Comment by elevaet

> 1. From a simple sniff test, if this were true, then athletes wouldn't need a lot of calories. This obviously isn't true, eg Phelps eats 8-11K calories a day. I personally eat around 3.5K calories a day. If exercise didn't impact caloric burn I assure you I'd be a lot fatter...

I agree and I'm in the same boat. After 10 years of running ~70km/week, I'm eating way more, have dropped 20lb, and am healthier and stronger.

> The implication of this is that somehow the sedentary lifestyle of your average couch potato is the "normal" lifestyle for a body, and the lifestyle of a hunter gatherer is "overactive", and their bodies are chronically tired and trying to reduce their metabolisms. That... seems quite unlikely.

I think people underestimate what being active and excercise actually mean. Our ancestors were vastly more active than we are today. The amount of movement that was required for foraging, hunting, agriculture is hard for most modern people to imagine.

Even the act of preparing the food that was gathered/hunted/harvested was so much more manual and energy intense than what we are accustomed to today.

For most of our evolutionary history basically everything we did was powered by our bodies. Today we have machines for everything, and a high standard of comfort.

It's true that calorie restriction is easier for most people than excercise, but I think it's because.. to put it bluntly.. we've become lazy.