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The focus of the people you have linked is about exercise in the context of a gym and diet is about calories. I would like to argue that being healthy and fit i

The focus of the people you have linked is about exercise in the context of a gym and diet is about calories. I would like to argue that being healthy and fit is not about the gym, or investing time in tracking calories. Instead we should focus on daily fun movements that we like to do. So it doesn't feel like a chore and easy to maintain within your lifestyle. This could fall under different categories such cardio (walking , cycling) and some resistance training like body weight exercises. These are called Micro workouts, and can be done during the day. A great (nerdy) guy who is quite far on that path is the bioneer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWuKIlbybqY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWuKIlbybqY And for food we should try to focus on whole foods and not calories and almost no-one should try to diet like a body builder prepping for a show. They feel terrible and you are priming the body to store energy in the fat cells. https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/stop-counting-calories https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/stop-counting... Humans have been healthy for very long without the gym or calorie counting. Both are large time investments that can be better spent elsewhere

balfirevic 4y ago
> I would like to argue that being healthy and fit is not about the gym, or investing time in tracking calories. You do what works for you, others should do what works for them.
- ImPostingOnHN 4y ago
  yeah, as an adult, I don't mind doing chores, weightlifting is just one of them like most chores, it's not that fun, but the results make it worth it
  - marcinreal 4y ago
    I've found that few adults think this way. A lot of them avoid exercise and healthy eating because they perceive these as hard and complicated, and they are afraid of doing the work and likely failing anyway. Mainstream advice doesn't help this situation at all. I get a lot better results at helping people when I show them that health can actually be fun and easy.
  - Broken_Hippo 4y ago
    I mind doing most chores, and I don't think I'm alone: How many people would choose to do dishes for a family of four if they have a dishwasher to do it for them? I even like to cook, but most days it is simply a chore and not something I particularly want to do that day.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- Attummm 4y ago
  The point of the article on which we are commenting is that training each day is more beneficial than once a week. It's a huge time investment to go to the gym each day. But you could do some pushups or squats right now, and the great thing is. The time investment is small, and short term and long term is great investment. you'll immediately get a small dopamine boost and in the long run your health and appearance will improve. And according to the article it's better than once heroic day in the gym, that will leave you feeling sluggish. But everyone can benefit from even simple body exercises, and maybe buy some dumbbells and lift them up each day for 5 minutes, if they become light, increase the weight or reps. Its that simple. The point I'm trying to make is that exercise doesn't have to take place in a gym, it could. The bioneer link above can expain it much better then me.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - galangalalgol 4y ago
    My understanding is that training every day is good for hypertrophy and perhaps endurance, but that it is not the best way to gain strength. The underlying notion is that the more work you do, the more capacity for work you can do. And that recovery time is nonlinear to the amount of work done, so that more but less intense excercise leads to ablarger capacity for work. However, if you are double fast-twitch and you want to play to your strengths (pun intended), you are going for peak power, not average capacity for work over time. In that case you get stronger by doing things that require more strength. That is going to still require recovery time that will not typically allow work every day. In fact, for strength training, best practice is still to avoid getting out of breath on recovery days. Hypertrophy is a different goal entirely, and always had more volume than strength or power workouts, this data simply takes that to the logical conclusion. Whether its bro-splits or lots of compound work. You want to maximize average volume over any interval you could pick.
Pius_IX 4y ago
Being healthy and being fit is mostly about being healthy and being fit. There are obviously countless ways to get closer to that goal, the gym and calorie counting being one way. Saying stuff like 'we should try to focus on whole foods and not calories' is a pretty bad take if you ask me. Contrasting that immediately with 'a body builder prepping for a show' is just ridiculous. One is good advice to form part of a healthy lifestyle, the other is a way of life for a tiny group of professional athletes. There goes more into a healthy diet than just eating lots of whole foods - although whole foods are obviously awesome and healthy. Notice that the linked article compares two groups eating processed and processed with the one eating the processed foods eating 500 more calories a day. They don't gain weight magically but because they ate the less satiating food and as a result ate more calories. And simply saying 'Instead we should focus on daily fun movements that we like to do. So it doesn't feel like a chore and easy to maintain within your lifestyle.' is such a weird take. Have you ever considered that some people enjoy going to the gym? On the other hand I personally couldn't imagine anything more boring than body weight exercises. In the end it is up to the individual to chose the lifestyle that they enjoy, so please stop selling your personal favorite as if any other choices 'are large time investments that can be better spent elsewhere'. I very much enjoy my time spend at the gym, thank you very much.
