The people going to the gyms will find other ways to exercise. The people sitting at home obese are not impacted by closing gyms. If you want to prove me wrong, find some kind of report of what number of obese and morbidly obese people do weekly gym visits in the best of times?
If you want to see how the sugar tax works, look at the rollout, fallout, and repeal of the sugar tax in Chicago. It didn’t go so well.
It’s easy to call things common sense, but many of these arguments fall apart under closer inspection.
Here ice skating rinks are closed (outdoor-only ones are open to a maximum of four 12 year olds on the entire rink at once, it's fucking absurd).
I've not skated in seven months. My weight is stable thankfully because I spent 400 bucks buying a VR system and beat saber, not all my (mostly younger) skating fellows can afford that luxury. Running is out of the question, and gym at home is awfully boring.
Point is, do not just assume people will "find other ways to exercise". Sports centers should be considered health necessities, not recreational, in the context of the current pandemic.
Well, exercise isn’t how you control weight. Weight control is just eating less calories than you burn. Exercise less, eat less, and your weight stays the same.
Trust me I love exercise. I am a running nut. I do anything I can to help bike trails get made. But keeping skating rinks close to stop the spread of a pandemic seems pretty reasonable, and I would support it.
Rinks are extremely safe. They are air conditioned, filtered. In Belgium, there have been zero recorded infections from the rinks across all of last year when they were still open - limited attendance, masks, etc.
For comparison, swimming pools are open. Their showers aren't, though. Something about it not being safe, so instead people don't soap up before getting into the pool. It's gross, idiotic and all in the name of COVID.
There's a lot of these absurdities going on, it's pretty easy to find them if you look. It happens, of course.. but it is demoralizing. I'd invite you to consider how you would feel if your local government closed everywhere in the country where you could run. Closing off not just your sport, but your psychological break from the world. Your mental pillar.
Back in winter when the lakes froze, our equivalent of the parks service decided people skating outdoors, on lakes, was a COVID risk and forbade it. Even some of our official experts called it an absurd move.
And no, exercising less has had a pretty bad effect on my body, regardless of what I eat. My core and leg muscles are not doing well after 7 months not getting their daily routines on the ice, and I simply don't burn passively as much as I used to, despite doing what I can at home.
To be honest, as someone who struggled with weight most of my entire life and only got it under control after two decades thanks to those rinks, I find it pretty off-putting the way you're implying how simple it is to control weight. Maybe for you it is, but one look at obesity rates unveils the truth for most people.
Finding other ways to exercise can be difficult when it is cold and rainy out. I'm a month past having my 2nd dose of Moderna vaccine, covid is not really an issue anymore apart from people still being afraid of it/antivaxxers.
Weights and exercise equipment was unobtainable in early 2020 in the UK I wanted to buy some just before the lockdown but my GF said it would be silly.
Pull ups and some body weight exercise was the best I could do and honestly it wasn’t easy to keep going and I have found myself turning from a 6 day PPL to a couch potato especially during the 2nd lockdown.
I still run 5K 3-4 times a week and did a 10K run every other week but it wasn’t enough to prevent weight gain and muscle loss over nearly a year of interruption due to lockdown.
The biggest factor was also the lack of daily mobility I went down from 21K Aveo daily steps in 2019 to less than half of that in 2020 and early 2021.
You’ll be surprised just how much you lose from really only having to walk from the bed to your desk in the living room or spare bedroom for a year.
>The people sitting at home obese are not impacted by closing gyms.
That's doubtful & I would need a report to substantiate this /s
Clearly any hurdle you put in front of people wanting to better themselves is going to reduce the number of people that successfully implement that change. It might not be significant (that would be up to statistics), but it's way more grounded in common sense than saying that hurdles don't affect people.
Every study and simple math says the same thing. Exercise is the least effective way to lose weight. The amount of exercise you have to do just burn 500 calories is far more than most people will do.
Besides, there are other ways to exercise.
The last point, if you overeat anything you will gain weight.
Exercise to burn calories is a proximate goal but not the ideal one. Calories burned during the exercise is, to your point, insufficient.
Exercise to reset metabolism is a better goal.
Takes about 6 weeks of very short HIIT sprints (4 minutes of high intensity interval training with 30 second intervals of anaerobic effort, along with 2 mins of warmup and 2 mins of cooldown) to shift metabolism into a rate that will burn extra kcalories at rest (an order of magnitude more a day than from the exercise itself).
