Outside elite athletes, most people burn a significant minority of calories on physical activity [1]. Again, we have actual research around calorie restriction + exercise.
All people have a huge static component to the calories that are used by our bodies. But this component is pretty much the same for all people. Our livers, our hearts, our brains are all constructed the same and use the same amounts of energy.
Where our bodies differ for the static component is based on our activity levels. Our Basal Metabolic Rate is higher when we have active lifestyle and tend to be lower when we are sedentary.
So, again, to use less energy you have to move less because regular exercise will increase your BMR or (depending how you think about it) prevent it from dropping.
You can't have low basal metabolic rate AND be regularly exercising.
We have evidence time-restricted feeding reduces basal metabolic rates [1].
> to use less energy you have to move less
Most of us carry a lot of fat, particularly around the organs, that makes all sorts of processes from physical activity to the mundane inefficient. The point of calorie restriction, nutrition and exercise is to cut out that inefficiency. We have strong evidence it can be done. Per the article and reams of research.
The only catch is that the truly extreme cases have a notably higher energy requirement to stay alive (more tissue needs more energy), which could skew their numbers a bit to have somehow resembled a more active person.
We know calorie restriction + exercise works in mice. So this isn’t a thermodynamic problem. We in tech tend to think from first principles; calories in = calories out seems obvious. The problem is it’s misleadingly simplifying—there is a lot in between that is significant.
In any case, I don’t think this is therapeutically inclined. It’s simply hinting at an underlying mechanism we may be able to exploit.
Primarily because of improper muscle activation, and from their body weight making the exercise more intense.
Athletes increase their cardiovascular and metabolic throughput (i.e., allowing them to burn even more calories and thus work even harder), and repeating an activity increases muscle control, allowing more coordinated and balanced movements (e.g., keeping themselves and external weights balanced without erratic, wasteful compensatory movements). They might also have a diet that absorbs better, as athletes try to absorb absurd amounts of calories.
A larger person does have a higher base energy consumption, although this is not caused by inflammation - it's just that any tissue need energy. If this was not the case, even just a few kilocalories overeating would cause unbounded growth - instead, energy requirements for a person lie on a curve, and slight overeating for one body weight just means that you reach equilibrium at a slightly higher body weight, with any combination of food intake + activity + body composition having some (although possibly absurd) body mass equilibrium. Of course, being morbidly obese does introduce high risk of certain diseases that have an energy cost and waste (e.g., mismanaged diabetes and sugar in urine), but I consider that somewhat separate.
Caries in = calories out is a thermodynamic problem. Thermodynamics account for inefficient processes. If you take fewer calories in, it always means that your body will be doing less or taking its energy from elsewhere. The body has plenty of ways to do this, including reducing base metabolism at certain costs. The sheer number of backup plans the body has available for any particular function is fascinating, but they are generally all costlier than the primary ones.
However, do not let that deter you from exploring this further. Collecting data on health outcomes of human behaviors is almost impossible without massive datasets - can't exactly cage people up in labs to test them.
Not arguing it doesn't. Just that using thermodynamics to understand human metabolism is akin to trying to grok flight through Newtonian mechanics. You can do it. But mostly by working backwards from higher-level principles.
The evidence for that disconnect is this thread. CACO leads people to believe you can't decrease your calorie consumed and burned without also increasing physical activity levels. Yet that's empirically incorrect. Not because thermodyanmics doesn't apply. But that it applies in mechanisms so complex that starting from first principles doesn't work until you have the roadmap.
> slight overeating for one body weight just means that you reach equilibrium at a slightly higher body weight
Studies observing the effects of calorie restriction see improvements in a variety of biomarkers. That slightly-higher weight comes with higher inflammation, higher CVD frequencies and other nasties.
Based on my personal experience, whether you exercise or not you are still going to be miserable when on caloric restriction.
But when you are exercising your portions do not get so small. In fact, you could be eating exactly the same and if you add walking about 10km (6 miles) every day, you are putting yourself in a significant calorie deficit of about 600 kcal (adult male, regular height, a bit overweight).
While it does not matter where 600kcal deficit comes from from thermodynamic point of view, it makes dieting easier:
* The food portions have the size you are used to. Your stomach is used to about this kind of food. At least some satiety signals are going to be the same as before you started dieting.
* Exercising will preserve muscle mass. We have a mechanism where if the body needs to access stored energy it will spare the muscles that are being exercised. This is how bodybuilders are cutting -- during cutting phase they are reducing their fat without building new muscle but are still exercising. This exercising is necessary so that the body burns fat preferentially rather than going for muscle protein.
* Exercising seems to prevent most or all of BMR drop from calorie restriction. Normally, if you just reduce your calories without much activity, the body will start conserving energy in various ways (for example I felt cold on hot days which was super interesting feeling). If BMR drops, you need to reduce your food intake even further to ensure the same level of calorie restriction. And if you do not do this you might find that a) you have reduced your calorie intake and b) you are not losing weight. Terrible place to be in. Activity prevents that from happening.
Over the period of six month from May 2023 to October 2023 I logged:
* 2497km of combined walks and runs (about 80% walks and running the rest), about 13.6km a day on average
* 384h of activities (for about 2h 7m daily average)
* about 6.5km/h average activity speed. I walk at about 6km/h normally (sometimes faster, sometimes slower), some of the activity time is probably walking into groceries or standing in a queue for a coffee and some of the activities are runs.
* 709k steps in May * 775k steps in June * 792k steps in July * 808k steps in August * 713k steps in September * 618k steps in October
For a total of 4.4M steps in 6 months or about 24.2k steps a day, on average.
