← Back to context

Comment by profile53

1 year ago

On the other hand, 50 calories x 365 days a year x 20 years x 5,000 calories per lb of weight = 75 lb of additional weight.

> Increases in activity tend to drive increases in hunger As far as I know, certain types of high intensity exercise do so but not necessarily all exercise.

I'm not fond of the calories/lb calculations because everything's really relative to where your caloric equilibrium point is, but this is an aside. Let's take your numbers at face value, and now consider that in 1970 the average American was eating 2,025 calories. Whereas by 2010 we were up to 2,481 [1] - a total increase of 456 calories/day!

If we take your numbers at face value, that'd be a delta of 684 pounds per 20 years. Again kind of an obvious indicator why these long term calorie/pound measurements are pretty dubious, but at the same time also an indicator of why diet is just so much more important than exercise for weight management.

[1] - https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2016/12/13/whats-on-...