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Comment by Bancakes | Hacker News Reader

Yeah I'm appalled the studies are fuel for excuses to exercise less. Maybe in 20 years, pop sci will figure out you can even do pushups and pullups - once a week if you feel like it.

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Walking is very underrated. Most of the world is not overweight precisely because they have to walk place to place instead of being cooped up in their suburban home or skyscraper apartment where delivery just works better. Those 300-700 extra calories from daily walking activities and carrying things around add up very quickly. In terms of staying fit, walking is much more beneficial than push-ups or pull-ups. Not that you shouldn't do the latter, but many people have to make exercising a habit, and if our goal is weight loss they're more likely to do that with dedicated walking than with pull-ups or push-ups. It's just too hard to do consistently even with 100-push up programs.

Obesity is yet another problem either created by, or exacerbated by our absolutely abhorrent urban planning and architecture practices.

Skyscraper apartments are extremely low portion of units, and anyway don't prevent walking. They enable the density that makes walking efficient.

They don't prevent walking any more than living in the suburbs do. But there's a slight barrier waiting for an elevator, or walking down stairs, etc. There's a reason that grocery delivery services sprang up in places like NYC first and most prominently instead of, say, Pittsburgh.

While they enable density, certainly better than the suburbs do, they're not a great solution. For large cities you want to look at a city like Paris (Ignoring the central business district which is set aside like an upset child that needs to think about what they've done) for even better and more appropriate density.

I think often times people assume more skyscrapers == more density therefore good. But I think that level of density isn't healthy either, it's just more healthy in comparison to the abysmal and wasteful suburbs.

Also your statement is a bit contradictory. If the skyscraper apartments are an extremely low portion of units, how do they enable density if there are so few?

Somewhat nit-picky, but I would push back against the simplicity of a few things you described. Overweight/obesity is influenced by numerous factors - exercise being one of them. In general, exercise has been shown to be a far less effective factor in controlling weight when compared to diet, but that's not to say exercise isn't important to your weight/health, because it is VERY important. I would say most of the world isn't obese because their food environment combined with biological/psychological/social factors is different than that of the US, which seems to be conducive to the development of obesity.

I agree that habit forming is very difficult - and specifically that, given somebody doing no activity, starting them with walking/aerobics vs a relatively specific/strenuous exercise like pullups is a good idea.

I think obesity is influenced by urban planning - in the context that obesity is influenced by many environmental factors. Like the US's obsession with car-sprawl at the expense of integrating activities like walking/cycling into one's daily life.

You should read about some of Herman Pontzer's research: https://dupri.duke.edu/news-events/news/herman-pontzer-expla... Specifically, that doing more physical activity doesn't mean you "burn more calories". You may also find his research on metabolism interesting: https://today.duke.edu/2021/08/metabolism-changes-age-just-n... (Age 20-60, it doesn't change much at all)

It's a feedback loop, though.

If you spend a day inside or doing sedentary activities then you're more likely to reach for crap food. If you're in touch with your body, even if you're doing something like a weightlifters' dirty bulk you're probably at least targeting the correct macronutrients.

I agree completely, and thanks for sharing your thoughts and links here.

Well, the other option is that people see sky-high exercise targets (from their POV) and not even get started. Yes, you need exercise, but people can't simply carve out three hours of their day twice a week to go to the gym and if you start with that expectation, most people simply won't. Walking 30 minutes is far more doable and proving that this already gives a benefit is not a bad thing.

Six hours a week of exercise is sky-high, but 40-60 hours a week of work isn't, right?

In my opinion a lot of people would be served well by holistically thinking about what they're doing here on this planet.

People will get in shape ricky tick as you forbid them health insurance or fat tax them. Humans have no natural predator, no forced adaptations and selections - we must invent such.

Being fat is already quite expensive and literally kills you in the long run, plus it makes finding a partner for reproduction arguably a lot harder. Next to all the moral problems your suggestions would bring, it already looks like it doesn't work.

> People will get in shape ricky tick as you forbid them health insurance or fat tax them

Increasing sin taxes (alcohol and cigarettes) and raising insurance rates on those who choose to overindulge on those aren't effective so this wouldn't be either. Forbidding people health insurance because they're not "in shape" just feels wrong and a pathway to eugenics imo

It is eugenics. Obesity is degeneracy in the most dictionary non-emotional sense of the word. It has no benefits and should be rooted. In the jungle, people with stomachs too big would never have lived to reproduce or take care of offspring anyway - either by dying of hunger or being killed for their dead weight appetite.

>Forbidding people health insurance because they're not "in shape" just feels wrong and a pathway to eugenics imo

And besides that, in countries where health insurance is to some extent or entirely public, you don't tend to see a rise in rates since health care is considered a kind of right.

The fat people with no health insurance paying alcohol and cigarette tax disprove this absurd claim.

You think people like being unable to control their body?

> forbid them health insurance or fat tax them

Yeah, right after we yank insurance for anyone who refuses to get vaccinated. Or is the heavy hand of authoritarianism (and the sneakier one of eugenics) only welcome when it falls on Other People?

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