Comment by yourabstraction
3 years ago
I think a big part of the issue is that popular fitness and weight loss advice has perpetuated the wrong way to exercise to loose weight. When most people think about exercise for weight loss, they imagine long exhausting sessions on the treadmill, dripping with sweat, and a high calorie burn number. While the short term results may seem great based on the immediate calories burned, it's actually a terrible strategy for several reasons.
1) You become more efficient at repeated exercise, so the calories burned number on the machine is not accurate.
2) Your hunger will increase to compensate for the calories burned and you'll subconsciously eat more if not carefully tracking.
3) Excessive cardio and reduced calories can increase daytime cortisol levels and reduce resting metabolic rate.
4) Excessive cardio and reduced calories can cause muscle wasting and further reduce metabolic rate.
A better long term strategy is a strength training program with short cardio sessions. You'll build muscle which will increase the resting metabolism and avoid the over exertion stress that can lead to decreased metabolic rate.
Of course, at the end of the day it really is calories in calories out (despite the naysayers). But, the devil is in the details, because measuring calories out is extremely difficult unless you're willing to live in a sealed room that monitors your exhaled CO2 24/7. Diet (not how much but what you eat), sleep, and stress can have a large impact on the metabolic rate, and thus drastically change the CICO calculation.
> 2) Your hunger will increase to compensate for the calories burned and you'll subconsciously eat more if not carefully tracking.
This is also a oft-made claim that doesn't have much backing. Part of the point of the research described in TFA is that humans who face specific periods of energy expenditure during the day may often simply reduce energy expenditure during the rest of the day so that TEE remains roughly constant.
I know many endurance athletes (having been one) who would report that some levels of exercise actually result in appetite suppression.
I know this isn't rigorous but it definitely matches up with my personal experience -- I'll be hungrier, often ravenously so, after strenuous activity.
I have no apetite at all after biking for two hours. However, if I drink any diet soda or piece of candy with sweetener, I will be ravenously hungry in 10 minutes. Has always been like this so I stay away from that stuff.
My exercise is a game called Turf. Mostly played in Sweden where there are a lot of zones close by. I bike quite relaxed for 1-4 minuts and stand still for 20 seconds in the zone, then repeat until next zone. It's a bit harder during winter with all the snow though. I have done nothing to my diet and lost about 20 kilo the last year. The GPS says I traveled about 3500 km the last year at my slow pace.
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After a long bike ride, apart from being much hungrier than usual, food tastes better. Mediocre food becomes good, good food becomes the best thing you've ever eaten.
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The activity makes a big difference for me though. Running for example tends to not have a major impact on appetite.. sometimes I feel like it actually lowers my desire to eat. That's based on relatively short runs though (45-90 mins of activity). I don't know how I'd feel after a marathon.
If I ride a bike for 3 hours, I feel like I could eat a horse.
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I have a bias towards the idea that we are very different, and it really depends on many unknown factors that apply only to one specific individual.
I also have that gut feeling, mind the pun. It stands to reason to me that since metabolism is incredibly complex, any slight variation in any of the parameters can lead to significant differences observed at an overall operational level. It's also very obvious people are reporting a wide range of experiences for the same activity
We're not _that_ different. And a lot _is_ known. There isn't anyone on earth with incurable obesity.
I know, anecdata, but on my off dates (I go swimming in the early morning three days a week) I have to fight not eating breakfast early and then needing lunch and dinner in the evening.
On my swim-days I have no problem with a late breakfast leading me to be able to skip lunch and enjoy my dinner.
But I have no other insight as my own experience.
It has a lot of backing when you look at people changing jobs without gaining or losing weight. We think of exercise in terms of X minutes on a treadmill, but people working long days of physical labor can more than double their daily caloric needs and will eat accordingly without prompting.
There where plenty of old jokes about lumberjack breakfasts and people eating skills tall stacks of pancakes. These guys weren’t trying to gain or lose weight just keep going for another day of hard labor, but when you start talking 6-8,000 calories per day it’s an insane amount of food.
