5 ms·

Exercise has nothing to do with weight loss. Caloric restriction also doesn't work without consuming the correct fats to satiate your appetite. As you age there

Exercise has nothing to do with weight loss. Caloric restriction also doesn't work without consuming the correct fats to satiate your appetite. As you age there is no amount of exercise that will allow you to maintain the amount you weigh in you 20's or 30's. It will all depend on your diet of the correct foods. I would suggest probably the best book ever written about why people get fat. Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It -Gary Taubes Fantastic book that looks at the science of Obesity and weight loss among other things like Insulin resistance and genetics.

varelse 11y ago
"As you age there is no amount of exercise that will allow you to maintain the amount you weigh in you 20's or 30's." This seems overly general and anecdotally total BS. I still eat what I like just like I did in my 20s/30s. It's just that what I like is generally lots of vegetables and sufficient protein, with occasional vices slipped in because YOLO(tm). That said, without the exercise, I gain about a pound per week. That means I am atoning for an extra 400-500 calories daily, no? Or what would you suggest is really going on here?
- skrebbel 11y ago
  An alternative would be that in the weeks where you don't exercise, you feel a little worse, and therefore submit to slightly more of them YOLO vices. I mean, I have no idea which it is, but there's plenty of explanations for your observations other than the one you gave.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- hourislate 11y ago
  As you naturally age you will burn less calories. So as you continue to eat the same way and the same amount you will have to up your exercise to impossible limits. What needs to change is your diet. No sugars and lots of healthy fats. Here is an excerpt from the book I mentioned. Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It by Gary Taubes http://amzn.com/0307474259 http://amzn.com/0307474259 >The authors were Paul Williams, a statistics expert at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California, and Peter Wood, a Stanford University researcher who has been studying the effect of exercise on health since the 1970s. Williams and Wood collected detailed information on almost thirteen thousand habitual runners (all subscribers to Runner’s World magazine) and then compared the weekly mileage of these runners with how much they weighed from year to year. Those who ran the most tended to weigh the least, but all these runners tended to get fatter with each passing year, even those who ran more than forty miles a week—eight miles a day, say, five days a week. This observation led Williams and Wood, both believers in the doctrine of calories-in/calories-out, to suggest that even the most dedicated runners had to increase their distance by a few miles a week, year after year—expend even more energy as they got older—if they wanted to remain lean. If men added two miles to their weekly distance every year, and women three, according to Williams and Wood, then they might manage to remain lean, because this might mean expending in running the calories that they seemed fated otherwise to accumulate as fat. Let’s see where that logic takes us. Imagine a man in his twenties who runs twenty miles a week—say, four miles a day, five days a week. According to Williams and Wood (and the logic and mathematics of calories-in/calories-out), he will have to double that in his thirties (eight miles a day, five days a week) and triple it in his forties (twelve miles a day, five days a week) to keep fat from accumulating. A woman in her twenties who runs three miles a day, five times a week—an impressive but not excessive amount—would have to up her daily distance to fifteen miles in her forties to retain her youthful figure. If she does eight-minute miles, a nice pace for such a distance, she’d better be prepared to spend two hours on each of her running days to keep her weight in check.
  - jschwartzi 11y ago
    It's also well known that as you become fitter, your body becomes more efficient at performing the same activities. It doesn't surprise me that people who habitually run get fitter, burn fewer calories per mile, and need to run farther to maintain the same burn rate. That these people are also getting older at the same time might just be a coincidence.
  - antisthenes 11y ago
    My anecdotal experience seems to confirm this. I've gained ~30 lbs throughout my 20s (130 --> 160), even though I've become at least twice as active as I have ever been in my late teens. The weight gain has been both fat and muscle, however, but I'm not exactly sure in which proportions (I can notice both more subcutaneous fat in the belly area as well as more pronounced muscles) By far the biggest metabolic cliff seems to occur around ~25 years of age +-1-2 years. I've noticed a very sharp increase in weight around that time, despite keeping my diet constant.
  - vannevar 11y ago
