Hacker News Reader

Comment by orwin | Hacker News Reader

But the muscle mass will rise your metabolic consumption.

You can loose all your extra weight in the kitchen. Nevertheless, doing a sport help, a lot. I lost 15kg just by changing my eating habits (over 3 years). But the last mile is really hard to get to without exercises. I'm a sailor, but i only get to windsurf/kayak/so catamaran during summer, where i loose ~5kg i immediatly gain over the autumn-winter period. Doing a new, indoor sport did help a lot. This year, even though i only started in February, i already have my weight of October (when i usually stop enjoying myself on the water)

View on HN

> But the muscle mass will rise your metabolic consumption.

Losing weight doesn't have to increase muscle, you might be trying to just actually lose weight. Also, the actual difference unless you replace an enormous amount of your mass with muscle (which unless you're doing an incredible amount of lifting you won't be doing), ends up being in the region of 1-200 calories per day, which is the difference between having a chocolate bar with your tea in the morning.

> But the last mile is really hard to get to without exercises

The last mile is the same as the previous mile. The difference is that many people realise that losing weight isn't the entire story, and the last mile is no longer about losing weight it's about gaining muscle, and _that_ requires exercise.

As I said, exercise is incredibly important, you'll look better you'll feel better, you'll sleep better, but you won't lose weight unless you're running 10k every day _and_ not eating any more to compensate for it.

> Also, the actual difference unless you replace an enormous amount of your mass with muscle […] ends up being in the region of 1-200 calories per day, which is the difference between having a chocolate bar with your tea in the morning.

If you’re middle-aged (-ish) and healthy, overweight, but not obese, what made you overweight likely is a gain of, ballpark, 3 grams a day (that’s about a kg a year, or 10kg/decade, 30kg between the age of 20 and 50)

There’s about 7,700 kilocalories in a kg of body fat, so preventing that slow but steady weight increase only takes eating about 25kCal less per day or burning 25kCal more.

It doesn’t take much exercise to get there.

> The last mile is the same as the previous mile.

Is it, though? Maybe from a biological perspective, but definitely not in terms of lifestyle.

The times I've needed to lose weight, the first few pounds came off easily, because I usually just need to clean up a few bad habits. But then I typically settle in to a set point that's still above a healthy weight. At that point, further reductions require more and more calorie micromanagement.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com