19 ms·

But exercise is also supposed to help you age better, and doesn't exercising mean you have to consume more calories?

by klipt 3y ago

whirlwin 3y ago
It's paradoxal. But the least preferable would then be to eat more AND avoid exercise
timcobb 3y ago
This is something I’ve been wondering. And the older I’ve gotten, the more it feels like I need to eat to recover even from cardio, let alone weight training. When I was young, recovery from medium-intensity cardio didn’t seem to require any extra caloric intake.
- Heliosmaster 3y ago
  Could this just be a perception issue? When you are young you are generally less careful about what you eat, and eat a lot of calorie dense food.
- kennethh 3y ago
  As you get older it take longer to recover. I noticed this the first time around 35 and now at 51 it take even longer to recover. I also notice that real food feels a lot better compared to when I was younger, especially benefitable for me have been to eat more meat which make it possible for me to not to eat directly after training. In general I read that the digestion gets worse the older you are and you need to provide more high quality food ie no pop tarts.
- scotty79 3y ago
  Any recovery takes more time as you get older. Heck, if I exert myself I don't even feel the damage the next day like when I was young. It hurts on the day after the next. Not sure about food though. I don't feel any different.
erklik 3y ago
> doesn't exercising mean you have to consume more calories You can't exercise off calories. The difference in burning rate vs consumption is far too high for most cases.. I always thought the exercise that helped age better, was largely that the diet remains constant..
- whirlwin 3y ago
  Consider the case of an individual who manages to have a stable body mass without training. One would most certainly require more calories if he/her started training.
  - silisili 3y ago
    It -really- depends on what you're doing. If you're an olympic athlete swimming 10 miles a day, you need more calories. If you're the typical American walking or jogging even for an hour, you burn basically a can of Coke or two.
  - ekianjo 3y ago
    Unless you are exercising 10 hours per day you dont lose much calories by exercising
    - arghnoname 3y ago
      I ran 15 miles on Monday at a pretty relaxed pace (took 2.5 hours). My watch, while probably not perfectly accurate, nevertheless suggested I burned approximately 1640 additional calories during this time. This is 1/4 as much as 10 hours and is a significant proportion of my basal metabolic expenditure. On a more typical day, I may run closer to an hour and be closer to 600-700 calories. I'd still call this significant. You can burn significant calories exercising, but the exercise is probably kind of unpleasant.
      - ekianjo 3y ago
        Good. What I mean is that it is a lot more effort than cutting down on an extra snack. Running a hour for 600 calories does not sound like its very effective since its just about the calories of 2 cookies.
q-base 3y ago
Depends on your goal. You could also keep your diet consistent and do more exercise to produce a deficit. If your goal is longevity, then this may be a viable option. If your goal is to be faster, stronger or bigger, then this is probably not the right approach. But reading article the conclusion seems to be that we simply do not know enough about how this all works. Giving absolute ranges of calories also seems like the wrong approach. There are differences in sex, in height in activity levels etc. etc. etc. Would someone on a 2000 calorie diet who was moderately active fare better than someone on a 2500 calorie diet who was more active? I do not think we have the answer to that.
- globular-toast 3y ago
  It's not about being in a deficit. It's about consuming fewer calories.
onetimeuse92304 3y ago
It is thought to be (but not proven) to be a tradeoff between maximum achievable age and maximum achievable healthy age. You need to consume less calories to have longest maximum achievable age (again, not proven in humans). You need to move more to have longest achievable healthy age (this is much better documented). Personally, I prefer to be healthier for longer even if it means I will live shorter in absolute terms. I am running every day which hopefully will help me have denser and more robust bones and joints and tendons. And I am lifting weights so that I still have some muscle into old age when they inevitably start to shrink. Core muscles are important to prevent fragility as we age.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > tradeoff between maximum achievable age and maximum achievable healthy age What is this based on? The evidence I’ve seen is calorie restriction and exercise both increase one’s healthspan.
  - onetimeuse92304 3y ago
    Calories can only be restricted temporarily. Your body has finite stores of energy until you run out of it and die of starvation. So over long periods of time, you consume almost exactly as much calories as you use. The only way to consume less calories over your lifetime is to use less calories over your lifetime. And for this you need to move less. So "calorie restriction" is opposite from higher activity levels (exercise).
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > only way to consume less calories over your lifetime is to use less calories over your lifetime. And for this you need to move less Outside elite athletes, most people burn a significant minority of calories on physical activity [1]. Again, we have actual research around calorie restriction + exercise. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6003580/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6003580/
ralusek 3y ago
I think of it like this: if you leave your car sitting in the garage, it’s not for good for it. Gas will gum up, battery will die, all manner of issues from not running it. However, what ultimately will make a car crap out is the number of miles on it. Running it kills it, but not running it can kill it first. Burning calories by eating/exercise is largely what kills us, but exercise can help keep our heart running when it otherwise might’ve failed due to congestive heart issues, or diabetes, etc. Death from metabolism means you avoided the other stuff.
- XorNot 3y ago
  The human body is not a car. The same genetic material in your cells can produce a brand new infant who lives another full lifetime.
Heliosmaster 3y ago
Excercise absolutely makes you age better. Actually, it seems that in order to have a decrease in all-mortality you need to exercise quite a lot (at least 1.5hrs a day.. for the rest of your life). Aerobic exercise of course means more caloric expenditure, which you should totally compensate, but that's not hard for regular folks who train, only for extreme athletes
- raxxorraxor 3y ago