    The math seems fishy here. Let's assume your young woman's base metabolism (without any extra exercise) is ~1500 calories a day. Running 5 miles a day burns 500 calories putting her at 2000 total. For her to maintain 2000/day while running 15 miles a day, her base metabolism would've had to drop 66% down to 500 calories a day. I simply don't believe that. Your metabolism might drop a few percentage points per year, but the drops will eventually tail off as your metabolism reaches its lower limits. You can't just linearly extrapolate the drop down to zero, as your examples imply.
  - fauigerzigerk 11y ago
    It's not true for myself at all. On the contrary. And looking at a crowd in any European city, older people don't look significantly more obese than younger people (excluding teens maybe). I very much doubt that they're all doubling and tripling their workout as they age.
- gregw134 11y ago
  My health prof in college said people gain weight because they don't maintain their muscle as they age...muscle requires 30 calories/pound just to maintain.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > muscle requires 30 calories/pound There's a unit of time missing there. You probably mean "per day" (though 50 calories/pound/day is the more commonly quoted, and apparently, wrong number.) The places I can find that seem to actually be linked to some kind of reasonable source seem to have 5-10 calories per pound per day to maintain muscle.
  - gozur88 11y ago
    Not even close. It takes about six calories per day to maintain a pound of muscle. And it takes two calories per day to maintain a pound of fat. That's why people who think they're going to be able to eat radically more if they change ten pounds of fat to ten pounds of muscle are deluding themselves - it adds up to about forty calories a day, which is half a teaspoon of butter. Anyway, the thirty calorie figure doesn't pass the smell test - men average about seventy three pounds of lean muscle mass, so at thirty calories per would be 2190 calories per day even if you ignore all activity and every other metabolic process. Your average sedentary middle aged guy is going to gain weight if he eats more than about 1500 calories per day.
    - learc83 11y ago
      > Your average sedentary middle aged guy is going to gain weight if he eats more than about 1500 calories per day. That's not true. The average middle age man (say 50 years old, 5'9", 160lbs) has a BMR around 1600 calories, and unless he's bed ridden will burn around 2000 calories per day.
      - gozur88 11y ago
        Bed ridden or has a desk job. From a calorie perspective it's probably not much different.
CuriouslyC 11y ago
This is just wrong. Weight loss on the short scale is literally a function of the difference between calories in vs calories out. You can increase that difference by eating less, or exercising more. You can easily maintain your weight as you age by increasing the amount you exercise, it might involve more exercise than expected, but it is perfectly doable. Fat is not satiating to everyone. If it works for you, good, but stop making sweeping generalizations. Eating the correct foods will influence the amount of metabolic slowdown in response to calorie restriction, and also the percentage of weight lost from fat versus lean body mass. What exactly the correct foods are depends on your genetics, your activity level, and your gut microbiota, and are different for everyone. Pretty much the only constant is that a high fiber diet is better than a low fiber diet.
- stkni 11y ago
  Absolutely, but without stating the blindingly obvious the calorific content of some foods is so high that exercise can not be the dominant factor of that function. This article [1] from last week seems to support that view. There was something else on HN on Friday that offered the same opinion but included a lot more studies. Can't find it now, but the message is the same. [1] http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/apr/22/obesity-owes-more-to-bad-diet-than-lack-of-exercise-say-doctors http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/apr/22/obesity-owes-...
  - revelation 11y ago
    That's a bit excessive. I did a ride of 3 hours on the weekend and put 1832kJ worth of energy into the pedals, that translates (at 25% efficiency) to 1750kcal total energy expended. It's actually pretty difficult to eat back those 1750kcal if you don't go out of your way to stuff your face with sweets. The point most people (and certainly the press) misses with the "exercise doesn't work!11" meme is that of course it will never work if you simply see it as some kind of tool for weight loss or necessary evil. You are just going to stop the moment you have your "goal weight". The point is to turn the exercise (rather, find a sport) into a habit, a hobby.
    - 11y ago
ghshephard 11y ago
For another perspective on this, see: http://anthonycolpo.com/stephan-guyenet-debunks-gary-taubes/ http://anthonycolpo.com/stephan-guyenet-debunks-gary-taubes/
- jdmichal 11y ago
