4 ms·

While it may be true that the American lifestyle is more sedentary, I don't think obesity can be entirely or even mostly explained by that. AFAIK diet generally

by Delk 6y ago

While it may be true that the American lifestyle is more sedentary, I don't think obesity can be entirely or even mostly explained by that. AFAIK diet generally affects weight more than exercise does; if your diet is energy-heavy, it's very difficult (without being an athlete) to exercise enough to consume as much as your energy surplus from the diet is. I don't have any references or numbers to back that up, but that's what I've understood from what I've read in papers and heard from some people who apparently did the math. With that said, physical activity has lots of benefits beyond just weight loss, and it would be worth it to make one's lifestyle non-sedentary in any case.

X6S1x6Okd1st 6y ago
It's really that baseline metabolic burn is pretty high, you have to work a lot to double the number of calories you burn, but it's easy to eat double your metabolic needs
- xnyan 6y ago
  >easy to eat double your metabolic needs Or more! When I started losing weight, my target was 1600 kcals a day. I learned that I was eating 1600+ calories __every single meal__, plus snacks. Pasta is the devil y'all.
  - kaybe 6y ago
    I found this pasta made purely from peas or beans in the shop. They are a bit harder to eat but fill you up much faster and feel lighter in the stomach. (And they have less carbs and more protein.) If you like pasta I can recommend trying this.
  - belorn 6y ago
    The sum of kcals is not as easy as that, In take is the kcal of the food times the digestion factor. The kcal out is the metabolic need, which depend on factors such as fat building vs energy usage, which in turn is influenced by stress but also things like dieting. This is why counting calories can be an ineffective strategy for some while for others it is a good match.
    - canjobear 6y ago
      kcal of food is still an upper bound on bioavailable kcals
      - belorn 6y ago
        Let put this is numbers for illustration purposes. Let say 1000 kcal in, and for an average healthy person 1000 kcal in metabolic rate. For digestion, this person eat mostly proteins resulting in about 20% of kcal going into energy for the digestion system itself (proteins is relative hard to break down). Let also say that in addition, sloppy digestion and incorrect gut bacteria is resulting in additional 20% of the food never getting digested and resulting in feces. Result is a loss of 400. If thats the whole story you have a person that is loosing weight despite keeping a diet that seemingly fulfills their calories need. Lets now change metabolic aspects. Rather than suffering from bad digestion they are suffering from chronic stress with high cortisol, adrenal and other stress hormones. The body crave more food that cost less to digest, ie fat and sugar, insulin is spiking in order to get the body to take up more energy, the body goes into lethargic state in order to save energy, muscle and organ cell production is decreased in favor of fat cells. Instead of 1000 kcal in metabolic rate we might have 600 kcal, with now a surplus of +400 going into fat production. The upper bound on bioavailable kcals is still 1000 kcal, but the numbers won't tell you if the person is going to loose weight or gain it, unless the person is in good healthy to begin with.
  - namdnay 6y ago
    > Pasta is the devil y'all. And yet Italians are generally slim and healthy :)
    - konschubert 6y ago
      To be fair they don't eat all that much pasta.
- brownbat 6y ago