  Assuming a 80 year lifespan, that would amount to 5 years exercising. So you need to weigh that up again...
  - simmerup 3y ago
    This is why it’s best to find a form of exercise you enjoy
  - jabl 3y ago
    If you hate exercising you won't do it for 1.5h/day anyway. If you enjoy exercising, you get to do something you like, which on top of that increases your (healthy) lifespan. Win win.
  - highwaylights 3y ago
    If you really like swimming / football / cricket / basketball / hiking / climbing / whatever then it sounds like a great trade-off. More fun in exchange for better health is a deal anyone would take.
3abiton 3y ago
If you subscribe to the information theory of aging (look up david sinclair's book), the recommendation is fasting + exercise. Not necessarily fewer calories, but calorie time restrictions. Ideally "higher quality" food during a specific time period, rather than lots of low quality food spread out during the day.
tempestn 3y ago
I actually recall reading recently that that's not necessarily the case outside of extreme levels of exercise, because the body can compensate by spending fewer calories on other things - some of which it may be beneficial to put less energy into, like producing inflammation. Just did a quick search and found this paper, which suggests an average rate of compensation of 28%, but notes that it varies significantly: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982221011209 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096098222...
- trnl 3y ago
  I believe Chris van Tulleken recently cited another paper in his book – "Ultra-Processed People": https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/physiol.00027.2018?rfr_dat=cr_pub++0pubmed&url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr_id=ori%3Arid%3Acrossref.org https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/physiol.000... In it Herman Pontzer investigated the daily calorie burn of different lifestyles: hunter-gatherers, farmers, and office workers. Studying the Hadza tribe in Tanzania, he discovered that their calorie expenditure was surprisingly similar to that of Americans and Europeans. Results suggest that increasing activity won't impact total energy expenditure. But without exercise, the energy spent by bodies on other things like stress, inflammation, etc.
gwd 3y ago
My theory is that it's more to do with going through periods of calorie deficit, rather than total maximum number of calories. There was a paper posted here a year or two ago purporting to show that fasting triggered "autophagy", which seems to be a sort of "stack ranking" phase for the body. Anecdotally, I'm nearly 50, and for the last decade people have been commenting on how young I look. All my younger siblings have loads of gray hair, and I've only got a few; my mother even asked me if I dyed my hair (I don't!). Possibly it's just genetics or something else (like not having a child to take care of until a few years ago); but also possibly it's because I've been regularly doing fasts for religious reasons since I was in my late 20's. I typically aim to do a 36-hour fast once a week (eat dinner on Sunday, eat breakfast on Tuesday); and I've done a number of week-long fasts as well. There are loads and loads of benefits to fasting, and the potential for a longer, healthier life is one of them.
- sigmoid10 3y ago
  >like not having a child to take care of until a few years ago This is 100% the main reason. There are a few studies in this direction showing e.g. that raising a kid ages you faster than smoking or being obese. The physical and mental stress accumulated over so many years is insane.
  - SquibblesRedux 3y ago
    Anecdotally, this feels true. However, I have not been able to find any credible evidence to back up the claim that raising one or more children has a net-negative effect greater than smoking or being obese.
  - brainzap 3y ago
    not mentioning sleep interruption, tststs
  - cudgy 3y ago
    Is this from the kids or the spouse along with the kids?
- penjelly 3y ago
padraigf 3y ago
I think it's more about not having excess calories. As for the science, my understanding is...excess calories = excess glucose = insulin-response, which is associated with inflammation. A good book I read on it recently is, The Intermittent Fasting Revolution by Mark P. Mattson https://www.amazon.co.uk/Intermittent-Fasting-Revolution-Optimizing-Performance/dp/0262545985 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Intermittent-Fasting-Revolution-Opt...
bossstein 3y ago
From a normal daily calorie expenditure only a fraction goes on physical movement. The greatest share goes on cell biochemistry, followed by digestion, then normal stuff like heart beats. Additionally all the physical movement like rolling over when you sleep and reaching for a coffee. This means that for most people an hour work out will add less than 10% to your daily energy expenditure. And your body can naturally reallocate energy from different processes if you are in deficit. Like running some other things in a slightly lower energy mode. If you are in a serious deficit for a long time it can be harmful. But the more immediate worry is getting the right things at the right times.
- atmin 3y ago
  I just ran for a hour and burned about 45% of my resting calories. I do this every other day. 3.5 hours of exercise per week sounds reasonable to me.
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    How many Calories (I assume kilocalories) is that? According to this article: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/23/sports/olympics/cross-country-skiing-food.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/23/sports/olympics/cross-cou... >A typical elite cross-country skier will burn about 30 calories a minute during training–by comparison, a 155-pound person on an elliptical machine burns about 11 calories a minute. On the rowing machine, I can get up to about 500 to 600 Calories in 45min to 1 hour. But I also feel like most people would not work out hard enough to burn 10 calories per minute, especially if we are talking about older people.
    - atmin 3y ago
      799 total calories, 55:33 run duration, 146 avg heart rate. Resting metabolism: about 1800 calories per day.
ColonelBlimp 3y ago
Not necessarily. I'm in my early fifties and I typically run 30 miles/50 km per week. I've been doing this for a couple of years and I reckon I consume less calories and eat less in general than during my sedentary phase. I suppose feeling better overall (physically and mentally) makes it easier for me to have a more rational relationship with food.
erispoe 3y ago
It's the calorie deficit that matters.
francisofascii 3y ago
Maybe it has to do with spending those calories before it gets stored as fat. If you consume glucose, it first gets stored as glycogen in the muscles for short term storage. Maybe if you burn that energy as glycogen then, it doesn't count?

