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Whenever there's insignificant science making "controversial" claims like "you can't lose weight with sport" journalist will provide storytelling instead of sci

Whenever there's insignificant science making "controversial" claims like "you can't lose weight with sport" journalist will provide storytelling instead of science. The whole premise of that "You can’t exercise your way out of obesity" is that you burn more calories when you start running than later on as you continue. What's so controversial about it? It's normal that body optimizes for energy expenditure that's why we develop strength, endurance etc. And that's why when you're truly doing sports you're running more, faster, lifting more, etc. you increase the challenge to give your body greater burden to carry. If I start lifting 20lbs and 3 years later I still lift that of course I won't lose weight. You have that same thing in other disciplines - "historians" who can't make any meaningful contribution yet want to make name for themselves go on claiming "that or that king was gay" or "vikings were trans" or whatever fits the trending topics of the day and they get media exposure.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
1_player 5y ago
> What's so controversial about it? Your body burns incredibly more energy just "being there" than you burn moving about. Exercise certainly increases your calorific expenditure, but it's much easier to ingest less fuel than to run 5 more miles because you had a portion of fries. There are benefits in exercise, apart from the obvious ones the raising of the baseline metabolic expenditure, because muscles are expensive to maintain, but again, if you want to lose weight eating one less portion of fries is easier and takes less time than going for a 5 mile run. > body optimizes for energy expenditure No that's wrong, it optimises for energy maintenance. Genetically it's better to maintain fat and survive the next famine, than burning all the energy today. Which is why the body is so efficient at _not_ losing weight unless it has no other choice to maintain homeostasis. And thus to lose fat, we need to preferably eat less, not run more. Do both, and you'll do great.
- jeltz 5y ago
  While I agree with that excerice isn't a very efficient way to lose weight I think that you understate how many calories running burns. When I run consistently I need to eat what feels like a lot more food to maintain my weight. Running burns about 700-800 kcal per hour for me (I have a quite small build) which ends up quite a bit over a week (I run 5-8 hours per week).
  - the-alt-one 5y ago
    I have no clue how many calories running burns, but the act of moving around leaves you less time to eat :). Getting fat in the dark winters of Sweden is more likely for me, because I'm just bored and don't want to go outside as much so I sit inside and eat chocolate.
  - scotty79 5y ago
    Think about it this way. The rate at which you burn calories is directly proportional to the rate at which you breathe out CO2 because that what happens with carbon you burn. So if every day you train for an hour so that your breathing is 3 times faster, then you have additional two hours of burning in a day. 23 usual hours plus one worth 3. So you have 26 instead of 24 hours in a day. It's way easier to put 15% less on your plate every day than to intensly train for an hour each day while keeping portions the same.
    - bratwurst3000 5y ago
      Yes but in numbers it is way more. If I bike for an hour I burn 700-1000kcal . Thats not 15 but 50% of the dayli calorie intake… i am no expert btw. My understanding is that the problem is more that after 20 minuts of sport, at a certain heart rate, is starting to burn fat…but not body fat. More free floating fat. And it takes one hour or so to start burning bodymass. So the fuel for one hour sport is what I ate before and not my bodyfat. Another example. I do mountaineering, mostly 1 week walking in the alps for 10h a day. Thats around 4000kcal more burned a day. And there I see instant results with all my friends coming with me . They get thin very fast. Around 500g of body mass a day :)
- mantas 5y ago
  > Your body burns incredibly more energy just "being there" than you burn moving about. Bullshit. My body goes through 1600-ish kcal on an idle day. If I go out on a 4h steady bicycle ride (= 100km), I go through 2000 kcal on ride alone. That’s much more than my body burns just being there.
  - me_me_me 5y ago
