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Take an overweight person, put them on island where they can only eat survival rations and water, and they will lose weight. I accept that some people may gain

Take an overweight person, put them on island where they can only eat survival rations and water, and they will lose weight. I accept that some people may gain weight differently / faster than others. But if you count calories and exercise you are guaranteed to lose weight. It’s chemistry. Maybe with better nutrition you could eat more volume. But pretending like it isn’t the calories that cause weight gain is being exceptionally nuanced when the basic combo of portion control and exercise does the trick.

macintux 5y ago
> Although researchers have rarely thought to control for energy intake in their experiments, when they did, testing whether their animals get fatter than lean controls even when eating as little or less food, they almost invariably report that they do. “These mice will make fat out of their food under the most unlikely circumstances, even when half-starved,” as Jean Mayer wrote about obese mice he studied in the 1950s.
- marcusverus 5y ago
  It is possible for everything in this quote to be true without contradicing the grandparent, because the quote doesn't explicitly address whether any of these animals were eating a caloric deficit. It is physically impossible to gain weight while eating a caloric deficit. The same kind of impossible as perpetual motion.
  - criddell 5y ago
    As I understand it, the fat mice in the study were fed half the amount of food that other mice were fed and still gained weight. It makes me wonder if a calorie surplus is necessary but not sufficient for weight gain which could also mean that a calorie deficit is not necessary for weight loss.
  - q-rews 5y ago
    > It is physically impossible to gain weight while eating a caloric deficit. Is it? As much as I want to agree, what if my body decides that 50% of calories input must be stored? It might mean that I will have to eat 200% of my daily required input just to be functional. Not saying that this is the case, but I think it’s what the article is arguing.
    - marcusverus 5y ago
      If your body were doing this, you'd be burning more calories than if it didn't. Your body requires some number of calories to keep the lights on for a given day--to move, to breath, to run your brain. Google says the average is 1800/day. If you only eat 1700 calories per day (a 100-calorie deficit) for a month, and you don't stop moving, breathing, or thinking, then your body managed to get those missing 100 calories from somewhere (i.e. from fat). In your example, say you burn ~1800 calories per day, but you only eat 800 calories (a 1000-calorie deficit)--and your body, because it hates you, stores all 800 calories as fat! Well, your body still used up 1800 calories (assuming you're still breathing, etc). So you would've burned 1800 calories of old fat, and stored 800 calories of new fat. But wait! Turning fat into energy isn't free, that requires energy, too! So you'd actually be burning more than your base rate of 1800, meaning your deficit would be even higher than the expected 1000. It's all much more complicated than this. Your body has multiple ways of generating energy, storing, and releasing energy. Eating less signals your body that you need to preserve calories, which may lower your metabolism and make it harder to eat a caloric deficit. But at the end of the day, physics dictates that you can't get more energy out of a system than you've put into it.
      - jimmaswell 5y ago
        Your body might make you move less throughout the day, "underclock" your brain, and do other things to push your BMR lower and lower. I've heard of people who end up having to eat so little to lose weight that they get severe nutrient deficiency.
      - q-rews 5y ago
        > your body still used up 1800 calories If you don't eat enough, you'll feel lethargic and unable to perform normally, so I doubt it will still use 1800 calories. According to the article, if you eat 800 calories and your body stores them all, you'll feel as hungry as if you never ate at all. Of course this likely isn't so drastic ("50%") but it would explain why many people keep gaining weight over their lifetime (or until the body reaches a balance).
  - lkey 5y ago
    A living body can be quite clever, it can change your BMR (what you assumed was a deficit is now a surplus) perform muscle catabolism, or burn glycogen stores (more than one kind of fuel) during starvation. All the while taking pains to store away the calories you do intake as new fat cells. It's precisely this kind of direct and overly simple appeal to thermodynamics that the article tries to address. Burning fuel in a calorimeter is not the same thing as a human body. /Fat/ loss and creation aren't the body's /only/ response to calorie deficits and excesses. You can create new /fat/ cells while still losing energy and mass overall without violating thermodynamics. As I said above, all you need to do is have your metabolism prefer your other stores first.
exabrial 5y ago
Yep.... laws of physics and the conservation of energy. I'm 45lbs down, in some of the best shape of my life, and to boot I have my second XCO Bike Race this coming weekend! I feel better, I look healthy, and I'm happy. I don't count anymore, but I do think about the caloric content over everything I eat now and try to keep it reasonable.
- AtlasBarfed 5y ago
  Would you characterize the exercise you used to lose weight the "long slow fat burn in zone 2" that is all the rage in trainers, or high intensity anaerobic zone 4 work?
  - exabrial 5y ago
    Neither actually. So my BMR was roughly ~2300 calories. Eating less than that is not actually very difficult. Hardboiled eggs in the morning with some coffee + non sweetened creamer, cold cuts +pickles+cheese for lunch, and a 500cal portioned dinner from a local meal prep service would get me to about 1500-2000 calories. From there, if I wanted a beer or a snack or to eat out, that's where the workouts came in. I would do intermittent sprints on the rower for 45m, roughly 22m of activity, which measured at the rower and verified with my Garmin watch would be between 500-800 calories. Or if it was the summer, 1.5 hours of XCO MTB is worth about the same calorie count (I can only measure that with my Garmin watch, I don't have a power meter on my bike). The goal was to have a net 500 calorie deficit per day. Whether that deficit was generated by eating less (which some weeks while overseas I had to do) or by exercise it didn't matter. The important thing was to generate that deficit. No idea what "zone" I was in as it didn't matter. Just hitting that calorie deficit is the key.
    - AtlasBarfed 5y ago
      intermittent sprints probably qualify as interval training more than "long slow distance".