Also, some of the feedback mechanisms involved are quiet slow and can take weeks to kick in. Your body doesn’t need to balance things every day as gaining or losing significant weight takes time.
Also anecdotal, but I’m not an athlete (like, the inverse of an athlete, I’m overweight and don’t move enough) and moderate exercising does, in my case, suppress some appetite. I eat les after exercising.
My 2 cents theory is that it suppress the "stress induced" appetite.
It might also increase dopamine. I have ADHD and there are two things that let me focus better and feel less hungry: stimulants and exercise.
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If you are low on sugar (therefore hungry) for a while, your body will start burning fat (lipolysis) to restore sugar levels. This will suppress apetite.
It's easy to experience, although it can take longer for lipolysis to start if you're not used to. Of course, eating sugar during or before exercise delays it.
Some levels, yes, appetite-suppressing. When appetite returns, it can be with a vengeance.
I think it depends heavily on what you do. When you run, you tend to eat less, me definitely. When you weight lift, do body weight exercises, do anything that builds muscle, you need to eat. Personally I get more hungry about HIIT too.
And that additional eating is not a bad thing either. It is body needing supply to build muscles. For most beginners, that is a good thing.
Yeah, this is me. I naturally eat a lot less when I am exercising than when I am not. I'll often exercise in the morning and then have no desire to eat until dinner time.
If you fall into a routine CICO isn't that difficult in practice. First, while sleep/stress definitely impact the equation unless you are at an unusual life crisis, the ups and downs mostly balance out over time. Second, I don't recommend counting calories, at least not in the traditional way.
Instead, eat a fairly standardized diet at least on a weekly basis, so roughly the same meals (doesn't have to be exact). Eat a quantity of food such that you neither gain nor lose weight over a period of time (a couple of weeks with daily weigh ins is sufficient to ensure a flat line on a chart). Adjust intake until the line is flat if you start seeing a trend up or down. Now, to lose weight simple subtract 500 calories per day from what you eat (if you eat packaged foods, assume an extra 20% from the calories on the label). You should now have near exactly 1 lbs. per week weight loss. The reverse also works if you want to put on some weight. I do each of these once per year as a "mini-bulk" and a "mini-cut". I track my weigh ins on my Fitbit - it is a near perfect diagonal trend line over the 2-3 month period I do this.
NOTE: It is important to weigh in daily (at same time - I recommend first thing in morning after flushing the system) precisely because your weight fluctuates on a day to day basis by 2-3lbs. It takes a few days of weigh ins to see a trend change on the graph and you need to be able to adjust your intake if you are off.
Based on your description, I will venture a guess that you are not obese / grossly overweight. There is good evidence from various studies that obese/overweight people are not typically able to achieve this - usually their craving for food is far too powerful to just control simply by falling into a routine; or, the body sometimes finds other ways to adjust (the lipostat model).
This is really the problem with CICO - it is definitely correct in an abstract sense (weight doesn't come from thin air, and neither does food you eat magically disappear), but the factors controlling calories in and calories out are far more complex. Human behavior is far from being entirely rationally determined. Our choices (particularly in regards to food, exercise, and other basic needs) are to a great extent controlled by our metabolism, even though it often doesn't seem that way.
This probably explains why people rarely lose weight on the long term - you can allow yourself to be forced to eat less than your body thinks it needs for a while, and obviously you'll lose weight; but you will go right back up to your "normal" weight as soon as the forcing stops (program ends, willpower exhausted etc).
the type of food definitely matters. Carbs somehow 1) dont fill you up 2) spike your appetite. When I do low carb I feel so much less hungry on lower calories.
The deficit cant be too large, for me 500 is ok, but 1000 has me ravenous the next day.
Lots of obese people easily lose 2 pounds/week but as you get closer to a healthy weight it gets harder.
CICO was the first time I was able to actively lose weight in my entire life.