    I don't get it, how is that a myth or controversial. Cutting empty calories is the easiest to remove calories from daily total. Exercise further decreases the ratio of calories in calories out. Bottom line is: calories in - calories out. There are caveats there for sure, like increasing muscle mass increases idle caloric burn. Different types of food have different effect promoting or impeding metabolism.
    - irthomasthomas 5y ago
      calories in - calories out was debunked a while ago. Different types of food and diet cause different degrees of weight gain or loss. For an extreme example compare 100 calories of glucose to 100 calories of fibre, both are types of sugar. The fibre contains an extra electron that acts like a shell, and the body has to expend energy breaking that bond to make it digestible. So most fibre passes through you without affecting your weight. The most useful measure of food is the Glycemic Load. Not Glycemic Index which is a measure of the net glucose in the food. Glycemic Load is a measure of how the body responds to the food. E.g. cold potatoes have the same calories and GI as hot potatoes, but their measured GL is actually lower, so cold potatoes are better for controlling weight.
      - tlamponi 5y ago
        > calories in - calories out was debunked a while ago. Not really, it's just that calories-in is worst-case that's what's on the foods box, you cannot magically produce more energy but it's well known that not everything can be processed by the metabolism with the same efficiency. So with extremes like your example the difference is naturally huge, but that doesn't matter in practice if one balances their consumption just somewhat it averages out and approaches something between upper (100%) and lower (0%) of efficiency, and in reality it rather close to the upper bound (averaged) as our metabolisms are quite efficient with the food most humans actually put into them. Your glycemic index rule holds does not violate the calories in calories out rule, it's just more precise regarding the actual upper bound.
oblio 5y ago
> If I start lifting 20lbs and 3 years later I still lift that of course I won't lose weight. This example is kind of bad :-) You don't lose weight by lifting weights, in general. And amusingly, if you did want to lose weight by lifting weights, your example is precisely how you <<would>> lose weight. You lift 10kgs over and over and over again, or even better, incorporate the extra weight into some sort of cardio routine. Instead of increasing the weight, you'd increase the reps or the motion you use for lifting weights.
- episteme 5y ago
  This is not accurate, weightlifting with a reasonably difficult weight for your strength level is one of the most effective ways to burn calories.
  - otikik 5y ago
    The scenario was "20lbs for 3 years". Most "standard adults" (e.g no injuries, obesity or illnesses) would not consider 20 lbs "difficult", to start with. And especially not after 6 months of regular practice.
  - watwut 5y ago
    > This is not accurate, weightlifting with a reasonably difficult weight for your strength level is one of the most effective ways to burn calories. It wont make you loose weight however. It will likely make you gain weight as your muscles will grow. Which is explicit goal of many guys who start lifting weights.
    - viceroyalbean 5y ago
      True, but for many people "lose weight" is really code for "lose body fat", since that has desirable health and aesthetic benefits.
    - episteme 5y ago
      No, it won't, unless you are eating excess calories. It takes a lot of energy to repair muscles and grow them.
FrankyHollywood 5y ago
> If I start lifting 20lbs and 3 years later I still lift that of course I won't lose weight. I don't understand, your body optimizes, and uses 20% less energy. However, you are still using the 80% which is more than not doing anything at all don't you?
- jeltz 5y ago
  Plus at least for running you can just run faster and make up for that 20% effioency gain. I personally do not think excercise is very good for losing weight but that particular argument is BS.
carlmr 5y ago
> Whenever there's insignificant science making "controversial" claims like "you can't lose weight with sport" journalist will provide storytelling instead of science. I think this is quite the claim, maybe you should provide some evidence. I think it sounds reasonable to assume that those that lack the scientific basis will use storytelling to convince, because they have nothing else. But I'm not sure about the reverse. Here we have storytelling, but the story is peppered with some data from experiments that support the claim. So how does storytelling imply lack of evidence?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

