calories Out. You measure Calories In daily and then your weight at a sample rate that's long enough that it averages out most weirdness - probably weekly. If your weight is going up, reduce caloric consumption.

Re: Diet, not lack of exercise, drives obesity, a new study finds

#64

Post by 0x737368 »

mvieira38 wrote: post #46
Delphiza wrote: post #32

Unsurprisingly, the title is sensationalist and not representative of the study. The study compares energy expenditure across different economic groups i.e. western people sitting in offices versus hunter-gatherers in Africa, and found that difference in energy expenditure does not account for differences in obesity, so points to consumption as the likely reason. The sample dataset explicitly excluded 'athletes', so…

Would you say Luka, Neymar and others are outrunning their diets? Did Shaq, too? You don't automatically get a good physique by being an athlete, you still have to earn it. People just see that all of the top athletes have earned it and take it for granted, like they don't have world class dieticians and a huge financial incentive to maintain a strict diet

I can't take this Luka slander. The guy carried the ungrateful Mavericks team for 6 seasons averaging 35mpg. He's not out of shape. Same thing with Jokic, 10 seasons of 32mpg average. Their mpg also go up in the playoffs.

People need to stop thinking about I do agree with regards to Shaq, the guy coasted in his talent later in his career and let himself go. Had he a better work ethic he could have been in the conversation for one of the greatest players ever.

Re: Diet, not lack of exercise, drives obesity, a new study finds

#65

Post by jmyeet »

Delphiza wrote: post #32

Unsurprisingly, the title is sensationalist and not representative of the study. The study compares energy expenditure across different economic groups i.e. western people sitting in offices versus hunter-gatherers in Africa, and found that difference in energy expenditure does not account for differences in obesity, so points to consumption as the likely reason. The sample dataset explicitly excluded 'athletes', so…

I don't think the existence of elite athletes alters the central point: it is vastly to go into calorific deficit by altering diet than increasing exercise.

Running is around 600 calories per hour [1]. A large fries from McDonald's is 480 calories. A can of Coke is 140 calories.

What's easier? Not eating the fries and drinking the Coke or running vigorously for an hour?

When you look at the group who have become morbidly obese, you see diets that reach 10, 20 or 30+ thousand calories a day. You get to 600+ pounds and you actually need like 20,000 calories just to maintain that weight. When such people decide to change, they're often put on a medical diet of ~2400 calories. There is no way they could exercise down to this kind of calorie deficit.

Peple should think of food in terms of how much exercise it is because it becomes impossible to ignore just how much easier it is to alter diet than it is to increase calorie expenditure.

[1]: https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/weight-loss/in-...

Re: Diet, not lack of exercise, drives obesity, a new study finds

#66

Post by RobKohr »

I cut out drinks with sugar in them, eating after dinner, and in general just eating healthy meals.

I lift weights about 3 days a week, and am fairly fit strengthwise.

All this lowered my fat levels down to a reasonable level, but still left me with about 23% body fat and a bit of a belly, and that remained consistent. Trying to diet didn't really cause any maintainable change.

What I found has helped is doing a 24 hour fast once a week. This really means just eating one dinner a little earlier (4:30pm) and then skipping breakfast and lunch and drinking water with electrolytes added.

With keeping the rest of the days calorie intake the same, I have shaved off consistently 1 pound a week and 1/2" from my waistline.

This has been going for 5 weeks now, and I have gone from 23% to 19.7% based on navy body fat formula.

What is great is I have no cravings or feelings that I am depriving myself except for the last 8 hrs of the weekly fast. The rest of the week, I eat well.

My plan is to bring myself down to 15% and then continuing to measure. If I get above 15% I fast that week, if I don't then I don't fast, so it basically becomes like a controllable throttle.

Re: Diet, not lack of exercise, drives obesity, a new study finds

#67

Post by alistairSH »

taeric wrote: post #16

Reminds me of a video I saw recently that pointed out the absurd number of calories professional athletes burn. Upshot of that video was that you almost certainly can run to lose weight. Just don't expect it to be an easy task. At a personal level, I can also say that it is flat out hard to eat large amounts of food if you are staying active. The stereotype of wanting an after meal nap is legit. It is also somewhat i…

At a personal level, I can also say that it is flat out hard to eat large amounts of food if you are staying active.

I've never had that problem. When I exercise a lot, my body just starts to crave a higher proportion of calorie-dense foods - ice cream, cheese, breads. The actual volume of food might not go up all that much, but the balance changes.

Of course, "a lot" for me is 10-15 hours cardio/week plus 3-4 hours/week weight training. My baseline is 3-5 hours cardio and the same 3-4 weight training. I only ramp up to 10+ hours cardio if I have a major event planned (100 mile mtn bike race or similar).

Re: Diet, not lack of exercise, drives obesity, a new study finds

#68

Post by 71153750 »

justinmarsan wrote: post #53
71153750 wrote: post #45

This reminds a little of Usain Bolt famously having chicken nuggets before his final at the Beijing Olympics. Although hardly indicative of a bad diet that he may or may not have had. I think as well there is some difficulty with variability between people that isn't clear or maybe doesn't matter at scale. The article linked study was across 43 nations with 4213 adults. Yet there may still be individuals who can argu…

I do bouldering and I eat fast food multiple times a week, I can definitely outclimb my poor diet... I probably helps that I don't eat breakfast though... It's well known though that as you build muscle, your rest calorie consumption increases, so probably if you build/maintain enough muscle, then you can just outrun your intake, since you consume more without doing anything to start with...

I agree. Also age and other activities factor in I'm sure. I suspect you carry your bouldering mat and do some walking to and from boulders.

I think it stands to reason that if we took an overweight person and trained them to eat what you or I eat and then move like you or I move, they'd end up losing weight.

For me though, I know that I can be running say 50km/31 miles a week regularly and that if there is weight loss, it is impercetible to me. But up it with just two more runs and I believe I do start outrunning my diet. Again, this is an n=1 and ignores pretty much every other factor in my life.

Re: Diet, not lack of exercise, drives obesity, a new study finds

#69

Post by 0x737368 »

bko wrote: post #2

> "So if we burn more of our energy every day on physical activity, on exercise, after a while our bodies will adjust and spend less energy on the other tasks that we sort of don't notice going on in the background," Pontzer says. I also think this is true related to food. Your body adjusts its metabolism based on the amount of food you eat as long as it's not chronic. That's why you can have competitive eaters that…

Competitive eaters throw their food up and keep it secret as "I'm just calorie counting" sounds a lot better than "I pretty much have an eating disorder". You can't eat large portions once a week and still train your stomach to stretch enough to eat those gargantuan amounts of food that they need to perform.

Re: Diet, not lack of exercise, drives obesity, a new study finds

#70

Post by 71153750 »

bsoles wrote: post #61
mvieira38 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you say Luka, Neymar and others are outrunning their diets? Did Shaq, too? You don't automatically get a good physique by being an athlete, you still have to earn it. People just see that all of the top athletes have earned it and take it for granted, like they don't have world class dieticians and a huge financial incentive to maintain a strict diet

Michael Phelps did outswim his diet. He famously ate a lot of junk food and pizza, and yet remained fit because of his huge daily calorie expenditure. A direct quote from an interview with him, where he states: "I just sort of try to cram whatever I can into my body. It’s pretty much whatever I feel like eating, I’m going to eat".

I think the challenge with swimming is that there is thermodynamics of swimming through water to also contend with. So your body is also having to keep warm whilst losing heat to better heat conducting fluid (water vs air). But I still agree, if Phelps was running or even walking with the same effort he could eat similarly.
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