I'm going to repeat some things in the article for those who didn't read it:
>For starters, exercise—at least the kind most of us do—is typically ineffective for weight loss
>In studies where exercise has produced meaningful weight loss, participants burned at least 400 to 500 calories per session on five or more days a week
The reason why I've always believed claims such as yours are bullshit is because I do the kind of exercise that produces meaningful weight loss when the scales tip too far in the wrong direction.
Burning 400-500 calories per workout is an insane amount of calories. Just running on a treadmil for an hour only burns about 100 calories...maybe 150 if you're really pushing it.
That's really slow going on a treadmill then. A mile is about 120 calories depending on your weight. A decent jogging pace should be at least 3-4 miles per hour. So adding a bit of incline it shouldn't be hard to hit 400 calories in an hour on a treadmill.
I get about 200 per 20 minutes on the elliptical with a fairly relaxed pace and low resistance.
It adds up quick. I used to feel the same way. But I started going to the sauna-- one hour of that burns 500-600 calories. When you start off it's hard but exercise gets exponentially easier
No. As a general very rough rule of thumb, you can burn 100 cals per mile on foot. In an hour of jogging you can likely burn 600+ calories. Even walking, you can likely burn 300-400.
No. 100 calories/mile is the general estimate given for running for an average weight. More for overweight/obese people.
Running on a treadmill for an hour would be anything from 6 miles (10km) to 12 miles (20km) for some of the very best runners, so 600 calories to 1200 calories.
Personally I exercise every day, and the more noticeable direct effects is I have an athletic physique when I don't prevent its visibility by eating too much shitty foods.
But there's a second-order effect of the exercise, since it's mostly calisthenics; when my weight goes up, my performance immediately deteriorates. That mental negative feedback usually corrects my eating misbehavior within a day. It's far more weight-affecting than the calories burned, by changing my eating.
The fact is though, generally speaking, you're not going to outrun a bad diet with exercise...
I've been a rock climber for 4 years, and likewise, I've been preoccupied with keeping it down and never let it get out of control. I never used to stand on the scale everyday, but now I do.
Before I started climbing I burnt off 25 pounds that I accumulated up after I broke my leg and spent 2 years largely sedentary. I did it using high intensity interval training: sprinting stairs, over a period of 10 weeks.
I took this approach not based on any study, or advice but because in the past, when doing HIIT with a healthy body weight, it was hard to maintain a diet good enough to keep up.
Your metabolic rate is determined by your body mass, so increasing mass increases metabolic rate. Obviously strength training is a huge component of muscle-based body mass. You can definitely work out, increase body mass, increase metabolism, and thus "look better" on the same diet.
It’s a pity not to exercise once you get on well with not eating as much as an elephant (“dieting” for some) and start losing some wheight. It’s a pity I say because you become more agile with less wheight, you will run faster, cycle faster, be able to do chin-ups, get tired later, just enjoy.
>The takeaway is that we’re more likely to perceive exercise positively and actually do it when we focus on our well-being rather than our weight.
I agree this is the right framing.
As a formerly obese person I think obese people typically focus on their weight instead of their well-being, as I did. It's understandable initially, but ideally as you develop healthier routines you get a broader view of health apart from weight.
Getting weight down will absolutely improve well-being, but transitioning to a healthier lifestyle has so many other benefits.
I'm at the gym a lot now but it has nothing to do with my weight. It isn't a punishment or a chore (at least not on most days!). It's something I look forward to. If I only viewed it as a tool to manage my weight, I wouldn't view it so positively.
Excuse the napkin math, but presuming a common candy bar such as a snickers is 215 calories and walking a mile burns 100 calories and you walk an average of 2.5-3 miles per hour, you will need to walk less than 1 hour to burn the calories off.
fat is stored energy. To use this energy your body must be in fat burning mode, to get into this you must stop eating sugar/carb based foods, you can eat fat based like meats, avo, yogurt. Less than 20grams of carbs keeps the body ready to use stored fat as energy. Then its mostly just reducing intake and using more of the stored fat... so fasting for extended duration and skipping meals.
