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"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

by varelse 10y 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 10y 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 10y ago
[deleted]
hourislate 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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 10y ago
      Bed ridden or has a desk job. From a calorie perspective it's probably not much different.

by varelse 10y ago

skrebbel 10y 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 10y ago

[deleted]

hourislate 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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 10y ago
    Bed ridden or has a desk job. From a calorie perspective it's probably not much different.