Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The myth of outrunning your diet

williamjbarry.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 97 posts

Re: The myth of outrunning your diet

#71

Post by colechristensen »

rkomorn wrote: post #63
colechristensen wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[flagged]

Re: The myth of outrunning your diet

#72

Post by taeric »

watwut wrote: post #67
taeric wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Agreed. I was trying to emphasize the difficulty in starting, is all.

And further agreed that you don't have to push to uncomfortably hard. I would emphasize that it is almost certainly some level of discomfort for everyone, though.

Re: The myth of outrunning your diet

#73

Post by Synaesthesia »

taeric wrote: post #54
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.

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.

To be honest I just weighed myself and I have lost weight.

I think it's a fair amount. I try hit 10000 steps a day, go to the gym, do occasional runs.

Re: The myth of outrunning your diet

#74

Post by taeric »

Synaesthesia wrote: post #73
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.

To be honest I just weighed myself and I have lost weight. I think it's a fair amount. I try hit 10000 steps a day, go to the gym, do occasional runs.

If you are getting 10k steps a day in, I'm assuming that is already 3-400 calories right there?

I should be clear. It isn't that I don't think 500 is enough to make a difference. I legit didn't know if it was a lot of extra calories to burn.

I've been walking my kids from the bus stop lately, and my exercise thing is convinced I'm getting about 600 calories in from that. (To be clear, I run to the bus stop, and then walk them back. Two trips, due to different drop off times.) I assumed I also need to do other work on top of that.

Re: The myth of outrunning your diet

#75

Post by maxglute »

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…

Most of these conversations boil down to disconnect between

1) weight managemennt is 100% solved process

2) that process is trivial for some or borderline impossible for some depending on genetic of enviroment factors IN BOTH DIRECTIONs, most of attention is just fixated on weight loss

Re: The myth of outrunning your diet

#76

Post by dwohnitmok »

paulddraper wrote: post #58
dwohnitmok wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not trying to strawman here, but I've never met a person like that who was ever overweight at any point in their life. This is an extremely common story for anyone who does through hiking on the Appalachian Trail (or Pacific Crest Trail, Continental Divide Trail, etc.). Quite a lot of people start overweight (although I have no idea what the percentage looks like). Almost everyone ends up losing a very signific…

That's definitely an outlier case. And despite their choices of calorie-dense foods, > gorging themselves at every opportunity is a meaningful qualifier. Carrying your food will lead to restriction, naturally.

> Carrying your food will lead to restriction, naturally.

Eh. Yes, but people on the trail are still regularly eating > 6000 calories a day. If you talk with folks, the limit is often satiety even when not in town (people often simply cannot eat enough calories without feeling sick if they don't pace their eating accordingly), not pack capacity.

Re: The myth of outrunning your diet

#77

Post by DangitBobby »

emptyfile wrote: post #45
DangitBobby wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people maybe can but most cannot. Even running like 5 miles a day is completely undone by a large frapachino. The difference in an active adult's normal day, like a teacher walking around, and a completely sedentary worker at their computer can be undone with a cream cheese bagel. And in the US, a bunch of the food that's convenient to buy and eat is "hyperpalatable". You're going to be really hard pressed to lo…

35 miles per week is low milage. 10 miles per day would be more appropriate for someone aiming for a marathon. If you eat real food and not "frapachino" (whatever that is) it can be pretty hard to eat enough food to keep your weight, without stomach issues. No, I don't run that much. But many people do even more.

Yeah sure, 35 miles is totally realistic for the average American. Sorry I was too lazy to double check the spelling of frappuccino when it didn't auto-correct on my phone, I'm sure that made it really difficult to tell what I was talking about!

Re: The myth of outrunning your diet

#78

Post by lucyjojo »

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 have a very simple technique.

i don't eat one day a week when i want to lose weight. the next day i pay attention to eat slowly.

and i do moderate exercise simply to keep the fluids pumping in my body.

(precondition being that when you eat all days of the week your weight remains more or less stable, including exercise)

Re: The myth of outrunning your diet

#79

Post by lucyjojo »

jokoon wrote: post #37

Physical activity also makes me less hungry. The problem is that physical activity is unnatural and not intuitive. Biology is about saving energy, not spending it to keep everything healthy. Bad mental health leads me to do less physical activity. Bad mental health also makes physical activity more difficult and painful.

my weekly exercise consists in walking/biking to the game bar 9km away, play games, eat snacks and joke around, then get back home.

it's pretty fun.

just gotta bring a change of clothes

Re: The myth of outrunning your diet

#80

Post by lucyjojo »

weird-eye-issue wrote: post #36
ehnto wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thermodynamics argument misses the fact that our body is not a single input, output engine. The body will use energy from several different sources, with different efficiencies. It will store energy in different forms, with different efficiencies, and it throws away a lot of energy that you put into it. Yes, if you spend energy, it has to come from somewhere, but it's only in really specific scenarios that it com…

You are completely wrong because over the long term, thermodynamics isn’t just a theory — it’s the governing principle. No matter how “inefficient” the body is at using or storing energy, it still obeys conservation of energy. If you consistently burn more calories than you consume, your body has to draw on stored energy (fat, muscle, glycogen, etc.) to make up the difference. That’s not up for debate — it’s been pro…

you are completely ignoring injuries, deficiencies and genetic particularities.

the human body is not a linear system. it's markedly self-regulated and non-linear, and things can get pretty bad pretty quick.

Post reply on HN