macintux 5y ago

> Although researchers have rarely thought to control for energy intake in their experiments, when they did, testing whether their animals get fatter than lean controls even when eating as little or less food, they almost invariably report that they do. “These mice will make fat out of their food under the most unlikely circumstances, even when half-starved,” as Jean Mayer wrote about obese mice he studied in the 1950s.

marcusverus 5y ago
It is possible for everything in this quote to be true without contradicing the grandparent, because the quote doesn't explicitly address whether any of these animals were eating a caloric deficit. It is physically impossible to gain weight while eating a caloric deficit. The same kind of impossible as perpetual motion.
- criddell 5y ago
  As I understand it, the fat mice in the study were fed half the amount of food that other mice were fed and still gained weight. It makes me wonder if a calorie surplus is necessary but not sufficient for weight gain which could also mean that a calorie deficit is not necessary for weight loss.
- q-rews 5y ago
  > It is physically impossible to gain weight while eating a caloric deficit. Is it? As much as I want to agree, what if my body decides that 50% of calories input must be stored? It might mean that I will have to eat 200% of my daily required input just to be functional. Not saying that this is the case, but I think it’s what the article is arguing.
  - marcusverus 5y ago
    If your body were doing this, you'd be burning more calories than if it didn't. Your body requires some number of calories to keep the lights on for a given day--to move, to breath, to run your brain. Google says the average is 1800/day. If you only eat 1700 calories per day (a 100-calorie deficit) for a month, and you don't stop moving, breathing, or thinking, then your body managed to get those missing 100 calories from somewhere (i.e. from fat). In your example, say you burn ~1800 calories per day, but you only eat 800 calories (a 1000-calorie deficit)--and your body, because it hates you, stores all 800 calories as fat! Well, your body still used up 1800 calories (assuming you're still breathing, etc). So you would've burned 1800 calories of old fat, and stored 800 calories of new fat. But wait! Turning fat into energy isn't free, that requires energy, too! So you'd actually be burning more than your base rate of 1800, meaning your deficit would be even higher than the expected 1000. It's all much more complicated than this. Your body has multiple ways of generating energy, storing, and releasing energy. Eating less signals your body that you need to preserve calories, which may lower your metabolism and make it harder to eat a caloric deficit. But at the end of the day, physics dictates that you can't get more energy out of a system than you've put into it.
    - jimmaswell 5y ago
      Your body might make you move less throughout the day, "underclock" your brain, and do other things to push your BMR lower and lower. I've heard of people who end up having to eat so little to lose weight that they get severe nutrient deficiency.
    - q-rews 5y ago
      > your body still used up 1800 calories If you don't eat enough, you'll feel lethargic and unable to perform normally, so I doubt it will still use 1800 calories. According to the article, if you eat 800 calories and your body stores them all, you'll feel as hungry as if you never ate at all. Of course this likely isn't so drastic ("50%") but it would explain why many people keep gaining weight over their lifetime (or until the body reaches a balance).
- lkey 5y ago
  A living body can be quite clever, it can change your BMR (what you assumed was a deficit is now a surplus) perform muscle catabolism, or burn glycogen stores (more than one kind of fuel) during starvation. All the while taking pains to store away the calories you do intake as new fat cells. It's precisely this kind of direct and overly simple appeal to thermodynamics that the article tries to address. Burning fuel in a calorimeter is not the same thing as a human body. /Fat/ loss and creation aren't the body's /only/ response to calorie deficits and excesses. You can create new /fat/ cells while still losing energy and mass overall without violating thermodynamics. As I said above, all you need to do is have your metabolism prefer your other stores first.

exabrial 5y ago

Yep.... laws of physics and the conservation of energy. I'm 45lbs down, in some of the best shape of my life, and to boot I have my second XCO Bike Race this coming weekend! I feel better, I look healthy, and I'm happy. I don't count anymore, but I do think about the caloric content over everything I eat now and try to keep it reasonable.

AtlasBarfed 5y ago
Would you characterize the exercise you used to lose weight the "long slow fat burn in zone 2" that is all the rage in trainers, or high intensity anaerobic zone 4 work?
- exabrial 5y ago
  Neither actually. So my BMR was roughly ~2300 calories. Eating less than that is not actually very difficult. Hardboiled eggs in the morning with some coffee + non sweetened creamer, cold cuts +pickles+cheese for lunch, and a 500cal portioned dinner from a local meal prep service would get me to about 1500-2000 calories. From there, if I wanted a beer or a snack or to eat out, that's where the workouts came in. I would do intermittent sprints on the rower for 45m, roughly 22m of activity, which measured at the rower and verified with my Garmin watch would be between 500-800 calories. Or if it was the summer, 1.5 hours of XCO MTB is worth about the same calorie count (I can only measure that with my Garmin watch, I don't have a power meter on my bike). The goal was to have a net 500 calorie deficit per day. Whether that deficit was generated by eating less (which some weeks while overseas I had to do) or by exercise it didn't matter. The important thing was to generate that deficit. No idea what "zone" I was in as it didn't matter. Just hitting that calorie deficit is the key.
  - AtlasBarfed 5y ago
    intermittent sprints probably qualify as interval training more than "long slow distance".