Exercise Has Many Health Benefits. Weight Loss Isn't One of Them
discovermagazine.com
discovermagazine.com
It’s difficult to get past the clickbait title for a start.
The analysis here is far too simplistic for any useful purpose. Regular exercise also has many indirect but well-studied psychological effects which may also aid in weight loss. It’s not just about the raw calories burned off by the activity itself. But if those calories happen to tip you into a calorific deficit then that exercise absolutely WILL help weight loss - so you cant just make misleading blanket statements about this.
There are plenty of cherry-pickable studies to support both sides of this argument, for example:
> The 15-week exercise training appeared to motivate young adults to pursue healthier dietary preferences and to regulate their food intake. [0]
Really?
A pound of fat is 3500 calories. To work off a thousand calories requires swimming 4000-5000 yards, biking 25-30 miles on a road bike, or running 7-10 miles.
People need to understand what working your butt off is. High school practice for major sports will burn that for every single practice.
That's working your butt off. Now go to a gym and tell me if you see most people doing that. They aren't.
Add to that you need intensity to cause physiology adaptation which forces more calories in tissue building.
People aren't working their butt off.
For the vast majority of people starting an exercise routine it will be hard to burn even 600 calories in an hour of exercise.
So that means six days of one hour of exercise a day will burn 1 pound of fat ... If you controlled calories intake. Big if.
Ten pounds of fat is:
35000 calories
140,000 yards of swimming (180 lbs person) or about 80 miles of swimming
233 miles of running (180 lb person)
875 miles of biking.
And I may be underestimating.
There is no way that not even overweight but a middle aged mostly, sedentary person can do 10 miles runs 6x a week. IMHO one should start with biking and walking which are way easier on the joins and start running after getting to the level when 50km rides are not causing you any problems. This assuming your BMI is not way above 25.
I just don't get it. This stuff is just not that complicated. Just constant wrong information over and over and over.
People need to understand that doing 20-30 minutes on an elliptical, even 7x a week, is not "working your butt off". But that is what people think is "working your butt off".
People don't realize how calorically dense our lives our, how sedentary they are, and the actual scale of work necessary to counter that.
And once you've spent a decade being sessile, you no longer have the endurance capacity, tendon/ligament strength, or muscles to sustain the work that is needed.
So people if they want to do an exercise routine need to become athletes. Athletes train. They don't "exercise". They aren't "active". They train, a word that implies repeated almost seemingly unending repetition. Train, as in having a destination/goal and doing what is necessary to get there.
The key is to make permanent, maintainable lifestyle changes to become healthier, including diet and exercise — cut down on sodium and added sugars too — and eventually your body will look and feel better. The fat will come off and stay off, but you don't need to measure to tell that, you can just see the changes in your body.
The thing about exercise is, the more exercise you do, the more exercise you're capable of doing in the future. Sedentary people aren't capable of exercising with the intensity to burn off a ton of calories, whereas athletes burn off so many calories that they have to eat a ton just to compensate. Short-term, exercise may not do a lot of good, but long-term, it adds up. You have to "invest" in exercise, and the payoff will come, slowly but surely.
Admittedly, there's one downside to this gradual approach, which is that you may have to keep buying new clothes that fit right, until you eventually stabilize.
It mentions caloric restriction but nothing about fasting. And fasting is a form of caloric restriction but it’s not really the same - see this video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2iCVKRxsgE0&pp=ygUldGhvbWFzIGR...
The 36 hour fasts I do are so much easier than trying to eat small portions consistently it’s absurd.
I lost all my extra weight and didn’t even eat as healthy as I was prior to fasting. Serious fasting is like hard exercise for your metabolism. When you exercise, would you rather go hard and push yourself or would you rather go through the motions and not work up a sweat? I think of real fasting (24 hr plus) as intense workout for your metabolism.
And it’s much easier than I thought if you know the tricks… mainly take prebiotic fiber to stop insane hunger. Drink lots of tea. And take pink/mineral salt if you get a fasting headache. If you want to know more of the science why it works watch the YouTube vid I linked. That guy has like 5000 videos about fasting, it’s so much he should probably do a fast of making YouTube vids about fasting.
For additional context on this commenter's health perspective: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36068156
Read some arkmedic
https://arkmedic.substack.com/
I may rant off the cuff like I did in that comment, but the evidence is there you should not trust anything in a medical journal.
Haha, only kidding. But really, it often is easier to reduce calorie intake than it is to increase calorie expenditure.