- appel_user 4y ago
  That is the link from the post you are replying too it's from Harvard Medical. https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/stop-counting-calories https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/stop-counting.... """ "This idea of 'a calorie in and a calorie out' when it comes to weight loss is not only antiquated, it's just wrong," says Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford, an obesity specialist and assistant professor of medicine and pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. """ edit: | And simply saying 'Instead we should focus on daily fun movements that we like to do. So it doesn't feel like a chore and easy to maintain within your lifestyle.' is such a weird take Did you watched youtube link provided? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWuKIlbybqY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWuKIlbybqY Because after watching it, it makes allot of sense. And your points are all addressed there.
  - 4y ago
alldayeveryday 4y ago
> And for food we should try to focus on whole foods and not calories … This is just plain false. You can “focus” on eating whole foods and if you consume more calories than you burn you will gain weight. If you consume less calories than you burn you will lose weight. The science has not changed on this point. No one giving honest diet advice should tell people not to worry about the calories they consume if the individual has the goal to increase, lower or maintain their weight.
- greymalik 4y ago
  https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/stop-counting-calories https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/stop-counting...
  - alldayeveryday 4y ago
    > "This idea of 'a calorie in and a calorie out' when it comes to weight loss is not only antiquated, it's just wrong," says Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford, an obesity specialist and assistant professor of medicine and pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. The truth is that even careful calorie calculations don't always yield uniform results. How your body burns calories depends on a number of factors, including the type of food you eat, your body's metabolism, and even the type of organisms living in your gut. You can eat the exact same number of calories as someone else, yet have very different outcomes when it comes to your weight. This is just plain dishonest writing. Just because there are other variables, or that different people burn different amount of calories, does not make 'calorie in and calorie out' wrong. If John burns 2000 calories a day and has different organisms in his gut from Sarah who burns 1500 calories a day, in no way disproves calories in / calorie out. All it proves is that people are different, a premise that the modern science community seems to find a challenging notion.
    - criddell 4y ago
      I think you are missing their point. Calories in and out is a piece of the puzzle and net calories is often not enough to make a good prediction. Two similar people can consume precisely the same number of calories and have the same level of physical fitness and physical activity and have different outcomes. People are indeed different and the scientist you quote is saying precisely that.
FpUser 4y ago
>"And for food we should try to focus on whole foods and not calories" People get obese on "whole foods" just fine if they do not count calories. For some it is not needed since they live physically active life and naturally do not eat all that much. Yet others can barely fit in their cars on the same food.
- appel_user 4y ago
  The poster added a link from Harvard Medical. https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/stop-counting-calories https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/stop-counting.... """ "This idea of 'a calorie in and a calorie out' when it comes to weight loss is not only antiquated, it's just wrong," says Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford, an obesity specialist and assistant professor of medicine and pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. """
  - mrmlz 4y ago
    Well Harvard Medical should probably take a trip to the physics department and do some book learning.. But I´ll give her the benefit of a doubt that the quote is pulled from a larger reasoning.
  - towaway15463 4y ago
    An absurd statement. If you put someone on a calorie deficit they will lose weight, period. If I work you 12 hours a day at a gruelling physical job and don’t increase the amount you eat then you will lose weight, end of story. All this faffing around about with metabolism and gut bacteria is only applicable when people have the absolute luxury of sitting all day with their only physical activity being walking to the kitchen to get another bowl of pasta. The human body was designed for long distance running and a fast/feast diet of mostly fruit and meat, of course you’re going to get fat if you don’t move and just eat pure carbs for every meal.
    - sph 4y ago
      It's not absurd, quite the opposite. "Calores-in, calories-out" on the other hand is laughably reductive. If the body was an actual furnace, calories in calories out would be an excellent mantra. But it is not. It's a complex chemical machine with complex feedback loops. You do not ingest pure energy, you ingest matter that might be processed into food and stored using a ton of different chemical pathways, some more efficient than others. If I ingest 2000 kcal of cellulose, I indeed get 2000 kcal of cellulose out, not as energy but as undigested faeces. If I ingest 2000 kcal of fat, my body behaves completely differently than if I ingest 2000 kcal of pure carbohydrates, than if I ingest 2000 kcal of pasta. So, please let's stop with his reductive CICO meme. We all know thermodynamics, but it's a very bad model for explaining how the body handles food, hunger and long term energy storage. Focusing on calories is like comparing vehicle speeds by solely focusing on their horse power. There's a relation, but it conveniently ignores hundred of other variables that might show an opposite outcome.
