Evolutionary Anthropologist Busts Myths About How Humans Burn Calories (science.org) 192
Herman Pontzer, a biological anthropologist at the Pontzer lab at Duke University, works with his colleagues to "systematically measure the total energy used per day by animals and people in various walks of life," reports Science.org. "The answers coming from their data are often surprising: Exercise doesn't help you burn more energy on average; active hunter-gatherers in Africa don't expend more energy daily than sedentary office workers in Illinois; pregnant women don't burn more calories per day than other adults, after adjusting for body mass." Here's an excerpt from the report: Pontzer's skill as a popularizer can rankle some of his colleagues. His message that exercise won't help you lose weight "lacks nuance," says exercise physiologist John Thyfault of the University of Kansas Medical Center, who says it may nudge dieters into less healthy habits. But others say besides busting myths about human energy expenditure, Pontzer's work offers a new lens for understanding human physiology and evolution. As he wrote in Burn, "In the economics of life, calories are the currency." "His work is revolutionary," says paleoanthropologist Leslie Aiello, past president of the Wenner-Gren Foundation, which has funded Pontzer's work. "We now have data ... that has given us a completely new framework for how we think about how humans adapted to energetic limits."
Doesn't surprise me (Score:5, Informative)
This doesn't surprise me at all. While my older brother packed on massive weight starting in his late twenties I completely avoided such things strictly by changing my diet. Cutting carbs and refine sugar is the exact difference between my obese brother and myself in regards to weight and general health. While I'm just now starting to work out more to balance my weight there was no difference in physical activity for either if ua for quite some time.
Did you even read the summary? (Score:3, Interesting)
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The theory is the stress response experienced by the office worker is resulting in a much higher caloric burn even though the raw physical activity isn't there
Either that, or...
Humans burn most of their calories maintaining their body temperature. Somebody sitting in an air conditioned office can easily burn as many calories as somebody in a hot country.
(no, that doesn't mean that 'cold' is a diet, your body can easily shut down blood flow to the surface, etc., it's only the core and brain that absolutely needs to be at 37 degrees C)
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The brain is the organ that burns most calories ...
Has nothing to do with "stress". Just a question how hard you use it.
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https://www.medicalnewstoday.c... [medicalnewstoday.com]
Just thinking hard also does increase the brain's calorie burn, which could also apply to that desk worker in Chicago.
Re:Did you even read the summary? (Score:5, Informative)
Either that, or Pontzer is wrong.
As a general rule, one should immediately be VERY supicious of any "Rogue Scientist Who Says What We Want To Hear Says All Of His Colleagues And His Entire Field Are Wrong!" stories.
So let's google him. Uh oh, red flag #2: he's a pop author who makes visit to the Dr. Oz show.
One has to wade through pages of plugging for his books to get to any review of his work. For example, this [germanjour...dicine.com]. Which isn't exactly flattering.
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Because the "mainstream" is not associated with the idea that it may be popular because it's a good approximation, but instead that the only reason for it to be popular must be that there's a conspiracy that is suppressing anything else.
Just last week I had to explain to someone why the "Electric Universe" isn't talked about a lot any more excep
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Therefore, the new theory of the authors who have performed such large and interesting studies is simply false. Unfortunately, it has caused a large reaction in the press and possibly will survive a while. The couch-potatoes will feel encouraged. What a pity!
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Exactly this, although you've just ruined the days of all fad dieters. Diets work, because they put you into a calorie deficit. Low carb? Vegetarian? Intermediate fasting? Whatever method you follow, whatever works for you mentally, the point of any diet is to reduce your calorie intake.
TFA is well-written - I read the whole thing, even though this is /. - and the interesting discovery is that normal physical activity does not burn unusual amounts of calories. Sure, run a marathon everyday, and you'll nee
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"Diets work, because they put you into a calorie deficit. Low carb? Vegetarian? Intermediate fasting? Whatever method you follow, whatever works for you mentally, the point of any diet is to reduce your calorie intake."