Sure, you can burn hundreds or thousands of calories a day by riding your bike. But if you’re worried about losing that much weight, are you in good enough shape to do that much exercise reliably anyway? I’m not.
(I should ride my bike more…)
And yes, 100gr of nuts is about 650 of calories, but that doesn't mean the body will actually "access" all those 650 calories.
For example: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S216183132...
"The metabolizable energy (ME) of nuts was consistently lower than that predicted by Atwater factors for investigated nut types"
"The lower-than-expected ME may explain a lack of association between nut intake and body weight observed in the literature"
A search on google scholar for: peanuts lipid bioaccessibility digestibility
might bring more studies on this topic
Maybe I break the laws of physics, maybe my brain is lying to me about how much I ate, or maybe my endocrine system is doing things to maintain a setpoint, like it does with temperature, hydrostatic balance, CO2 levels, Na/K balance, anything else I've missed?
Given the above, how the ** do you suggest that CICO works as a predictive model over long terms? I don't know the first number, really don't know the second, and the second changes in response to the first.
Doesn't matter. Ignore the O, focus on the I. If you want to weigh a certain amount, look up what the sedentary metabolic estimate is for that weight and consume that number that despite any additional exercise you are doing.
The hard part is dealing with being hungry all the time, and despite the promises of fad diets everywhere, there is no solution to that that I have found that doesn't involve stimulants.
[1] https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/exercise-metabolism-and-...
If you have a "slow metabolism" eat one candy bar's less worth of calories and you'll be fine.
Nine out of ten humans will be within 10% (less than a candy bar) of what an online BMR calculator spits out based on their sex, age, weight, and height.
The tenth out of ten humans is the person in the article you linked to, or an elite athlete.
If you are one of those one out of ten humans, you are or should be under the care of a physician.
Everyone else can count calories and adjust based on their observations.
BMR has the same factoid-spouting prigs as BMI. Yeah, we get it, you're a powerlifter so BMI doesn't work with you. Shut up and let the 99.97% of the population for who it works use it.
Cutting out that candy bar may work on paper, but the body will adapt to that reduced intake.
I'll cite the article I linked:
"One show contestant lost 239 pounds and achieved a weight of 191 pounds, yet six years later, after regaining 100 pounds of that lost weight, had to consume an 800-calorie-per-day diet to maintain his weight."
Now, you may argue that this person is an extreme outlier, and that's certainly true. However, it illustrates the principle. Differences as small as 10% can make a big impact over time.
The 130kg person burning just 800kcal/day is something highly suspicious. I am not sure if would be enough to lie in coma in a +30C room with a severe thyroid hormones deficiency to get to that level.
There are examples from hundreds of concentration/POW camps, periods of famine: if such extreme BMR lowering would be a thing, we would see it long time ago.
Yes, because being hungry sucks. Why this has to be explicitly pointed out to you, I don't know.
Consider the following: 1500 calories worth of Snickers bar would not have the same effects as 1500 calories worth of beans and legumes or 1500 calories of pure soda. Satiety, nutrient and calorie availability, hormones (insulin), all differ depending on what you're eating -- and how often and how much you're eating. Even the combination of macro nutrients will have different effects: for example, fats + simple carbs is way worse than fats + proteins + fiber.
And exercise, mood, sunshine also factor in.
In the end, of course, thermodynamics holds and if you eat 1000 calories (no matter what form they take) when you need at a minimum 1500 then 100% yoi will lose weight. But how fast, how easy or how healthy that would be is a different story depending on what you're eating.
How sure of that are you? Mark Haub, Nutrition Professor, famously ate a diet made entirely of "convenience store food" like Twinkies and chips for 10wks at a caloric deficit.
Despite a diet based on pure junk food, all of his health metrics improved and he lost 27lbs[0].
As someone who has lost well over 100lbs and who struggles constantly to deal with their weight, I can say from my experience that how many calories you eat is practically the only thing that matters. I have tried all the fad diets over the years and not a one of them has managed to lose me any weight and perform any better without strict calorie counting.
[0] http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/...
"In the end, of course, thermodynamics holds and if you eat 1000 calories (no matter what form they take) when you need at a minimum 1500 then 100% yoi will lose weight. But how fast, how easy or how healthy that would be is a different story depending on what you're eating."
"if you eat 1000 calories (no matter what form they take) when you need at a minimum 1500 then 100% you will lose weight"
And then I added:
"how fast, how easy or how healthy that would be is a different story depending on what you're eating."
You can lose weight (or maintain weight) only drinking 1000 calories worth of soda everyday. But it will be harder, way harder, than losing weight by eating 1000 calories of baked cauliflower with some nuts and some parmesan.