baby 4y ago
One of the person I was following was basically saying “don’t diet to lose weight, create muscles and your body will naturally need to consume more calories”
- towaway15463 4y ago
  While it’s true that more muscle mass requires more calories it also has an impact on your appetite so if you aren’t conscious of what you’re eating you can also gain a lot of fat while gaining muscle. There’s no way around it if you want to look lean you need to balance your diet and eat an appropriate number of calories for your weight and activity level.
  - swader999 4y ago
    This is not necessarily true when you are young, but after about age 35, it gets harder and harder to outrun the kitchen.
    - curiousllama 4y ago
      It’s still true when you’re young! Youth compensates for bad diet, but it also accelerated the positive effects of good diet & exercise.
  - lottin 4y ago
    The thing is if you get lean without having put on plenty of muscle first, you'll look like a bag of bones, which is neither healthy nor aesthetically pleasing.
    - Jensson 4y ago
      You wont look like a bag of bones unless you start to literally starve yourself into underweight levels, like BMI less than 17. Healthy weight people at around BMI 22 don't look like bags of bones, they either have significant amounts of muscle or fat, that is roughly the level where most athletes are so you either have that amount of muscle or the equivalent in fat or somewhere in between.
zppln 4y ago
ngmi
relativeadv 4y ago
The World Health Organization recommends (for adults) 150 to 300 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic physical activity OR 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous-intensity aerobic physical activity a week. They also recommend at least two days a week of "muscle-strengthening" activities at moderate or greater intensity that involve all major muscle groups. [1] If anyone can meet or exceed these guidelines solely through things they enjoy then absolutely go for that. However, most of us tend to enjoy one thing more than another, I've noticed. We might be highly into rock climbing and less-so willing to go for walks or bike rides. We might be a 10k runner who neglects to do their pushups. My point is it is likely you're going to need to do some stuff you're not thrilled about. If you don't do them then fine, but don't make the argument that just doing things you like doing is enough because it very well might not be. As for the calories debate, all i can say here is that evidence is needed for some of these claims you and your article have made. I'm seeing links to quotes and videos but no real evidence that a calorie is not a calorie. If the point they're clumsily trying to make is that practically speaking you cannot track every single calorie in your day-to-day existence then yes i would agree with that but no one who tracks calories would tell you their goal is 100% accuracy. It all comes out in the wash over averages. That said, I do not think most people need to track their calories if they just want to be at a healthy bodyweight. Merely eating whole foods and adhering to the guidelines above should get them there just fine. This is not the same thing as saying a calorie isn't a calorie. [1] https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/336656/9789240015128-eng.pdf https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/336656/9789...
Msw242 4y ago
Americans absolutely need more education on calories. If you're going to eat processed junk food, you should at least eat less of it. That's step 1.
iamamicrowave 4y ago
Post body
honkdaddy 4y ago
Not all of those blogs are about being healthy. Some of them are just about reaching and maintaining the popular societal understanding of appearing "fit". I mean damn, one of the blogs is literally called Look Great Naked! I totally agree, for the record. For the majority of people counting calories and recording reps isn't something they'll be interested in doing their entire lives, any more than they'd be interested in updating new device drivers and reflashing their OS if an easier, brainless alternative existed. And it does! Walk, bike, or run a little bit every day; eat less carbs than you'd prefer, and try to eat more vegetables than you would otherwise. I'm no expert whatsoever, but I've travelled all over the world and that advice seems to be the only constant amongst all the healthiest people I've seen.
edanm 4y ago
> Instead we should focus on daily fun movements that we like to do. So it doesn't feel like a chore and easy to maintain within your lifestyle. The people I know on that list would absolutely agree with this. E.g. Mike Israetel from Renaissance Periodization; he'll often say that one of the best ways to lose weight is to try to get your step count up, e.g. move around more in the day, without necessarily doing formal exercise. The best thing is that you can be running around doing "chores" or whatever, and this will help with your weight loss goals and get more stuff done during the day. That said, the question is, as always, what are your goals. If your goals are to be healthier, that requires a very different approach than if your goal is to, e.g., look more muscly, bodybuilder style. They're not completely incompatible goals, at least for novices, but they are different goals. Some strength training and cardio, with an emphasis on maintaining a body fat percentage <20%, is probably the best for maximizing long term health.
snapcaster 4y ago
post body
dkarl 4y ago