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I have also done almost exactly this process, and it worked for years to regulate my weight. But then I hit a plateau (a high plateau, not a low one) where I was unable to drop weight no matter how low I cut my calories. I started at a range that I knew had worked in the past, and lowered it over the course of weeks, well past the point where I was miserable. I even tried more complicated things, like varying my intake, doing on weeks and off weeks, etc. Nothing worked.
I wasn't sure what was causing it, so I hypothesized that I was low on muscle mass, and took up weight training. Then I gained ten pounds.
I'm not sure what the upshot is here, but my guess is that this approach indiscriminately consumes lean muscle mass if you don't pair it with muscle-building exercises.
> But then I hit a plateau (a high plateau, not a low one) where I was unable to drop weight no matter how low I cut my calories.
Fat cells "remember" their metabolic environment when they were created--ie. they "remember" your weight and fight you when you try to reduce it. It's one of the problems with dieting to large weight losses.
It is somewhere around 3 years for a fat cell to die off and be replaced. You probably need to "hang out" at the plateau weight for a bit until the fat cells that remember you being heavier die off.
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What I know from personal experience and learned a bit through knowledge osmosis (my better half studied ecotrophology/nutrition) is that many people underestimate how the body adapts to a "new normal" of caloric intake when this is well below basal metabolic rate/consumption.
On the other hand, the body also likes to get essential amino acids, if it does not get them from food, from the body's own muscle mass. This leads to a reduction of the own muscles and to a low basal metabolic rate.
I cannot judge whether one of the reasons is true, that would be the job of a good (!) nutritionist. Unfortunately, at least in Germany, the term is not protected and anyone, regardless of education, knowledge or experience may call himself so. Here there are really (especially on social networks) really many false claims.
The most likely possibility is that you were simply underestimating your calorie consumption. A lot of people forget to count the creamer in their coffee, the candies from the office break room, the little tastes while cooking dinner. Unless you have a severe metabolic disorder your body will only burn lean muscle mass as a last resort when you have exhausted glycogen stores and can't sustain the energy demand from fat alone. Some weight training is always a good idea, though.
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I've only used this to go up/down +-10 lbs seasonally (although I did permanently drop 40lbs on a one time calorie restriction diet about a decade ago, but not exactly this method). One thing to keep in mind (you probably thought of this already) is your calorie burn goes down as you lose weight. So a 160lbs person takes in less calories to maintain even weight than a 200lbs person, thus you may need to reassess baseline for longer cuts. Beyond that, no idea, and yes, everyone is individual.
I will say the whole time I have used this I have trained with weights extensively (5 days/week standard 3x sets per exercise body building routine). I do not know how much or little this plays into it, but definitely helps with the fat/muscle ratio (obviously).
I don’t see how the weight change is relevant in this. Muscle weighs more than fat, so your strength training caused you to build up some muscle, making you heavier. The valuable metric to track would be what % of your body is fat mass vs. muscle mass
For how long were you in a deficit before plateuing? There are some adaptations the body will make with regards to the thyroid that'll drastically lower your BMR
> Now, to lose weight simple subtract 500 calories per day from what you eat
I appreciate you are trying to be helpful. But most of what you said assumes a certain level or privilege (resources time/money/ableness) that the vast majority of people don't have. People working long hour jobs, or double jobs, or balancing kids/parent responsibilities. Often fast food is the only obvious option, and people aren't buying it until well into the throws of a low blood sugar event.
This coupled with metabolic/genetic differences can really muck up any given diet. What works of you doesn't just not work for everyone, it isn't even possible for everyone to follow.
That said, I know you are being helpful - my words or more to help those that might read them and be saying: "I did all that and it didn't work!"
> assumes a certain level or privilege (resources time/money/ableness) that the vast majority of people don't have
Unless you're talking about extremes (e.g. non first-world country, homeless, or disabled people etc) I'm going to call BS on this.
Everyone eats, and everyone has 24 hours in a day.