A human lifespan is not 10 weeks. Did he do that for the next 50 years? Because that's what's necessary.
IIRC the average American gains weight equivalent to a 50 kCal / day surplus, or 2.5%. By that same logic, going by weight gain and activity, I've started eating 70% more over the last two weeks, and I can't agree that's what happened. I eat out rarely and my groceries bill and cart contents have not changed.
I might believe the claim in isolation but, if all of his health metrics improved - sorry, I'm going to need a replication. Over 40 weeks.
> However, he did admit to eating veggies around his kids.
Oh look.
I can come up with any old crap as advice if, afterwards, I can tell the recipient "you need to update the figures until my predictions stop being wrong". That just means the figures I gave were wrong.
Sample of 19, all male, between 19 and 26, medium age 21. Approximately half were smokers. All had scored a class I or II PFT prior to deployment, had passed a physical, and were in good to excellent health.
Environment and Conditions = Aircraft carrier on gonzo station in the Indian Ocean. Period = 4.5 months. Working temperature range 24 to 35C, 50 to 100%RH. IMA mostly sedentary, sitting at avionics bench in air conditioned space. OMA mostly active, on flight deck or on hanger deck
Work level = 12 to 24 hr/day for OMA(this includes chow breaks). 10 to 20 hr/day for IMA. Both worked 7 days/week.
Food Intake - OMA people ate 3x to 5x per day where range of consumption not less than 3400 cal/day. High end of consumption range indeterminate, probably over 5700 cal/day. IMA people ate 3x/day, unless standing a mid-watch, where range of consumption was 3100 to 4200 cal/day.
About 30% of OMA subject did weights 3x to 5x per week. Essentially all IMA lifted 2x to 6x per week.
Results - all OMA people lost between 5% and 20% body mass by end of cruise. I lost approx 9%, but may not be representative because I spent approx 30% of time working in IMA.
IMA people weight gains ranged from 0% to 10%.
Source = Senior Chief Corpsman (paygrade E-8) that was collecting performance data on aviation maintenance personnel for unknown reasons.
Based on this small sample, I could conclude that both caloric intake and activity level are among the principle things that effect a weight loss or gain.
Correlation does not guarantee causation, but it sure hints there may be something connecting the two variables.
They are very much outliers in terms of what their body composition compared to people of the same age who don't do endurance sports, especially when you look at their diet.
Someone who does a < 60 minute workout will likely not burn off all the glycogen stored in their muscles. Around 60 minutes your body will have to switch to burning fat or you start having to add calories. And “eating healthy” during exercise takes a backseat to fast calories due to GI issues and the much slower breakdown of more complex carbohydrates.
The difference is what you eat when you’re not training. I try to eat healthy during the day, but for long workouts, it’s high-carb sports drinks, gels, and peanut butter M&Ms.
Gustav Iden, the current IRONMAN champion, eats around 8000 calories on intense training days.
I’m not Gustav, and I don’t work out as much or as hard as he does, but sometimes I need 3000-4000 calories just so I don’t feel like * before, during or after training
Everyone knows if you are Michael Phelps you can eat 8,000 calories a day and not gain weight. It's just not interesting to discuss.
What is actually useful is advice to real people. You cannot outrun the fork. If you are a hobby distance cyclist racking up 600 miles/week, these types of articles and advice is simply not for you as it obviously does not apply.
And to be honest? This sort of thing is really non-obvious to many people. I've witnessed many folks in my life who spend hours in the gym who quite literally think that means they can have that donut no problem - not realizing they just wiped out that hour workout plus 50% more in that single act.
The energy efficiency of human beings is not intuitive to many, including myself.
It may be hyperbolic - but for 90% of the population stating something like "absolutely nothing else matters for weight loss other than diet" is a true statement.
And the point I'm trying to make is that there are likely higher-order effects from exercise well beyond the number of calories burn during that exercise. Whether it is because endurance exercise improves mitochondrial efficiency, or insulin sensitivity, or basal metabolic rate, the matter of fact is that there are plenty of ordinary people who struggled with their weight and see significant long-term weight loss as long as they continue performing a few hours of endurance exercise per week.
Go talk to people in your nearest amateur cycling club if you don't believe me.
It's just difficult and requires a lot of willpower. Provided you actually worked (didn't sit on a machine at the gym on your phone), burned a decent amount (typically cardio works best), and don't replace the extra calories you burned out with more food, it's all helping you achieve a CICO deficit.
9 times out of 10, it is all CICO.