Um, Atkins and South Beach are both low carb diets that give you no limit on caloric intake.
Anecdote: Years ago, my cardiologist put me on South Beach when we discovered that my total cholesterol had spiked to over 300. (Note, I later discovered all of my older relatives were on statins alr
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Obviously.
As "Atkinson" is a high protein low carb diet. Your body only "burns" carbs (and fat/sugar). To burn proteins, you ned to be STARVING - and then you burn your own muscle mass, and not the proteins you eat.
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The excess in alimentation might happen with the nibbling "in-between".
Following a diet will cut sharply into the second breakfasts, late-day munches and late night snacks.
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Shit, I lost weight (around 25 lbs) on a home-rolled low carb diet that consisted of a 1/4 lb sausage and two eggs with cheese cooked in butter for breakfast, a salad and 2 hamburger patties for lunch and steak/chicken/pork and green veggies for dinner.
If I was hungry between meals (which wasn't often), it was "snacks" like meat sticks or cheese until I wasn't hungry.
"Desert" when I felt like it was home made whipped cream (no sugar) on blueberries or strawberries, which were the only fruit I would eat.
Ther
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Perhaps you should read the article instead of being stuck in your own myths about diet and exercise.
For starters:
- if you exercise you burn the sugar in your liver
- you have to exercise more than 45 minutes until the body considers to burn fat
- exercising most of the time does not burn many calories anyway, worst is typical gym stuff with weights
- consider swimming if you want to lose weight, it is soft on your joints/back gives considerable stamina and is the most calories burning exercise a "normal human
Re: Did you even read the summary? (Score:2)
As far as we can tell, wave motion stimulates appetite, resulting in lower weight loss than running and cycling.
Re:Doesn't surprise me (Score:5, Insightful)
While my sister ate a diet of mostly fruits and veggies and gained weight, I've been eating a diet of chocolate chip cookies and chips for my whole life and have stayed thin into my 40s.
But I will decline to cite that as proof of the superiority of my ways, and instead offer that two data points is an anecdote, not evidence.
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Re:Doesn't surprise me (Score:5, Interesting)
It does surprise me that level of activity has no significant effect on how many calories you burn per day. To the point of not believing it, or at least assuming that I and everyone in this forum is interpreting it wrong.
I have had periods of my life where I was highly active and periods where I haven't been, and most of the time as I transitioned between these periods my diet didn't change dramatically (I ate poorly throughout most of my life). When I was hitting the gym regularly, burning an extra 3000 or so calories per week in exercise, it was much easier to maintain my weight or lose some. When I was more sedentary, I either gained weight or had to significantly cut calories to maintain my weight.
There must be some kind of nuance to his research I'm not picking up on in that article. I do agree diet is far more effective than exercise to maintain a healthy weight (although some exercise is important for health regardless of your weight), but someone who regularly exercises absolutely burns more calories than someone who is more sedentary. Perhaps not as much as the treadmill manufacturer wants you to think, but more none the less.
not exactly (Score:5, Informative)
The summary isn't really right. The article points out that people who were running 40 kilometers in a day burned 5000 calories, more than a sedentary person. Olympic athletes sometimes go crazy eating things because they expend so many calories (Nils van der Poel drank whipped cream and ate potato chips).
The main point is that energy expenditure doesn't match what you'd expect, and no one knows why. Here is the relevant quote from the article:
“This morning I ran about 5 miles; I spent about 500 calories running. In a very simplistic model that would mean my TEE would be 500 calories higher. According to Herman, humans who are more active don’t have that much higher TEE as you’d predict but we still don’t know why or how that occurs.”
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This morning I ran about 5 miles; I spent about 500 calories running. In a very simplistic model that would mean my TEE would be 500 calories higher
In the very simplistic model where, during the time you were not running, you would be dead?
