Comment by xurukefi
3 years ago
"You can’t outrun a bad diet" seems to be the party line among fitness people these days. Anecdotally speaking that's not really true for a lot of people. I run > 100km/week pretty much all year round (most of it on extremely hillly trails) and despite my bad diet consisting mainly of pancakes, white bread, nutella, pizza, fries and burgers, I am not overweight with 78kg at 190cm. Before I picked up running I was moderately overweight. If I can't run for a prolonged period of time, then I start gaining weight again. I've met plenty of people who run similar mileage and many of them also have pretty bad dietary habits but none of them are oeverweight. Note that I'm not saying that this is healthy (it clearly isn't).
However, I still think that there is a lot of truth to the "you can't outrun a bad diet" statement. A lot of people who occasionally go for a run are likely to overestimate their energy expenditure and feel like they have to eat a cow to compensate. I think, however, that the statement becomes less and less true the more excessive the exercise gets. If you burn thousands of calories day in day out with exercise it seems to become harder to overcompensate this every time with excess food intake.
I think the bigger issue with exercise is a mental one. Weight loss seems to be a pretty bad motivation for exercising. Most people I know who picked up running for the sole purpose of losing weight eventually gave up or they are stuck with their 5km weekend park run, which, of course, is rather pointless for their objective. 100% of the avid runners I know (including myself) don't care about their weight. I could probably lose more weight (or improve my long term health) if I changed my diet, but it's simply something that I'm not interested in. I run because it's fun and a somewhat low body weight seems to be a by-product of that.
I think I agree with your general point, and specifically agree that that statement is targeted as "mainstream advice", and might not be literally true. However, one point of disagreement:
> I run > 100km/week pretty much all year round (most of it on extremely hillly trails) and despite my bad diet consisting mainly of pancakes, white bread, nutella, pizza, fries and burgers, I am not overweight with 78kg at 190cm.
That is not necessarily a "bad diet" for weight loss purposes. It's an unhealthy diet, but as long as you're not eating too much of all those foods, it won't make you gain weight. It's only bad because most people who are eating these kinds of foods will be eating too much of them (because they are much less filling for the amount of calories that they contain).
Yeah. I think the advice on diet is a good one for mainstream audiences. Giving nuance is difficult when people are looking for quick answers.
I had the same experience for a long time. People would see me eat Oreos, pizza, ice cream, pop tarts, etc. and they’d say, “how are you so incredibly thin if you eat all that garbage?” And I’d respond that I just eat less - I don’t eat a lot. And it was true. I’d eat garbage but I’d eat so little that I’d maintain an incredibly low weight. Now as I’m older and stress has gotten better - I’ve started eating more and gained weight due to it. It’s all due to the quantity/amount-of-calories.