Note that this type of HIIT can make people feel ill. Use an HR monitor and work with your doctor. You also cannot hit the necessary level of effort using most gym equipment. You need full body climbers (best, recruits 95% of muscles, easy to hit anaerobic sprints) or full body ergo cycles or rowers (recruits 80% - 90% but harder to sprint above VO2 Max).
The recalibration then also lasts 6+ months, and only needs 2 - 3 HIIT sessions a week to last indefinitely.
// And still, yes, what doesn’t go in doesn’t have to get burned off.
“Reset metabolism” sounds like bro science to me. Do you have some form of backup for this concept?
>Takes about 6 weeks of very short HIIT sprints (4 minutes of high intensity interval training with 30 second intervals of anaerobic effort, along with 2 mins of warmup and 2 mins of cooldown) to shift metabolism into a rate that will burn extra kcalories at rest (an order of magnitude more a day than from the exercise itself).
There are tons of academic and sports medicine white papers on HIIT. Google has more time than I do.
My “five whys” guess would be it remains relatively obscure, because it’s not a thing trainers are trying to get casuals or ‘bros’ to do if they want recurring customers, because people hate it, because most people feel ill from HIIT done right, because doing it to the point of effectiveness relies on pushing beyond normal limits for 30 seconds at a time.
You can add keywords for “tabata intervals” and branch out from the research in Japan on hockey training.
As for metabolism shift, it’s the opposite of prevailing “bro” science that thinks the workout is the thing. On the contrary, look into BMR or basal metabolic rate and EPOC or post-exercise oxygen consumption.
Countries with an overweight population tend to be also countries with an ageing population and given how dominant is how you protected your elderly in the death rates, not sure the correlation means causation. The ICU doctors interviews I have seen suggest overweight people go to ICU but generally do not die unless it is combined with age or serious com-morbidity.
This does seem likely, but the paper claims to have taken it into consideration:
The authors acknowledged that the age structure of a country, as well as its relative wealth and reporting capacity, has an impact on covid-19 cases, hospital admissions, and deaths, but said that their findings seem to be independent of these contributory factors.
I recall reading an article about studies showing that the majority of people who were hospitalized for COVID in some country (the UK?) were either obese or had vitamin D deficiency (which can also be caused by obesity). I can’t seem to find it now, but it raises some interesting questions: Does all of society need to restrict itself to accommodate the safety of those who, mostly due to their own choices, are unhealthy? Or should those who are at risk or simply risk averse restrict themselves instead of demanding that all of society change so they can still retain some freedom for themselves? Should a child lose two years of socialization and education or should the obese adult just stay in?
Everyone has different opinions on these tough questions based on their values. I can’t help but feel that choice must be retained at the individual level in the end, so that each can act according to their own values, their own perception of risks and benefits, rather than one philosophy of risk management being forced on everyone.
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[ 5.8 ms ] story [ 82.2 ms ] threadBut the government is not doing a ban of HFCS by executive order.
And taxes on soft drinks are very low, which adds to the problem.
So many problems that could be fixed with a bit of common sense by the politicians.
If you want to see how the sugar tax works, look at the rollout, fallout, and repeal of the sugar tax in Chicago. It didn’t go so well.
It’s easy to call things common sense, but many of these arguments fall apart under closer inspection.
I've not skated in seven months. My weight is stable thankfully because I spent 400 bucks buying a VR system and beat saber, not all my (mostly younger) skating fellows can afford that luxury. Running is out of the question, and gym at home is awfully boring.
Point is, do not just assume people will "find other ways to exercise". Sports centers should be considered health necessities, not recreational, in the context of the current pandemic.
Trust me I love exercise. I am a running nut. I do anything I can to help bike trails get made. But keeping skating rinks close to stop the spread of a pandemic seems pretty reasonable, and I would support it.
For comparison, swimming pools are open. Their showers aren't, though. Something about it not being safe, so instead people don't soap up before getting into the pool. It's gross, idiotic and all in the name of COVID.
There's a lot of these absurdities going on, it's pretty easy to find them if you look. It happens, of course.. but it is demoralizing. I'd invite you to consider how you would feel if your local government closed everywhere in the country where you could run. Closing off not just your sport, but your psychological break from the world. Your mental pillar.
