https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-exercise-para...
I had one winter where I didn't cycle and I gained 15 pounds before I even noticed. It took a little under a month to lose, which I did by eating less, but I also got back on the bike. That's the only time I've gained weight, and losing it wasn't some special act of will or anything, I decided to do it and I did it.
The rest of my family is sedentary, and fat. They're always talking about how they've got to lose weight but they're intimidated by it and they never stick with their diet plans for long. They don't have the intimate relationship with their metabolism that someone who excercise daily has.
My own experience and studies I have seen show that exercise leads to some early weight loss but then plateaus quickly. To lose further, diet has to be involved.
Source? According to [1], obesity rate in NL is 19.8%, with some other European countries being lower.
This is why nutritional studies in the past need to be taken with a grain of salt. We all know from studies that too much red meat can have deleterious consequences on your health. But what we don't know is what type of lifestyles these participants led. Did they also eat junk food while rapaciously devouring heaps of sugar and soda on the side?
We're not working in a strict lab environment here so there are lots of variables that we can't possibly account for.
Indeed, and it goes the other way around too: not even counting weight in, any competent trainer will tell you that the first step to proper efficient exercise is a proper healthy diet. Losing weight then comes as a side effect, exercise being a catalyst to the diet that comes with it.
> One of the reasons is that exercise is associated with compensatory behaviors (such as increased hunger)
Personal experience: exercise comes with increased, yet highly self-regulated hunger, whereas it would slowly go unregulated when not exercising. Also, the things my body craves for are fundamentally different when I exercise than when I don't.
This, to me, comes from two types of very different feelings of what we call "hunger" (and its opposite "replete"): one that comes from stomach emptiness/fullness, and one that comes from the energy/material one needs to or has absorbed. The former is a downright lie, and exercise has a tendency to shut it down while lack thereof makes you forget the latter in favour of the former, which is then boundlessly growing because the stomach is highly elastic and is easily trained to expand more and more.
Also there seems to be a fundamental difference between both as I find the former also seems to aim to compensate some lack of dopamine/adrenaline/whatevs (this stuff is way over my head) that I get when exercising. The hunger I get when exercising is more genuine and truthful, while the one I get otherwise is more deceitful and addictive.
E.g. if my resting heart rate is lower, my blood work is "better", and my body fat percentage has gone down, I'll take the weight gain, duh.
In a thought experiment (where it's possible to know the exact amounts) -- do you think consuming exactly 2k kcal is perfectly even with burning exactly 2k kcal? IE, is there overhead to transform the energy? Does it account for physical/energy waste?
The energy expenditure does account for waste, I think only about 20-25% of the energy spent is turned into mechanical output
You might enjoy this: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/running
I weigh 215lbs, 71" and I am 32 years old. I eat bread (which my wife makes from scratch), and other whole natural foods, vegetables, fruits, bacon, ribs, steak, fried chicken (made from scratch) etc... All my meat comes from a local farm, I actually bought a whole pig, half-cow and 50 chickens over the summer.
I powerlift, training between 6 - 8 hours a week. Resting heart rate is 58, blood pressure is 110/75. Being that I hadn't done any cardio training for about 2-3 years I wanted to ensure I wasn't in terrible shape - did a 500 yard swim in 11 minutes. I am not breaking records, but won't pass out trying to do simple things.
Eat natural foods they have been eating for hundreds of years and exercise hard. Now you can save money and time by not worrying about what the next overweight, smoking doctor will publish.
According to my friend's theory, being hungry and eating a lot shouldn't be a problem if you sport often (and I suppose regularly).
From September to December I was about this active (plus some pick-up ultimate or basketball here and there) and put on six or seven kilos. Some muscle, some fat. I've been eating quite a lot too; a weekday's eating is something like:
- Bran flakes cereal
- Cheese & ham sandwich
- Home cooked curry & brown rice (or equiv dinner)
- Two protein shakes (one with creatine)
- Two granola bars
- Dark chocolate bar
- Two oranges, an apple and a banana
Note, I just realised I actually gained about two or three kilos rather than six or seven, but I definitely gained a bunch. Also I'm below average height for my gender. My thigh and shoulder muscles have clearly filled out.
Perhaps there is some magical amount of cardio beyond which it's literally impossible to gain weight, but you'd probably have to be beyond a Michael Phelps level of training.
For what it's worth I had my blood tested recently and my glucose levels were fine, slightly below average. I appreciate your concern though.
How does this account for the fact that lots of young people have difficulty gaining weight, no matter what they eat, until a certain age? Obviously not all young people, but lots even who play the Xbox or watch TV all day (i.e., little muscle mass and little physical activity).
By the way, one thing that helps me keep my weight and appearance under control is "planking", 3x 1.5 min a day (I also do it in the office, and I can read HN on my phone while doing it because I rest on my elbows). In times when I don't exercise enough, it keeps my belly flat, even when I have some fat in the mid-section. Combined with some simple yoga, it's also a nice way to de-stress during the day (keeping cortisol in check is an often forgotten factor in staying lean).
They're not actually eating above their calorific output. This is either because they're not eating as much as they think they are, or because their calorific output happens to be high. The number of calories your body burns at rest can vary a lot, even between people with apparently similar bodies, and over time in the same body. It can even fluctuate a little in response to what you eat. So, whilst calorific intake is the most reliable single indicator of weight gain/loss, it's not necessarily useful unless you are continuously tracking it and noting the effect of small modifications. Calorie counting is psychologically difficult - albeit conceptually straightforward - which is part of the reason why many people turn to fad diets or come up with creative reasons why they don't believe in calories.
I doubt those skinny young people are rigorously counting their calories. They probably have no need or desire to. They're just eating "whatever they want", which for those people at that point in time happens to be roughly equal to their calorific output. If you took that "whatever they want" baseline and added a gallon of (whole) milk per day, you would absolutely see them start to gain weight.
> planking ... keeps my belly flat, even when I have some fat in the mid-section
Right, the shape of your belly - just like the rest of your body - is determined by the amount of muscle and the amount of fat. Decreasing fat and/or (to a degree) increasing muscle will lend your belly a flatter appearance. Planking will stress your abs and obliques, which will produce more muscle in those areas. A larger effect can be achieved by heavy compound movements, especially deadlifts, or isolation exercises like weighted situps. But if you don't lift heavy weights, which I'm guessing you don't, then planking will have a significant effect.
It's all about finding what works for you. What keeps you happy and sane in the long run. For you I suppose it's an equilibrium amount of exercise in order to keep your appearance roughly steady. For me, I love to hit targets and seeing my squat, deadlift and bench numbers go up over the year is very fulfilling. But whatever our goals our, knowing more about the subject at hand can only be a good thing.
I have to be careful how I eat or I pack on the fat. I have to monitor my eating like crazy to lose fat. This gets more true as I get older. 5 years ago, it was stable at 4 to 5k calories a day (of healthy food). I've gained weight compared to then due to a less-strict diet coupled with a slower metabolism and I have to eat nearly half of what I used to to keep the scale from still sliding up. A couple weekends of my favorite pizza and beer, and I'm in for several weeks of highly restricted diet to get back to my previous weight. Sucks to not be in my twenties any more.