8 ms·

It’s gotten harder to lose weight and not for the reasons you think

29 points by RyanMcGreal 11y ago

rasz_pl 11y ago
same story yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10309249 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10309249 study relies on SELF REPORTING, need I say more?
- ZoFreX 11y ago
  What would we prefer, a study that relies on self-reporting but is a study nonetheless, or a bunch of theories based on entirely on anecdotes with a sample size of 1? I get this study isn't perfect but it seems silly that so many commenters here are disregarding it entirely yet are perfectly happy to listen to completely untested theories from people with no expertise whatsoever in the field.
  - rasz_pl 11y ago
    We do know that self reporting is flawed, just ask your chubby "dieting" friend about donuts.
dagurp 11y ago
Click bait title
aabajian 11y ago
"Weight management is actually much more complex than just ‘energy in’ versus ‘energy out." No, it's not. Maybe it's more difficult to measure calories (that salad ranch dressing has more calories than that hamburger), but people should be encouraged to balance their calorie intake everyday. For what it's worth, here's why Americans are obese: 50 extra calories / day x 365 days / year x 1 lb / 3,500 calories = 5 lbs / year Multiplied by 10 years, and you get 50 lbs over weight. In twenty years you are 100 lbs over weight. Bottom line is that people are eating just a little too much every day, and that adds up over time. My advice for losing and maintaining weight: Have 5 x 400 calorie meals each day and exercise for 30 minutes. The chore of finding 400 calorie meals is well worth the effort because you'll see just how many calories each item you consume contains.
- cousin_it 11y ago
  It's not so simple. People are different. Some people won't need your plan because they stay at low weight no matter what they eat. Others won't be able to follow your plan because it would require superhuman willpower. I'm an example of the first category. I'm 6'2'' and 160 lbs, and have been like this for years. At age 27 I spent a whole year working from home, eating at McDonalds 1-2 times every day, going to sleep at 5am, and not exercising at all. Resulting weight gain? About five pounds, which I promptly lost after joining a gym. More recently, at age 32, I took a two-week vacation and literally spent it all in bed, playing video games and eating large amounts of chocolate and pastries. Resulting weight gain? Zero (actually a slight loss). This happened last month. Since I'm at one extreme end of the scale, it's very easy for me to believe that there are people at the other end, who won't be able to follow your plan at all. Restrict them to 2K calories/day, and they just won't fall asleep unless they get a snack. They need a different way. The laws of thermodynamics are true as far as they go, but they don't have anything to say about genetics, metabolism, hunger, or willpower. These are the real important factors in weight loss. The sooner we move away from a virtue-based worldview, the sooner we can start actually solving it.
  - DarkTree 11y ago
    You're right, there are certainly many mental factors that contribute to weight gain, such as hunger, willpower etc. that vary from person to person. However, as far as actual physical weight gain (controlling for height and muscle mass), the dominating factor is calories in vs. calories out. For people like you who are tall and skinny and it seems impossible to gain weight, you are either not eating as much as you think you are consistently (i.e. not correctly tracking your calorie intake) or you are grossly underestimating how many calories obese people consume on a daily basis. Just eating at McDonalds 1-2 times a day doesn't mean anything if you are just getting a burger, but if you get three burgers, a large fry and large coke on a daily basis, that is going to make a difference. Along with mental factors, poor dietary upbringing, as well as horrible (and consistently changing) nutrition advice are strong contributors to problems with weight gain.
  - Kurtz79 11y ago
Shivetya 11y ago
The bias isn't against obese people, it is against morbidly obese people who don't want to accept it. There is a whole collection of groups that sprouted up to fight the "discrimination" against fat people, HAES (Health At Every Size) is the most know, but fat acceptance gets airtime simply because it is so much easier to get a message out. Obesity is an issue, we simply have way too much opportunity to indulge and little reason to move to entertain ourselves. Go out and play seems to have fallen on deaf ears, why should kids do that when adults don't? lastly, exercise is not they key to weight loss, proper eating is. if anything exercise contributes because it changes your lifestyle, you get out more or you spend less time eating and sitting
- danielbarla 11y ago
