Hacker News Reader

Comment by slacka | Hacker News Reader

> I really feel that proposing video games over being outside does a huge disservice to us as people.

This. Growing up, I was only allowed 1 hr of video games or TV per day. And on nice days, I was ordered to play outside. I grew up with a love of outdoors, sports, and have always been in good shape. My cousins were encouraged to stay in and play video games and never allowed out alone. We are similar age and genetics, yet they are both overweight and unhealthy. Whereas my sister and I are healthy.

I know it's anecdotal, but my families experience sure matches your centennial common sense.

View on HN

Exercise is overwhelmingly dwarfed by calorie consumption, in terms of weight. Not eating an apple is about equivalent to running an entire mile. Most likely your cousins just had a worse diet. Exercise as a weight loss solution is essentially a lie sold by con artists - you can't outrun a bad diet, as they say.

You can if you just do truly massive amounts of exercise. At one point last year I was doing 12 hours of cycling per week and my maintenance caloric intake was approximately 3000 kcal, or that of one and a half normal people.

Weight is not the primary concern of being in good shape. Being thin, but in bad shape, is almost as detrimental to your health as being over weight and in bad-shape.

Maybe if you spend all your time outside, you've got less temptation/time to snack and thus consume less calories ?

Sounds like someone thinking of an excuse not to exercise :)

A quick Google suggests running a mile burns about 100 calories and an apple is about 50.

In a more general sense, you can't really compare the two. You can't say exercise is "dwarfed" by consumption because they're not on the same scale; unless you're talking about, say, perceived willpower of eating less versus exercising more.

Google said 90 calories to an apple for me.

How was measure calories is terrible. Carbs should be measured different from calories. If you cut out bread, pasta, soda and other major sources of starches and sugars (you can keep fiber and sugar alcohols), weight loss and overall health greatly improve.

Exercising is good and healthy for you. You should do it. But you won't loose weight by it. Your diet is way more important.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com