  That tracks with what's written in The Hacker's Diet, and I think it's largely right. If you look at how much running you need to do to burn off a daily burger it's intimidating. The only caveat I've learned is that weightlifting can make a dent. It's one of the few things where as you improve, you can burn more calories in the same amount of time instead of fewer (partly because you're doing more work as you add weights, partly because the muscle you build is more metabolically expensive to maintain). I also had success restructuring my life so accessing food was way more of a hassle. Kept a mostly empty fridge. Meal prepped so only whole meals were there. Don't take money unless I know I need to buy something, found a few reasonable options at local sandwich places that became routine, etc. I'd love to see a correlational study on fridge size and obesity. In America we buy SUV fulls of food, in Europe it's much smaller frequent trips, i.e. generally higher hassle per calorie.
indecisive_user 6y ago
You're right, it's impossible to out-exercise a bad diet, but there are secondary reasons that being sedentary leads to weight gain besides just the raw number of calories burned. For one, an hour you spend exercising or walking around is probably an hour that you're not eating. Many Americans are constantly eating when they're at home, either mindlessly snacking or eating a huge meal. Given that you only have 8 hours between work and sleep, occupying yourself for 1 of those hours could mean a significant decrease in time spent eating. Incidentally, this is why intermittent fasting works well for some people.
- nradov 6y ago
  Well it's not literally impossible to out-exercise a bad diet. Look at what some ultra endurance athletes eat. But those are extreme outliers and that lifestyle isn't really sustainable.
SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago
Once you start tracking the energy usage of exercise with a smart watch or similar, you'll notice that even extended exercise consumes almost no energy compared to the energy used simply living. Doing an hour of heavy exercise only changes my total energy usage for the day by a fairly small % compared to no exercise. Diet is clearly a much more important aspect for weight loss. Exercise has many other benefits though.
- nightski 6y ago
  I don't know, my Garmin watch says my daily 1h-1.5h long walk burns about 500-600 calories. It could be wildly inaccurate. But it definitely gives me more cushion to eat comfortably during the day that is for sure! I realize it is dwarfed by the 2000+ calories I burn naturally but that is almost another meal in calories.
  - meowster 6y ago
    You burn about 100-150 calories just by existing for 1h-1.5h, so walking for an hour or so only gets you an additional 400 calories. Versus eating, you can consume a 400 calorie cookie in one minute. When I lost 70lbs, I did so by deciding it was easier just to not consume the calories in the first place rather than trying to burn them off.
    - bennyelv 6y ago
      It’s really a case of the rich getting richer when it comes to exercise, because if you’re fitter you can sustain a calorie burn rate far higher than someone who isn’t. On my bike I have a power meter which uses strain guages and an accelerometer to calculate force x distance / time at the crankset so I have accurate calorie burn numbers. Riding for an hour at the output a generally sedentary person can manage, I’ll burn sub 500 calories. Riding at my maximum output for an hour burns about 1000. Given that the recommended energy intake for a day is 2500, you can see what a difference that makes proportionally to what you can consume.
    - spockz 6y ago
jb_gericke 6y ago
Hmmm this makes me think of powerlifters. Curating a 'power gut' is pretty normal for competing lifters (even hobbyists). Intuition would make me wager testosterone levels of you average powerlifter would be in the higher ranges (necessary to build muscle), despite not generally being lean.