* as an interesting note, Garmin estimates that my activities burned 180 thousand kcalories which translates to 20kg of pure fat or about 23kg of adipose tissue (I have maintained my weight during that period, though). Hard to say how accurate this is.
So, yes, it is feasible. Though quite time consuming. I switched my entertainment needs to consuming audiobooks and whatever informational/educational content I could put my hands on that would be even remotely useful.
Again, you're missing the other side of the comparison implied by "restriction"—restricted from what? You can't just avoid calories entirely.
From baseline. Which for almost every person is higher than is healthy.
> can't just avoid calories entirely
Who said this? Even the title says “eating less” not “starve and die.”
Why not just say "eat baseline calories"? Assuming everyone is overweight is weird.
This is like saying “everything in moderation.” What’s moderation? The whole point is drawing the new baseline.
> Assuming everyone is overweight is weird
Again, straw man. Nobody said as much. What is suggested by the research is we eat and expend more calories than is efficient.
Presumably, not always "less than what you're currently doing".
And at every step, they hear that they surely eat too much.
Curious to see research showing eating disorders are driven by misguided pursuits of health.
> Increasing amount of population eats significantly less then they need and are terrified of eating more
"The overall incidence rate of anorexia nervosa is considerably stable over the past decades," though it's increasing "among younger persons (aged <15 years)" [1]. ("For bulimia nervosa, there has been a decline in overall incidence rate over time.")
Meanwhile, obesity is increasing globally [2].
And yes, eating diaorders among young people are on the rise, both in boys and girls. When people complain about social media and mental health of young people, that is the primary concern.
Plus, you can have eating disorder and be fat, while your body lacking whole host of nutrition.
"Orthorexia nervosa is not listed in the offical ICD-11 and DSM-V classifications of mental disorders" and "there is still no officially accepted definition of ON, or standardised criteria of its diagnosis" [1]. As such, it's difficult to characterise its prevalence.
You said "eating disorders are on the rise." That's not true outside a narrow cohort, and among them, there is no evidence it's driven by misguided pursuits of health. What we do have evidence of is increasing obesity.
Note that this is the least traumatic way of calorie usage.
Between junk calories and inefficient metabolism from a sedentary lifestyle, almost everyone has this surplus in their energy balance.
But monitoring calorie intake vs expenditure really does make a difference. I went through multiple cycles of controlled 10kg+ weight gain and loss, and I must say that just by walking extra couple miles a day while enforcing the calorie limit can make all the difference.
What doesn't work for weight control is just doing more sports - this is easily compensated by hunger.
Because their bodies compensate by eating more and they are surprised they are not losing weight and they think that exercising does not work.
Which is completely wrong way to look at it. You want to get healthier to lose weight not lose weight to get healthier. And exercise is one of the best ways to help you get healthier even if it does not directly and immediately lead to losing weight.
If you combine calorie deficit, a body that is in dire need of energy, high fasting insulin leading to inability to reach into fat stores, underdeveloped mitochondria making burning fat even more difficult, your result is body that prioritises burning protein for fuel.
If you exercise not only the body gets signal to preserve the tissue and muscles that are being loaded, but also keeps building mitochondria that are necessary to effectively burn more fat.
I would hope people exercise to a limited extent anyway, to the extent their bodies will try retain a baseline level of muscle-stength needed day to day.
As you've read on my other comment, I lost 20kg over 6 months on a low carb, low sugar, higher protein diet. I started gyming about 4/5 months in and I personally attribute this gyming with a chain-reaction that led to me putting the weight back on and am now in a much worse position health wise, even muscle wise. This all due to practical reasons, such as increased appetite which upset the hard-fought dietary and hunger equilibrium I reached.
Exercising too is I'm sure definitely better but I feel is way more difficult and sets many, on the weightloss journey, up to fail.
I went down from 93kg to 78 and then from 90kg to 78. I didn't go for low carb or sugar, just ensured enough protein and overall calorie deficit. Right now I am just carefully float around 80 kg.
This, and moderate excercise (kettlebells, some weightlifting, walking) made things relatively easy as I just made sure I stayed in an overall deficit.
One more point: it's the running weight average matters, not daily measurements.
Regular exercise causes people to be hungry and compensate for the additional activity. That's normal.
But I probably am feeling and healthier than I would if I wasn't running.
As an example, my body got rid of all the skin folds. I should have flappy loose skin around my belly and I should have old looking skin on my face. Instead my body, being much healthier than if I was just restricting calories, is able to break up and use that extra tissue and got rid of all that skin naturally.
I learned that a doctors evaluating people who lost significant amount of fat can guess pretty correctly at the method the person used to lose the weight just based on how their skin looks like.
Which is to say, it's too simplistic a model to talk about "breathing twice as fast" as explaining what's going on.
I'm curious about nighttime vs daytime breathing. I was under the impression that sleeping person breaths deeper than resting person. At least you can tell the exact moment somebody falls asleep because they start to breath deeply and loudly.
i don't know where you pulled the data about 10k steps, but even if it was accurate, it would depend a great deal on how much weight. At my weight, running (!) for 30 minutes burns a mere 200 calories.
I switched to weight lifting, walking a lot and some kettlebell training for weight control after running for many years. Running is great but in my case resulted in joint and back problems.
One surprising thing about walking vs running is that running doesn't burn all that much calories compared to the effort it requires. While I can integrate walking into my daily routine (15-30 minutes in the morning, at lunch time and in the evening), running needs at least 1.5-2 hours per day.
> most of the calories burnt are just so the body can maintain itself (basal metabolism), not from the exercise!
When reporting how many calories are burned through exercise, people usually count what is in addition to being at rest/sedentary. But the total reported by this calculator includes the basal rate. That's why it's so high.