Re:not exactly (Score:4, Informative)
These studies usually don't take into account the difference environmental effects have also. Sitting in a ventilated office, compared to walking in heat or cold, rain, snow, heavy winds etc. No mention of weight of items carried either. When I did long-range patrols, even with "light" pack, I ate 6.5k kCal per day, and still lost 10kg's of body mass over 3 weeks. And some days we only averaged about 15-20km straight-line distance in a 24h period.
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This kind of thing has been observed before with very overweight people who crash diet. Their bodies go into starvation mode and reduce "background" calorie burn significantly, so reducing caloric intake stops being effective. The result is feeling tired and hungry all the time, while not losing or even gaining weight.
I suspect it's a similar but less extreme thing at work here. If you exercise in the morning your body tries to save energy the rest of the day to make up for it. Obviously there are health be
Re: not exactly (Score:3)
It stops being effective for quitters, the true near starvation diets which dietary science started with (that and amphetamines) simply work. There are limits to efficiency.
800 kcal is more than enough for sufficient protein to prevent muscle atrophy and necessary fats.
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800 kcal diets are extreme and dangerous. They might work for some people but we really need a better, safer option than that.
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I lived in Brazil for 2 years and my wife is from there. Instead of the American phrases "Are you full?" and "I am full" they generally ask "Are you satisfied?" and answer "I am satisfied". I think there is much to be said about recognizing when you are no longer hungry, but not overly full. This pandemic has blown me off course, but before I got COVID-19 in January 2020, I was losing 2-3 pounds a week by eating slower and trying to listen to when my body was "satisfied" instead of "full". I wasn't changing
Re:not exactly (Score:5, Informative)
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Cyclists burn up to 10k calories a day, but cycle 4h and more on a competition.
But you are right, the general gusto is: daily laymen activities burn less than one might think
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I remember reading an article about some champion marathoner (from Czechoslovakia I think). In preparation for quitting the endurance training he had to train itself to eat less than the 6000 calories a day "sports" diet he was used to.
(an article I read a looong time ago, so some facts might be "almost-right". The calorie intake was still several multiples of the normal average).
Another relevant quote from the article: (Score:3)
"Exercise prevents you from getting sick, but diet is your best tool for weight management."
That is Herman Pontzer's conclusion, so far. It sure would have been nice if this had been included in the summary.
Bullshit (Score:2, Informative)
The calorific intake of Royal Navy ratings in the 1700's was on the order of 7000 per day, more if they saw action. That's more than an office worker.
Also "after adjusting for body mass" just means "after I fudged the numbers a bit to fit my theory".
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Also "after adjusting for body mass" just means "after I fudged the numbers a bit to fit my theory".
No it doesn't, we both know that.
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Also "after adjusting for body mass" just means "after I fudged the numbers a bit to fit my theory".
No it doesn't, we both know that.
It does, really. Because to adjust for body mass you need to understand how that affects metabolism. But metabolism is what he's trying to measure, so to adjust it you need to know the answer in advance.
Better to just list the raw numbers. Which would spoil his press release.
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I didn't know that fat burns calories at work and rest.
It does because is must. It is living tissue not some inert substance so must expend energy in metabolizing. The question is not "whether" but how much.
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Really, so you would not adjust for body mass between a body builder and a fat guy? I didn't know that fat burns calories at work and rest.
The question is how much do you adjust. The guy's using a circular argument: "I can adjust for body mass because I know how the metabolism works, so I can use that information to work out how the metabolism works."
And, of course, fat does burn calories even at rest because your body has to do more work to move, breath, pump blood etc.
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The calorific intake of Royal Navy ratings in the 1700's was on the order of 7000 per day,
Do you have a citation? Because 7000 cal/day is not plausible.
A normal man consumes 2500 cal/day. Running a marathon adds another 2500.
7000 cal/day would require running two marathons ... every day. I don't think so.