  > lastly, exercise is not they key to weight loss, proper eating is. This is very true in my personal experience, too. I can quite easily binge-eat an extra 500 calories for dinner because I'm feeling a bit too hungry, but to work that back off with exercise might take 30 - 45 minutes of cardio. With hectic work schedules, it's also very easy to skip exercise sessions, but good eating habits are "working" even at these times. Of course, sometimes we don't have time to eat well, but I find that it takes a lot less time (per calorie) to eat well, than it is to work it off. Another point I'd make is that small differences add up scarily quickly over time, as someone else pointed out. When I was just out of university, I started putting on 1 - 1.5 kgs of weight per year, nice and slow that it was hardly noticeable. Then, just a handful of years later, I was 10 kgs overweight - it creeps up on you. The opposite is also true, a nice steady decline is easy to arrange, and gives your body all the more time to adjust to your new eating habits, without it breaking your willpower.
  - gozo 11y ago
    Yes, but it also a losing proposition for most people. Do we really think that people who are overweight, especially in a body focused society as the US, haven't tried to "just eat better"?
    - danielbarla 11y ago
colund 11y ago
As a Swede it's hard not to blush reading the name of the interviewee. Kuk means cock in Swedish (not the bird).
- rogeryu 11y ago
  In Holland we have people called Dick de Cock. Anyhow, a cock is actually just a rooster, not?
  - colund 11y ago
    No it's also a Johnson.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
rogeryu 11y ago
Sorry, haven't RTFA, but what I know is that when people get heavier, the babies they get are biased to more weight. These kids, now adults, have a body that is trained or prepared for more weight, and it won't give up that easily. I'm 5 kg overweight, and should lose another 10 kg to get the ideal weight. My goal is not to gain any weight, and I've kept it stable for about 10 years. I know when I overeat, and I feel really bad when I gain another kg. If that happens, it takes a week or so to lose it again.
thomasahle 11y ago
TL/DR: It's gotten harder to lose weight, because people eat more crap: artificial sweeteners, steroids, pollutants, plastic packaging, pesticides, meat, antidepressants. A positive read would be: if you want to be healthy, don't focus solely on energy intake, but also what chemicals you are subjecting your body to.
- monochromatic 11y ago
  Plastic packaging makes people fat?
  - gozo 11y ago
    I assume it's a reference to BPA.
  - FilterSweep 11y ago
    "Makes people fat" is a bit of a reach, but it has an effect on the holistic reasons why one becomes fat. The links are dubious, but they are there. Plastic Packaging contains a high amount of BPA (Bisphenol A) which acts as a xenoestrogen - slightly unrelated: the generational drop in testosterone in males has been tied to this[0]. Back on topic, cells containing the metabolite of BPA, BPA-Glucoronide, have been found to accumulate more fat than untreated cells.[1] [2] This is part of the reason why "BPA-Free" plastic products (think: Nalgene water bottles) use this tagline in sales. [0] http://www.livescience.com/29401-bpa-testosterone-levels.html http://www.livescience.com/29401-bpa-testosterone-levels.htm... [1] http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bpa-may-prompt-more-fat-in-the-human-body/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bpa-may-prompt-mor... [2] http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/777288 http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/777288
- leemuro 11y ago
  "Chemicals" are a scapegoat. Everything you put in your face is a "chemical". Folks just need to eat food that isn't just a bunch of empty dense calories. Stuff that actually satisfies you.
  - 11y ago
leemuro 11y ago
This is such a bad study and this post is your usual garbage of the media just confusing people and making them think weight loss is impossible, all while giving them more excuses to do absolutely nothing. The idea that this "data" is in any way an accurate representation of how many calories the average person eats is just absurd. The average person cannot tell you how many calories they eat per day, they have no idea. The foods we have available today make it much more likely for a person to consume more calories than someone "thinks" they are. You can sit around all day and blame it on leaky gut, artificial sweeteners, pesticides, gluten, carbs, fat, red meat or whatever the latest "fad villian" is, and you'll just keep failing to lose weight. Plain and simple. Eat nutritious food that actually fills you up and satisfies you, track your calorie intake, and find a sustainable way to just eat less every day.
- CaptainAmerica 11y ago
  Completely agree that this is total crap and is only going to hurt the population more. They lost in the first paragraph when they stated they're using BMI. BMI is total bs and I'm pretty sure we all know it. I'm male, 24, 6', 195 lbs. I work out 5 days a week, run, play sports and eat healthy, but according to BMI I'm overweight.
irixusr 11y ago