But exercise is also supposed to help you age better, and doesn't exercising mean you have to consume more calories?

by klipt 3y ago

But exercise is also supposed to help you age better, and doesn't exercising mean you have to consume more calories?

whirlwin 3y ago

It's paradoxal. But the least preferable would then be to eat more AND avoid exercise

timcobb 3y ago

This is something I’ve been wondering. And the older I’ve gotten, the more it feels like I need to eat to recover even from cardio, let alone weight training. When I was young, recovery from medium-intensity cardio didn’t seem to require any extra caloric intake.

Heliosmaster 3y ago
Could this just be a perception issue? When you are young you are generally less careful about what you eat, and eat a lot of calorie dense food.
kennethh 3y ago
As you get older it take longer to recover. I noticed this the first time around 35 and now at 51 it take even longer to recover. I also notice that real food feels a lot better compared to when I was younger, especially benefitable for me have been to eat more meat which make it possible for me to not to eat directly after training. In general I read that the digestion gets worse the older you are and you need to provide more high quality food ie no pop tarts.
scotty79 3y ago
Any recovery takes more time as you get older. Heck, if I exert myself I don't even feel the damage the next day like when I was young. It hurts on the day after the next. Not sure about food though. I don't feel any different.

erklik 3y ago

> doesn't exercising mean you have to consume more calories You can't exercise off calories. The difference in burning rate vs consumption is far too high for most cases.. I always thought the exercise that helped age better, was largely that the diet remains constant..

whirlwin 3y ago
Consider the case of an individual who manages to have a stable body mass without training. One would most certainly require more calories if he/her started training.
- silisili 3y ago
  It -really- depends on what you're doing. If you're an olympic athlete swimming 10 miles a day, you need more calories. If you're the typical American walking or jogging even for an hour, you burn basically a can of Coke or two.
- ekianjo 3y ago
  Unless you are exercising 10 hours per day you dont lose much calories by exercising
  - arghnoname 3y ago
    I ran 15 miles on Monday at a pretty relaxed pace (took 2.5 hours). My watch, while probably not perfectly accurate, nevertheless suggested I burned approximately 1640 additional calories during this time. This is 1/4 as much as 10 hours and is a significant proportion of my basal metabolic expenditure. On a more typical day, I may run closer to an hour and be closer to 600-700 calories. I'd still call this significant. You can burn significant calories exercising, but the exercise is probably kind of unpleasant.
    - ekianjo 3y ago
      Good. What I mean is that it is a lot more effort than cutting down on an extra snack. Running a hour for 600 calories does not sound like its very effective since its just about the calories of 2 cookies.