  The link you provided is a no-value-added wrapper to the actual article: http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/08/carbohydrate-hypothesis-of-obesity.html http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/08/carbohydrate-h...
  - ghshephard 11y ago
    Anthony Colpo has a lot of articles beyond just that one.
- hourislate 11y ago
  Interesting how Stephan Guyenet says that: I'd like to begin by emphasizing that carbohydrate restriction has helped many people lose body fat and improve their metabolic health. Although it doesn't work for everyone, there is no doubt that carbohydrate restriction causes fat loss in many, perhaps even most obese people. For a subset of people, the results can be very impressive. From Stephan Guyenet >This is where he should have mentioned leptin signaling, and the circuits in the brain that regulate body fat mass, which would have taken the book in a more compelling direction. According to literally thousands of publications spanning nearly two centuries, the brain is the only organ that is known to regulate body fat mass in humans and other animals-- neither fat tissue itself, nor the insulin-secreting pancreas have the ability to regulate body fat mass as far as we currently know. Leptin is the system that Drs. Jules Hirsch and Rudy Leibel have shown in carefully controlled human studies is responsible for the metabolic defect Taubes alluded to (1). It's also the system that is mutated in the genetically obese rodents he discusses (2, 3). Yet it receives no mention in the book. This is a fork in the road, where Taubes discards a solid hypothesis in favor of a shaky one. From Wiki Leptin (from Greek λεπτός leptos, "thin"), the "satiety hormone",[a] is a hormone made by adipose cells that helps to regulate energy balance by inhibiting hunger. Leptin is opposed by the actions of the hormone ghrelin, the "hunger hormone". From Gary >Another remarkable aspect of the last half-century of discussion about obesity and weight loss is that medical experts have been remarkably uninterested in the fat tissue itself and how our bodies happen to regulate it. With very few exceptions, they’ve simply ignored the fat tissue because they’ve already concluded that the problem is behavioral and lies in the brain, not in the body. Had we been discussing disorders of growth—why some people grow to be more than seven feet tall and others never make it to four feet—the only subject of discussion would be the hormones and enzymes that regulate growth. And yet, when we’re discussing a disorder in which the defining symptom is the abnormal growth of our fat tissue, the hormones and enzymes that regulate that growth are considered irrelevant.* I think if you read the chapter on The Laws of Adiposity, you will see that Gary discusses much of what Anthony claims he doesn't. I would cover the other points Stephan Guyenet makes but this would turn into an essay. Honestly he debunks nothing. I am curious if he ever read the book.
MustardTiger 11y ago
Gary Taubes is a fraud. He deliberately misrepresents research the scientists he quotes out of context in his books have come out repeatedly saying this. Everything Taubes says is nonsense, and he is doing this deliberately to sell books on the back of a fad diet craze. There are no magic satiety fats. Fat is not higher satiety than carbs. Protein is.
- hourislate 11y ago
  Nonsense. No one has come out and said anything of the such. Try reading his book before you comment.
  - MustardTiger 11y ago
    I have read his books, plural. And yes, they have: https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/gary-taubes-and-the-cause-of-obesity/ https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/gary-taubes-and-the-cau...
taneq 11y ago
> Exercise has nothing to do with weight loss. Caloric restriction also doesn't work without consuming the correct fats to satiate your appetite. As you age there is no amount of exercise that will allow you to maintain the amount you weigh in you 20's or 30's. It will all depend on your diet of the correct foods. What? Every one of those points are wrong. * Exercise has a modest effect on your energy balance (assuming we're talking less than an hour a day - if you're running marathons then the effect is much bigger). You can out-eat any reasonable amount of exercise but it still has a significant effect. * Caloric restriction works regardless of your macronutrient balance, if you eat fewer calories than you burn then you will lose weight, that's not just biology, it's the law of conservation of energy. * Aging doesn't allow you to mysteriously break the law of conservation of energy either. You will find it harder to keep the weight off but by controlling your energy balance and engaging in regular exercise you can absolutely maintain the same weight you maintained in your 20s. (As a single data point, I weigh the same now as I weighed a decade ago, and 20kg less than I weighed 8 years ago.) It's true that sticking to a reduced calorie diet is more difficult if you eat some diets than others, maybe that's what you meant?