If your insulin is high, you can't utilize your fat stores. They are essentially locked away. You must use your glyocgen stores and glucose to fuel your brain and body. When your insulin is low and not stimulated by carbs/protein, you can utilize your fat stores and produce ketones. Your brain and body use the ketones for energy. Our brains prefer ketones over glucose when it has the choice. This is the point OP is trying to make. The article doesn't bother to mention basic human physiology of being in a fasting state vs a fed state.
If you have hyperinsulemia (massively ignored and undiagnosed in western countries), or are eating 3 meals /day + snacks with carbs and proten, or such... it is very hard for your body to have a chance to burn fat stores. Your body becomes adapted to storing energy, not burning it. Your insulin is too frequently elevated.
This huberman pdocast you link is more about athletic performance for low carb vs high carb. There's huberman podcasts covering the fact that metabolic disease and obesity is driven by high insulin too
Actually, they are correct. The only nuance I would add is that, from reading the scientific literature, we are not exclusively in fat or carb burning mode, it's usually a mix of the two. The mix depends on how well your body is adapted to fat oxidation, your blood sugar/insulin levels, etc.
The podcast you linked is very interesting but doesn't necessarily refute the parent comment? You can improve fat burning in a multitude of ways but I believe the best ways are to avoid carbs/sugar and do quite a bit of training below your aerobic threshold. Most people have such a low aerobic threshold that any exercise they do is above the aerobic threshold, so they won't "burn fat" by exercising, instead they use liver/muscle glycogen.
I've always been a runner but a few years ago discovered the low carb diet. I eat less than 50g carbs a day now. I'm very well adapted to be a fat burner and have very little body fat compared to most people < 10%. I did a metabolic test recently and at my aerobic threshold I was burning 2g of fat per minute (which is alot), at an aerobic threshold HR of 158 bpm (lactate threshold at 177bpm), which enables me to run at 6.30min/mile pace and I can keep that up for hours without bonking.
If I eat a piece of bread and go running, my aerobic system never really kicks into gear because blood sugar/insulin levels are too high and the above doesn't hold.
1) Look up a TDEE calculator online. The number it spit out for me (1900 to 2100 calories per day) was very accurate. This is the amount of calories burned per day just being alive. (This can be tested by tracking calories and see if you gain, lose or maintain weight depending on how close to that number you eat)
2) Subtract 500 calories from that number and eat that many calories per day. So in my case, I ate ~1500 calories a day.
3) Weightloss
I lost about 60lbs in the course of a couple of months
Yeah I would like to get this into the common understanding also.
During the pandemic I developed high blood pressure for the first time, and I had also put on some weight. So as part of addressing the blood pressure, I decided to drop the extra weight.
But I just did it without much thought — basically, I just ate more salads and veggies, and less of everything else. Along with running 30-60 minutes almost every day.
I lost the weight, of course! But I also lost strength. My kids felt heavier. The difference was pretty clear.
I hired a trainer and she said what you said: add weight training and more protein. You must get enough protein, and you must do at least some resistance training (e.g. lifting weights) or you will lose a substantial amount of muscle mass along with the fat when you lose weight.
She was right, I regained my strength by enforcing (roughly) 2g protein per kg of body weight in my diet, and lifting weights for 30-60 minutes 3 days a week.
I also googled it with duckduckgo.com after she told me those things, of course, and I found that yeah pretty much everybody who is into fitness/nutrition already knows that.
The protein source also matters. BCAAs are important, and plant based sources are less bioavailable. That is, something like broccoli might have 4g protein/100g serving but only 50% is bioavailable.
I've found it to be important to optimize your diet for satiation, too. If you eat a lot of junk food, it's going to be a struggle to keep to 1500 calories.
A good meal for weight loss, in my experience, is a modest portion of a lean protein (e.g. fish or chicken), a large vegetable portion, and a small amount of carbs (maybe toast or a roll). A lot of my meals are based on that formula and it keeps me full until the next meal for maybe half the calories of a burger and fries.
My plan was to lose weight without thinking about it too much - just adjusting my habits instead of counting calories every day; weighing in occasionally and tweaking my routine based on results. It's been successful so far.
> My plan was to lose weight without thinking about it too much - just adjusting my habits instead of counting calories every day; weighing in occasionally and tweaking my routine based on results.
This sounds like the key to sustainability. Sort of like all those "productivity apps" - if there's too much fiddling around, it gets boring/oppressive pretty quickly.
