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Comment by _0w8t | Hacker News Reader

Coach potatoes spend approximately the same amount of calories as modern-day hunter-gatherers. The current thinking is that a body has an energy budget to spend. If one does not move, that energy is spent on other things like hormone synthesis. Conversely walking or even running for 5 miles each day will not decrease the weight.

So been overweight is really about eating too much. This does not mean that one should not move. That has a lot of benefits, it is just loosing wright is not one of them.

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Having more muscle mass increases BMR.

Having a higher cardiovascular capacity increases the number of potential calories you can burn per hour.

Weight loss strategies that don't include exercise can work, but it is silly to do so. Exercise improves longevity, mental health, and expedites weight loss. All things equal, if you add a 5 mile walk to your daily regiment, you will lose weight faster.

Cool. Glad that works for you. Not everyone can walk. These discussions are always very "me me me" and rarely of much value.

Over 99% of humans can walk. I don't think that's very "me me me".

> Over 99% of humans can walk.

Clearly not, even before considering particular disability; average age of children first walking is over a year, and the number of children under 1 is well over 1% of world population.

More relevant to the discussion, though, in the US, 13.7% of adults have a mobility disability with serious difficulty walking or climbing stairs. [0]

[0] https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/disabilityandhealth/infographic-d....

You know what. You are right. This is an excellent critique and I'm quite literally quivering in my boots at the sheer intellectual dominance exuding from your comment. I've learned my lesson and in the future will consider my opinions to be irrelevant and not useful. Please continue enlightening the world with your critical thinking prowess. I look forward to reading your future work.

Except those that regularly take part in physically strenuous activities are often very much aware that excess weight makes those activities much harder (particularly if you're at all competitive), which provides extra motivation for being concerned with what and how much you eat. Anecdata, yes, but everyone I know that was overweight in the past and has now lost it and kept it off has done so by taking up some sort of sport/regular physical activity (mostly cycling). I don't know anyone who's done so just by dieting alone.

Just the opposite from yo: everyone I know who lost weight permanently did so by changing their diet exclusively (no changes on exercise). In fact some of the sports guys gained some weight with sports (lifting, gained muscle)

They've typically still lost fat though, even if they've gained weight.

I don't know what sort of stats there are comparing those who've lost weight and successfully kept it off (for, say, 10 years or so) via exercise/sports vs via dieting alone, though from what I know it's a pretty low percentage that do manage in the latter group. My understanding is that the initial weight loss is primarily down to diet changes, but exercise works better at helping maintaining a healthier weight/lifestyle.

> walking or even running for 5 miles each day will not decrease the weight

This is so wrong. Humans have come up with calories as a measurement of how the body burns fuel. Food is the fuel and burning that fuel is spending calories. You can reduce the calories consumed and/or increase movement to burn more. A quick google indicates 1 mile walking is about 100 calories burned for a 180lb person. So walking 5mi is burning roughly 500 calories and if done daily, this would mean 3500 per week which is roughly 1lb of loss. If you replace that 500cal loss per day with 500cal of ice cream then yeah you’re not going to lose weight. So if someone decided to just eat all the same stuff they currently eat but go walk 5mi day they would likely lose weight.

Calculating weight loss is mathematically very simple and software devs should be familiar with feedback loops. The simple formula is track calories, weigh yourself, adjust calories for loss, weigh self. Daily tracking works. The LoseIt app does this for you and adjusts calorie budget when you lose weight (less weight means lower budget).

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