by Delk 6y ago

X6S1x6Okd1st 6y ago

It's really that baseline metabolic burn is pretty high, you have to work a lot to double the number of calories you burn, but it's easy to eat double your metabolic needs

xnyan 6y ago
>easy to eat double your metabolic needs Or more! When I started losing weight, my target was 1600 kcals a day. I learned that I was eating 1600+ calories __every single meal__, plus snacks. Pasta is the devil y'all.
- kaybe 6y ago
  I found this pasta made purely from peas or beans in the shop. They are a bit harder to eat but fill you up much faster and feel lighter in the stomach. (And they have less carbs and more protein.) If you like pasta I can recommend trying this.
- belorn 6y ago
  The sum of kcals is not as easy as that, In take is the kcal of the food times the digestion factor. The kcal out is the metabolic need, which depend on factors such as fat building vs energy usage, which in turn is influenced by stress but also things like dieting. This is why counting calories can be an ineffective strategy for some while for others it is a good match.
  - canjobear 6y ago
    kcal of food is still an upper bound on bioavailable kcals
    - belorn 6y ago
      Let put this is numbers for illustration purposes. Let say 1000 kcal in, and for an average healthy person 1000 kcal in metabolic rate. For digestion, this person eat mostly proteins resulting in about 20% of kcal going into energy for the digestion system itself (proteins is relative hard to break down). Let also say that in addition, sloppy digestion and incorrect gut bacteria is resulting in additional 20% of the food never getting digested and resulting in feces. Result is a loss of 400. If thats the whole story you have a person that is loosing weight despite keeping a diet that seemingly fulfills their calories need. Lets now change metabolic aspects. Rather than suffering from bad digestion they are suffering from chronic stress with high cortisol, adrenal and other stress hormones. The body crave more food that cost less to digest, ie fat and sugar, insulin is spiking in order to get the body to take up more energy, the body goes into lethargic state in order to save energy, muscle and organ cell production is decreased in favor of fat cells. Instead of 1000 kcal in metabolic rate we might have 600 kcal, with now a surplus of +400 going into fat production. The upper bound on bioavailable kcals is still 1000 kcal, but the numbers won't tell you if the person is going to loose weight or gain it, unless the person is in good healthy to begin with.
- namdnay 6y ago
  > Pasta is the devil y'all. And yet Italians are generally slim and healthy :)
  - konschubert 6y ago
    To be fair they don't eat all that much pasta.
brownbat 6y ago
That tracks with what's written in The Hacker's Diet, and I think it's largely right. If you look at how much running you need to do to burn off a daily burger it's intimidating. The only caveat I've learned is that weightlifting can make a dent. It's one of the few things where as you improve, you can burn more calories in the same amount of time instead of fewer (partly because you're doing more work as you add weights, partly because the muscle you build is more metabolically expensive to maintain). I also had success restructuring my life so accessing food was way more of a hassle. Kept a mostly empty fridge. Meal prepped so only whole meals were there. Don't take money unless I know I need to buy something, found a few reasonable options at local sandwich places that became routine, etc. I'd love to see a correlational study on fridge size and obesity. In America we buy SUV fulls of food, in Europe it's much smaller frequent trips, i.e. generally higher hassle per calorie.

indecisive_user 6y ago

You're right, it's impossible to out-exercise a bad diet, but there are secondary reasons that being sedentary leads to weight gain besides just the raw number of calories burned. For one, an hour you spend exercising or walking around is probably an hour that you're not eating. Many Americans are constantly eating when they're at home, either mindlessly snacking or eating a huge meal. Given that you only have 8 hours between work and sleep, occupying yourself for 1 of those hours could mean a significant decrease in time spent eating. Incidentally, this is why intermittent fasting works well for some people.

nradov 6y ago
Well it's not literally impossible to out-exercise a bad diet. Look at what some ultra endurance athletes eat. But those are extreme outliers and that lifestyle isn't really sustainable.

SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago

Once you start tracking the energy usage of exercise with a smart watch or similar, you'll notice that even extended exercise consumes almost no energy compared to the energy used simply living. Doing an hour of heavy exercise only changes my total energy usage for the day by a fairly small % compared to no exercise. Diet is clearly a much more important aspect for weight loss. Exercise has many other benefits though.

nightski 6y ago
I don't know, my Garmin watch says my daily 1h-1.5h long walk burns about 500-600 calories. It could be wildly inaccurate. But it definitely gives me more cushion to eat comfortably during the day that is for sure! I realize it is dwarfed by the 2000+ calories I burn naturally but that is almost another meal in calories.
- meowster 6y ago
  You burn about 100-150 calories just by existing for 1h-1.5h, so walking for an hour or so only gets you an additional 400 calories. Versus eating, you can consume a 400 calorie cookie in one minute. When I lost 70lbs, I did so by deciding it was easier just to not consume the calories in the first place rather than trying to burn them off.
  - bennyelv 6y ago
    It’s really a case of the rich getting richer when it comes to exercise, because if you’re fitter you can sustain a calorie burn rate far higher than someone who isn’t. On my bike I have a power meter which uses strain guages and an accelerometer to calculate force x distance / time at the crankset so I have accurate calorie burn numbers. Riding for an hour at the output a generally sedentary person can manage, I’ll burn sub 500 calories. Riding at my maximum output for an hour burns about 1000. Given that the recommended energy intake for a day is 2500, you can see what a difference that makes proportionally to what you can consume.
  - spockz 6y ago

jb_gericke 6y ago

Hmmm this makes me think of powerlifters. Curating a 'power gut' is pretty normal for competing lifters (even hobbyists). Intuition would make me wager testosterone levels of you average powerlifter would be in the higher ranges (necessary to build muscle), despite not generally being lean.