q-base 3y ago

Depends on your goal. You could also keep your diet consistent and do more exercise to produce a deficit. If your goal is longevity, then this may be a viable option. If your goal is to be faster, stronger or bigger, then this is probably not the right approach. But reading article the conclusion seems to be that we simply do not know enough about how this all works. Giving absolute ranges of calories also seems like the wrong approach. There are differences in sex, in height in activity levels etc. etc. etc. Would someone on a 2000 calorie diet who was moderately active fare better than someone on a 2500 calorie diet who was more active? I do not think we have the answer to that.

globular-toast 3y ago
It's not about being in a deficit. It's about consuming fewer calories.

onetimeuse92304 3y ago

It is thought to be (but not proven) to be a tradeoff between maximum achievable age and maximum achievable healthy age. You need to consume less calories to have longest maximum achievable age (again, not proven in humans). You need to move more to have longest achievable healthy age (this is much better documented). Personally, I prefer to be healthier for longer even if it means I will live shorter in absolute terms. I am running every day which hopefully will help me have denser and more robust bones and joints and tendons. And I am lifting weights so that I still have some muscle into old age when they inevitably start to shrink. Core muscles are important to prevent fragility as we age.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> tradeoff between maximum achievable age and maximum achievable healthy age What is this based on? The evidence I’ve seen is calorie restriction and exercise both increase one’s healthspan.
- onetimeuse92304 3y ago
  Calories can only be restricted temporarily. Your body has finite stores of energy until you run out of it and die of starvation. So over long periods of time, you consume almost exactly as much calories as you use. The only way to consume less calories over your lifetime is to use less calories over your lifetime. And for this you need to move less. So "calorie restriction" is opposite from higher activity levels (exercise).
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > only way to consume less calories over your lifetime is to use less calories over your lifetime. And for this you need to move less Outside elite athletes, most people burn a significant minority of calories on physical activity [1]. Again, we have actual research around calorie restriction + exercise. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6003580/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6003580/

ralusek 3y ago

I think of it like this: if you leave your car sitting in the garage, it’s not for good for it. Gas will gum up, battery will die, all manner of issues from not running it. However, what ultimately will make a car crap out is the number of miles on it. Running it kills it, but not running it can kill it first. Burning calories by eating/exercise is largely what kills us, but exercise can help keep our heart running when it otherwise might’ve failed due to congestive heart issues, or diabetes, etc. Death from metabolism means you avoided the other stuff.

XorNot 3y ago
The human body is not a car. The same genetic material in your cells can produce a brand new infant who lives another full lifetime.

Heliosmaster 3y ago

Excercise absolutely makes you age better. Actually, it seems that in order to have a decrease in all-mortality you need to exercise quite a lot (at least 1.5hrs a day.. for the rest of your life). Aerobic exercise of course means more caloric expenditure, which you should totally compensate, but that's not hard for regular folks who train, only for extreme athletes

raxxorraxor 3y ago
Assuming a 80 year lifespan, that would amount to 5 years exercising. So you need to weigh that up again...
- simmerup 3y ago
  This is why it’s best to find a form of exercise you enjoy
- jabl 3y ago
  If you hate exercising you won't do it for 1.5h/day anyway. If you enjoy exercising, you get to do something you like, which on top of that increases your (healthy) lifespan. Win win.
- highwaylights 3y ago
  If you really like swimming / football / cricket / basketball / hiking / climbing / whatever then it sounds like a great trade-off. More fun in exchange for better health is a deal anyone would take.