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7000 kcal/day is certainly possible. Consider that ratings on a ship were kept busy working all the time, in harsh conditions. In addition to all the obvious things people think about, such as adjusting rigging etc, you have constant drills, you have the constant mending, washing, cleaning and other equipment maintenance, all on a ship that often rolls, pitches and heaves, meaning that your body automatically adjusts posture to maintain balance, constantly burning energy. Add to that the weather, where you'
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8-10k is possible...
https://ftw.usatoday.com/2017/... [usatoday.com]
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Interesting)
https://www.outsideonline.com/... [outsideonline.com]
This whole article is a fun read in the context of this discussion.
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While interesting, not really relevant to this research though. If you burn an extreme amount of calories then the body can't compensate, sure. But that's not practical for most people wanting to lose weight. They might do some vigorous exercise and burn 250 kcal, but then their body makes it up by saving 250 kcal elsewhere.
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7000 kcal/day is certainly possible.
For someone riding a racing bicycle 4h - 6h a day. Yes.
A sailor on a ship with 8h off watch? Nope.
Some athletes eat up to 10k kcals per day just to maintain their bodies during long phases.
Nope. they eat so much _during the time their bodies need it_
They do not eat so much every day. Same for you. A energy demanding hike you might eat much. But the rest of the year you don't.
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The calorific intake of Royal Navy ratings in the 1700's was on the order of 7000 per day,
Do you have a citation? Because 7000 cal/day is not plausible.
A normal man consumes 2500 cal/day. Running a marathon adds another 2500.
7000 cal/day would require running two marathons ... every day. I don't think so.
This is the age of sail, where running a marathon would be nothing compared to the hardships of daily life climbing masts and rigging, moving cannons and cannonballs by hand, plus all the ropework and cleaning.
Running a marathon is only the endpoint of training which itself will take more than 5000 calories per day - Sumo wrestlers do 5-8k per day while training (which is more or less all the time), some supposedly do 10k.
Anyway, the cite for the RN figure (which I rounded down) is
Food, energy and the crea
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So many academics and similar who have no clue whatsoever just how long armed forces have tracked energy needs etc. And if they do, they try to compare gladiator workload with legionairy workload, and claim that the gladiator's diet would work for the legionairy.
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When I was in the military, I weighed around 85kg(+-2 kg depending on the week). When I was deployed, we did long-range patrols on foot. I ate 6.5k kcal/day(yes, I'm using correct units). Over the three weeks such a patrol took, I lost 10kg's. Medical staff carefully logged it, and the data was joined to all the other physiological data FOI took into account for physiology and nutrology research.
In fact, the average military 24h field ration pack across the world is in the range of 5.2-5.5k kcals, and then
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People differ in how many calories they burn doing the same thing - eg someone highly muscled will burn more calories than a skinny guy walking the same distance. Also peoples digestion efficiency varies in part due to differences in gut biota.
Unfortunately people love to point at a few things and say that proves it but the human body is extremely complicated and everyone is an individual.
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The article is not about deployed military.
It is about ordinary people.
And the finding is: it does not really matter what you do in "ordinary life" - the calories you burn are more or less the same.
It is not so hard to grasp. It is actually in the summary.
In fact, the average military 24h field ration pack across the world is in the range of 5.2-5.5k kcals,
Do you mean the "field ration" or the bar of chocolate in the pack?
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"The calorific intake of Royal Navy ratings in the 1700's was on the order of 7000 per day," ...).
Not all their food intake was of a quality good enough to deliver what should be 7,000 calories a day - no refrigeration, dried/salted meat that might have been more tendons than meat,
Still, quite a bit more than the 2,000 usual, back-of-the-cuff recommendation.
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But they also ate lots of hardtack and cheese
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"The calorific intake of Royal Navy ratings in the 1700's was on the order of 7000 per day," ...).
Not all their food intake was of a quality good enough to deliver what should be 7,000 calories a day - no refrigeration, dried/salted meat that might have been more tendons than meat,
Still, quite a bit more than the 2,000 usual, back-of-the-cuff recommendation.
You might be surprised at the quality of food they had when not stuck on a very long voyage between ports. The navy didn't actually want their people to be malnourished when they went into battle.
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No one knows what the 1700s calorie intake of a navy solder was.