Back in winter when the lakes froze, our equivalent of the parks service decided people skating outdoors, on lakes, was a COVID risk and forbade it. Even some of our official experts called it an absurd move.
And no, exercising less has had a pretty bad effect on my body, regardless of what I eat. My core and leg muscles are not doing well after 7 months not getting their daily routines on the ice, and I simply don't burn passively as much as I used to, despite doing what I can at home.
To be honest, as someone who struggled with weight most of my entire life and only got it under control after two decades thanks to those rinks, I find it pretty off-putting the way you're implying how simple it is to control weight. Maybe for you it is, but one look at obesity rates unveils the truth for most people.
Pull ups and some body weight exercise was the best I could do and honestly it wasn’t easy to keep going and I have found myself turning from a 6 day PPL to a couch potato especially during the 2nd lockdown.
I still run 5K 3-4 times a week and did a 10K run every other week but it wasn’t enough to prevent weight gain and muscle loss over nearly a year of interruption due to lockdown.
The biggest factor was also the lack of daily mobility I went down from 21K Aveo daily steps in 2019 to less than half of that in 2020 and early 2021.
You’ll be surprised just how much you lose from really only having to walk from the bed to your desk in the living room or spare bedroom for a year.
That's doubtful & I would need a report to substantiate this /s
Clearly any hurdle you put in front of people wanting to better themselves is going to reduce the number of people that successfully implement that change. It might not be significant (that would be up to statistics), but it's way more grounded in common sense than saying that hurdles don't affect people.
Besides, there are other ways to exercise.
The last point, if you overeat anything you will gain weight.
Exercise to reset metabolism is a better goal.
Takes about 6 weeks of very short HIIT sprints (4 minutes of high intensity interval training with 30 second intervals of anaerobic effort, along with 2 mins of warmup and 2 mins of cooldown) to shift metabolism into a rate that will burn extra kcalories at rest (an order of magnitude more a day than from the exercise itself).
Note that this type of HIIT can make people feel ill. Use an HR monitor and work with your doctor. You also cannot hit the necessary level of effort using most gym equipment. You need full body climbers (best, recruits 95% of muscles, easy to hit anaerobic sprints) or full body ergo cycles or rowers (recruits 80% - 90% but harder to sprint above VO2 Max).
The recalibration then also lasts 6+ months, and only needs 2 - 3 HIIT sessions a week to last indefinitely.
// And still, yes, what doesn’t go in doesn’t have to get burned off.
“Reset metabolism” sounds like bro science to me. Do you have some form of backup for this concept?
>Takes about 6 weeks of very short HIIT sprints (4 minutes of high intensity interval training with 30 second intervals of anaerobic effort, along with 2 mins of warmup and 2 mins of cooldown) to shift metabolism into a rate that will burn extra kcalories at rest (an order of magnitude more a day than from the exercise itself).
Source?
My “five whys” guess would be it remains relatively obscure, because it’s not a thing trainers are trying to get casuals or ‘bros’ to do if they want recurring customers, because people hate it, because most people feel ill from HIIT done right, because doing it to the point of effectiveness relies on pushing beyond normal limits for 30 seconds at a time.
You can add keywords for “tabata intervals” and branch out from the research in Japan on hockey training.
As for metabolism shift, it’s the opposite of prevailing “bro” science that thinks the workout is the thing. On the contrary, look into BMR or basal metabolic rate and EPOC or post-exercise oxygen consumption.
It does become a social issue when it comes to healthcare.
The authors acknowledged that the age structure of a country, as well as its relative wealth and reporting capacity, has an impact on covid-19 cases, hospital admissions, and deaths, but said that their findings seem to be independent of these contributory factors.
The UK has the third highest death rate and is #24th (18.3%) for Aging Population (% 65+).
https://www.prb.org/countries-with-the-oldest-populations/
Everyone has different opinions on these tough questions based on their values. I can’t help but feel that choice must be retained at the individual level in the end, so that each can act according to their own values, their own perception of risks and benefits, rather than one philosophy of risk management being forced on everyone.
This virus kills 0.01% of one group of people and 8% of another. We should really learn to use statistic to direct our limited efforts efficiently.