I don't know about the rest of the world, but in Australia you can buy a 800g can of tomatoes for $1.50, a 185g can of tuna for $1.60 and 1kg of rice for $1.40.
You could cook that up on a stove (with just a couple portions of rice) in about 30min, giving you two nutritious meals for (I'm going to be generous) let's say about $4. That's $2 per meal. 3 meals a day gives you a total of $42 for food per week.
So are you telling me that fast food costs less than $50 per week, that 23 hours isn't enough time left in the day to do everything else, or am I missing something here?
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Fair point, and and definitely some truth to that. I almost added "This works for me, your mileage may vary" disclaimer.
I will say that what I said above is _relative_, so if you go out for fast food "more than you should" than that becomes your baseline. Anything can be a baseline, even if not a healthy one.
I also know at least one person who has tried it and swears up and down it just doesn't work for them.
> Often fast food is the only obvious option
Ironically fast food often has some of the most easily available calories and macronutrient ratio. Working out the calories and macro for a home-made meal can be much more time-consuming
Sure fast food is convenient if you have little time, but people have survived poverty and mental health issues long before it.
> measuring calories out is extremely difficult unless you're willing to live in a sealed room that monitors your exhaled CO2 24/7
Is even that sufficient? Like, would you be able to tell the difference between "oxidation done by the body to generate energy for human cells" and "oxidation done by bacteria that feast on calories your human cells didn't get"? Maybe you could tell by the mixture of other gases, but I suspect CO2 itself wouldn't suffice.
Yeah, that's a very good point. This is kinda getting off into the weeds from the original point, but interesting weeds nonetheless :).
This study[0] says that measuring CO2 is not enough, and that indirect calorimetry is the gold standard for measuring energy expenditure (EE).
"Calculated EE based on CO2 measurement was not sufficiently accurate to consider the results as an alternative to measured EE by indirect calorimetry. Therefore, EE measured by indirect calorimetry remains as the gold standard to guide nutrition therapy."
Google says "Indirect calorimetry is the method by which measurements of respiratory gas exchange (oxygen consumption, V O 2 and carbon dioxide production, V CO 2 ) are used to estimate the type and amount of substrate oxidized and the amount of energy produced by biological oxidation."
So getting back to your point, if bacteria are feasting on part of the calories and producing CO2, it seems that it would throw off the results even using indirect calorimetry. At that point though are we kinda arguing semantics? While our microbiome isn't composed of human cells, you can still argue it's a part of our functioning organism. It seems it would be nearly impossible to measure human digested calories vs bacteria digested calories, so maybe the results are close enough. Also, many beneficial bacteria release calories that we can consume, like butyric acid, which further complicates things.
[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC5251283/
Let's consider a specific example: Lactose intolerance. The Wiki page for it is pretty good. So, despite the name, lactose intolerance refers to lacking the enzyme lactase, which is used to break down lactose. If you have lactase, then your human cells can use the calories from lactose; if you don't, then the bacteria get the lactose. Wiki says "Symptoms may include abdominal pain, bloating, diarrhea, gas, and nausea", which sounds like the bacteria do indeed eat it; if the bacteria couldn't extract calories from it either, then I assume it would just pass through and there would be no symptoms.
Thus, if Bob and Joe eat the exact same diet that has some milk products, and Bob is lactose intolerant while Joe isn't, then Bob's cells get fewer calories from that diet than Joe's. If Bob and Joe's bodies are otherwise identical and follow identical exercise routines, then I would assume that, like, if the diet is exactly enough to maintain Joe's weight, then Bob would lose weight; and if it's exactly enough to maintain Bob's weight, then Joe would gain weight. (Right? For sake of illustration, we could imagine that most of the diet's calories are from milk, and assume Bob can tolerate the nausea.) Yet "calories in" (measured as food entering stomach) are identical, and "calories out" (measured as CO2) might also be identical.
