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Comment by fortran77 | Hacker News Reader

And specifically, being at a heathy weight. It seems everyone's dancing around the elephant in the room, talking about "low testosterone" or "type II diabetes" as being co-morbidities.

See: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3955331/ for one of many sources for the link between obesity and low testosterone. Obesity just cost our nation several trillion dollars.

People on Hacker News don't like to talk about this, either, because the Computer Programmer community is also affected by obesity.

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The lockdown might prevent some infections, but this sounds like it also potentially causes more severe outcomes due to less activity at home.

You control weight primary by food intake.

And you control health primarily by activity.

If you're already overweight you should combine control of calorie intake with exercise. The only way fat leaves the body (besides surgery) is by exhaling it as CO2

It is definitely good to exercise when attempting to lose weight, but I don't think the reason is not because it significantly changes the amount you breathe. If you exercise for 30 minutes you'll breathe about 4% more breaths that day.

True, but you're always exhaling CO2, even when you're not exercising. Exercise simply doesn't create a very large increase the amount of calories you burn.

Consider: a person at my height/weight burns approximately 2500 calories/day just by resting metabolic rate. According to this calculator[1], a person of my weight running a mile at an 8 minute pace burns 136 calories. In other words, running a 5k every day would only increase my calories burned by 17%. And running 8 minute miles is one of the more efficient ways to burn calories--if you're doing some other exercise, your calories burned are likely much lower.

Compare the effort involved in running a 5k with drinking two less cans of cola (about equivalent in calories) and you'll quickly see how diet has a much larger effect on weight loss than exercise. There's a reason they say abs are made in the kitchen not in the gym.

[1] https://www.runnersworld.com/training/a20801301/calories-bur...

> In other words, running a 5k every day would only increase my calories burned by 17%.

Working 8+ hours in a manual labour job on the other hand, will greatly increase the calories burned. If people who are stuck at home now don't change their usual eating habits, they will see some weight gains.

I ride my bike 20-50 miles for fun. At 50 calories per mile, that definitely adds up.

Folks who exercise for aerobic reasons, you know, 20 minutes of brisk walking around the park, are getting benefits. But not weight-loss benefits. There's a 10:1 difference in possible exercise regimines. It all depends where you're at in that spectrum. Broad generalities are useless.

> I ride my bike 20-50 miles for fun. At 50 calories per mile, that definitely adds up.

You're literally talking about exercising for 1-5 hours depending on pace.

Perhaps broad generalities are useless, but in the context of talking about weight loss, I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that the average person embarking on a weight loss journey is going to jump in and start doing 50 mile bike rides.

It's much more likely that they'll be doing something like a 10 mile bike ride, at a much slower pace, in which case the numbers are back into a range where diet is going to play a much larger role in their success or failure.

Sure. But my whole family does this; my boys and their spouses; their cousins and so on. Its not as uncommon as all that. But yes, we are bicycle-obsessed people.

And how many of these people are concerned about losing weight?

Ha! None of them. All lean and strong.

And, correct me if I'm wrong, but you're still largely allowed to leave your house to get physical activity. With the gym closed I've taken up jogging every morning before the streets get busy to try and keep myself healthy.

You're not wrong, but consider other "stuck-at-home" factors that contribute to over-eating: depression, boredom, food/snack availability (just hop to the "fridge" and grab something).

The first things we closed were gyms and parks :-(

Wonder what the net loss is though, considering the vast amounts of money the process of getting a nation so obese has put into the economy. I don't mean to be calloused though, this is truly a horrible situation, and I do feel empathic towards people that are unable to take care of their body.

I tell people that if they would be considered brave for being without a shirt at the beach, then they are an at risk population

That's probably a little too inclusive. You can be healthy and still have a body nobody really cares to see shirtless.

>a body nobody really cares to see shirtless

As a European, I find this (apparently American) sentiment to be abhorrent. Our bodies shouldn't be treated as sculptures for the public to adore.

Pretty sure this is a worldwide thing. Including Europeans.

It's certainly widespread, but it's not ubiquitous.

I live smack in the center of the US, and visited Hawaii in ~2000. I remember being pleasantly surprised how little people cared about that sort of thing, and was far more comfortable on the beach there than anywhere else I've been. I was with a group of locals, not tourists, so I assume it's a cultural thing.

Healthy or in shape? The terms are conflated too often for my liking. Same with food, low-calorie or low-fat / sugar foods are often labeled healthy, but IMO that lacks nuance.

They are factually low-calorie for example. Whether they're healthy is another matter entirely because that depends largely on your overall diet.

I know a couple skinny chain smokers with alcohol problems. They go shirtless all the time -- southern VA, so that's how you do.

No way they are healthy, and if they catch the COVID they're going to suffer; if they don't then I bet they're gonna get cancer by 55. I'm related to them and not hoping for those outcomes, but they ain't gonna change and we've just accepted it.

> I tell people that if they would be considered brave for being without a shirt at the beach, then they are an at risk population.

Yet it affects males more than females. Hmmm. When you say "people" do you mean "male people"? Or when you say "beaches" do you mean "topless beaches"?

Maybe he sees the female population at risk?

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