To Lose Weight, Eating Less Is Far More Important Than Exercising More (2015)
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Also problematic in the article is normalising the perception that exercising is tedious. No, exercise is not tedious once you actually have some kind of aerobic base. But for someone who was sedentary beforehand, building this aerobic base for the first time takes a few months; most people give up before that and never get to a point where exercising is casual, pleasant and recreational (rather than a chore). Overall a contrarian article built on contrived arguments and incomplete contexts.
One interesting note that I have from the article is that mean weights for baseline/phase 1/phase 2/plateau weights were 102.8kg/97.1kg/92.1kg/90.1kg. This corresponds to a 0%/-6%/-10%/-12% drop from starting weight, with a massive increase in adaptive thermogenesis between -10% and -12%. The standard body builder advice for losing weight[0] is to lose 10% or ideally less at a time, slowly work your caloric consumption back to maintenance each time, and then start again after at least as long as the time you took to diet. I can't find any academic studies about this but I believe the intent is to reverse or avoid adaptation.
[0] E.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZL1lGA9M3A&list=PLyqKj7LwU2... around the 1 minute mark
> Collectively, these results underline the possibility that the metabolic adaptations that occur in response to prolonged energy deficit persist in time and that constant efforts may need to be deployed in the form of increased energy expenditure from exercise or strict adherence to lowered EI, similar to the characteristics of successful long-term weight-loss maintainers.
It references two studies which found that metabolic rate had not fully recovered at 12 weeks and 1 year after ending the caloric deficit/weight loss diet.
A 5.1% reduction compared to predicted caloric expenditure over the long term seems quite believable. I wonder if it can go higher or if that's the maximum extent, and what refeeding does.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enzyme_inhibitor#Irreversible_...
But this is quite intuitive, isn't it. It's the lasagna paradox: feed a man three lasagna trays a day for his whole life, he will be very fat. But once you start feeding him two, still well over the TDEE of a normal man, he will lose weight until he will plateau again.
If you condition your body to work with 2000Kcal from the 2400 it needs, it will adjust. If you then want to lose more fat once it is adjusted, you have to scale the caloric input even more.
This does not mean that dieting is ineffective. It's just your body adapting to keep you alive.
Besides, from the link: "Adaptive thermogenesis can make a difference in the ability of obese individuals to lose body weight"
In OBESE individuals.
I often find that weight loss discussion here on HN errs on the irrational side.
fify.
I lost nearly 100 lbs, and I've kept it off for five years now. Sample size of one, yes, but I've talked to a lot of other people who've gotten healthier, and they say similar things.
It's not about the most effective way to reduce the number on the scale - I suspect most people prioritizing that will find middling success, and probably will see it reversed eventually.
It's about understanding how our bodies work, why certain choices are healthier than others, and making the conscious decision to embrace a new lifestyle with all the personal costs and benefits that entails.
If you do that, you will be improving your diet and also getting more exercise. You'll want to do both, and the question of how much of each contributes to the number on the scale vanishes as you feel better and better each month.
"Quitting drugs is easy once you willpower yourself into it. Why is anybody still addicted to anything?"
Eat on the treadmill.
I'm someone who eats really fast and barely chews. It allows me to eat competition-level amounts of food, and my waistline can quickly suffer as a result. But pacing myself makes me feel fuller on much smaller portions (read: 500kcal days).
This is easy and satisfying when you don't eat alone and get lost in conversation.
Yes, a person in 60° water is losing heat energy more quickly than someone in 60° air. This is because water is much more efficient at transferring this energy - something like 24x IIRC.
Determining an equivalent air temperature requires knowing a bunch of additional factors (e.g. humidity). I don’t know of a rule of thumb you could apply other than saying the equivalent air temperature of water below one’s body temperature would be much colder, and the inverse would be true for water temperatures above one’s body temperature.
