Hacker News Reader

Comment by com2kid | Hacker News Reader

This is true to an extent and I'm very fond of the saying, but beyond a certain point you can indeed outrun a bad diet.

I used to spend ~4 hours a day training martial arts (kickboxing, BJJ, etc) during which time I could eat almost anything I wanted without gaining weight.

I'm sure if I had downed a cheesecake a day it would've been bad for me, but I was able to get away with a level of excess back then that I am unable to today.

So you can indeed outrun a bad diet, it just takes more running than most people want to do!

View on HN

Yeah, this is a scale problem.

You can hop on a plane and go from a driving-city to a walking city, look around and see the difference. I can't accept that this doesn't matter.

But if you take the common American diet where the bread of your sandwich is shelf-stable because it's packed with sugar and oil, and that's before we even talk about portion size, "more running than most people want to do" quickly becomes "recreate the scene from Forest Gump."

> I can't accept that this doesn't matter.

It's not that it doesn't matter, it's the asymmetry. You can eat a small chocolate bar that costs $1 (or whatever) in about 15 seconds, and it will take you 2 hours of walking to wear off the calories.

It's more complicated than this, because muscle raises your basal metabolic rate.

If you look at bodybuilders, they're buring 400 calories a day, regardless of exercise. Having an extra 100 pounds of muscle means your body just burns A LOT of calories doing absolutely nothing.

This is part of the reason why men burn more calories than woman just right out of the gate.

A pound of fat burns ~3 calories, while muscle is ~8 per day. Sure, it is different, but unless you are the Rock, most people do not have enough muscle mass to make a difference.

This is just not true, if you look at women and men of similar height men still burn significantly more calories.

Hormones, I'm sure, play a role too but testosterone is sticky. More weightlifitng raises your testosterone - so you should be seeing that benefit.

> men burn more calories than woman just right out of the gate

Sure, but parent's point is that the energy input from sugary snacks like chocolate roughly equates to a significant amount of exercise. (Over an hour of walking). -- Maybe the caloric equivalent amount of walking is a little longer or shorter for different bodies.

How might you take action from this understanding, though.

Gaining an extra 100 pounds of muscle is hardly an easy/tangible feat.

"Reducing intake of sugary snacks" is going to be easier than "walk for over an hour".

You don't need 100 pounds of muscle to reap the benefits.

My point is, yes eating a sugary snack takes 1 hour of walking. But it doesn't take 1 hour of weightlifting. It can take 0 hours of weightlifting, if you've already been weightlifting.

Even with walking and running, you do build muscle. When the treadmill says 100 calories, you didn't actually burn 100 calories - you burned 100 plus the increased rate from the muscle you gained.

So, if you're an athletic person, you're burning more calories regardless of if you work out. Just by existing, sleeping, whatever, you have a big head start. For some athletes, this head start is in the 1000s of calories range.

Sure, but if you hadn't eaten the bar in 15s you'd have burnt other calories that are now being stored instead.

Not that this applies to people with loads of muscle in general; the saying isn't particularly for people who focus massively on fitness. It's for people who don't do anything and think going for a walk a day will sort out their health goals.

You can hop on a plane and go from a driving-city to a walking city, look around and see the difference. I can't accept that this doesn't matter.

It's a whole lot easier to hit up a drive through or grab a tub of ice cream at the grocery store when you're driving a car.

You're not wrong, though. Walking around doesn't burn a lot of calories (~100/mile), but most people become overweight by only slightly overeating on a daily basis, over a long period of time. One can of soda has 140 Calories. 140 excess daily Calories is an extra pound of fat per month.

Well yeah, the sugar is also there to produce the soft squishy texture people expect from sandwich bread as well as the aiding the Maillard reaction when it's grilled. Miss me with a grilled cheese made with any other kind of loaf.

But we are talking about bread here, even in the absence of sugar and oil it's still got plenty of calories for you. Grain St Methode's white bread, a no added sugar brand is 180 cals for two slices and Wonder Bread, famously packed with sugar, is 140 cals for two slices. It's the bread which is making you fat, the sugar isn't moving the needle in any direction as far as the obesity crisis is concerned.

Exercise definitely helps you improve your eating patterns. In particular it helps you deal with stress which is a source of bad food habits.

Yep, at one point in my life I was consistently cycling for 30 hours a week and eating enough became a chore. So it's definitely possible, but it requires enough exercise that's essentially a full time job.

I once trained pretty hard for several months for a martial arts competition. I upped my calorie intake to keep up with the training and put on about ~15lb of muscle. What people don't tell you about this sort of intensive training is just much extra time you spend each week shopping, cooking, eating and taking a shit - on top of all the training!

I had a similar situation in my early 20s.

My conclusion was that past a certain point you need to use liquid sugar (soda especially) to get your body to put on weight past a certain point.

Even with absurd amounts of fat, carbs and proteins I could not process enough food to put on the weight I wanted too. Sugar is the backbone of massive weight gain.

I can confirm the same from my messenger days. On days when deliveries were sparse, we found ourselves moving from cafe to bakery, eating more pastries than a doctor would recommend. Regardless of the day's activity levels we would generally drink large amounts of beer after work and sometimes during. Maintaining weight and satisfying our appetites was always a more pressing concern.

I'm not a dietician, but when I read things like this NPR report, I wonder how much of it is motivated reasoning. "It is not your fault", is always a good come-on for a sales pitch. This report seems like something people would like to hear, especially if they haven't come to enjoy strenuous exercise.

That said, I've always had a bias against highly processed foods.

what is "processed" versus "highly processed" versus "ultra processed"?

the way these things are described feels very much like people are using a dowsing rod to find where to dig a well, or something. mumbo-jumbo.