Most certainly not 7000. So much does not even a miner in a iron/coal mine consume/need.
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No one knows what the 1700s calorie intake of a navy solder was.
You are wrong. We have a very good idea because the records of what they ate still exist and are very detailed.
And I'm not talking about soldiers. I'm talking about sailors. Navy soldiers (marines) certainly may have had a lower intake as they assisted with ship-board duties rather than being key members of the day-to-day working crew.
Very interesting! (Score:3, Interesting)
This intrigued me enough to buy the book "Burn: New Research Blows the Lid Off How We Really Burn Calories, Lose Weight, and Stay Healthy"
I'm 50 pages in and enjoying it. As you'd expect the dry details are woven into a back story of exploration and discovery - it's pleasant enough to digest.
This is the sort of stuff I like seeing on Slashdot
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You can only buy the book with crypto, so it's /. worthy.
Homeostasis is irrelevant in changing circumstance (Score:2)
Sedentary people training for half a marathon increase their TDEE measured by double labeled hydrogen by a third over the course of 40 weeks working up to it (plateaus after 10 weeks).
Just eating less is easier, but a year with a third extra energy expenditure can help lose a lot of weight.
Hmmm... (Score:3)
What does this "on average" mean? I understand that when one is well-trained, he uses less energy to do the same task. This doesn't surprise and matches my own experience.
But in the long run, when I can exercise I get thinner while eating everything I want, and when I cannot exercise I get fat even if I eat less; so somehow my case breaks this "on average" qualification and I'd like to understand how.
The article doesn't explain it well and so I smell a bit of sensationalism.
Does he correlate it to poop volume at some point? (Score:3)
"inflammation and stress response" (Score:2)
This sounds like an experimental/math error (Score:2)
'Everyone else is wrong about all things' gets me suspicious. This may be well intentioned but we actually know a lot about these subjects and it may be newcomer-itis thinking he's discovered something all the smart people missed.
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A lot of what we know is pretty poor. It turns out that double blind nutrition studies are extremely difficult to do.
You kind of have to stick people in a controlled environment to completely regulate everything they eat, which makes selection bias in the subjects a problem as well as being very expensive. Plus how long can you keep an N population in a contained environment? 30 days is tough, but you'd really like this data at 3, 6 or even 12 months. You can also get into ethical challenges trying to p
Bullshit (Score:2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
This dude consumes something like 8k calories per day. He has to to maintain his body mass and lift as much as he does. He burns a lot more calories than you or I do, through the power of exercise.
He's an extreme example, but honestly, if you work out you will require more calories unless you economize somewhere else.
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If you work out you'll also be hungry and eat more. Most of the people cannot outrun their fork (there are exceptions)
I too call bullshit on this (Score:2)
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His message that exercise won't help you lose weight "lacks nuance," says exercise physiologist John Thyfault
No, what it lacks is a $39.99 product/subscription to sell along with the message.
Nobody will ever believe that something that's free will help them lose weight.
(ie. eating less)
Re: You cannot eat yourself thin (Score:2)
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I think the whole OP must be wrong. Is this paper peer reviewed? Movement eg your arms, legs doing excersize is kinetic energy. physics says energy can neither be created or destroyed,.
Food calories can be transformed into heat or stored as fat instead of being used for motion. The more you eat, the less "efficient" your body gets.
Re:You cannot eat yourself thin (Score:5, Insightful)
It should be rather obvious that if you are fat, then you eat too much.
Yes, that is obvious. But it doesn't answer the question of why they eat too much.
I eat what I want and don't get fat. I love veggies and rarely crave sugar or fat.
Native Americans of the desert Southwest have almost universal obesity and the highest rate of diabetes in the world.
Why the difference? I doubt they are fatter than you because of moral failings.
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Why the difference? I doubt they are fatter than you because of moral failings.
The native American's traditional diets were replaced by industrial variants. That meant changing from their native corn to the hybrid corn, which causes an extreme glycemic reaction in their genetic type. Add to that all the other highly refined carbohydrates that industrial (profitable) food systems provide and you have obesity and diabetes.