Hormones act in blood concentrations of 1E-12 [1]. This is by design, they act as triggers. When you consider hormones affect everything, from how and where you put weight, to sexuality, to behavior it's incredible how little thought lay people give to them and the endocrine system. (The Intercept has a very interesting 3 part series about an endocrine disruptor that DuPont splashed all over WV and Ohio causing thousands of cancers [2]) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_blood_components https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_blood_components [2] https://theintercept.com/2015/08/11/dupont-chemistry-deception/ https://theintercept.com/2015/08/11/dupont-chemistry-decepti...
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
michaelgold 11y ago
In my experience, losing weight is very hard if you follow fad diets. In the NY tech scene, nearly every tech event has free pizza and beer. I gained a ton of weight from 2008-2012 and have finally lost it. I'm weighing in at 165 pounds now. In 2012, I was weighing in at 215 pounds. In May of that year, I started on Tim Ferriss' Four Hour Body Slow Carb diet. It worked for a while but I plateued at 195 pounds. I figured that was it for me - that I wasn't going to be able to lose any more weight. I told my primary care doctor about this in January of 2015 and he recommended ditching the Slow Carb Diet and tracking my calorie consumption in the app My Fitness Pal. He said to continue using My Fitness Pal until I figured out the right balance of food and exercise I needed to eat to drive weight loss or maintain my weight. Just by guessing calories of the food I was eating, I was able to lose 30 pounds This may seem like a pain in the ass, but it only added on 5 minutes to my daily routine. I got a good scale (the WiThings WS-50). It not only tracks your weight, but it tracks your weight loss / weight gain trend over the last 30 days in its app. In 2015 from CES to SXSW I dropped from 195 to 182 pounds. From SXSW to June 1st I dropped from 182 to 169 pounds. I stopped using the app in July and am now weighing 165 pounds. I've put a few of my friends on to this, and they've also lost weight. Hope this can help someone else who wants to cut through the noise of fad weight loss advice.
makecheck 11y ago
In my case this is what matters most: - Watch what you DRINK, not so much what you eat. Drink water or black coffee/cold-brew or tea most of the time, and turn other beverages into rare treats. Soda is perfectly fine once a week but buy the smallest size and sip it without a straw so that you enjoy it a lot more. (I was shocked at how I could barely finish a tiny Coke by sipping it but somehow I could practically chug one 3x the size just by using a straw. Don't use straws; they increase consumption and keep you from even tasting most of the calories that you're consuming.) - Cook most of your meals, multiple meals at once. Yes, this takes time and it'll take awhile to become any good at it but it's worthwhile. Pick a day, spend 1-2 hours cooking your lunches for the rest of the week. You will tend to fill your shopping lists with more raw vegetables and meat that go a long way. This also keeps you from finding excuses to head to the nearest fast-food place at lunch time. - Do not ever skip a meal, no matter what your weight is. Prefer breakfasts high in protein, like eggs and chicken sausage, with few carbs (not too much of cereal or muffins or similar). - Take every excuse to walk. Find someplace to go a few times a week, like a coffee shop, and walk the entire way. Even when I drive somewhere, I'm never afraid to park the car and walk in (no drive-through, no spending 10 minutes to find that "good" parking spot; just walk from somewhere a bit further out). Same thing with stairs versus elevators; and if you take an escalator, walk up the escalator instead of riding it. - Make some effort to build muscle to get some "free" calorie consumption. You don't need a lot. The biggest muscles in your body are better at working off calories so if you have limited time, start with your legs. A gym isn't strictly required for a lot of good exercises; you just need to read up on a few things to do and be really consistent about doing sets a few times a week.
linkydinkandyou 11y ago
The New England Journal of medicine did a study with "doubly labeled water" which made it possible to determine _exactly_ how many calories a person ate. In a study of people who claimed to be "diet resistant" (some of whom were taking medication based on what they reported to their doctors) it had been determined that each and every one of them were underreporting their calorie intake and overreporting their exercise to the doctors. Here's the study (PDF) http://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJM199212313272701 http://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJM199212313272701 It's been duplicated again and again. The last paragraph says: "In conclusion, all the obese subjects we studied who had a history of self-reported diet resistance had appropriate energy expenditure, but they misreported their actual food intake and physical activity." It's sounds shocking to me, but people would rather lie to their doctors, and get medication they don't need, than count calories accurately.
dang 11y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10309249 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10309249

