Inactivity 'kills more than obesity'

Of note, don't just assume it gets it right. In my case, it put me at the front of the train station, rather than at the back. This caused the routing to take me out of my way. Always worth exploring an area/talking to people to work out if there is anything out there that has missed.

To be honest it makes for awesome office banter.

I find riding in a couple inches of snow to be quite enjoyable but it can become overly burdensome when it gets too deep.

The main thing is to just dress appropriately and take your time. There's quite a few blog articles you can find about tips for bike commuting in the winter.

run an hour on a treadmill and wipe it out with a single donut.

That's going to be have a pretty huge donut then :P (or I'd have to be running at a rather slow pace)

The 2nd law of thermodynamics has little if anything to do with calorie counting.

There's a bit more happening than the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Our body does a lot of things.

I understand how comforting it can be to put it in "in -> out" terms, so simple. But it just doesn't reflect in any way the complexity of a living organism, and doesn't reflect the experiences of people trying naively to just eat less for instance.

- making you intensely crave specific calorific foods,

- making you prefer the taste of higher-energy over lower-energy foods when offered a choice,

- demanding your gut absorb more of the calories you normally consume,

- making more frugal use of the calories you normally consume,

- throwing you into hibernation mode, making you sleepy, lazy, and disinclined to move.

In general, through my life, I've found the best way to think about it is exercise for fitness, diet for weight maintenance.

What happens to you once you have responsibilities to others (wife, kids, etc.) unless you are a professional-level athlete is that you really don't have the time and energy to burn enough calories. It's hard to burn 400 kcalories, but it's easy to not eat that piece of pie (or to have a small piece and no bread with your meal).

There are exceptions, and most of us who are somewhat active have probably gone through that phase of life where we do 5000 kcal workouts 5 days a week and so on, but it's a very time-and-energy consuming proposition. I have known some men who have made it a point to continue that lifestyle into middle age, but they are exceptional and almost to a person never married (gay I think) or several times divorced. In other words, it takes total self absorption and those of us with normal family and community responsibilities have to let it go eventually.

That's also the failure I see with people and their New Years' Resolutions to get fit: quit drinking, go to the gym twice a day, etc. It's not sustainable.

Of course; eating exactly the number of calories that are required to maintain your weight, and then you start to exercise - yes, you will lose weight.

But people don't do that. They think "hey, I need a post-workout meal", and suddenly they're eating that in addition to everything else. And then it's the weekend, and they feel they deserve something extra because they've worked out a lot. Or they're already getting too many calories, and working out just makes them get fatter slower.

Exercise is important for a healthy lifestyle, but it won't result in weight loss. The amount of calories burned are trivial.

For example:

- 30 minute run burns (150 pound individual) burns just 272 calories.

- 30 minute lap swim (150 pound individual) burns, again, just 272 calories.

A single Milky Way chocolate bar has 240 calories. A Big Mac has 530 calories. A McDonalds Chicken Classic Sandwich 350 calories. And so on. So you can exercise for an hour and then regain the weight in under a minute. That's how few calories exercise burns.

The primary way people lose weight is BMR (basal metabolic rate), this is calories burned just keeping you alive. You literally lose weight while you sleep due to BMR.

People often like to claim "'calories in' need to be lower than 'calories out'" and while that is true to a point, it is an over simplification (i.e. even with identical calories certain things, like sugar, are kept as fat to a greater extent than other things, such as fiber, which are "ejected").

So, yes, please exercise. You'll live longer, feel healthier, and it might even shed one or two pounds if you're already skinny. But if you're obese and need to shed 10+ pounds then your diet is the primary means by which you'll accomplish your goals, in fact you can lose all of your weight while in a coma on a hospital bed, so all you need to do is under-eat for your BMR (but consult your doctor, and try to eat a balanced diet).

I recommend using something like MyFitnessPal. It is free. Just set it up, it will track your BMR and what you eat, and as long as you stay in the "green" (below the BMR) you'll eventually lose some weight.

However please keep in mind "water weight" is a legitimate thing. Your body does gain and lose +-5 pounds "randomly" so you shouldn't weigh yourself excessively, you'll just lose motivation. Once a week MAX, every two weeks is better.

Since fasting itself has some health benefits, it's probably better to do any exercise at all while reducing food intake, than it is to eat "normally" and try to make up for it with exercise which is not likely to confer much more marginal health benefit.

The point is there is there no set point of "enough" exercise to induce weight loss. It is highly variable between people and it is very unlikely that any individual can keep weight off in this fashion over a period of time. Linking exercise and weight is a time waster and, more importantly, can dissuade people from exercising when they don't achieve an impossible standard for weight loss.

> For example, say you have a 1-hour lunch break each day. During that lunch break, you could easily go for a 6km run (30-40 minutes), as well as have time for a shower, and grab food. If you're prepared to have a faster shower, and eat a quick snack, heck, you could even make it a 10km run (50 minutes).

First of all, the majority of workers do not have hour long lunch breaks. Second, that exercise during the middle of the work day sounds like a great way to ratchet up stress rather than be relaxing since now you are stuck in a time management game. This isn't an appropriate approach for everyone.

> Either way, I personally know many ordinary people who manage to get a healthy amount of exercise, and achieve their weight goals.

Again, this notion of a "healthy amount" of exercise is a fiction w.r.t. weight loss.

