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Without more details if be inclined to blame "almost identical" as the culprit (not an expert): Making all your meals 5% bigger would cause a weight gain of ne

by hansvm 5y ago

Without more details if be inclined to blame "almost identical" as the culprit (not an expert): Making all your meals 5% bigger would cause a weight gain of nearly 10lbs/yr, and the kind of switch in diet that can happen naturally with age (especially including eating out more with friends) can make it hard to spot incremental changes. Moreover, a lot of exercise doesn't actually do much for weight loss (it's still immensely beneficial for your health; please don't stop). To counteract the aforementioned 10lbs/yr you'd have to walk an extra ~20 minutes per day. It isn't all that much per se, but if your exercise were 20 minutes of something high intensity and an hour of something low intensity every single day (a lot more than most people get) it'd still be a noticeable demand on your time -- enough that I don't think you'd call the extra exercise level "nearly identical." It's also possible less visible culprits exist if you're used to average weight gains/losses of under a pound per month as a function of your diet/activity. E.g., iirc fidgiting and tapping your feet consumes nearly a pound per month in calories, and that doesn't seem like the kind of thing you'd recognize stopping/starting over a timespan of decades.

OhHiMarkos 5y ago
Exercise isn't always aerobic. Resistance and weight training which causes a muscle buildup can help you lose weight because your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) increases while you build more muscle. Now if you combine aerobic and anaerobic training strategically, while you have your eating habits checked, you can lose that quarantine weight in no time. This is what i am doing now.
tw04 5y ago
Sure. I’ve got about 20lbs more muscle than I did at 30. I currently lift 3-4 times a week and run 3.5+ miles 5-6 times a week. At 30 I worked out or ran 3 days a week. I eat out less now and generally pay attention to what I eat vs just eating whatever is in front of me. Nearly identical meaning proportions are the same but I eat less junk food now. I was a college athlete, but there’s no way I carried the fitness forward ~6 years without maintaining my college level of workouts. I realize it’s all anecdotal, but based on my personal experience, the study is really tough to take at face value.
- vidarh 5y ago
  People tend to massively overestimate how much the extra muscle mass matters, and how much they burn during exercise, though, and it takes very little to overcompensate with a little extra food here and there. I lift too, and for many years I wrote down everything I wrote, and weighed myself every morning. I could tell very precisely how much I burnt, and it tended to shock people on lifting forums who were certain they needed to down lots protein shakes to get enough calories. At my peak lifting I wasn't huge, but I was around qualification levels for competitive powerlifting for my weight class at the time (I squatted about 200kg, benched 150kg), and exercised 5 days a week. I burned about 2000kcal/day on average. I tested that many times when bulking or slimming down by seeing how much I needed to increase it or drop it down. And it changed a little as I added muscle, but much less than you might think. I'd have people arguing with me on fitness forums that there was no way I was burning that little, and that I really needed 3000kcal/day or more, and then complain about why they were adding weight. People in a more active job would burn more than that, and people with a more active life outside of work and the gym as well, but people are notoriously bad at estimating their activity levels and apply calorie level assumptions that are often many decades out of date and based on far more labour intensive daily lives. Basically the only way you'll know is to track and measure.
