Comment by michalu
3 years ago
Whenever there's insignificant science making "controversial" claims like "you can't lose weight with sport" journalist will provide storytelling instead of science.
The whole premise of that "You can’t exercise your way out of obesity" is that you burn more calories when you start running than later on as you continue. What's so controversial about it? It's normal that body optimizes for energy expenditure that's why we develop strength, endurance etc. And that's why when you're truly doing sports you're running more, faster, lifting more, etc. you increase the challenge to give your body greater burden to carry.
If I start lifting 20lbs and 3 years later I still lift that of course I won't lose weight.
You have that same thing in other disciplines - "historians" who can't make any meaningful contribution yet want to make name for themselves go on claiming "that or that king was gay" or "vikings were trans" or whatever fits the trending topics of the day and they get media exposure.
> What's so controversial about it?
Your body burns incredibly more energy just "being there" than you burn moving about.
Exercise certainly increases your calorific expenditure, but it's much easier to ingest less fuel than to run 5 more miles because you had a portion of fries.
There are benefits in exercise, apart from the obvious ones the raising of the baseline metabolic expenditure, because muscles are expensive to maintain, but again, if you want to lose weight eating one less portion of fries is easier and takes less time than going for a 5 mile run.
> body optimizes for energy expenditure
No that's wrong, it optimises for energy maintenance. Genetically it's better to maintain fat and survive the next famine, than burning all the energy today. Which is why the body is so efficient at _not_ losing weight unless it has no other choice to maintain homeostasis. And thus to lose fat, we need to preferably eat less, not run more. Do both, and you'll do great.
While I agree with that excerice isn't a very efficient way to lose weight I think that you understate how many calories running burns.
When I run consistently I need to eat what feels like a lot more food to maintain my weight. Running burns about 700-800 kcal per hour for me (I have a quite small build) which ends up quite a bit over a week (I run 5-8 hours per week).
Think about it this way. The rate at which you burn calories is directly proportional to the rate at which you breathe out CO2 because that what happens with carbon you burn.
So if every day you train for an hour so that your breathing is 3 times faster, then you have additional two hours of burning in a day. 23 usual hours plus one worth 3. So you have 26 instead of 24 hours in a day.
It's way easier to put 15% less on your plate every day than to intensly train for an hour each day while keeping portions the same.
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TEE is what the article discusses measuring, not the energy burned during the exercises but the total in the day. The data in the referenced studies indicate the body compensates for the calories burned running by cutting back in energy use elsewhere.
I have no clue how many calories running burns, but the act of moving around leaves you less time to eat :). Getting fat in the dark winters of Sweden is more likely for me, because I'm just bored and don't want to go outside as much so I sit inside and eat chocolate.
The problem is, it isn't efficient if you are overweight :)
When I was at my heaviest weight, I could only do a normal-speed walk, which burned relatively little calories.
At my lightest, I was also having to go out of my way to eat extra calories, as I was cycling so much, and a fast 90 minute cycle would leave me light-headed if I didn't eat some extra calories.
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> Your body burns incredibly more energy just "being there" than you burn moving about.
Bullshit. My body goes through 1600-ish kcal on an idle day.
If I go out on a 4h steady bicycle ride (= 100km), I go through 2000 kcal on ride alone. That’s much more than my body burns just being there.
I don't get it, how is that a myth or controversial.
Cutting empty calories is the easiest to remove calories from daily total.
Exercise further decreases the ratio of calories in calories out.
Bottom line is: calories in - calories out.
There are caveats there for sure, like increasing muscle mass increases idle caloric burn. Different types of food have different effect promoting or impeding metabolism.
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"If I go out on a 4h steady bicycle ride (= 100km), I go through 2000 kcal on ride alone."
What do you mean 'on that ride alone', are you doing more than 4 hours of excersise a day, every day? Because that's like 0.1% of the population, most can't even fit that in their diary, let alone have the stamina/etc.