A study performed at the University of Florida showed slightly more calories are burned in cold water exercise than in warm. In the study, men who exercised for 45 minutes in 68 degree water burned an average of 517 calories. The men who exercised in 91.4 degree water burned 505 calories, on average.
from very cold to very warm is just twelve extra calories
But even in that case, you’d only burn a few additional calories at best, Cypess said. In studies where he’s put participants in cold rooms for entire days, they burned off an additional 150 to 200 calories. Again, that’s a full day of cold — not an hour’s worth of outdoor activity.
https://www.vox.com/2017/12/23/16774320/exercise-in-cold-bur...
vast majority of energy is expended by exhalation of carbon dioxide, not warming
It is vastly easier to consume calories than to shed them via exercise. Thus, though both are important, eating less should be the focus of weight loss not moving more, even though exercise is important and should be part of a program.
There is no need to have a battle of science words to debate something which has been understood for a hundred years.
Exactly how I feel. Weight loss is a heated argument here on HN. There's the occasional diet denier, those who apparently gain more weight than calories contained in the food they eat "because of how their bodies work", et cetera. I think that there's no escape from thermodynamics.
Not eating is the simplest thing one can do. Body will still burn fuel to keep you alive and functioning well. Plus, eat a pizza, ingest 1000Kcal. To run off 1000Kcal, eh...
I think the first step is to recognize the difference between not being completely full and actually being hungry. If your stomach isn't growling, you're not actually hungry, you just don't feel full.
Another step is changing when you eat to reduce how much you eat. There are different ways to intermittent fast so find out which works for you and stick to it. A couple of easy ways to fast is to not eat in the morning because if you do, your stomach starts working. Let it sleep and eat later. Then at the end of the day, eat in the evening, close enough to bedtime that you're not hungry yet but long enough that you're not eating too close to bedtime. Most people can drink water in the morning to keep hydrated, without waking their stomach.
When you start out, just push your eating times by an hour at a time until you get them to where you want them. You will likely feel like eating but you will get used to it and soon your body won't ask.
So if you eat at 8pm and then don't eat breakfast until noon the next day, you've gone 16 hours without eating. About 12 hours after you eat, the food you ate is gone, and your body will start pulling energy from your fat cells to keep it going for those next 4 hours. This causes weight loss.
Another step is which macro-nutrients you eat, fats, proteins, and carbs. When you eat carbs, your blood sugar rises and your body pushes the excess into your fat cells for future use. This causes weight gain. It also causes your blood sugar to go down and for you to feel hungry again. This is why you feel like snacking a couple of hours later even though it's not meal time yet and even though the sugar pushed into your fat cells hasn't been burned off yet.
The other issue with carbs is that there is nothing in carbs that your body needs that it can't get from the other macro-nutrients as long as you're eating a variety of foods.
When you eat proteins, your blood sugar doesn't rise as fast and you don't feel hungry as quickly so you might last until the next meal time before feeling hungry. Also, not as much of it is stored in your fat cells for later use. Your body does need proteins. You can look up online how many grams of protein you should eat each day.
Your body also needs fats. When you eat fats, your blood sugar rises barely at all, it is not pushed into your fat cells for storage and you can go for many hours without feeling hungry. Of course, you need to ensure you are eating healthy fats and not unhealthy fats.
Also, get enough fibre.
I find that I only like very few vegetables.
A small portion of broccoli or spinach
Maybe some romaine or (useless) iceberg lettuce
That's kind of it... 100 calories of zucchini smothered in oil/butter really isn't going to change my life?
I'm probably not alone and this is why America is fat.
All very rough estimates, and not counting butter and such. Thanks for the prompt; it was an interesting exercise.
Dog knows I could stand to lose 15 lbs or so, though.
The carrots and chickpeas I eat plain sometimes, but most other things get roasted or sauteed with a bit of olive oil and salt, or thrown in a stew. You don't need a ton of oil or salt to make it flavorful, but "flavorful" is of course relative, and even well-seasoned veggies don't compete with more processed foods.
As other commenters have noted, veggies shine because they have low caloric density per unit appetite satisfied, most of my calories probably come from oil, eggs, milk, and peanut butter.