  - nradov 5y ago
    At rest, muscle only burns about 8 kcal/day/kg more than fat.
  - Aerroon 5y ago
    I'm curious: how tall are you and/or roughly how much do you weight? Benching 150 kg with 2000 kcal/day absolutely does sound odd compared to recommendations. However, my personal experience also tells me that the regular recommendations might be a bit high.
    - vidarh 5y ago
      6'1/185cm. At the time my weight was around 93kg, so 150kg bench was nothing special for my size. When bulking I'd do about 2400kcal. For people pushing towards competitive levels it may well have made sense to go higher to allow exercising accordingly harder, but for me it was just to stay fit so I prioritised staying reasonably lean. Also worth mentioning that outside of lifting my life absolutely was/is very sedentary, so I did burn less than a lot of people. EDIT: One thing that will confuse people here is that style of exercise will matter a lot. To reach a 1RM of 150kg on bench meant most of the time I did bench 1-2 times a week for 5 sets of 5 reps of ca 120kg or so. My bench routine took 10-15 minutes. My whole lifting program took about 40m x 3 days/week. I added some cardio to that, but that is not a lot of physical activity. Someone who does bodybuilding on the other hand will typically do a lot more volume.
watwut 5y ago
> Without more details if be inclined to blame "almost identical" as the culprit (not an expert): Why? I mean, why do people find the idea of older people needing different diet due to body changes related to age so unbelievable? There are many changes related to age - how quickly injuries heal, how quickly you recover from something physical or tiring, how much or well you sleep. Your heartrate is slowly changing with age too. Why would it be shocking that these has also impact on how food affects your look? > To counteract the aforementioned 10lbs/yr you'd have to walk an extra ~20 minutes per day. That is not how this works tho. The effect of exercise is not just in how many calories you theoretically spent running/walking exactly same distance. Your body adjusts to exercising way more - including on metabolism and body temperature. It has impact on how body works overall including on hunger - depending on exercise it can go both toward eating less or eating more. It has impact on how many muscles you have, how much energy you burn while building those muscles etc. Experience of "I stopped exercising and keep eating the same, I gained a lot of weight" is not rare.
- bojan 5y ago
  > Experience of "I stopped exercising and keep eating the same, I gained a lot of weight" is not rare. It's not rare because calories add up immensely quickly. Say that you were burning 200 kcal per day exercising - and that is a low estimate. If you keep eating the same, you end up keeping 6000 kcal per month more - that translates to 1.7 lbs of body weight - per month. So, 20 lbs in the first year!
  - watwut 5y ago
    So the claim is, that simultaneously: 1.) when you stop exercising, it does a lot for weight. 2.) If you start exercising, it does nothing for weight loss.
    - quantum_magpie 5y ago
      >1.) when you stop exercising, it does a lot for weight. Yes, if you also don't downsize your meals at the same time. Which a lot of people don't. >2.) If you start exercising, it does nothing for weight loss. Yes, if you increase your food intake because you feel more hungry, which a lot of people do. If you keep eating the same -- then it of course has a noticeable effect. For exercise to matter in your weight loss, you have to always keep in mind your food intake. It is still very beneficial and should not be ignored!
8note 5y ago
For me, 5% larger meals just means 5% more poop