I think what you're describing is the best case, the world we should shoot for. But getting there for most people will take a generation of social change. Meanwhile, most of us find ourselves in a shitty current situation where a healthy diet and a healthy level of activity feel weird and counterintuitive to us, and we have to trust reason and evidence to guide us to a healthy way of living, despite deeply engrained aversions, deeply engrained compulsions to engage in unhealthy behavior, and powerful external forces arrayed against us. For people who are unhappy with where they're at and are looking for answers, telling them that there's an easy healthy way to live that caters to their current desires and aversions sends them on a lifelong journey of being disappointed by one set of false promises after another. A more honest thing to tell them is that their life up to this point, their experiences, the norms they grew up with, the food ecology of the world around them, has warped their perceptions to the point that what is actually good for their body will feel unpleasant and psychologically unsettling. The unvarnished truth, which you might not want to dump on them right at the beginning, is that at times it will be fucking miserable. It's analogous to having a substance abuse disorder. Many, many times the only choice that feels comfortable and natural is the one that physically harms you, and resisting the compulsion to harm yourself feels awful. It can feel sad and scary not to eat every single donut in the break room, even if you've already had a generous healthy breakfast. At times like that, the "if it isn't easy, you're doing it wrong" message comes off like an unfeeling flex, like telling a depressed person to just snap out of it. People may stigmatize difficult lifestyle changes as "restrictive" or "joyless" or "unrealistic," but it's not the fault of the lifestyle itself. It's the fault of what you've been fed your whole life and what the world continues to shove in your face and dangle in front of you every day. It doesn't kill joy not to eat cake. It kills joy to say no to cake eight times a day while a billion dollar industry wages war against your efforts to care for yourself by constantly reminding you of the momentary pleasure and relief you will feel if you give in, and people who care about you unwittingly act as their accomplices in all the spaces that are supposed to be safe for you. > https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/stop-counting-calories https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/stop-counting... People who work in public health are not giving advice to help you make a significant change in your life. They are giving advice that will do the most good for the most people, which realistically means moving the needle a tiny bit. That's what they're shooting for. They don't expect you to succeed at living a healthy life. They expect you to be overweight and to live a lifestyle that makes metabolic disease a likelihood, because the societal context is stacked against us. They've accepted that their power to help people currently struggling with their health is limited to changing a fraction of a percent here and there, and to achieve significant results we need to focus on changing the context for the next generation. Which we do need to do, but meanwhile, if you don't want to write yourself off as a victim of the times, don't let people tell you that easy is the only healthy way. You won't regret doing your best to take care of yourself, even if it's a struggle and you can't pretend it's easy like everyone tells you it's supposed to be.
mikepurvis 4y ago
"So it doesn't feel like a chore and easy to maintain within your lifestyle." This is it for me, absolutely. I've always been a bike commuter, so that was my cardio for decades— 10x 20min bike ride to and from work each week, year round. When I lost the commute with pandemic WFH, I fairly quickly shot up 15lbs. The journey back was in finding ways that I could recreationally get that same experience, which for me has been a combination of walks, distance cycling, and lane swimming. All of these are things I enjoy for their own sake, and are great mental health resets. They're also things I can do with others, so there's that little bit of accountability woven into it as well. I'm not really watching what I eat, though I did cut out a bunch of snacking (especially at bedtime), and I switched my breakfast to a protein smoothie. Now I'm down 30lbs+ from my pandemic high, and probably the best shape I've been in since my early twenties.
- Attummm 4y ago
  Bam, congratulations on your success with your health journey. :)
imwillofficial 4y ago
We were fit a long time before processed foods, massive environmental pollutants, stable hormone levels, etc..: Modern man so screwed even if everything is done right.
z9znz 4y ago
> we should focus on daily fun movements that we like to do I fully agree. If some of that fun actually involves going to the gym, then great. But there are a lot of "play" activities which are compelling and fun while also making you healthier. Sports is an obvious one, and dancing is a less obvious one. One hour of salsa dancing (with breaks and partner changes) is a good cardio exercise which is also lots of fun. And as or more importantly, the mental and emotional boost is something many of us need more than bigger muscles. I like both.
whateveracct 4y ago
Counting calories always comes off as so disordered to me. Maybe it's because I've grown up around multiple people with eating disorders.
BobbyJo 4y ago
How do we know if we are moving enough or eating the right amount if we do not use some quantifiable basis? Moving for fun is all well and good, and exercise should be fun as opposed to a chore, but the dose dependency needs to be accounted for. Whole foods work well because they tend to hit the calorie and nutrient milestones without much tracking being necessary, but we only know that because other people have done the tracking for us. I think the information these people put out should be used to inform a lifestyle that one constructs, not to construct it directly.