29 points by RyanMcGreal 11y ago

same story yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10309249 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10309249 study relies on SELF REPORTING, need I say more?

ZoFreX 11y ago
What would we prefer, a study that relies on self-reporting but is a study nonetheless, or a bunch of theories based on entirely on anecdotes with a sample size of 1? I get this study isn't perfect but it seems silly that so many commenters here are disregarding it entirely yet are perfectly happy to listen to completely untested theories from people with no expertise whatsoever in the field.
- rasz_pl 11y ago
  We do know that self reporting is flawed, just ask your chubby "dieting" friend about donuts.

dagurp 11y ago

Click bait title

aabajian 11y ago

"Weight management is actually much more complex than just ‘energy in’ versus ‘energy out." No, it's not. Maybe it's more difficult to measure calories (that salad ranch dressing has more calories than that hamburger), but people should be encouraged to balance their calorie intake everyday. For what it's worth, here's why Americans are obese: 50 extra calories / day x 365 days / year x 1 lb / 3,500 calories = 5 lbs / year Multiplied by 10 years, and you get 50 lbs over weight. In twenty years you are 100 lbs over weight. Bottom line is that people are eating just a little too much every day, and that adds up over time. My advice for losing and maintaining weight: Have 5 x 400 calorie meals each day and exercise for 30 minutes. The chore of finding 400 calorie meals is well worth the effort because you'll see just how many calories each item you consume contains.

cousin_it 11y ago
It's not so simple. People are different. Some people won't need your plan because they stay at low weight no matter what they eat. Others won't be able to follow your plan because it would require superhuman willpower. I'm an example of the first category. I'm 6'2'' and 160 lbs, and have been like this for years. At age 27 I spent a whole year working from home, eating at McDonalds 1-2 times every day, going to sleep at 5am, and not exercising at all. Resulting weight gain? About five pounds, which I promptly lost after joining a gym. More recently, at age 32, I took a two-week vacation and literally spent it all in bed, playing video games and eating large amounts of chocolate and pastries. Resulting weight gain? Zero (actually a slight loss). This happened last month. Since I'm at one extreme end of the scale, it's very easy for me to believe that there are people at the other end, who won't be able to follow your plan at all. Restrict them to 2K calories/day, and they just won't fall asleep unless they get a snack. They need a different way. The laws of thermodynamics are true as far as they go, but they don't have anything to say about genetics, metabolism, hunger, or willpower. These are the real important factors in weight loss. The sooner we move away from a virtue-based worldview, the sooner we can start actually solving it.
- DarkTree 11y ago
  You're right, there are certainly many mental factors that contribute to weight gain, such as hunger, willpower etc. that vary from person to person. However, as far as actual physical weight gain (controlling for height and muscle mass), the dominating factor is calories in vs. calories out. For people like you who are tall and skinny and it seems impossible to gain weight, you are either not eating as much as you think you are consistently (i.e. not correctly tracking your calorie intake) or you are grossly underestimating how many calories obese people consume on a daily basis. Just eating at McDonalds 1-2 times a day doesn't mean anything if you are just getting a burger, but if you get three burgers, a large fry and large coke on a daily basis, that is going to make a difference. Along with mental factors, poor dietary upbringing, as well as horrible (and consistently changing) nutrition advice are strong contributors to problems with weight gain.
- Kurtz79 11y ago

Shivetya 11y ago

The bias isn't against obese people, it is against morbidly obese people who don't want to accept it. There is a whole collection of groups that sprouted up to fight the "discrimination" against fat people, HAES (Health At Every Size) is the most know, but fat acceptance gets airtime simply because it is so much easier to get a message out. Obesity is an issue, we simply have way too much opportunity to indulge and little reason to move to entertain ourselves. Go out and play seems to have fallen on deaf ears, why should kids do that when adults don't? lastly, exercise is not they key to weight loss, proper eating is. if anything exercise contributes because it changes your lifestyle, you get out more or you spend less time eating and sitting