by hansvm 5y ago

OhHiMarkos 5y ago

Exercise isn't always aerobic. Resistance and weight training which causes a muscle buildup can help you lose weight because your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) increases while you build more muscle. Now if you combine aerobic and anaerobic training strategically, while you have your eating habits checked, you can lose that quarantine weight in no time. This is what i am doing now.

tw04 5y ago

Sure. I’ve got about 20lbs more muscle than I did at 30. I currently lift 3-4 times a week and run 3.5+ miles 5-6 times a week. At 30 I worked out or ran 3 days a week. I eat out less now and generally pay attention to what I eat vs just eating whatever is in front of me. Nearly identical meaning proportions are the same but I eat less junk food now. I was a college athlete, but there’s no way I carried the fitness forward ~6 years without maintaining my college level of workouts. I realize it’s all anecdotal, but based on my personal experience, the study is really tough to take at face value.

vidarh 5y ago
People tend to massively overestimate how much the extra muscle mass matters, and how much they burn during exercise, though, and it takes very little to overcompensate with a little extra food here and there. I lift too, and for many years I wrote down everything I wrote, and weighed myself every morning. I could tell very precisely how much I burnt, and it tended to shock people on lifting forums who were certain they needed to down lots protein shakes to get enough calories. At my peak lifting I wasn't huge, but I was around qualification levels for competitive powerlifting for my weight class at the time (I squatted about 200kg, benched 150kg), and exercised 5 days a week. I burned about 2000kcal/day on average. I tested that many times when bulking or slimming down by seeing how much I needed to increase it or drop it down. And it changed a little as I added muscle, but much less than you might think. I'd have people arguing with me on fitness forums that there was no way I was burning that little, and that I really needed 3000kcal/day or more, and then complain about why they were adding weight. People in a more active job would burn more than that, and people with a more active life outside of work and the gym as well, but people are notoriously bad at estimating their activity levels and apply calorie level assumptions that are often many decades out of date and based on far more labour intensive daily lives. Basically the only way you'll know is to track and measure.
- nradov 5y ago
  At rest, muscle only burns about 8 kcal/day/kg more than fat.
- Aerroon 5y ago
  I'm curious: how tall are you and/or roughly how much do you weight? Benching 150 kg with 2000 kcal/day absolutely does sound odd compared to recommendations. However, my personal experience also tells me that the regular recommendations might be a bit high.
  - vidarh 5y ago
    6'1/185cm. At the time my weight was around 93kg, so 150kg bench was nothing special for my size. When bulking I'd do about 2400kcal. For people pushing towards competitive levels it may well have made sense to go higher to allow exercising accordingly harder, but for me it was just to stay fit so I prioritised staying reasonably lean. Also worth mentioning that outside of lifting my life absolutely was/is very sedentary, so I did burn less than a lot of people. EDIT: One thing that will confuse people here is that style of exercise will matter a lot. To reach a 1RM of 150kg on bench meant most of the time I did bench 1-2 times a week for 5 sets of 5 reps of ca 120kg or so. My bench routine took 10-15 minutes. My whole lifting program took about 40m x 3 days/week. I added some cardio to that, but that is not a lot of physical activity. Someone who does bodybuilding on the other hand will typically do a lot more volume.

watwut 5y ago

> Without more details if be inclined to blame "almost identical" as the culprit (not an expert): Why? I mean, why do people find the idea of older people needing different diet due to body changes related to age so unbelievable? There are many changes related to age - how quickly injuries heal, how quickly you recover from something physical or tiring, how much or well you sleep. Your heartrate is slowly changing with age too. Why would it be shocking that these has also impact on how food affects your look? > To counteract the aforementioned 10lbs/yr you'd have to walk an extra ~20 minutes per day. That is not how this works tho. The effect of exercise is not just in how many calories you theoretically spent running/walking exactly same distance. Your body adjusts to exercising way more - including on metabolism and body temperature. It has impact on how body works overall including on hunger - depending on exercise it can go both toward eating less or eating more. It has impact on how many muscles you have, how much energy you burn while building those muscles etc. Experience of "I stopped exercising and keep eating the same, I gained a lot of weight" is not rare.

bojan 5y ago
> Experience of "I stopped exercising and keep eating the same, I gained a lot of weight" is not rare. It's not rare because calories add up immensely quickly. Say that you were burning 200 kcal per day exercising - and that is a low estimate. If you keep eating the same, you end up keeping 6000 kcal per month more - that translates to 1.7 lbs of body weight - per month. So, 20 lbs in the first year!
- watwut 5y ago
  So the claim is, that simultaneously: 1.) when you stop exercising, it does a lot for weight. 2.) If you start exercising, it does nothing for weight loss.
  - quantum_magpie 5y ago
    >1.) when you stop exercising, it does a lot for weight. Yes, if you also don't downsize your meals at the same time. Which a lot of people don't. >2.) If you start exercising, it does nothing for weight loss. Yes, if you increase your food intake because you feel more hungry, which a lot of people do. If you keep eating the same -- then it of course has a noticeable effect. For exercise to matter in your weight loss, you have to always keep in mind your food intake. It is still very beneficial and should not be ignored!

8note 5y ago

For me, 5% larger meals just means 5% more poop