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Comment by reducesuffering | Hacker News Reader

> Exercise doesn't spend enough energy for high calories foods to be worth it. If you want to lose weight that is.

Tell that to all the lean 150 pound / 68kg runners stuffing their faces with high calorie foods all the time.

You're replying to a person saying "exercise doesn't spend enough energy [...] if you want to lose weight" by referencing "lean 68kg runners".

Do you think they want to lose weight?

I wanted to lose weight. I ran a lot (only 5 hours out of the week), ate the same high caloric foods, and lost a lot of weight. Clearly GP's assertion isn't correct, because enough exercise does lose weight.

_Athletes_ are completely different from the normal people looking to exercise. Can you spend 4 hours of your day exercising?

Try only 4 hours a week of exercise. Most lean runners are only getting that amount of time running in and still eating high calories, because 4 hours of running is ~2,500 extra calories burned every single week.

If most people really wanted to I think they could. Split it into multiple blocks

Even most professional endurance athletes rarely hit 28 hours per week of actual training time. That would be like a peak week in a training plan before tapering leading up to a race.

Even more contrary to GP's claim, the top American marathoners are only doing ~13 hour weeks of running before their races. It's public data on Strava.

If you are single and short commute, it is doable. People spend hours watching TV, looking at phone.

I don't think it's reasonable. That becomes basically the only thing to do outside of work. Highly unlikely at the very least.

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