balfirevic 4y ago

> I would like to argue that being healthy and fit is not about the gym, or investing time in tracking calories. You do what works for you, others should do what works for them.

ImPostingOnHN 4y ago
yeah, as an adult, I don't mind doing chores, weightlifting is just one of them like most chores, it's not that fun, but the results make it worth it
- marcinreal 4y ago
  I've found that few adults think this way. A lot of them avoid exercise and healthy eating because they perceive these as hard and complicated, and they are afraid of doing the work and likely failing anyway. Mainstream advice doesn't help this situation at all. I get a lot better results at helping people when I show them that health can actually be fun and easy.
- Broken_Hippo 4y ago
  I mind doing most chores, and I don't think I'm alone: How many people would choose to do dishes for a family of four if they have a dishwasher to do it for them? I even like to cook, but most days it is simply a chore and not something I particularly want to do that day.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
Attummm 4y ago
The point of the article on which we are commenting is that training each day is more beneficial than once a week. It's a huge time investment to go to the gym each day. But you could do some pushups or squats right now, and the great thing is. The time investment is small, and short term and long term is great investment. you'll immediately get a small dopamine boost and in the long run your health and appearance will improve. And according to the article it's better than once heroic day in the gym, that will leave you feeling sluggish. But everyone can benefit from even simple body exercises, and maybe buy some dumbbells and lift them up each day for 5 minutes, if they become light, increase the weight or reps. Its that simple. The point I'm trying to make is that exercise doesn't have to take place in a gym, it could. The bioneer link above can expain it much better then me.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- galangalalgol 4y ago
  My understanding is that training every day is good for hypertrophy and perhaps endurance, but that it is not the best way to gain strength. The underlying notion is that the more work you do, the more capacity for work you can do. And that recovery time is nonlinear to the amount of work done, so that more but less intense excercise leads to ablarger capacity for work. However, if you are double fast-twitch and you want to play to your strengths (pun intended), you are going for peak power, not average capacity for work over time. In that case you get stronger by doing things that require more strength. That is going to still require recovery time that will not typically allow work every day. In fact, for strength training, best practice is still to avoid getting out of breath on recovery days. Hypertrophy is a different goal entirely, and always had more volume than strength or power workouts, this data simply takes that to the logical conclusion. Whether its bro-splits or lots of compound work. You want to maximize average volume over any interval you could pick.

Pius_IX 4y ago

Being healthy and being fit is mostly about being healthy and being fit. There are obviously countless ways to get closer to that goal, the gym and calorie counting being one way. Saying stuff like 'we should try to focus on whole foods and not calories' is a pretty bad take if you ask me. Contrasting that immediately with 'a body builder prepping for a show' is just ridiculous. One is good advice to form part of a healthy lifestyle, the other is a way of life for a tiny group of professional athletes. There goes more into a healthy diet than just eating lots of whole foods - although whole foods are obviously awesome and healthy. Notice that the linked article compares two groups eating processed and processed with the one eating the processed foods eating 500 more calories a day. They don't gain weight magically but because they ate the less satiating food and as a result ate more calories. And simply saying 'Instead we should focus on daily fun movements that we like to do. So it doesn't feel like a chore and easy to maintain within your lifestyle.' is such a weird take. Have you ever considered that some people enjoy going to the gym? On the other hand I personally couldn't imagine anything more boring than body weight exercises. In the end it is up to the individual to chose the lifestyle that they enjoy, so please stop selling your personal favorite as if any other choices 'are large time investments that can be better spent elsewhere'. I very much enjoy my time spend at the gym, thank you very much.