varelse 11y ago

"As you age there is no amount of exercise that will allow you to maintain the amount you weigh in you 20's or 30's." This seems overly general and anecdotally total BS. I still eat what I like just like I did in my 20s/30s. It's just that what I like is generally lots of vegetables and sufficient protein, with occasional vices slipped in because YOLO(tm). That said, without the exercise, I gain about a pound per week. That means I am atoning for an extra 400-500 calories daily, no? Or what would you suggest is really going on here?

skrebbel 11y ago
An alternative would be that in the weeks where you don't exercise, you feel a little worse, and therefore submit to slightly more of them YOLO vices. I mean, I have no idea which it is, but there's plenty of explanations for your observations other than the one you gave.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
hourislate 11y ago
As you naturally age you will burn less calories. So as you continue to eat the same way and the same amount you will have to up your exercise to impossible limits. What needs to change is your diet. No sugars and lots of healthy fats. Here is an excerpt from the book I mentioned. Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It by Gary Taubes http://amzn.com/0307474259 http://amzn.com/0307474259 >The authors were Paul Williams, a statistics expert at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California, and Peter Wood, a Stanford University researcher who has been studying the effect of exercise on health since the 1970s. Williams and Wood collected detailed information on almost thirteen thousand habitual runners (all subscribers to Runner’s World magazine) and then compared the weekly mileage of these runners with how much they weighed from year to year. Those who ran the most tended to weigh the least, but all these runners tended to get fatter with each passing year, even those who ran more than forty miles a week—eight miles a day, say, five days a week. This observation led Williams and Wood, both believers in the doctrine of calories-in/calories-out, to suggest that even the most dedicated runners had to increase their distance by a few miles a week, year after year—expend even more energy as they got older—if they wanted to remain lean. If men added two miles to their weekly distance every year, and women three, according to Williams and Wood, then they might manage to remain lean, because this might mean expending in running the calories that they seemed fated otherwise to accumulate as fat. Let’s see where that logic takes us. Imagine a man in his twenties who runs twenty miles a week—say, four miles a day, five days a week. According to Williams and Wood (and the logic and mathematics of calories-in/calories-out), he will have to double that in his thirties (eight miles a day, five days a week) and triple it in his forties (twelve miles a day, five days a week) to keep fat from accumulating. A woman in her twenties who runs three miles a day, five times a week—an impressive but not excessive amount—would have to up her daily distance to fifteen miles in her forties to retain her youthful figure. If she does eight-minute miles, a nice pace for such a distance, she’d better be prepared to spend two hours on each of her running days to keep her weight in check.
- jschwartzi 11y ago
  It's also well known that as you become fitter, your body becomes more efficient at performing the same activities. It doesn't surprise me that people who habitually run get fitter, burn fewer calories per mile, and need to run farther to maintain the same burn rate. That these people are also getting older at the same time might just be a coincidence.
- antisthenes 11y ago
  My anecdotal experience seems to confirm this. I've gained ~30 lbs throughout my 20s (130 --> 160), even though I've become at least twice as active as I have ever been in my late teens. The weight gain has been both fat and muscle, however, but I'm not exactly sure in which proportions (I can notice both more subcutaneous fat in the belly area as well as more pronounced muscles) By far the biggest metabolic cliff seems to occur around ~25 years of age +-1-2 years. I've noticed a very sharp increase in weight around that time, despite keeping my diet constant.
- vannevar 11y ago
  The math seems fishy here. Let's assume your young woman's base metabolism (without any extra exercise) is ~1500 calories a day. Running 5 miles a day burns 500 calories putting her at 2000 total. For her to maintain 2000/day while running 15 miles a day, her base metabolism would've had to drop 66% down to 500 calories a day. I simply don't believe that. Your metabolism might drop a few percentage points per year, but the drops will eventually tail off as your metabolism reaches its lower limits. You can't just linearly extrapolate the drop down to zero, as your examples imply.
- fauigerzigerk 11y ago
  It's not true for myself at all. On the contrary. And looking at a crowd in any European city, older people don't look significantly more obese than younger people (excluding teens maybe). I very much doubt that they're all doubling and tripling their workout as they age.
gregw134 11y ago
My health prof in college said people gain weight because they don't maintain their muscle as they age...muscle requires 30 calories/pound just to maintain.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > muscle requires 30 calories/pound There's a unit of time missing there. You probably mean "per day" (though 50 calories/pound/day is the more commonly quoted, and apparently, wrong number.) The places I can find that seem to actually be linked to some kind of reasonable source seem to have 5-10 calories per pound per day to maintain muscle.
- gozur88 11y ago
  Not even close. It takes about six calories per day to maintain a pound of muscle. And it takes two calories per day to maintain a pound of fat. That's why people who think they're going to be able to eat radically more if they change ten pounds of fat to ten pounds of muscle are deluding themselves - it adds up to about forty calories a day, which is half a teaspoon of butter. Anyway, the thirty calorie figure doesn't pass the smell test - men average about seventy three pounds of lean muscle mass, so at thirty calories per would be 2190 calories per day even if you ignore all activity and every other metabolic process. Your average sedentary middle aged guy is going to gain weight if he eats more than about 1500 calories per day.
  - learc83 11y ago
    > Your average sedentary middle aged guy is going to gain weight if he eats more than about 1500 calories per day. That's not true. The average middle age man (say 50 years old, 5'9", 160lbs) has a BMR around 1600 calories, and unless he's bed ridden will burn around 2000 calories per day.
    - gozur88 11y ago
      Bed ridden or has a desk job. From a calorie perspective it's probably not much different.