Lactose is a specific, well-understood example of some people absorbing nutrients much better than others. I think there are other examples, and I expect there's a lot of variation in absorption efficiency that's less known. When you hear about people who eat lots of food and remain thin, I suspect this is part of the explanation. And whether their bacteria get the calories instead, or whether it passes through untouched, might show up in CO2 measurements but I don't think it would be related to body fat accumulation.
In a conservation-of-energy sense, "calories in" certainly gives you an upper bound on how many observed "calories out" you can produce without losing weight. But I don't think there's a lower bound on how inefficient someone's digestive system can be (except "zero"), or a practical upper bound on how much their cells might burn energy without us noticing (without close observation). I think, if you wanted a complete accounting of calories-out that would actually match the input, you'd need to add up (a) the heat a person puts out (via contact with air and surfaces, also infrared emissions), (b) the work they do in a physics sense (e.g. lifting heavy objects), and (c) the amount of un-burned calories in their stool (or any other excreted substances).
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> At that point though are we kinda arguing semantics? While our microbiome isn't composed of human cells, you can still argue it's a part of our functioning organism.
It's not semantics, because when more calories are used up by bacteria they only sustain the amount of bacteria inside you, which then die and leave your body on a relatively quick timescale.
It's like if your fat cells could only store fat for a month before it gets discarded.
So it's important to know how much is each, if they can both vary.
What? No, I haven't gained weight, my bacteria is just getting a little heavy
>"oxidation done by bacteria that feast on calories your human cells didn't get"?
That would still be part of calories in.
> When most people think about exercise for weight loss, they imagine long exhausting sessions on the treadmill, dripping with sweat
This is a major education/communication issue. When I switched to weightlifting, I started seeing rapid and significant results. And I don't even really sweat from it (except on leg day)
> a terrible strategy
It may be less effective for losing weight, but exercise, including and especially cardio, is a great and essential strategy for other health reasons.
> You'll build muscle which will increase the resting metabolism
This is another myth. Even if you put on a serious amount of muscle, the change to your daily calorie burn is insignificantly increased in the larger scale of things.
Don’t to strength training to lose weight, so Strength training to get strong.
The change in metabolic rate is a homeostatic adaptation of the body due to increased energy expenditure due to exercise. You can measure it in a metabolic chamber, and 200-300 calories per day during rest time is not unusual for male athletes.
I don't know if I can accept that offhand because high levels of muscle atrophy is a human adapted trait specifically to save calories for the brain. If muscle maintenance costs were so insignificant why would we have adapted a trait to make us physically weaker?
This is anecdotal but the difference between what I can eat working on a farm with having lots of muscle mass and sitting around on a computer with that same muscle mass was not really significant. But the difference between sitting at a desk with a lot of muscle mass and sitting at a desk with noticeably less muscle mass is night and day in how much I have to eat. With small and inconsistent amounts of strength exercise to maintain a bit more muscle mass again, my caloric expenditure went back up, far beyond what is lost from the exercise itself.
Some very bold claims, would love some citations to give them more credibility.
HIIT workouts are great for cardiovascular fitness and melted the fat off of me that I gained from a sedentary lifestyle spanning the last 2-3 years for example.
Meh idk. Look at any long distance runners. They are skinny. Based on my own ancedotal evidence when I am running often I tend to be 20lbs less than when I don't.
You have a few correct points but are mostly spreading misinformation. Repeated exercise will only improve efficiency by a few percent at most, and then only for certain activities. For cycling, efficiency hardly improves at all. The calories shown on gym equipment are often nonsense but the latest generation of fitness trackers are reasonably accurate and can be worn 24/7.
You have to get into really long cardio sessions with no carbohydrate supplements before that has any significant catabolic effect. This is not a concern for casual athletes.
Strength training is great, but it should be combined with some form of cardio in a comprehensive fitness program.
> latest generation of fitness trackers are reasonably accurate and can be worn 24/7.
I've heard claims of 30% inaccuracy. Not sure if that applies to the absolute latest generation but I'd be happy to know if my understanding is outdated