appel_user 4y ago
That is the link from the post you are replying too it's from Harvard Medical. https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/stop-counting-calories https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/stop-counting.... """ "This idea of 'a calorie in and a calorie out' when it comes to weight loss is not only antiquated, it's just wrong," says Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford, an obesity specialist and assistant professor of medicine and pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. """ edit: | And simply saying 'Instead we should focus on daily fun movements that we like to do. So it doesn't feel like a chore and easy to maintain within your lifestyle.' is such a weird take Did you watched youtube link provided? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWuKIlbybqY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWuKIlbybqY Because after watching it, it makes allot of sense. And your points are all addressed there.
- 4y ago

alldayeveryday 4y ago

> And for food we should try to focus on whole foods and not calories … This is just plain false. You can “focus” on eating whole foods and if you consume more calories than you burn you will gain weight. If you consume less calories than you burn you will lose weight. The science has not changed on this point. No one giving honest diet advice should tell people not to worry about the calories they consume if the individual has the goal to increase, lower or maintain their weight.

greymalik 4y ago
https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/stop-counting-calories https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/stop-counting...
- alldayeveryday 4y ago
  > "This idea of 'a calorie in and a calorie out' when it comes to weight loss is not only antiquated, it's just wrong," says Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford, an obesity specialist and assistant professor of medicine and pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. The truth is that even careful calorie calculations don't always yield uniform results. How your body burns calories depends on a number of factors, including the type of food you eat, your body's metabolism, and even the type of organisms living in your gut. You can eat the exact same number of calories as someone else, yet have very different outcomes when it comes to your weight. This is just plain dishonest writing. Just because there are other variables, or that different people burn different amount of calories, does not make 'calorie in and calorie out' wrong. If John burns 2000 calories a day and has different organisms in his gut from Sarah who burns 1500 calories a day, in no way disproves calories in / calorie out. All it proves is that people are different, a premise that the modern science community seems to find a challenging notion.
  - criddell 4y ago
    I think you are missing their point. Calories in and out is a piece of the puzzle and net calories is often not enough to make a good prediction. Two similar people can consume precisely the same number of calories and have the same level of physical fitness and physical activity and have different outcomes. People are indeed different and the scientist you quote is saying precisely that.

FpUser 4y ago

>"And for food we should try to focus on whole foods and not calories" People get obese on "whole foods" just fine if they do not count calories. For some it is not needed since they live physically active life and naturally do not eat all that much. Yet others can barely fit in their cars on the same food.

appel_user 4y ago
The poster added a link from Harvard Medical. https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/stop-counting-calories https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/stop-counting.... """ "This idea of 'a calorie in and a calorie out' when it comes to weight loss is not only antiquated, it's just wrong," says Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford, an obesity specialist and assistant professor of medicine and pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. """
- mrmlz 4y ago
  Well Harvard Medical should probably take a trip to the physics department and do some book learning.. But I´ll give her the benefit of a doubt that the quote is pulled from a larger reasoning.
- towaway15463 4y ago
  An absurd statement. If you put someone on a calorie deficit they will lose weight, period. If I work you 12 hours a day at a gruelling physical job and don’t increase the amount you eat then you will lose weight, end of story. All this faffing around about with metabolism and gut bacteria is only applicable when people have the absolute luxury of sitting all day with their only physical activity being walking to the kitchen to get another bowl of pasta. The human body was designed for long distance running and a fast/feast diet of mostly fruit and meat, of course you’re going to get fat if you don’t move and just eat pure carbs for every meal.
  - sph 4y ago
    It's not absurd, quite the opposite. "Calores-in, calories-out" on the other hand is laughably reductive. If the body was an actual furnace, calories in calories out would be an excellent mantra. But it is not. It's a complex chemical machine with complex feedback loops. You do not ingest pure energy, you ingest matter that might be processed into food and stored using a ton of different chemical pathways, some more efficient than others. If I ingest 2000 kcal of cellulose, I indeed get 2000 kcal of cellulose out, not as energy but as undigested faeces. If I ingest 2000 kcal of fat, my body behaves completely differently than if I ingest 2000 kcal of pure carbohydrates, than if I ingest 2000 kcal of pasta. So, please let's stop with his reductive CICO meme. We all know thermodynamics, but it's a very bad model for explaining how the body handles food, hunger and long term energy storage. Focusing on calories is like comparing vehicle speeds by solely focusing on their horse power. There's a relation, but it conveniently ignores hundred of other variables that might show an opposite outcome.

