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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

#81
post #65

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 morb…

> 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.

You left out the key word in that sentence, which should have appeared after “vastly”. I assume you mean easier, but in fact that’s not true for a lot of people.

> You get to 600+ pounds and you actually need like 20,000 calories just to maintain that weight.

That's wildly inaccurate. It’s more like 5k than 20k. Maintenace calorie requirements are basically linear with weight given similar activity patterns.

Also, most people who need to lose weight haven't already gotten to 600+ lbs.

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

#82

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

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 convers…

I'm a Luka fan, but he does look a (hehe) little chubby these past 2 seasons and it has impacted his game noticeably. Just compare the explosiveness from his first seasons to now

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

#83

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 eat fast food multiple times a week

This doesn't mean anything. Just like improving your climbing, what matters is consistency. Count your calories and macros and you'll see that your total intake is reasonable. The processed vs unprocessed argument is negligible when you're only partaking occasionally.

When I was younger, I couldn't understand why I was thinner than my friends. We'd go out to eat and I'd stuff down a huge meal with the best of them. Turns out that they were eating like that at every meal, while I was having cereal for breakfast and a less calorie-dense lunch or dinner.

as you build muscle, your rest calorie consumption increases

The difference is tiny. Yes, you can outrun or out-muscle a bad diet at the extremes, but that's like saying BMI isn't a useful metric. You're not 1970s Schwarzenegger or Phelps.

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

#84
I'm from a western country, but live outside the OECD. Currently on a trip back home and the food is disgusting.

Everything tastes sweet, is invariably hyper-processed, and supplied by a narrow pool of companies.

My diet in my host country isn't great, but it's so much easier to eat well. Fresh fruit and veg is more readily available, cheaper and frankly tastier. I wouldn't say people are any more or less sedentary, particularly in the capital city in which I live.

The study is supported by my limited experience.

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

#85

If you eat 4k calories but burn 5k, you'll lose a lot more weight than if you ate 1000 and burned 2000. So running can help but you still need a calorie deficit. Eating and burning more boosts your metabolism - if you measure a body builder during a bulk they are like a furnace, burning 1-2k over baseline. They still put on fat but it's a lot less than what you'd think given the amounts they're eating.

If you eat 4k calories but burn 5k, you'll lose a lot more weight than if you ate 1000 and burned 2000. Each of those is a 1,000 Calorie deficit. if you measure a body builder during a bulk Incidentally, the terms "bulking" and "cutting" come from bodybuilders taking steroids. I know that non-chemically-enhanced people have started using these terms, but it's honestly foolish. When you're not cycling anabolic steroid…

So you're saying your metabolism is the same when you eat 1k calories vs 4k?

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

#86

If you eat 4k calories but burn 5k, you'll lose a lot more weight than if you ate 1000 and burned 2000. So running can help but you still need a calorie deficit. Eating and burning more boosts your metabolism - if you measure a body builder during a bulk they are like a furnace, burning 1-2k over baseline. They still put on fat but it's a lot less than what you'd think given the amounts they're eating.

> If you eat 4k calories but burn 5k, you'll lose a lot more weight than if you ate 1000 and burned 2000.

No, you’ll lose less weight (I mean, assuming the difference in what you are burning is from exercise, if you find a way, e.g. by some chemical intervention, to kick your metabolism up to burning 4× your baseline amount without doing additional exercise, this doesn't apply), because you have the same calorie deficit and more of the weight you lose (unless you are in fairly great shape to start with, more than 100% of the weight you lose!) will be fat, and it takes a greater calorie deficit to lose a pound of fat than a pound of muscle.

OTOH, most people want to lose fat and avoid losing muscle, so this is a good thing, but its not more weight loss.

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

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you eat 4k calories but burn 5k, you'll lose a lot more weight than if you ate 1000 and burned 2000. Each of those is a 1,000 Calorie deficit. if you measure a body builder during a bulk Incidentally, the terms "bulking" and "cutting" come from bodybuilders taking steroids. I know that non-chemically-enhanced people have started using these terms, but it's honestly foolish. When you're not cycling anabolic steroid…

So you're saying your metabolism is the same when you eat 1k calories vs 4k?

Your metabolism differences are already accounted for when you talk about how much you are burning, you don't get to count metabolism twice.

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

#88
Maybe I'm reading the study wrong, but it doesn't seem like they accounted for caloric intake at all? https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2420902122

They accounted for total EE and basal EE, but the data they've supplied in the appendix doesn't track caloric intake.

This seems like a huge miss to me, as it is absolutely possible to have a sky-high TEE while being insanely fat (American football linebackers) and also having a low TEE and being skinny as a rail (by basically not eating, i.e. most fad diets).

Also, they categorize most of Africa as either horticulturalist, agropastoralist (why couldn't they say "farmers"???) or hunter-gatherer) despite the table at the bottom ranking their economies as "lowHDI", and the BEE for this cohort is N/A, which invalidates their PAL ratio (TEE/BEE).

idk this seems like a "fat ppl bad" study to me.

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

#89

Having lost 40lbs in the past couple of years, diet and walking have been key. It's just so much easier to burn fat by not eating it, than it is to try to burn it off with exercise. You'll find that burning 500 calories on a treadmill feels like an eternity, but eating one chocolate chip muffin? You can do that and gulp down a big glass of milk in 5 minutes like it's nothing.

>You'll find that burning 500 calories on a treadmill feels like an eternity

That's because you are doing it on a treadmill...

Try doing a more fun activity outside in the world and in nature. Like cycling.

I can cycle for 120 miles outdoors in about 6 hours in a single day and have a positive experience and memory of doing it and that burns about 8200 calories according to a calculators for my weight.

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

#90
You can, it just takes work and discipline.

For example jogging at about 7mph for 2 hours a day for a 180lb man would burn about 13,200 calories a week. I know people who jog like this.

Or I know people who cycle 250-400 miles a week which burns about 17,000-27,000 calories a week!

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