1_player 5y ago

> What's so controversial about it? Your body burns incredibly more energy just "being there" than you burn moving about. Exercise certainly increases your calorific expenditure, but it's much easier to ingest less fuel than to run 5 more miles because you had a portion of fries. There are benefits in exercise, apart from the obvious ones the raising of the baseline metabolic expenditure, because muscles are expensive to maintain, but again, if you want to lose weight eating one less portion of fries is easier and takes less time than going for a 5 mile run. > body optimizes for energy expenditure No that's wrong, it optimises for energy maintenance. Genetically it's better to maintain fat and survive the next famine, than burning all the energy today. Which is why the body is so efficient at _not_ losing weight unless it has no other choice to maintain homeostasis. And thus to lose fat, we need to preferably eat less, not run more. Do both, and you'll do great.

jeltz 5y ago
While I agree with that excerice isn't a very efficient way to lose weight I think that you understate how many calories running burns. When I run consistently I need to eat what feels like a lot more food to maintain my weight. Running burns about 700-800 kcal per hour for me (I have a quite small build) which ends up quite a bit over a week (I run 5-8 hours per week).
- the-alt-one 5y ago
  I have no clue how many calories running burns, but the act of moving around leaves you less time to eat :). Getting fat in the dark winters of Sweden is more likely for me, because I'm just bored and don't want to go outside as much so I sit inside and eat chocolate.
- scotty79 5y ago
  Think about it this way. The rate at which you burn calories is directly proportional to the rate at which you breathe out CO2 because that what happens with carbon you burn. So if every day you train for an hour so that your breathing is 3 times faster, then you have additional two hours of burning in a day. 23 usual hours plus one worth 3. So you have 26 instead of 24 hours in a day. It's way easier to put 15% less on your plate every day than to intensly train for an hour each day while keeping portions the same.
  - bratwurst3000 5y ago
    Yes but in numbers it is way more. If I bike for an hour I burn 700-1000kcal . Thats not 15 but 50% of the dayli calorie intake… i am no expert btw. My understanding is that the problem is more that after 20 minuts of sport, at a certain heart rate, is starting to burn fat…but not body fat. More free floating fat. And it takes one hour or so to start burning bodymass. So the fuel for one hour sport is what I ate before and not my bodyfat. Another example. I do mountaineering, mostly 1 week walking in the alps for 10h a day. Thats around 4000kcal more burned a day. And there I see instant results with all my friends coming with me . They get thin very fast. Around 500g of body mass a day :)
mantas 5y ago
> Your body burns incredibly more energy just "being there" than you burn moving about. Bullshit. My body goes through 1600-ish kcal on an idle day. If I go out on a 4h steady bicycle ride (= 100km), I go through 2000 kcal on ride alone. That’s much more than my body burns just being there.
- me_me_me 5y ago
  I don't get it, how is that a myth or controversial. Cutting empty calories is the easiest to remove calories from daily total. Exercise further decreases the ratio of calories in calories out. Bottom line is: calories in - calories out. There are caveats there for sure, like increasing muscle mass increases idle caloric burn. Different types of food have different effect promoting or impeding metabolism.
  - irthomasthomas 5y ago
    calories in - calories out was debunked a while ago. Different types of food and diet cause different degrees of weight gain or loss. For an extreme example compare 100 calories of glucose to 100 calories of fibre, both are types of sugar. The fibre contains an extra electron that acts like a shell, and the body has to expend energy breaking that bond to make it digestible. So most fibre passes through you without affecting your weight. The most useful measure of food is the Glycemic Load. Not Glycemic Index which is a measure of the net glucose in the food. Glycemic Load is a measure of how the body responds to the food. E.g. cold potatoes have the same calories and GI as hot potatoes, but their measured GL is actually lower, so cold potatoes are better for controlling weight.
    - tlamponi 5y ago
      > calories in - calories out was debunked a while ago. Not really, it's just that calories-in is worst-case that's what's on the foods box, you cannot magically produce more energy but it's well known that not everything can be processed by the metabolism with the same efficiency. So with extremes like your example the difference is naturally huge, but that doesn't matter in practice if one balances their consumption just somewhat it averages out and approaches something between upper (100%) and lower (0%) of efficiency, and in reality it rather close to the upper bound (averaged) as our metabolisms are quite efficient with the food most humans actually put into them. Your glycemic index rule holds does not violate the calories in calories out rule, it's just more precise regarding the actual upper bound.

oblio 5y ago

> If I start lifting 20lbs and 3 years later I still lift that of course I won't lose weight. This example is kind of bad :-) You don't lose weight by lifting weights, in general. And amusingly, if you did want to lose weight by lifting weights, your example is precisely how you <<would>> lose weight. You lift 10kgs over and over and over again, or even better, incorporate the extra weight into some sort of cardio routine. Instead of increasing the weight, you'd increase the reps or the motion you use for lifting weights.

episteme 5y ago
This is not accurate, weightlifting with a reasonably difficult weight for your strength level is one of the most effective ways to burn calories.
- otikik 5y ago
  The scenario was "20lbs for 3 years". Most "standard adults" (e.g no injuries, obesity or illnesses) would not consider 20 lbs "difficult", to start with. And especially not after 6 months of regular practice.
- watwut 5y ago
  > This is not accurate, weightlifting with a reasonably difficult weight for your strength level is one of the most effective ways to burn calories. It wont make you loose weight however. It will likely make you gain weight as your muscles will grow. Which is explicit goal of many guys who start lifting weights.
  - viceroyalbean 5y ago
    True, but for many people "lose weight" is really code for "lose body fat", since that has desirable health and aesthetic benefits.
  - episteme 5y ago
    No, it won't, unless you are eating excess calories. It takes a lot of energy to repair muscles and grow them.

FrankyHollywood 5y ago

> If I start lifting 20lbs and 3 years later I still lift that of course I won't lose weight. I don't understand, your body optimizes, and uses 20% less energy. However, you are still using the 80% which is more than not doing anything at all don't you?

jeltz 5y ago
Plus at least for running you can just run faster and make up for that 20% effioency gain. I personally do not think excercise is very good for losing weight but that particular argument is BS.

carlmr 5y ago

> Whenever there's insignificant science making "controversial" claims like "you can't lose weight with sport" journalist will provide storytelling instead of science. I think this is quite the claim, maybe you should provide some evidence. I think it sounds reasonable to assume that those that lack the scientific basis will use storytelling to convince, because they have nothing else. But I'm not sure about the reverse. Here we have storytelling, but the story is peppered with some data from experiments that support the claim. So how does storytelling imply lack of evidence?