baby 4y ago

One of the person I was following was basically saying “don’t diet to lose weight, create muscles and your body will naturally need to consume more calories”

towaway15463 4y ago
While it’s true that more muscle mass requires more calories it also has an impact on your appetite so if you aren’t conscious of what you’re eating you can also gain a lot of fat while gaining muscle. There’s no way around it if you want to look lean you need to balance your diet and eat an appropriate number of calories for your weight and activity level.
- swader999 4y ago
  This is not necessarily true when you are young, but after about age 35, it gets harder and harder to outrun the kitchen.
  - curiousllama 4y ago
    It’s still true when you’re young! Youth compensates for bad diet, but it also accelerated the positive effects of good diet & exercise.
- lottin 4y ago
  The thing is if you get lean without having put on plenty of muscle first, you'll look like a bag of bones, which is neither healthy nor aesthetically pleasing.
  - Jensson 4y ago
    You wont look like a bag of bones unless you start to literally starve yourself into underweight levels, like BMI less than 17. Healthy weight people at around BMI 22 don't look like bags of bones, they either have significant amounts of muscle or fat, that is roughly the level where most athletes are so you either have that amount of muscle or the equivalent in fat or somewhere in between.

zppln 4y ago

ngmi

relativeadv 4y ago

The World Health Organization recommends (for adults) 150 to 300 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic physical activity OR 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous-intensity aerobic physical activity a week. They also recommend at least two days a week of "muscle-strengthening" activities at moderate or greater intensity that involve all major muscle groups. [1] If anyone can meet or exceed these guidelines solely through things they enjoy then absolutely go for that. However, most of us tend to enjoy one thing more than another, I've noticed. We might be highly into rock climbing and less-so willing to go for walks or bike rides. We might be a 10k runner who neglects to do their pushups. My point is it is likely you're going to need to do some stuff you're not thrilled about. If you don't do them then fine, but don't make the argument that just doing things you like doing is enough because it very well might not be. As for the calories debate, all i can say here is that evidence is needed for some of these claims you and your article have made. I'm seeing links to quotes and videos but no real evidence that a calorie is not a calorie. If the point they're clumsily trying to make is that practically speaking you cannot track every single calorie in your day-to-day existence then yes i would agree with that but no one who tracks calories would tell you their goal is 100% accuracy. It all comes out in the wash over averages. That said, I do not think most people need to track their calories if they just want to be at a healthy bodyweight. Merely eating whole foods and adhering to the guidelines above should get them there just fine. This is not the same thing as saying a calorie isn't a calorie. [1] https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/336656/9789240015128-eng.pdf https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/336656/9789...

Msw242 4y ago

Americans absolutely need more education on calories. If you're going to eat processed junk food, you should at least eat less of it. That's step 1.

iamamicrowave 4y ago

Post body

honkdaddy 4y ago

Not all of those blogs are about being healthy. Some of them are just about reaching and maintaining the popular societal understanding of appearing "fit". I mean damn, one of the blogs is literally called Look Great Naked! I totally agree, for the record. For the majority of people counting calories and recording reps isn't something they'll be interested in doing their entire lives, any more than they'd be interested in updating new device drivers and reflashing their OS if an easier, brainless alternative existed. And it does! Walk, bike, or run a little bit every day; eat less carbs than you'd prefer, and try to eat more vegetables than you would otherwise. I'm no expert whatsoever, but I've travelled all over the world and that advice seems to be the only constant amongst all the healthiest people I've seen.

edanm 4y ago

> Instead we should focus on daily fun movements that we like to do. So it doesn't feel like a chore and easy to maintain within your lifestyle. The people I know on that list would absolutely agree with this. E.g. Mike Israetel from Renaissance Periodization; he'll often say that one of the best ways to lose weight is to try to get your step count up, e.g. move around more in the day, without necessarily doing formal exercise. The best thing is that you can be running around doing "chores" or whatever, and this will help with your weight loss goals and get more stuff done during the day. That said, the question is, as always, what are your goals. If your goals are to be healthier, that requires a very different approach than if your goal is to, e.g., look more muscly, bodybuilder style. They're not completely incompatible goals, at least for novices, but they are different goals. Some strength training and cardio, with an emphasis on maintaining a body fat percentage <20%, is probably the best for maximizing long term health.