I'm sure even "super ultra giga processed" foods are fine for you so long as you don't eat a lot of them. I'm not even sure that "processed" is bad at all. I don't want to eat raw cashews, I'll die (as will anyone else) I want those processed by cooking. Is pre-cooked food "processed" or "highly processed" or "ultra processed" or something else? all of the above; it depends on who you ask.

I don't know of any level of "processed" which is bad, I just know that if you consume 10k calories per day and only burn 3k, you're going to gain weight, level of "processed" probably doesn't matter. And I think that's all this study is saying: unless you're extremely active, you can't burn 10k calories a day, your body really limits how many calories you can burn in a day unless you are physically working enough to actually turn that amount of energy into physical work.

anyway, yeah. i immediately distrust anyone that starts mentioning "processed" or "highly processed" or "ultra processed" because I don't think those are defined. I think they're speaking entirely on vibes which are not quantitative.

>Wise Cheez Doodles Honey Bbq Cheese Flavored Corn Snacks, Honey; Bbq; Cheese

>CORN MEAL, VEGETABLE OIL (CONTAINS ONE OR MORE OF THE FOLLOWING: CORN, COTTONSEED, SUNFLOWER, OR CANOLA OIL), SUGAR, SALT, HONEY, CORN STARCH, FRUCTOSE, WHEY, DEXTROSE MONOHYDRATE, MONOSODIUM GLUTAMATE (FLAVOR ENHANCER), TOMATO POWDER, CHEDDAR CHEESE, (CULTURED MILK, SALT ENZYMES), ONION POWDER, BUTTER (CREAM, SALT), BLUE CHEESE FLAVOR, BUTTERMILK SOLIDS, MALTODEXRIN, YELLOW 5 LAKE, YELLOW 6 LAKE, GARLIC POWDER, PAPRIKA EXTRACT, NATURAL FLAVORS (CONTAINS CELERY), SOYBEAN OIL, LACTIC ACID, CITRIC ACID, SODIUM PHOSPHATE, ENZYME MODIFIED BUTTER OIL, YELLOW 5, YELLOW 6, AUTOLYZED YEAST EXTRACT, THIAMIN HYDROCHLORIDE (VITAMIN B1), DISODIUM GUANYLATE, DISODIUM INOSINATE

The big thing about processed food is that it is “purified” in a sense to strip it down to just starches, sugar, and fats. Think sweet corn vs corn syrup.

If you eat only processed foods but limit your calories, you will not become overweight. But you will not be getting enough fiber or micronutrients, and you will probably not feel full either.

> i immediately distrust anyone that starts mentioning "processed" or "highly processed" or "ultra processed" because I don't think those are defined. I think they're speaking entirely on vibes which are not quantitative.

Don't be afraid to use the web to dispel your confusion!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-processed_foods

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_classification

You are technically correct that processed foods are no less healthy than any other foods.

However they are engineered to be hyper palatable, meaning they taste way better than other foods and they will not satiate you even after eating and excessive amount.

Or to put it simply, it is really damn easy to eat a thousand calories of potato chips and still be hungry for "a real meal" but most people will tap out before eating a thousand calories of steak (12 to 16oz).

I think focus on satiation & calorie density makes good sense.

"Ultra-processed" is not completely precise, not completely accurate proxy for "hyper palatable, low satiation, calorie dense".

Yeah. Sure, your body can adjust how much calories are burned when you're idle, but it can only do so much. If you're burning thousands of calories on daily activity, it's gotta come from somewhere.

The most effective exercise for weight loss is fork put-downs.

[citation needed]

That is not what any of the studies I have read find, particularly not past the short term: past calorie restriction diets is one of the factors associated with developing obesity.

Isn't that a bit of a truism?

A _past_ calorie restriction is associated with a _current_ calorie surplus.

Obviously if the calorie restriction were being continued, one wouldn't be developing obesity.

"Fork put downs" does not mean a crash diet or anything like that.

It means permanently adjusting your caloric intake to levels that allow you to reach and maintain a healthy body weight and body fat makeup.

If you're eating 6000 calories a day there is no way you're out-exercising that diet while working a full time job.

And plate push aways

And spoon reversals

I see fork put-downs touted by random influencers and life coach type people on the internet, but this feels like one of those things that sounds profound but isn't based on any research other than someone's individual anecdotal experience.

I'm skeptical that this actually does anything.

Anecdotal counterpoint:

I have been quite sedentary for several years, since going fully remote.

I had seasons where I would gain wait and lose weight, and my level of activity remained unchanged.

A few years ago, I started paying more attention to my weight, and got to where I was consistently in my ideal weight range. Again, level of activity remained unchanged.

About a year ago, I started indoor cycling (Zwift) quite regularly — about 2.5 hours per week, averaging right in the middle of my target heart rate zone. Diet remained the same. Weight remained mostly unchanged (still in my ideal weight range — I’ve maybe lost 5 or so pounds, but I lost way more weight when only changing my diet).

So — for me — diet has definitely had more impact on my weight than my level of activity.

People tend to adjust their activity to maintain their energy expenditure without consciously thinking about it.

So a 30 minute session in the day might be followed by more time on the sofa later on.

I don’t think I could spend much more time on the sofa before I started cycling. :)

So you can indeed outrun a bad diet, it just takes more running than most people w̶a̶n̶t̶ have time to to do!

You were also younger.

I used to house whole pizzas for lunch. Now I only eat 2 slices and weigh the same.

The difference in metabolic activity as you age is relatively small until you are quite old, like a single digit percentage difference. You can go look at any TDEE calculator and see this.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com