3abiton 3y ago

If you subscribe to the information theory of aging (look up david sinclair's book), the recommendation is fasting + exercise. Not necessarily fewer calories, but calorie time restrictions. Ideally "higher quality" food during a specific time period, rather than lots of low quality food spread out during the day.

tempestn 3y ago

I actually recall reading recently that that's not necessarily the case outside of extreme levels of exercise, because the body can compensate by spending fewer calories on other things - some of which it may be beneficial to put less energy into, like producing inflammation. Just did a quick search and found this paper, which suggests an average rate of compensation of 28%, but notes that it varies significantly: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982221011209 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096098222...

trnl 3y ago
I believe Chris van Tulleken recently cited another paper in his book – "Ultra-Processed People": https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/physiol.00027.2018?rfr_dat=cr_pub++0pubmed&url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr_id=ori%3Arid%3Acrossref.org https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/physiol.000... In it Herman Pontzer investigated the daily calorie burn of different lifestyles: hunter-gatherers, farmers, and office workers. Studying the Hadza tribe in Tanzania, he discovered that their calorie expenditure was surprisingly similar to that of Americans and Europeans. Results suggest that increasing activity won't impact total energy expenditure. But without exercise, the energy spent by bodies on other things like stress, inflammation, etc.

gwd 3y ago

My theory is that it's more to do with going through periods of calorie deficit, rather than total maximum number of calories. There was a paper posted here a year or two ago purporting to show that fasting triggered "autophagy", which seems to be a sort of "stack ranking" phase for the body. Anecdotally, I'm nearly 50, and for the last decade people have been commenting on how young I look. All my younger siblings have loads of gray hair, and I've only got a few; my mother even asked me if I dyed my hair (I don't!). Possibly it's just genetics or something else (like not having a child to take care of until a few years ago); but also possibly it's because I've been regularly doing fasts for religious reasons since I was in my late 20's. I typically aim to do a 36-hour fast once a week (eat dinner on Sunday, eat breakfast on Tuesday); and I've done a number of week-long fasts as well. There are loads and loads of benefits to fasting, and the potential for a longer, healthier life is one of them.

sigmoid10 3y ago
>like not having a child to take care of until a few years ago This is 100% the main reason. There are a few studies in this direction showing e.g. that raising a kid ages you faster than smoking or being obese. The physical and mental stress accumulated over so many years is insane.
- SquibblesRedux 3y ago
  Anecdotally, this feels true. However, I have not been able to find any credible evidence to back up the claim that raising one or more children has a net-negative effect greater than smoking or being obese.
- brainzap 3y ago
  not mentioning sleep interruption, tststs
- cudgy 3y ago
  Is this from the kids or the spouse along with the kids?
penjelly 3y ago

padraigf 3y ago

I think it's more about not having excess calories. As for the science, my understanding is...excess calories = excess glucose = insulin-response, which is associated with inflammation. A good book I read on it recently is, The Intermittent Fasting Revolution by Mark P. Mattson https://www.amazon.co.uk/Intermittent-Fasting-Revolution-Optimizing-Performance/dp/0262545985 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Intermittent-Fasting-Revolution-Opt...

bossstein 3y ago

From a normal daily calorie expenditure only a fraction goes on physical movement. The greatest share goes on cell biochemistry, followed by digestion, then normal stuff like heart beats. Additionally all the physical movement like rolling over when you sleep and reaching for a coffee. This means that for most people an hour work out will add less than 10% to your daily energy expenditure. And your body can naturally reallocate energy from different processes if you are in deficit. Like running some other things in a slightly lower energy mode. If you are in a serious deficit for a long time it can be harmful. But the more immediate worry is getting the right things at the right times.

atmin 3y ago
I just ran for a hour and burned about 45% of my resting calories. I do this every other day. 3.5 hours of exercise per week sounds reasonable to me.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  How many Calories (I assume kilocalories) is that? According to this article: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/23/sports/olympics/cross-country-skiing-food.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/23/sports/olympics/cross-cou... >A typical elite cross-country skier will burn about 30 calories a minute during training–by comparison, a 155-pound person on an elliptical machine burns about 11 calories a minute. On the rowing machine, I can get up to about 500 to 600 Calories in 45min to 1 hour. But I also feel like most people would not work out hard enough to burn 10 calories per minute, especially if we are talking about older people.
  - atmin 3y ago
    799 total calories, 55:33 run duration, 146 avg heart rate. Resting metabolism: about 1800 calories per day.

ColonelBlimp 3y ago

Not necessarily. I'm in my early fifties and I typically run 30 miles/50 km per week. I've been doing this for a couple of years and I reckon I consume less calories and eat less in general than during my sedentary phase. I suppose feeling better overall (physically and mentally) makes it easier for me to have a more rational relationship with food.

erispoe 3y ago

It's the calorie deficit that matters.

francisofascii 3y ago

Maybe it has to do with spending those calories before it gets stored as fat. If you consume glucose, it first gets stored as glycogen in the muscles for short term storage. Maybe if you burn that energy as glycogen then, it doesn't count?