danielbarla 11y ago
> lastly, exercise is not they key to weight loss, proper eating is. This is very true in my personal experience, too. I can quite easily binge-eat an extra 500 calories for dinner because I'm feeling a bit too hungry, but to work that back off with exercise might take 30 - 45 minutes of cardio. With hectic work schedules, it's also very easy to skip exercise sessions, but good eating habits are "working" even at these times. Of course, sometimes we don't have time to eat well, but I find that it takes a lot less time (per calorie) to eat well, than it is to work it off. Another point I'd make is that small differences add up scarily quickly over time, as someone else pointed out. When I was just out of university, I started putting on 1 - 1.5 kgs of weight per year, nice and slow that it was hardly noticeable. Then, just a handful of years later, I was 10 kgs overweight - it creeps up on you. The opposite is also true, a nice steady decline is easy to arrange, and gives your body all the more time to adjust to your new eating habits, without it breaking your willpower.
- gozo 11y ago
  Yes, but it also a losing proposition for most people. Do we really think that people who are overweight, especially in a body focused society as the US, haven't tried to "just eat better"?
  - danielbarla 11y ago

colund 11y ago

As a Swede it's hard not to blush reading the name of the interviewee. Kuk means cock in Swedish (not the bird).

rogeryu 11y ago
In Holland we have people called Dick de Cock. Anyhow, a cock is actually just a rooster, not?
- colund 11y ago
  No it's also a Johnson.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

rogeryu 11y ago

Sorry, haven't RTFA, but what I know is that when people get heavier, the babies they get are biased to more weight. These kids, now adults, have a body that is trained or prepared for more weight, and it won't give up that easily. I'm 5 kg overweight, and should lose another 10 kg to get the ideal weight. My goal is not to gain any weight, and I've kept it stable for about 10 years. I know when I overeat, and I feel really bad when I gain another kg. If that happens, it takes a week or so to lose it again.

thomasahle 11y ago

TL/DR: It's gotten harder to lose weight, because people eat more crap: artificial sweeteners, steroids, pollutants, plastic packaging, pesticides, meat, antidepressants. A positive read would be: if you want to be healthy, don't focus solely on energy intake, but also what chemicals you are subjecting your body to.

monochromatic 11y ago
Plastic packaging makes people fat?
- gozo 11y ago
  I assume it's a reference to BPA.
- FilterSweep 11y ago
  "Makes people fat" is a bit of a reach, but it has an effect on the holistic reasons why one becomes fat. The links are dubious, but they are there. Plastic Packaging contains a high amount of BPA (Bisphenol A) which acts as a xenoestrogen - slightly unrelated: the generational drop in testosterone in males has been tied to this[0]. Back on topic, cells containing the metabolite of BPA, BPA-Glucoronide, have been found to accumulate more fat than untreated cells.[1] [2] This is part of the reason why "BPA-Free" plastic products (think: Nalgene water bottles) use this tagline in sales. [0] http://www.livescience.com/29401-bpa-testosterone-levels.html http://www.livescience.com/29401-bpa-testosterone-levels.htm... [1] http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bpa-may-prompt-more-fat-in-the-human-body/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bpa-may-prompt-mor... [2] http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/777288 http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/777288
leemuro 11y ago
"Chemicals" are a scapegoat. Everything you put in your face is a "chemical". Folks just need to eat food that isn't just a bunch of empty dense calories. Stuff that actually satisfies you.
- 11y ago

leemuro 11y ago

This is such a bad study and this post is your usual garbage of the media just confusing people and making them think weight loss is impossible, all while giving them more excuses to do absolutely nothing. The idea that this "data" is in any way an accurate representation of how many calories the average person eats is just absurd. The average person cannot tell you how many calories they eat per day, they have no idea. The foods we have available today make it much more likely for a person to consume more calories than someone "thinks" they are. You can sit around all day and blame it on leaky gut, artificial sweeteners, pesticides, gluten, carbs, fat, red meat or whatever the latest "fad villian" is, and you'll just keep failing to lose weight. Plain and simple. Eat nutritious food that actually fills you up and satisfies you, track your calorie intake, and find a sustainable way to just eat less every day.

