3 ms·

From the link: "While this study didn’t track the women’s eating and movement habits away from the lab, it is likely that those who gained weight began eating

by sn9 10y ago

From the link: "While this study didn’t track the women’s eating and movement habits away from the lab, it is likely that those who gained weight began eating more and moving less when they weren’t on the treadmills, “probably without meaning to,” Dr. Gaesser said." Expending more calories via exercise increases one's weight when you eat more calories than you burned. There's nothing new there.

prostoalex 10y ago
The number of studies where participants ate less, engaged in more exercise and consistently lost weight is 0, though. You'd think with a thesis this obvious it should be relatively easy to reproduce. Hard to discuss the specifics of this exact experiment without knowing the details, but you have the control group that admits they have a weight problem and honestly tries to lose weight by signing up for this experiment. All of a sudden they turn into a bunch of cheaters buying up passes to an all-you-can-eat buffet? Is every obese person walking around extremely weak-willed? Is every thin person you see meticulously tracking their caloric intake and output? What about entire countries that have low obesity rates? Are French or Koreans strong-willed at national level, consistently under-eating and over-exercising?
- sn9 10y ago
  The number of studies that you're personally aware of may be zero. I'm not confident in your knowledge of the state of research when you missed the fact that they didn't even track diet in the study you linked to prove your thesis. There are thousands of examples online of people who've lost weight and maintained that weight loss, not to mention the thousands of people who manipulate their weight at will to compete in events with weight classes. Studies about diet and exercise are usually poorly designed and poorly funded, so they don't always accurately reflect reality and the existence of thousands of successes isn't invalidated by a poorly run study. Nor is our knowledge of basic physiology. Rule of thumb: any study that relies on self-reporting diets is basically useless. It's not about lying. People are just really bad at measurement unless they explicitly measure every gram of food that enters their mouth. Intentions don't affect the quality of an implementation if you don't know how to implement something successfully. People who are underweight tend to eat less than they think and people who are overweight tend to eat more than they think. Note that studies in which the number of calories a person consumes are tracked by the researchers leave no ambiguity in the direct relationship between the number of calories a person consumes and how their weight changes. Distilling these issues into one of willpower is just incredibly misguided IMO and reflective more of the views of journalists who struggle with their weight and pass on the results of poorly designed studies. I addressed what I thought was a better way of looking at these issues in another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13827878 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13827878 It's not as though Americans have "lost willpower" over the course of a couple generations. We just started eating more and moving less. Why we started eating more isn't a mystery. Agriculture and food companies started processing food to be less satiating and more addictive by adding sugar and fat to sell more (a massive simplification of history, admittedly). Obesity wasn't an epidemic back when we were eating whole foods since they're so much more satiating and it's difficult to maintain a caloric surplus on a diet of lentils and vegetables or whatever. As countries like France, China, Japan, and others who have more recently maintained their normal weights on a population level get introduced to these processed Western foods, they too are seeing their rates of obesity, heart disease, and diabetes go up.
  - prostoalex 10y ago
    > The number of studies that you're personally aware of may be zero. That is correct. I am happy to fill that knowledge gap, though, if you have any links handy. > studies in which the number of calories a person consumes are tracked by the researchers leave no ambiguity in the direct relationship between the number of calories a person consumes and how their weight changes Can you point me to those?
    - sn9 10y ago
      I don't really keep a list of the studies I read, but Examine.com is a great resource for people without the scientific background and training in reading the research literature. These two links are great starting points, and link to the studies if you feel like reading them: https://examine.com/nutrition/what-should-i-eat-for-weight-loss/ https://examine.com/nutrition/what-should-i-eat-for-weight-l... https://examine.com/nutrition/does-metabolism-vary-between-two-people/ https://examine.com/nutrition/does-metabolism-vary-between-t...

by sn9 10y ago

prostoalex 10y ago

The number of studies where participants ate less, engaged in more exercise and consistently lost weight is 0, though. You'd think with a thesis this obvious it should be relatively easy to reproduce. Hard to discuss the specifics of this exact experiment without knowing the details, but you have the control group that admits they have a weight problem and honestly tries to lose weight by signing up for this experiment. All of a sudden they turn into a bunch of cheaters buying up passes to an all-you-can-eat buffet? Is every obese person walking around extremely weak-willed? Is every thin person you see meticulously tracking their caloric intake and output? What about entire countries that have low obesity rates? Are French or Koreans strong-willed at national level, consistently under-eating and over-exercising?

sn9 10y ago
The number of studies that you're personally aware of may be zero. I'm not confident in your knowledge of the state of research when you missed the fact that they didn't even track diet in the study you linked to prove your thesis. There are thousands of examples online of people who've lost weight and maintained that weight loss, not to mention the thousands of people who manipulate their weight at will to compete in events with weight classes. Studies about diet and exercise are usually poorly designed and poorly funded, so they don't always accurately reflect reality and the existence of thousands of successes isn't invalidated by a poorly run study. Nor is our knowledge of basic physiology. Rule of thumb: any study that relies on self-reporting diets is basically useless. It's not about lying. People are just really bad at measurement unless they explicitly measure every gram of food that enters their mouth. Intentions don't affect the quality of an implementation if you don't know how to implement something successfully. People who are underweight tend to eat less than they think and people who are overweight tend to eat more than they think. Note that studies in which the number of calories a person consumes are tracked by the researchers leave no ambiguity in the direct relationship between the number of calories a person consumes and how their weight changes. Distilling these issues into one of willpower is just incredibly misguided IMO and reflective more of the views of journalists who struggle with their weight and pass on the results of poorly designed studies. I addressed what I thought was a better way of looking at these issues in another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13827878 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13827878 It's not as though Americans have "lost willpower" over the course of a couple generations. We just started eating more and moving less. Why we started eating more isn't a mystery. Agriculture and food companies started processing food to be less satiating and more addictive by adding sugar and fat to sell more (a massive simplification of history, admittedly). Obesity wasn't an epidemic back when we were eating whole foods since they're so much more satiating and it's difficult to maintain a caloric surplus on a diet of lentils and vegetables or whatever. As countries like France, China, Japan, and others who have more recently maintained their normal weights on a population level get introduced to these processed Western foods, they too are seeing their rates of obesity, heart disease, and diabetes go up.
- prostoalex 10y ago
  > The number of studies that you're personally aware of may be zero. That is correct. I am happy to fill that knowledge gap, though, if you have any links handy. > studies in which the number of calories a person consumes are tracked by the researchers leave no ambiguity in the direct relationship between the number of calories a person consumes and how their weight changes Can you point me to those?
  - sn9 10y ago
    I don't really keep a list of the studies I read, but Examine.com is a great resource for people without the scientific background and training in reading the research literature. These two links are great starting points, and link to the studies if you feel like reading them: https://examine.com/nutrition/what-should-i-eat-for-weight-loss/ https://examine.com/nutrition/what-should-i-eat-for-weight-l... https://examine.com/nutrition/does-metabolism-vary-between-two-people/ https://examine.com/nutrition/does-metabolism-vary-between-t...