> Imagine a pill with this long list of benefits. We’d all be clamoring for it.
GLP-1 agonists are the future of weight loss really. It is the only solution that is not too expensive in terms of time, mental energy, and suffering to succeed long term.
They’re a tool unless you want to live your whole life taking a pill. Once your off the pill, the weight starts to come back. You need a foundation on how to be self-sufficient (diet/exercise) long term still. Unless one is just willing to abdicate their lives to something that is completely in their control. GLP-1 will be great for the extremely obese to survive while they develop lifelong healthy habits, but it will also enable the lazy for a quick fix (which isn’t actually a fix).
The article stresses that discipline over diet is easier to achieve than discipline over exercise.
It may be true that it’s easier to skip an extra soda in favor of walking for 30 minutes, but what the article doesn’t touch on is healthy lifestyle changes. Burning 500 calories is as effortless as saying no to a soft drink with the right lifestyle change.
The problem isn’t that exercise is too hard, it’s that our relationship with it has changed. You’re not fat because exercise doesn’t burn calories, you’re fat because you’re sedentary.
Cycle to work. Play with your kids. Start a hobby that doesn’t involve programming something in rust. Moving your body should not and cannot be viewed as something that happens only in a gym or in 30 minute increments.
> Cycle to work. Cycle to work. Play with your kids. Start a hobby that doesn’t involve programming something in rust. Moving your body should not and cannot be viewed as something that happens only in a gym or in 30 minute increments.
Honestly just walking more is huge. An extra 2-3 miles a day of walking is pretty easy to work in—it takes like an hour. You can kill a podcast and get some errands done at the same time if you do it right.
I am walking back from work, and will soon start walking both ways. One of the issue with walking is that I pass lots of diners and fast food shops which make disciplining oneself harder when hungry. I have managed to beat the urges so far and found that it helps build mental fortitude.
> The article stresses that discipline over diet is easier to achieve than discipline over exercise.
I just don't find this to be true. It is way easier to exercise then not eat when I am hungry and cant focus on work due to it. And it is way more effort to get the diet right, so that it contains everything needed and leaves me feeling good then going for walk or doing mild exercise.
People who think they're going to lose any significant weight by exercising are likely deluding themselves.
I would:
- GLP-1 agonist
- Metformin
- Throw out most of the carbs and oils
- Only buy foods with low caloric density
Effective and low-risk exercise is good for its own many purposes. Almost no one makes effective use of time and effort in the gym because they would need to understand muscle fiber types, biomechanics, risks to joints, appropriate exercises with form, what the data says to do in a given scenario, have that enormous data set interpreted by sports medicine data scientists, and chart progression of sets. An approximate template of general recommendations based on older data is available in the convenient form of a book called "Body by Science."
One spring I went two weeks eating only foods that had less than 1 calorie per gram. In unlimited amounts - satiety. That's a lot of pickles, sauerkraut, raw vegetables. Oh and lemon water.
A lot of weight came off though. I was pleasantly surprised.
I swear all these articles on weight loss are created by the food companies to confuse people, and then people see so many conflicting report that they just give up. 6 small meals per day, keto, mediterranean, do this, do that, it is never ending.
Of course, the answer is to only eat natural foods - fruit, vegetables, dairy (except eggs, fuck them at least for now), a bit of meat. A well rounded diet. Don't eat ice cream, candy, cookies, pototo chips...junk food. Do not eat pre-prepared foods - make everything from scratch. It's easy, there are all kinds of recipies on google search you can make ANYTHING. And all kinds of cooking videos. If you don't know what a term means, you look it up online.
And exercise is good, yes.
If you eat 500 calories less per week, and exercise 500 calories more per week, this means you will lose on the average, 2 pounds per week, or 8 pounds per month. After 10 months, that would be 80 pounds.
So if you only need to lose 40 pounds, then that is 4 months.
It's super easy to lose weight...if you don't cram your mouth full of shitty foods like pizza and cookies and candy. Just eat real actual natural foods.
But, people don't want to do that, so they will never lose weight.
45 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 95.3 ms ] threadDiet determines size, exercise determines shape.