snapcaster 4y ago

post body

dkarl 4y ago

I think what you're describing is the best case, the world we should shoot for. But getting there for most people will take a generation of social change. Meanwhile, most of us find ourselves in a shitty current situation where a healthy diet and a healthy level of activity feel weird and counterintuitive to us, and we have to trust reason and evidence to guide us to a healthy way of living, despite deeply engrained aversions, deeply engrained compulsions to engage in unhealthy behavior, and powerful external forces arrayed against us. For people who are unhappy with where they're at and are looking for answers, telling them that there's an easy healthy way to live that caters to their current desires and aversions sends them on a lifelong journey of being disappointed by one set of false promises after another. A more honest thing to tell them is that their life up to this point, their experiences, the norms they grew up with, the food ecology of the world around them, has warped their perceptions to the point that what is actually good for their body will feel unpleasant and psychologically unsettling. The unvarnished truth, which you might not want to dump on them right at the beginning, is that at times it will be fucking miserable. It's analogous to having a substance abuse disorder. Many, many times the only choice that feels comfortable and natural is the one that physically harms you, and resisting the compulsion to harm yourself feels awful. It can feel sad and scary not to eat every single donut in the break room, even if you've already had a generous healthy breakfast. At times like that, the "if it isn't easy, you're doing it wrong" message comes off like an unfeeling flex, like telling a depressed person to just snap out of it. People may stigmatize difficult lifestyle changes as "restrictive" or "joyless" or "unrealistic," but it's not the fault of the lifestyle itself. It's the fault of what you've been fed your whole life and what the world continues to shove in your face and dangle in front of you every day. It doesn't kill joy not to eat cake. It kills joy to say no to cake eight times a day while a billion dollar industry wages war against your efforts to care for yourself by constantly reminding you of the momentary pleasure and relief you will feel if you give in, and people who care about you unwittingly act as their accomplices in all the spaces that are supposed to be safe for you. > https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/stop-counting-calories https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/stop-counting... People who work in public health are not giving advice to help you make a significant change in your life. They are giving advice that will do the most good for the most people, which realistically means moving the needle a tiny bit. That's what they're shooting for. They don't expect you to succeed at living a healthy life. They expect you to be overweight and to live a lifestyle that makes metabolic disease a likelihood, because the societal context is stacked against us. They've accepted that their power to help people currently struggling with their health is limited to changing a fraction of a percent here and there, and to achieve significant results we need to focus on changing the context for the next generation. Which we do need to do, but meanwhile, if you don't want to write yourself off as a victim of the times, don't let people tell you that easy is the only healthy way. You won't regret doing your best to take care of yourself, even if it's a struggle and you can't pretend it's easy like everyone tells you it's supposed to be.

mikepurvis 4y ago

"So it doesn't feel like a chore and easy to maintain within your lifestyle." This is it for me, absolutely. I've always been a bike commuter, so that was my cardio for decades— 10x 20min bike ride to and from work each week, year round. When I lost the commute with pandemic WFH, I fairly quickly shot up 15lbs. The journey back was in finding ways that I could recreationally get that same experience, which for me has been a combination of walks, distance cycling, and lane swimming. All of these are things I enjoy for their own sake, and are great mental health resets. They're also things I can do with others, so there's that little bit of accountability woven into it as well. I'm not really watching what I eat, though I did cut out a bunch of snacking (especially at bedtime), and I switched my breakfast to a protein smoothie. Now I'm down 30lbs+ from my pandemic high, and probably the best shape I've been in since my early twenties.

Attummm 4y ago
Bam, congratulations on your success with your health journey. :)

imwillofficial 4y ago

We were fit a long time before processed foods, massive environmental pollutants, stable hormone levels, etc..: Modern man so screwed even if everything is done right.

z9znz 4y ago

> we should focus on daily fun movements that we like to do I fully agree. If some of that fun actually involves going to the gym, then great. But there are a lot of "play" activities which are compelling and fun while also making you healthier. Sports is an obvious one, and dancing is a less obvious one. One hour of salsa dancing (with breaks and partner changes) is a good cardio exercise which is also lots of fun. And as or more importantly, the mental and emotional boost is something many of us need more than bigger muscles. I like both.

whateveracct 4y ago

Counting calories always comes off as so disordered to me. Maybe it's because I've grown up around multiple people with eating disorders.

BobbyJo 4y ago

How do we know if we are moving enough or eating the right amount if we do not use some quantifiable basis? Moving for fun is all well and good, and exercise should be fun as opposed to a chore, but the dose dependency needs to be accounted for. Whole foods work well because they tend to hit the calorie and nutrient milestones without much tracking being necessary, but we only know that because other people have done the tracking for us. I think the information these people put out should be used to inform a lifestyle that one constructs, not to construct it directly.