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Comment by varjag | Hacker News Reader

Hard liquor abuse actually leads to weight loss. Plenty of alcoholics are dried out like raisins.

But no-one really wants weight loss, and that should be easy to prove: say you were offered a choice, drop 5lbs of fat or convert 5lbs of fat to 10lbs of muscle, what would you do?

Really?

The only time I'd have taken the additional weight is when I was playing rugby, and then mostly because I couldn't really afford much food. I was 20, 65kg and worked really hard to try and get to 70kg. Being hit hurt when I was that light (ok, it hurt at 70kg too, but at least then the other guy noticed me when he ran over me)

I think anyone into endurance sports would take the weight loss too (based on the running & cycling I've done).

The point I was making along the lines of, just because a heavy drinker might be quite slender, it doesn't imply that they're healthy. They've lost their muscle mass along with their fat.

PS I am a Marathon runner and I'd take the muscle... And have you seen the quads on a serious cyclist?

Cyclist's and Marathoners have significantly different needs. A Cyclist is primarily limited by wind resistance and their ability to absorb oxygen, but they do not need to carry their own weight. A Marathoner has far less wind drag, and is mostly limited by their need to store energy and avoid injury both of which are hampered when they carry more weight.

On the contrary, we do need strength - without it your form will go to pieces as soon as you tire and your gait will become much less efficient, and increase your risk of injury. 10lbs of muscle on your back, core and hips could make a massive difference.

Obviously a Marathon runner wouldn't be interested in adding 100lbs of muscle the way a bodybuilder would.

I agree that core strenght tends to be undervalued, but you will not see a top marathoner with a leg that is quite this size:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fabian_Cancellara_-_Tour_O...

Form, effecency, and power are important for both sports. However, cyclists focus more on power output.

It should be noted that at 80kg, Fabian Cancellara is considered much too heavy to ever win a grand tour. He is spectacularly fast on the flat because he is only slightly less aerodynamic than a much smaller and less powerful man, but he is quickly overpowered on a mountain stage by lighter riders.

You are correct that different courses favor different body styles, but comparing someone like Paula Radcliffe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Paula_Brooklyn_NYCM_2007_c...) with a top cyclist shows max power is less important in distance running.

Relative to the average American they do have similar thin and muscular body types. And, I think it's easy to underestimate how strong these people are because they have so much less fat than the average person. But, as you say the relative cost of drag for increased body size helps support a more bulky cyclist.

Just FYI Paula Radcliffe weighs 54 kg the cyclist Leonardo Piepoli who is a man and the same height as Radcliffe weighs 52 kg. I do think that cyclists are on average heavier than marathon runners, but the top climber cyclists are not. The advantage Cancellara has on flat terrain is much smaller than the advantage a climber has in the mountains.

In my personal experience with cycling and running I'd say that carrying 1kg of fat running is a smaller disadvantage than carrying 1kg of fat cycling in mountain terrain. This is reversed when you consider cycling on flat terrain.

A light cyclist has a huge advantage in non-flat terrain. He needs strong legs and light everything else. A runner needs core and back muscles to run in a way that does not waste a lot of energy and prevents injuries.

In my experience running is harder on your entire body, cycling just on legs and lungs.

PS I am a Marathon runner and I'd take the muscle... And have you seen the quads on a serious cyclist?

Quads, yes, but have you seen the rest of the body?

WRT runnimg, generally speaking (elite) marathon runners have much higher ratios of slow-twitch muscle than average. That means they will have lean bodies, without the peak strength or muscle mass of a fast-twitch heavy athlete like a sprinter.

Take a look at http://www.letsrun.com/2010/heightweight0504.php. The entire running world was shocked when Solinsky broke 27 minutes (for a 10 km). He's 6'1", and 160lbs - obviously still what most people would consider skinny, but way, way heavy compared to most distance runners.

(You might have good reasons to want more muscle - I'm just pointing out that it's unusual for a distance athlete)

I'm into running & cycling and I'd definitely take the muscles. Why exactly makes you think that an endurance sporter would take the weight loss?

Well, most cyclists (except for track sprinters) aim to be as light as possible.

Thus, at the elite level, one expects superior performance from smaller athletes in aerobic events where power requirements are approximately proportional to body mass--such as distance running and uphill cycling. (Technically, the power requirement scales more closely to mass, i.e. M0.76-M0.79 than does the power supply, M0.67; Swain, 1994). It is not surprising that the pre-eminent climber of the 1990s, Marco Pantani, is one of the smallest men in the peloton at only 55 kg. Anything that can be done to reduce the weight of a cyclist and bicycle, without compromising the cyclist's aerobic power, will improve hill-climbing performance.

http://www.sportsci.org/jour/9804/dps.html

Yep, but most of us are nowhere near that level where we have so much that more muscle is a disadvantage ;) I guess it's highly dependent on how you currently are. Someone who does weightlifting in a gym could probably indeed improve his cycling performance just by removing muscle.

And of course sports performance is not the only criterion for choosing +5lbs muscle vs -5lbs fat ;)

That depends on my starting weight. If I weigh 120lbs then I'll take the muscle. If I weigh 220lbs then I'll take the weight loss.

It shouldn't. His point is that if you're 220, what you really want to lose is fat, not weight. Having more muscle will increase your caloric burn rate and actually help you to lose fat faster. This is why dieting must always be paired with exercise.

To take the argument to an absurd extreme, the fastest way to lose weight would be to cut off your leg.

Obviously "losing weight" is really a euphemism for "losing fat."

It's never that easy. If your 6 foot 4 inches, at 220lbs, your probably fairly thin and may want to add muscle.

In the end if you have very little muscle, regardless of weight, you should add it. It will help you lose fat (ie ripping muscles speeds up your metabolism - yes, but most importantly the burn effect lasts much, much longer than an equivalent amount of endurance work). Also you'll have more energy to do more activities allowing you to lose more fat.

Definitely take the 5lbs of fat as 10lbs of muscle. I work in construction, I'm already muscular and always have been, however I'm struggling with weight I gained when I was forced to be unemployed during my Canadian immigration (they wouldn't give me a work visa despite job shortages in the construction sector and my employer meeting all the criteria to hire from outside Canada and they weren't obligated to give a reason why). I've lost a lot, and I've turned even more of it into muscle.

I'd take the 10lbs of muscle, because most people wouldn't believe how much better it makes you feel doing regular things. I'm seriously like a pack-mule coming out of a supermarket. I don't struggle like I used to, which means I don't get tired like I used to.

Sure it would be great to be lean, but my body type would never allow it, it would be unhealthy.

That might also be because they do not eat much?

This is no doubt part of it, but beer drunkards tend to be quite the opposite.

I think it's a combination of malnutrition, chronic dehydration and impact on metabolism.

Some people, when confronted with a problem, think “I know, I'll use regular expressions.” Now they have two problems.

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