Comment by astura
4 months ago
>it doesn't seem physically possible for most adult men to consume 13 pounds of potatoes a day. I'm a large man and I think I'd burst or vomit before choking down that much,
Presumably you aren't doing hard manual labor every day.
Not every day now, but I've done enough hard manual labor to know that it wouldn't allow me to eat 13 pounds of potatoes. Seriously no one was eating that much on as regular basis.
>Not every day
There's the difference.
Once you spend every single day doing hard manual labor for years consuming potatoes for the majority of your calories then tell me 13 pounds is impossible.
Sure, its impossible for you now, but that's totally irrelevant. An equivalent statement would be "it's totally impossible for a human to throw a baseball at 90mph, I tried for a whole week once and I only threw 40mph."
If your diet is 90% potatoes and you do hard manual labor all day, you would absolutely need about 7 pounds of potatoes (2500 calories). I don’t think 13 pounds seems that crazy. I have sat down at a meal and eaten 3 pounds of potatoes before.
A little off topic, but there is this joke:
A Russian and American soldier meet during some peacekeeping mission/veteran fair and discuss which army is better.
They go through weapons, the American really likes AK-47. They talk about training. They discuss the distributed vs centralized command.
Finally the American says that they eat 5k calories per day. The Russian suddenly jumps up, points his finger at the American and starts yelling: "Liar! Nobody can eat that much potatoes!"
13 pounds of potatoes is about 4600 kcals. That's in the range of what an NFL athlete consumes in a day.
The problem is digesting that quantity of food, not the energy content. Elite athletes typically eat some potatoes but most of what they eat is more nutrient dense.
Seriously guys, get out your scale and weigh 13 pounds of potatoes. Could you really consume that much volume in a day without feeling sick? Let's do a reality check here.
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I thought human bodies adapt to strenuous effort and become more efficient over time. Meaning your average keyboard jockey might need 4000 calories per day if they become a manual laborer. But over time their body would adjust and they'd be able to get by on maybe 3000 calories.
Human bodies don't adapt much to become more metabolically efficient. Some endurance athletes will gain a few percent after extensive training but the effect is small.
For some activities there is a skill and technique aspect which impacts the amount of energy required. Like if a keyboard jockey literally doesn't know how to swing a pickaxe effectively then they're going to burn more calories digging a ditch compared to someone who's been doing it for years.
> Human bodies don't adapt much to become more metabolically efficient
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-exercise-para...
That's not what recent research indicates. The author has written a book about this as well.
It's the key evidence behind the idea that you can't outrun your fork. To lose weight diet is the only way. Exercise gives you a nicer-looking, stronger body but it can't do much to make you shed fat.
That's a weird thing to be downvoted over. I didn't realize I was saying anything controversial.