As with alcohol, they had no tolerance for it. They aren't alone; it was a matter of degree. This "SAD" diet also affects the descendants of every other demogr
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That one's easy to answer: They live in a country where everywhere they go they have to walk past caramel mochas and creme donuts.
Yet I also live in a country with caramel mochas and creme donuts. Why do the Pima Indians crave them when I don't?
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Because you are an exception.
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Because you are an exception.
68% of American adults are overweight. That means 32% are not.
Being one of 32% is not exceptional.
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You're an exception not because you're not overweight but because you're not craving caramel mochas and creme donuts.
Re:You cannot eat yourself thin (Score:5, Interesting)
It's also worth noting two other things here:
1. As a category, overweight people have lower mortality from all causes. We've defined overweight mainly by aesthetics, not by health outcomes.
2. We use BMI to define these tiers, and not only are they arbitrary, they've arbitrarily changed in the past. The line for obesity moved down, so some people went to sleep 'overweight' and woke up 'obese'.
Indeed, to people of a 'normal' weight. [nih.gov]
If what we care about is the health of people and not just whether or not we find them physically attractive, we need to redefine what we consider overweight and obese. These are not useful categories, because you cannot make any health decisions based on them.
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Whoops, should've paid more attention to the preview. Anyway, the link is to a study that shows that people that are 'grade 1 obese' have no different health outcomes than people of so-called normal weight, and that, as I said, people that are 'overweight' have lower all-cause mortality.
Re:You cannot eat yourself thin (Score:4, Insightful)
It's also worth noting two other things here:
1. As a category, overweight people have lower mortality from all causes. We've defined overweight mainly by aesthetics, not by health outcomes. 2. We use BMI to define these tiers, and not only are they arbitrary, they've arbitrarily changed in the past. The line for obesity moved down, so some people went to sleep 'overweight' and woke up 'obese'.
Indeed, to people of a 'normal' weight. [nih.gov]
If what we care about is the health of people and not just whether or not we find them physically attractive, we need to redefine what we consider overweight and obese. These are not useful categories, because you cannot make any health decisions based on them.
You're completely misinterpreting this study. It says that being slightly overweight is correlated with longer life expectancy. Noone questions that. But surprise, that doesn't mean you should eat more to become overweight if you're normal. Correlation is not causation, see? And here the causation works in this way: obesity causes sickness, while being underweight is (frequently) caused by sickness. In fact, "sudden unexplained weight loss" is the best predictor known to science for death within 3 years.
So, the "normal weight" category includes a lot of people who have been overweight most of their life, have now mysteriously dropped their weight and are all happy, but are about to discover that the thing which has burned away that fatty tissue was a cancer they are going to die from in 2 years. And just grannies who tend to waste away before passing. And so on. And they skew the statistic quite a bit. So, the healthiest spot to be in, is, somewhat paradoxically, quite a bit lower than the spot with longest life expectancy.
So yes, it's actually healthier to be normal weight... as long as it doesn't come suspiciously easy for you all of a sudden, then you'd better haul your ass to a doctor, pronto.
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Portions are way bigger in the USA.
Solution: Find a spouse or partner who shares your food preferences. Then order ONE meal with two forks.
Re: You cannot eat yourself thin (Score:3)
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This is just a way of saying that people are fat because of their own weakness, and saying it's their own damn problem and ignoring it.
What do you want? Ration books?
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Me? I think it's exactly what we're seeing in the USA.
I remember ordering some blueberry pancakes for breakfast when I was over there. I got five, plate-sized pancakes neatly stacked up with layers of cream and syrup in between. I'm generally seen as a big eater - the one who finishes off other people's desserts, but there was no way I was going to finish that. It was easily enough for four people.
IIRC everything else was similarly huge* and there was always bottomless sugary drinks and a salad bar with hug
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If large portion sizes are contributing to obesity, that's something we can fix.