> I also have a friend who quite honestly, eats what seems to be an incredibly unhealthy mix - think large amounts of junk food and deep-fried fast food. However, they manage to stay reasonably slim (think BMI 18) by doing insane amounts of exercise (several hours a day). So it's definitely achievable, assuming you have that sort of willpower.

This person would likely still be a low BMI even without exercise.

> What studies are you referring to, that show that "normal" exercise will not cause weight loss? I'd be very curious to see them.

For a compilation of study data about weight loss, see the first half of Health at Every Size [1] (this is not an endorsement of a HAES lifestyle, but this book does collect the evidence).

[1] www.amazon.com/Health-At-Every-Size-Surprising/dp/1935618253/

If the person is only thinking "exercise will make me weigh less", that outcome is unlikely because modern society makes it deceptively easy to wipe out all your gains with a "small" snack, and because the conversion of fat to muscle doesn't show much on a scale.

But wouldn't better mental health increase productivity ? I mean a healthy horse might be more productive. Of course at some point, maybe better health doesn't increase productivity so much. But I tend to think that cerebral workers would work much better if they have less stress or better mental health.

...

>evolution

So, a few million years?

    - Adopt a Paleolithic diet as much as possible: plenty of fruit,
      fish, vegetables, nuts, and meat while avoiding most forms of
      food not in existence in paleolithic time. It implies avoiding
      all processed food, and in particular junk food and food with a
      high glycemic load, such as sweets and cultivated crops like
      potatoes and cereal grains (in particular wheat).
    - Exercise frequently, but with a variety of durations and
      intensities (including rest periods) rather than doing always
      the same, extended routines in a gym or while jogging.
    - Perform a variety of complex "natural movements" (e.g. walking,
      running, jumping, crawling, climbing, carrying, throwing,
      swimming) that use the whole body rather than artificially
      constrained exercises that focus on specific muscles (like those
      afforded by most gym equipment).
    - Maximize contact with nature, e.g. by keeping plants, gardening,
      working with animals, hiking in the woods, or climbing trees (as
      also proposed by the biophilia philosophy).
    - Use a minimum of clothes and don't wear shoes: exposure to heat,
      cold, pressure, and other natural forces strengthens rather than
      weakens the body.
    - Expose yourself regularly to the sun or at least to natural
      light, to get sufficient vitamin D and prevent depression.
    - Try to sleep at least 8 hours a day, preferably in line with
      natural day-night rhythms (though people in pre-industrial
      societies do not sleep in contiguous blocks - see anthropology
      of sleep and segmented sleep).
    - Spend sufficient time relaxing, playing, and just "being in the
      present", without worrying about later.
    - Reduce overall levels of stress; avoid overworking in favor of
      downshifting and simple living.
    - Allow contact with dirt: soil contains plenty of beneficial
      bacteria that strengthen immunity. Eat fermented foods like
      sauerkraut, kim chi, kombucha, etc. Lifelong exposure to a
      variety of microbes may actually be necessary to prevent
      allergies and autoimmune diseases, as proposed by the hygiene
      hypothesis.
    - Rear children the way hunter-gatherers do: extended
      breast-feeding, carrying of babies on the body, co-sleeping,
      while allowing older children to play and explore
      autonomously.
    - Sit with legs level with rear end (essentially, in the squatting
      position), as people in indigenous tribes do.
    - Socialize and interact closely with a small group of real
      friends, instead of staying alone or "networking" with thousands
      of superficial acquaintances.

Civilization is pretty young when you compare it to the evolution of humans. I think you're also missing out the difference of energy spent when comparing hunting versus agriculture. Even when you're not hunting, there is still a lot of physical activity around it. Not to mention automation.

More likely culprits:

* The "cheapness" and accessibility of junky food.

* The inaccessibility of heathy food in poor neighbourhoods (which may only have a corner store that primarily sells processed, packaged foods and no fresh veggies).

* The creep of sugar/HFCS into everything.

* The optimization techniques used by junk food companies to determine the right balance of taste so that people don't do things like eat in short bursts, but get sick of the flavour fast. [They basically run a ton of focus-groups on a bunch of small variations of the formula until they get one where people can -- for the most part -- just keep eating and eating it without getting sick of it.] If you liked potato chips, but got sick of the flavour after a single "serving" then you would eat fewer chips.

Fat acceptance is not a fad as you put. It is about people being able to accept and love themselves as they are. Fat people are bombarded with messages that they are not acceptable and they should not be exist. Fatness is described as a thing to be exterminated, which implies that fat people should be exterminated. This is not hyperbole, you can see this message reflected in advertising, media portrayals, and what people say (your own post has elements of this).

> Finally we have far too many people inactive in this country and many others because government benefits programs are sufficient to allow them this lifestyle. Simply put, if you keep paying and feeding people not to work just what do you expect them to do? Idleness is not a good state, its worse when we institutionalize it.

Have you even ever lived on an assistance program like food stamps? The amount of money given is never enough to completely cover's one's needs, folks are constantly looking for and finding ways to raise money by working, whether its official employment or grey market.

> Anecdotal but I am sure many have the same experience, there are two groups of co workers who are out the most, very obese people and smokers. Why should either be acceptable?

Nobody is obligated to live their life if a way you find acceptable. Nobody is obligated to be healthy or to drop unhealthy habits like smoking. Health systems that seek to punish people will not produce good health outcomes, it will simply drive those people away from seeking out medical care when they need it. Accusatory and attacking beliefs about health are what cause doctors and medical professionals to blame health outcomes on that status even when it is unrelated.