Average bloke goes to the gym for an hour couple times a week, at that level you calorie consumption is basically unchanged - its withing an error margin of natural variability of food you eat.
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Did you read the article? because this specific thing is what the science that the article covers explains.
tl;dr: your body burns roughly the same amount of calories regardless of exercise. However, it allocates those calories differently: if you don't spend them on exercise then it will spend them on stress (and presumably other stuff).
Which totally makes sense as to why my depression & anxiety fade if I run or work hard.
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> If I start lifting 20lbs and 3 years later I still lift that of course I won't lose weight.
This example is kind of bad :-)
You don't lose weight by lifting weights, in general.
And amusingly, if you did want to lose weight by lifting weights, your example is precisely how you <<would>> lose weight. You lift 10kgs over and over and over again, or even better, incorporate the extra weight into some sort of cardio routine.
Instead of increasing the weight, you'd increase the reps or the motion you use for lifting weights.
One does not only lose weight because of the exercise itself, but by retaining muscles since they are a major calorific expenditure factor. Large mass muscles burn calories e.g. glutes
Sadly, muscle only burns 12.6 kcal / kg /day at rest [1]. If you put on an impressive 20kg of muscle that would only increase total expenditure by 250 kcal a day. If you want your muscles to burn calories, you'd better be exercising them.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2980962/
This is not accurate, weightlifting with a reasonably difficult weight for your strength level is one of the most effective ways to burn calories.
I used to think this too, it's a popular talking point in favor of strength training.
But as far as I know it's wrong.
A one hour session of strength training will involve some amount of work, and a lot of rest. Compared to doing cardio, where an hour of work is an entire hour of elevated energy expenditure, you're effectively burning a lot less during strength training.
In addition, the "after burn" effect is very minor (in the extra tens of calories only range).
Btw as far as I know the only way to burn bodymass with sports is to have a heart rate of 120-140 for at least one hour. And then it starts. And to loose one gramm of fat one needs to burn 4kcal ( it takes 4kcal to generate the fuel from the body. Fat has usualy 8kcal). Also to loose around 200g of bodyfat a day one has to run at least 2 hours. ( with 500kcal/hour burned)
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Not on time. You cant lift weihgts for hours. But riding a bike or running goes for at least an hour. Golf burns a lot of calories because it takes 3 hours to complete. And lifting weight is also the wrong „zone“ for burning fat. It only burns avaible sugar. And to have that much fuel one needs to eat much ….
> This is not accurate, weightlifting with a reasonably difficult weight for your strength level is one of the most effective ways to burn calories.
It wont make you loose weight however. It will likely make you gain weight as your muscles will grow. Which is explicit goal of many guys who start lifting weights.
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The scenario was "20lbs for 3 years".
Most "standard adults" (e.g no injuries, obesity or illnesses) would not consider 20 lbs "difficult", to start with. And especially not after 6 months of regular practice.
It is accurate. He didn't use the phrase "burn calories" at all ;)
Isn't it anaerobic exercise, though, and from what I remember to lose weight you want aerobic exercise?
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I'm pretty sure you have that backwards. What you're describing is effectively trying to turn weigh-lifting into cardio, while most research shows that interval training / weigh training are more effective at burning calories than steady-state cardio.
> If I start lifting 20lbs and 3 years later I still lift that of course I won't lose weight.
I don't understand, your body optimizes, and uses 20% less energy. However, you are still using the 80% which is more than not doing anything at all don't you?
Plus at least for running you can just run faster and make up for that 20% effioency gain. I personally do not think excercise is very good for losing weight but that particular argument is BS.
> Whenever there's insignificant science making "controversial" claims like "you can't lose weight with sport" journalist will provide storytelling instead of science.
I think this is quite the claim, maybe you should provide some evidence. I think it sounds reasonable to assume that those that lack the scientific basis will use storytelling to convince, because they have nothing else. But I'm not sure about the reverse.
Here we have storytelling, but the story is peppered with some data from experiments that support the claim. So how does storytelling imply lack of evidence?