CuriouslyC 11y ago

This is just wrong. Weight loss on the short scale is literally a function of the difference between calories in vs calories out. You can increase that difference by eating less, or exercising more. You can easily maintain your weight as you age by increasing the amount you exercise, it might involve more exercise than expected, but it is perfectly doable. Fat is not satiating to everyone. If it works for you, good, but stop making sweeping generalizations. Eating the correct foods will influence the amount of metabolic slowdown in response to calorie restriction, and also the percentage of weight lost from fat versus lean body mass. What exactly the correct foods are depends on your genetics, your activity level, and your gut microbiota, and are different for everyone. Pretty much the only constant is that a high fiber diet is better than a low fiber diet.

stkni 11y ago
Absolutely, but without stating the blindingly obvious the calorific content of some foods is so high that exercise can not be the dominant factor of that function. This article [1] from last week seems to support that view. There was something else on HN on Friday that offered the same opinion but included a lot more studies. Can't find it now, but the message is the same. [1] http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/apr/22/obesity-owes-more-to-bad-diet-than-lack-of-exercise-say-doctors http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/apr/22/obesity-owes-...
- revelation 11y ago
  That's a bit excessive. I did a ride of 3 hours on the weekend and put 1832kJ worth of energy into the pedals, that translates (at 25% efficiency) to 1750kcal total energy expended. It's actually pretty difficult to eat back those 1750kcal if you don't go out of your way to stuff your face with sweets. The point most people (and certainly the press) misses with the "exercise doesn't work!11" meme is that of course it will never work if you simply see it as some kind of tool for weight loss or necessary evil. You are just going to stop the moment you have your "goal weight". The point is to turn the exercise (rather, find a sport) into a habit, a hobby.
  - 11y ago

ghshephard 11y ago

For another perspective on this, see: http://anthonycolpo.com/stephan-guyenet-debunks-gary-taubes/ http://anthonycolpo.com/stephan-guyenet-debunks-gary-taubes/

