Comment by 1_player
3 years ago
> 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.
You're assuming that breathing rate is proportional to CO2 breathed out, which I doubt. I barely breath any faster while running than while just sitting here, much less than 3x.
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Yes but in numbers it is way more. If I bike for an hour I burn 700-1000kcal . Thats not 15 but 50% of the dayli calorie intake… i am no expert btw. My understanding is that the problem is more that after 20 minuts of sport, at a certain heart rate, is starting to burn fat…but not body fat. More free floating fat. And it takes one hour or so to start burning bodymass. So the fuel for one hour sport is what I ate before and not my bodyfat. Another example. I do mountaineering, mostly 1 week walking in the alps for 10h a day. Thats around 4000kcal more burned a day. And there I see instant results with all my friends coming with me . They get thin very fast. Around 500g of body mass a day :)
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Also, you don’t absorb everything you eat. Actually, let me be clear: I have no evidence for this. But the fact that my weight is so consistent despite my radically inconsistent eating and exercising suggests to me that my body can regulate digestion. When I’m in a period when I’m overeating, my body just doesn’t absorb so much.
Again, more speculation, but i would imagine that metabolic disorders involve digestive regulation issues, not just lack of exercise and overeating.
You are arguing a different point. They argued that doing exercise burns more calories than sitting idle.
@1_player said: > Your body burns incredibly more energy just "being there" than you burn moving about.
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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.
This is primary that thing where exercising makes you more fit and in the long term more active in general. Because what was previously tiring straining activity suddenly becomes pleasurable. And if you eventually manage to stumble upon activity you actually like, it is way easier to do it then to sit at home hungry, passive and obsessed about how miserable you feel (until said person will break and eat a candy or something similar).
> 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.
calories in - calories out was debunked a while ago. Different types of food and diet cause different degrees of weight gain or loss.
For an extreme example compare 100 calories of glucose to 100 calories of fibre, both are types of sugar. The fibre contains an extra electron that acts like a shell, and the body has to expend energy breaking that bond to make it digestible. So most fibre passes through you without affecting your weight.
The most useful measure of food is the Glycemic Load. Not Glycemic Index which is a measure of the net glucose in the food. Glycemic Load is a measure of how the body responds to the food. E.g. cold potatoes have the same calories and GI as hot potatoes, but their measured GL is actually lower, so cold potatoes are better for controlling weight.
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Guess what else has massive effect on metabolism? Exercise.
Also, various workouts have a lot of other important effects. Increasing bone strength, improving body resistance to inflammatory processes, developing micro vascular system… simply managing calorie in/out ratio won’t get you any of this. And dropping weight in a dumb way may do more harm than good.
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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.
I used to ride amateur cycling races, then just do a nice amount of rides/runs.. Now I'm in situation where time outside the house is hard to manage. I try to cut the calories, but weight keeps growing and overall health decreasing. Looking forward to stabilising family circumstances to have time to head out enough...
From what I observed myself, cutting calories is very difficult and result is miniscule. Adding some cardio (2h/week? 5h/week?) helps so much more and allows more flexibility with food. Also cutting calories does not help to increased overall immunity. Cutting calories is hard on mood (as in, no sugar high and tasty foods are limited) yet exercising allows to keep tasty foods AND gives runner's high. Win-win...
As for tight schedule, I don't believe in gyms. People waste so much time driving to/from favourite/affordable gyms... Running right out home and doing body-weight exercises at home would be both more beneficial to one's health and cheaper.
P.S. I mean regular non-exercise day is 1600kcal. 4 hours ride would be 2000kcal. So exercise day would be ~ 3400. Obviously it long-ride is weekend affair. Then one or two run 10k runs or quick 1h ride (another 1k kcal each). So ideally it adds +500kcal/day. And a lot of cardiovascular health. Well, it was 2 years ago before kid was born... Now it has a loooooot of variation.
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.
> your body burns roughly the same amount of calories regardless of exercise
Can you explain how this makes sense?
Different physical activities (running vs. sitting, for example) require different amounts of energy to perform. Calories are a unit of measurement for this energy. It sounds like you (via referencing the article) are claiming that a human will expend the same amount of energy in a given period of time regardless of their physical activity.
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Depression and anxiety fades because endurance exercises release certain hormones and help to flush out kortizol.
And yes, it allocates calories towards building fat. Which is a weeeee different from burning them.