The portion sizes are also decided by "people" - the restaurant management, or the packed food management. Why doesn't your engineering begin by accepting those people, the ones who decide portion sizes, as they are ? If people crave to create big portions, that is not so easy to change.
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That would be ok with me, if just all people could afford to eat healthy - but in USA it is often the case that impoverished families simply can't afford healthy ingredients, and what they can afford is often super market fast food's (even here in Finland a cheeseburger at MacDonald's costs 1 euro - probably sold at 1000% what it cost them to make it) which, especially over there, are all laced with high fructose corn starch - now that's something that should be regulated, but apparently US food industry co
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Oh I forgot - nobody was talking about regulating what people can and can not eat. That would have been a lot shorter message and would've really contained all that was needed.
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Especially pub-food in the South. In pubs in Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas it seems the standard bar-burger is twice the size of burgers up north and half a bushel of potatoes were used for the fries! What is amazing is the prices are reasonable for all that delicious food!
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You're not supposed to, you're supposed to take it home for several meals. It goes back to the protestant attitudes of the country and feeling like you got a "good deal". Eurofats thing you're supposed to actually eat all that in one sitting...
Re:You cannot eat yourself thin (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:You cannot eat yourself thin (Score:4, Insightful)
This is something massively overlooked, I read an article detailing work from another researcher a few years ago about this exact point. It's not just how many calories you eat, it's how you get them. Your body can only use so many calories at once and if the food you eat gets absorbed and turned into blood glucose too quickly then a lot of it will get stored as fat, even if you're overall on a calorie deficit.
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My partner was lifting weights in the gym 6 days a week, and her weight kept creeping up, even though she was exercising more than she had in the last 10 years. We thought maybe it was muscle mass, and probably some of it was, but really, she was putting on a lot of fat. She wasn't eating more, either. I make the meals, so I know how much food we were going through.
Turns out she's massively hypothyroid. Her thyroid all but completely failed a few months later, and even on medication it's a struggle.
Your met
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She was eating too much. Because of hormonal issues, the point of "too much" shifted, and thus the answer is to eat less.
There's nothing to being fat beside "eating too much". That's simple physics.
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Over 2/3rds of the entire US population does not have hypothyroidism though, your partner is a fairly extreme outlier.
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Considering that you are probably over 18, perhaps even 30, you might have met plenty pf people who are fat but do not "eat too much".
Perhaps you want to read a book about it, e.g. gut bacteria - like cows have - that convert fibres into digestible carbs/sugar. Eat a piece of german bread, it has 200kcals. Have the wrong gut bacteria, it has 2000kcals.
And what exactly does "much" mean? I find those Atkinson guys funny who eat a steak that has close to zero useable kclas, but put 1000kcals of ketchup over it
Re: (Score:2)
I'd be interested to hear how did you learn that they don't jack off at least three times per day? Did you ask? And if so, how do you know they weren't too embarrassed to admit jacking off that much? *mumble* bunch of prunes... *mumble*
And for the most important question: What's the most common reaction? That is, of course, if you asked and didn't in fact just hack their computers to find out how often they go to www.oldprinciple teachesteenagestudentalesson.com/
Re:Already known fact is known (Score:5, Insightful)
Attempting to lose weight through exercise alone will fail mostly because you just can't exercise hard enough for long enough to make a big enough difference.
It will also make you feel like you've been good today so you can treat yourself to that bag of chips.
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Attempting to lose weight through exercise alone will fail mostly because you just can't exercise hard enough for long enough to make a big enough difference.
Unless, of course, you find a high enough intensity physical activity that you actually enjoy, then it becomes piss easy. For me it was exercise VR games.
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' lower weight means less surface area means less calories burned by doing nothing' What?
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The other side of that is when you lose weight, your BMR goes down. At some point, to keep losing weight, you have to keep lowering your caloric intake.
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Maybe he should work on being less of a "pop" scientist and more on reading.
I would suggest teh reading part to you as well. You could start with the linked article, btw.