jdmichal 11y ago
The link you provided is a no-value-added wrapper to the actual article: http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/08/carbohydrate-hypothesis-of-obesity.html http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/08/carbohydrate-h...
- ghshephard 11y ago
  Anthony Colpo has a lot of articles beyond just that one.
hourislate 11y ago
Interesting how Stephan Guyenet says that: I'd like to begin by emphasizing that carbohydrate restriction has helped many people lose body fat and improve their metabolic health. Although it doesn't work for everyone, there is no doubt that carbohydrate restriction causes fat loss in many, perhaps even most obese people. For a subset of people, the results can be very impressive. From Stephan Guyenet >This is where he should have mentioned leptin signaling, and the circuits in the brain that regulate body fat mass, which would have taken the book in a more compelling direction. According to literally thousands of publications spanning nearly two centuries, the brain is the only organ that is known to regulate body fat mass in humans and other animals-- neither fat tissue itself, nor the insulin-secreting pancreas have the ability to regulate body fat mass as far as we currently know. Leptin is the system that Drs. Jules Hirsch and Rudy Leibel have shown in carefully controlled human studies is responsible for the metabolic defect Taubes alluded to (1). It's also the system that is mutated in the genetically obese rodents he discusses (2, 3). Yet it receives no mention in the book. This is a fork in the road, where Taubes discards a solid hypothesis in favor of a shaky one. From Wiki Leptin (from Greek λεπτός leptos, "thin"), the "satiety hormone",[a] is a hormone made by adipose cells that helps to regulate energy balance by inhibiting hunger. Leptin is opposed by the actions of the hormone ghrelin, the "hunger hormone". From Gary >Another remarkable aspect of the last half-century of discussion about obesity and weight loss is that medical experts have been remarkably uninterested in the fat tissue itself and how our bodies happen to regulate it. With very few exceptions, they’ve simply ignored the fat tissue because they’ve already concluded that the problem is behavioral and lies in the brain, not in the body. Had we been discussing disorders of growth—why some people grow to be more than seven feet tall and others never make it to four feet—the only subject of discussion would be the hormones and enzymes that regulate growth. And yet, when we’re discussing a disorder in which the defining symptom is the abnormal growth of our fat tissue, the hormones and enzymes that regulate that growth are considered irrelevant.* I think if you read the chapter on The Laws of Adiposity, you will see that Gary discusses much of what Anthony claims he doesn't. I would cover the other points Stephan Guyenet makes but this would turn into an essay. Honestly he debunks nothing. I am curious if he ever read the book.

MustardTiger 11y ago

Gary Taubes is a fraud. He deliberately misrepresents research the scientists he quotes out of context in his books have come out repeatedly saying this. Everything Taubes says is nonsense, and he is doing this deliberately to sell books on the back of a fad diet craze. There are no magic satiety fats. Fat is not higher satiety than carbs. Protein is.

hourislate 11y ago
Nonsense. No one has come out and said anything of the such. Try reading his book before you comment.
- MustardTiger 11y ago
  I have read his books, plural. And yes, they have: https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/gary-taubes-and-the-cause-of-obesity/ https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/gary-taubes-and-the-cau...

taneq 11y ago

> Exercise has nothing to do with weight loss. Caloric restriction also doesn't work without consuming the correct fats to satiate your appetite. As you age there is no amount of exercise that will allow you to maintain the amount you weigh in you 20's or 30's. It will all depend on your diet of the correct foods. What? Every one of those points are wrong. * Exercise has a modest effect on your energy balance (assuming we're talking less than an hour a day - if you're running marathons then the effect is much bigger). You can out-eat any reasonable amount of exercise but it still has a significant effect. * Caloric restriction works regardless of your macronutrient balance, if you eat fewer calories than you burn then you will lose weight, that's not just biology, it's the law of conservation of energy. * Aging doesn't allow you to mysteriously break the law of conservation of energy either. You will find it harder to keep the weight off but by controlling your energy balance and engaging in regular exercise you can absolutely maintain the same weight you maintained in your 20s. (As a single data point, I weigh the same now as I weighed a decade ago, and 20kg less than I weighed 8 years ago.) It's true that sticking to a reduced calorie diet is more difficult if you eat some diets than others, maybe that's what you meant?