>For starters, exercise—at least the kind most of us do—is typically ineffective for weight loss
>In studies where exercise has produced meaningful weight loss, participants burned at least 400 to 500 calories per session on five or more days a week
The reason why I've always believed claims such as yours are bullshit is because I do the kind of exercise that produces meaningful weight loss when the scales tip too far in the wrong direction.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/weight-loss/in-...
I get about 200 per 20 minutes on the elliptical with a fairly relaxed pace and low resistance.
Running on a treadmill for an hour would be anything from 6 miles (10km) to 12 miles (20km) for some of the very best runners, so 600 calories to 1200 calories.
But there's a second-order effect of the exercise, since it's mostly calisthenics; when my weight goes up, my performance immediately deteriorates. That mental negative feedback usually corrects my eating misbehavior within a day. It's far more weight-affecting than the calories burned, by changing my eating.
The fact is though, generally speaking, you're not going to outrun a bad diet with exercise...
Before I started climbing I burnt off 25 pounds that I accumulated up after I broke my leg and spent 2 years largely sedentary. I did it using high intensity interval training: sprinting stairs, over a period of 10 weeks.
I took this approach not based on any study, or advice but because in the past, when doing HIIT with a healthy body weight, it was hard to maintain a diet good enough to keep up.
I agree this is the right framing.
As a formerly obese person I think obese people typically focus on their weight instead of their well-being, as I did. It's understandable initially, but ideally as you develop healthier routines you get a broader view of health apart from weight.
Getting weight down will absolutely improve well-being, but transitioning to a healthier lifestyle has so many other benefits.
I'm at the gym a lot now but it has nothing to do with my weight. It isn't a punishment or a chore (at least not on most days!). It's something I look forward to. If I only viewed it as a tool to manage my weight, I wouldn't view it so positively.
You'd have to walk roughly 2.5 miles to burn off a bag of either since there are fewer peanut ones in a bag.
I encourage you to listen to the Huberman lab podcast - specifically this episode https://hubermanlab.com/dr-andy-galpin-how-to-build-physical...
If you have hyperinsulemia (massively ignored and undiagnosed in western countries), or are eating 3 meals /day + snacks with carbs and proten, or such... it is very hard for your body to have a chance to burn fat stores. Your body becomes adapted to storing energy, not burning it. Your insulin is too frequently elevated.
This huberman pdocast you link is more about athletic performance for low carb vs high carb. There's huberman podcasts covering the fact that metabolic disease and obesity is driven by high insulin too
The podcast you linked is very interesting but doesn't necessarily refute the parent comment? You can improve fat burning in a multitude of ways but I believe the best ways are to avoid carbs/sugar and do quite a bit of training below your aerobic threshold. Most people have such a low aerobic threshold that any exercise they do is above the aerobic threshold, so they won't "burn fat" by exercising, instead they use liver/muscle glycogen.
I've always been a runner but a few years ago discovered the low carb diet. I eat less than 50g carbs a day now. I'm very well adapted to be a fat burner and have very little body fat compared to most people < 10%. I did a metabolic test recently and at my aerobic threshold I was burning 2g of fat per minute (which is alot), at an aerobic threshold HR of 158 bpm (lactate threshold at 177bpm), which enables me to run at 6.30min/mile pace and I can keep that up for hours without bonking.
If I eat a piece of bread and go running, my aerobic system never really kicks into gear because blood sugar/insulin levels are too high and the above doesn't hold.
1) Look up a TDEE calculator online. The number it spit out for me (1900 to 2100 calories per day) was very accurate. This is the amount of calories burned per day just being alive. (This can be tested by tracking calories and see if you gain, lose or maintain weight depending on how close to that number you eat)
2) Subtract 500 calories from that number and eat that many calories per day. So in my case, I ate ~1500 calories a day.
3) Weightloss
I lost about 60lbs in the course of a couple of months
During the pandemic I developed high blood pressure for the first time, and I had also put on some weight. So as part of addressing the blood pressure, I decided to drop the extra weight.
But I just did it without much thought — basically, I just ate more salads and veggies, and less of everything else. Along with running 30-60 minutes almost every day.
I lost the weight, of course! But I also lost strength. My kids felt heavier. The difference was pretty clear.