CaptainAmerica 11y ago
Completely agree that this is total crap and is only going to hurt the population more. They lost in the first paragraph when they stated they're using BMI. BMI is total bs and I'm pretty sure we all know it. I'm male, 24, 6', 195 lbs. I work out 5 days a week, run, play sports and eat healthy, but according to BMI I'm overweight.

irixusr 11y ago

Hormones act in blood concentrations of 1E-12 [1]. This is by design, they act as triggers. When you consider hormones affect everything, from how and where you put weight, to sexuality, to behavior it's incredible how little thought lay people give to them and the endocrine system. (The Intercept has a very interesting 3 part series about an endocrine disruptor that DuPont splashed all over WV and Ohio causing thousands of cancers [2]) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_blood_components https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_blood_components [2] https://theintercept.com/2015/08/11/dupont-chemistry-deception/ https://theintercept.com/2015/08/11/dupont-chemistry-decepti...

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

michaelgold 11y ago

In my experience, losing weight is very hard if you follow fad diets. In the NY tech scene, nearly every tech event has free pizza and beer. I gained a ton of weight from 2008-2012 and have finally lost it. I'm weighing in at 165 pounds now. In 2012, I was weighing in at 215 pounds. In May of that year, I started on Tim Ferriss' Four Hour Body Slow Carb diet. It worked for a while but I plateued at 195 pounds. I figured that was it for me - that I wasn't going to be able to lose any more weight. I told my primary care doctor about this in January of 2015 and he recommended ditching the Slow Carb Diet and tracking my calorie consumption in the app My Fitness Pal. He said to continue using My Fitness Pal until I figured out the right balance of food and exercise I needed to eat to drive weight loss or maintain my weight. Just by guessing calories of the food I was eating, I was able to lose 30 pounds This may seem like a pain in the ass, but it only added on 5 minutes to my daily routine. I got a good scale (the WiThings WS-50). It not only tracks your weight, but it tracks your weight loss / weight gain trend over the last 30 days in its app. In 2015 from CES to SXSW I dropped from 195 to 182 pounds. From SXSW to June 1st I dropped from 182 to 169 pounds. I stopped using the app in July and am now weighing 165 pounds. I've put a few of my friends on to this, and they've also lost weight. Hope this can help someone else who wants to cut through the noise of fad weight loss advice.

makecheck 11y ago

In my case this is what matters most: - Watch what you DRINK, not so much what you eat. Drink water or black coffee/cold-brew or tea most of the time, and turn other beverages into rare treats. Soda is perfectly fine once a week but buy the smallest size and sip it without a straw so that you enjoy it a lot more. (I was shocked at how I could barely finish a tiny Coke by sipping it but somehow I could practically chug one 3x the size just by using a straw. Don't use straws; they increase consumption and keep you from even tasting most of the calories that you're consuming.) - Cook most of your meals, multiple meals at once. Yes, this takes time and it'll take awhile to become any good at it but it's worthwhile. Pick a day, spend 1-2 hours cooking your lunches for the rest of the week. You will tend to fill your shopping lists with more raw vegetables and meat that go a long way. This also keeps you from finding excuses to head to the nearest fast-food place at lunch time. - Do not ever skip a meal, no matter what your weight is. Prefer breakfasts high in protein, like eggs and chicken sausage, with few carbs (not too much of cereal or muffins or similar). - Take every excuse to walk. Find someplace to go a few times a week, like a coffee shop, and walk the entire way. Even when I drive somewhere, I'm never afraid to park the car and walk in (no drive-through, no spending 10 minutes to find that "good" parking spot; just walk from somewhere a bit further out). Same thing with stairs versus elevators; and if you take an escalator, walk up the escalator instead of riding it. - Make some effort to build muscle to get some "free" calorie consumption. You don't need a lot. The biggest muscles in your body are better at working off calories so if you have limited time, start with your legs. A gym isn't strictly required for a lot of good exercises; you just need to read up on a few things to do and be really consistent about doing sets a few times a week.

linkydinkandyou 11y ago

The New England Journal of medicine did a study with "doubly labeled water" which made it possible to determine _exactly_ how many calories a person ate. In a study of people who claimed to be "diet resistant" (some of whom were taking medication based on what they reported to their doctors) it had been determined that each and every one of them were underreporting their calorie intake and overreporting their exercise to the doctors. Here's the study (PDF) http://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJM199212313272701 http://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJM199212313272701 It's been duplicated again and again. The last paragraph says: "In conclusion, all the obese subjects we studied who had a history of self-reported diet resistance had appropriate energy expenditure, but they misreported their actual food intake and physical activity." It's sounds shocking to me, but people would rather lie to their doctors, and get medication they don't need, than count calories accurately.

dang 11y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10309249 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10309249