1. 400g Carrots (full size peeled, or "baby carrots") tossed with 1tsp olive oil and black pepper, then roasted at 425F for 20 minutes is approximately two 100 calorie servings.
2. 400g Butternut squash (i use frozen - but thawed before roasting, so less of a PITA to prep) tossed with 1tsp olive oil, and 1 tsp of taco seasoning (store bought or home made). 425 for 20 minutes. Again, 2 servings of ~100 calories.
3. 400g of cauliflower tossed with 2 tsp of olive oil, 1/2 tsp of turmeric, 1/2 tsp of cumin. 425 for 1 hour, again, 2 servings of ~100 calories
4. 4 cups of cherry tomatoes (~100 calories), 2 English cucumbers (~80 calories), 200g of chickpeas (~320 calories), 1/2 tbsp olive oil (120 calories), 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar (14 calories), 6 servings of ~100 calories
5. 50g of sun-dried tomatoes (cut in strips), 100g of oil packed roasted red peppers (cut in strips, drained), medium avocado (cut into cubes), 50g of dried, unsweetened mango (diced) - 5 servings of ~110 calories)
Steamed broccoli is an excellent plate filler with almost zero effort.
For me, my parents had the mindset that we could eat as many servings of vegetables as we wanted but got a smallish serving of the main dish and dessert, so vegetables are the free space on the food bingo card. If you weren't exposed to the "ugh vegetables!" cultural fad it's also helpful. They can be tasty on their own merits.
Some discussion then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9724131
Eating more is easier than eating less.
What a weird paradox.
You need to lose weight, but do it slowly.
(He was making a joke with me of course. Most people going to cardiologists now are old enough to have been raised during the 'weight control is "diet+exercise" ' propaganda era. Actual results indicate that many people who "exercise" gain weight by eating more. )
My go to became stir fries of seafood/pork/chicken and dense veggies like broccoli, carrots, or potatoes. It's simple food that can be eaten so many different ways and where small indulgences with huge flavor like butter or cheese have minimal impact. I also got into herbs and spices that improved my palate and cooking. I also replaced my soda habit with plain ice cold carbonated water.
In other words weight loss is just the capstone of a more disciplined lifestyle where you cook your own food, which in turn also requires a routine of housework, grocery shopping, and avoiding fast food. Exercise can just be some basic calisthenics and daily walks. It's... pretty much what you were already taught way back in grade school.
See https://www.researchgate.net/figure/BMI-versus-body-fat-perc... from a study of the Greek population and note how many people are in each quadrant.
https://www.vox.com/2016/4/28/11518804/weight-loss-exercise-...
1 hour of intense exercise does account for approximately 500-700 active calories, which increases your daily caloric budget by 36% at the higher end.
All that matters for weight loss is that you burn more calories than you consume, and expanding your daily budget will certainly help that.
What most people need to start doing is actually counting their calories. Staring 600 calories in the face of your Starbucks coffee might get some people to think twice.
I'll disagree on the article, though. I thought it did a great job of illustrating why the "extra calories due to the exercise I did" argument is too simplistic. Compensatory behaviours, metabolic compensation, and all the rest mean that the calories out part of the equation is much more complicated than the standard linear model would suggest. I use MacroFactor when I'm tracking which automatically adjusts my calorie budget based on my food intake and weight movement, and it's astonishing how little difference exercise makes.
> Why you shouldn't exercise to lose weight
Content of the actual article, many paragraphs down:
> [P]eople who have had success losing weight have a few things in common: They weigh themselves at least once a week. They restrict their calorie intake, stay away from high-fat foods, and watch their portion sizes. They also exercise regularly.
I mean, I agree with the general thrust of the article, but really now! Exercise is important for reasons that have nothing to do with immediate weight loss. You shouldn't quit smoking to lose weight either, and in fact nicotine is an appetite suppressant, but you should still quit smoking.
Interestingly, they don't discuss the most important exercise when losing weight - resistance training is super important to make sure you lose fat rather than muscle, which they don't discuss at all. But that's not what most people think of when they think about exercising for weight loss.