I hired a trainer and she said what you said: add weight training and more protein. You must get enough protein, and you must do at least some resistance training (e.g. lifting weights) or you will lose a substantial amount of muscle mass along with the fat when you lose weight.
She was right, I regained my strength by enforcing (roughly) 2g protein per kg of body weight in my diet, and lifting weights for 30-60 minutes 3 days a week.
I also googled it with duckduckgo.com after she told me those things, of course, and I found that yeah pretty much everybody who is into fitness/nutrition already knows that.
A good meal for weight loss, in my experience, is a modest portion of a lean protein (e.g. fish or chicken), a large vegetable portion, and a small amount of carbs (maybe toast or a roll). A lot of my meals are based on that formula and it keeps me full until the next meal for maybe half the calories of a burger and fries.
My plan was to lose weight without thinking about it too much - just adjusting my habits instead of counting calories every day; weighing in occasionally and tweaking my routine based on results. It's been successful so far.
This sounds like the key to sustainability. Sort of like all those "productivity apps" - if there's too much fiddling around, it gets boring/oppressive pretty quickly.
I experimented with food consumption rate, and the slower I eat the easier it is to feel satiated provided a balanced meal.
Furthermore, i found that meals consisting of different foods at smaller portions and not “a single dish” improve satiation as well.
GLP-1 agonists are the future of weight loss really. It is the only solution that is not too expensive in terms of time, mental energy, and suffering to succeed long term.
So between a lifelong struggle or a lifelong pill, I would choose the pill.
I know I would not win a lifelong struggle.
It may be true that it’s easier to skip an extra soda in favor of walking for 30 minutes, but what the article doesn’t touch on is healthy lifestyle changes. Burning 500 calories is as effortless as saying no to a soft drink with the right lifestyle change.
The problem isn’t that exercise is too hard, it’s that our relationship with it has changed. You’re not fat because exercise doesn’t burn calories, you’re fat because you’re sedentary.
Cycle to work. Play with your kids. Start a hobby that doesn’t involve programming something in rust. Moving your body should not and cannot be viewed as something that happens only in a gym or in 30 minute increments.
Honestly just walking more is huge. An extra 2-3 miles a day of walking is pretty easy to work in—it takes like an hour. You can kill a podcast and get some errands done at the same time if you do it right.
I just don't find this to be true. It is way easier to exercise then not eat when I am hungry and cant focus on work due to it. And it is way more effort to get the diet right, so that it contains everything needed and leaves me feeling good then going for walk or doing mild exercise.
People who think they're going to lose any significant weight by exercising are likely deluding themselves.
I would:
- GLP-1 agonist
- Metformin
- Throw out most of the carbs and oils
- Only buy foods with low caloric density
Effective and low-risk exercise is good for its own many purposes. Almost no one makes effective use of time and effort in the gym because they would need to understand muscle fiber types, biomechanics, risks to joints, appropriate exercises with form, what the data says to do in a given scenario, have that enormous data set interpreted by sports medicine data scientists, and chart progression of sets. An approximate template of general recommendations based on older data is available in the convenient form of a book called "Body by Science."
One spring I went two weeks eating only foods that had less than 1 calorie per gram. In unlimited amounts - satiety. That's a lot of pickles, sauerkraut, raw vegetables. Oh and lemon water.
A lot of weight came off though. I was pleasantly surprised.
https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2022/06/anti-hunger-m...
And what if change in diet is a signal that the exercise is thorough enough? As opposed to some other way around.
Of course, the answer is to only eat natural foods - fruit, vegetables, dairy (except eggs, fuck them at least for now), a bit of meat. A well rounded diet. Don't eat ice cream, candy, cookies, pototo chips...junk food. Do not eat pre-prepared foods - make everything from scratch. It's easy, there are all kinds of recipies on google search you can make ANYTHING. And all kinds of cooking videos. If you don't know what a term means, you look it up online.
And exercise is good, yes.
If you eat 500 calories less per week, and exercise 500 calories more per week, this means you will lose on the average, 2 pounds per week, or 8 pounds per month. After 10 months, that would be 80 pounds.
So if you only need to lose 40 pounds, then that is 4 months.
It's super easy to lose weight...if you don't cram your mouth full of shitty foods like pizza and cookies and candy. Just eat real actual natural foods.
But, people don't want to do that, so they will never lose weight.