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> Failure is not an option: You cannot make up an excuse not to work out. Failure is inevitable, much more so if you live alone, so living through disaster b

> Failure is not an option: You cannot make up an excuse not to work out. Failure is inevitable, much more so if you live alone, so living through disaster becomes the option. Variety is probably also good. Running the numbers, though, the greater return is on managing your calorie intake. You can burn 200 extra calories managing chickens every day or you can figure out where that 200 calories needs to be cut out of your diet. The latter is a far more reliable approach.

Tade0 2y ago
The former is actually something that was put into question in recent years. Apparently you're not actually appreciably affecting your total calorie burn by doing exercise, as the body keeps that number within a narrow range. Where does the energy come from then? Other processes, like inflammation, which are invested in less.
- akira2501 2y ago
  > Apparently you're not actually appreciably affecting your total calorie burn by doing exercise, Within a limited range, I assume? Athletes being the obvious counter example of this failing past a certain limit. > Other processes, like inflammation, which are invested in less. Is the implication that inflammation is a response to not being active?
  - Tade0 2y ago
    Excerpt from an article about these findings: For a more granular look, comparing individuals instead of population averages, I recently joined Luke and her team, including Dugas, to examine activity and energy expenditure in a large, multiyear analysis known as the Modeling the Epidemiological Transition Study (METS). More than 300 participants wore accelerometers similar to a Fitbit or other fitness tracker 24 hours a day for an entire week while their daily energy expenditure was measured with doubly labeled water. We found that daily physical activity, tracked by the accelerometers, was only weakly related to metabolism. On average, couch potatoes tended to spend about 200 fewer calories each day than people who were moderately active: the kind of folks who get some exercise during the week and make a point to take the stairs. But more important, energy expenditure plateaued at higher activity levels: people with the most intensely active daily lives burned the same number of calories each day as those with moderately active lives. The same phenomenon keeping Hadza energy expenditure in line with that of other populations was evident among individuals in the study.
- episteme 2y ago
  It depends on what you call exercise. Doing 5 minutes of simple body weight exercises no, but weight lifting or cardio that actually makes you break a sweat uses a non-trivial amount of calories. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25162652/#:~:text=Caloric%20expenditure%20was%20significantly%20(p,%C2%B1%201.25%20kcal%C2%B7min) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25162652/#:~:text=Caloric%20....
  - Tade0 2y ago
    Yes it does, but it's not like your metabolism tracks your activity like that. Until relatively recently(20 years) studies have been measuring the wrong thing, assuming metabolism is flexible and follows activity. Studies measuring actual energy expenditure (using methods like double labelled water) confirmed, counterintuitively, that adjusted for weight, lean mass and age, people have roughly the same metabolic rate regardless of activity. It's an evolutionary adaptation for periods of low food availability - the body does everything it can to not touch those fat stores.
    - episteme 2y ago
      I feel like this is a misinterpretation of the findings. I think the finding is that your metabolic rate doesn't change much if you are very active but you still burn a lot more calories doing the activity. Physically moving weight around (weightlifting) or moving your body for tens of miles (marathon runner) requires a large amount of energy, your body can't just take this from other processes, it needs more input or it will have to burn the fat. People who train any sport need to eat a lot more too maintain their weight.
      - Tade0 2y ago
        Nope. It's actually "no real difference between active and sedentary people". Here's a podcast with one of the researchers who studied this: https://theproof.com/rethinking-diet-exercise-with-herman-pontzer-phd/ https://theproof.com/rethinking-diet-exercise-with-herman-po... The gist is that he went to a modern hunter-gatherer community, studied their activities and measured their energy expenditure. To his incredulity, the results indicated that these very active people use as much energy as their sedentary counterparts living in civilisation. Initial conclusion was that there must have been a mistake somewhere, but the same measurement using a different method yielded the same results.
polar8 2y ago
You are correct that weight management is 100% diet. But movement and exercise have myriad benefits beyond burning excess calories.

Tade0 2y ago

The former is actually something that was put into question in recent years. Apparently you're not actually appreciably affecting your total calorie burn by doing exercise, as the body keeps that number within a narrow range. Where does the energy come from then? Other processes, like inflammation, which are invested in less.

akira2501 2y ago
> Apparently you're not actually appreciably affecting your total calorie burn by doing exercise, Within a limited range, I assume? Athletes being the obvious counter example of this failing past a certain limit. > Other processes, like inflammation, which are invested in less. Is the implication that inflammation is a response to not being active?
- Tade0 2y ago
  Excerpt from an article about these findings: For a more granular look, comparing individuals instead of population averages, I recently joined Luke and her team, including Dugas, to examine activity and energy expenditure in a large, multiyear analysis known as the Modeling the Epidemiological Transition Study (METS). More than 300 participants wore accelerometers similar to a Fitbit or other fitness tracker 24 hours a day for an entire week while their daily energy expenditure was measured with doubly labeled water. We found that daily physical activity, tracked by the accelerometers, was only weakly related to metabolism. On average, couch potatoes tended to spend about 200 fewer calories each day than people who were moderately active: the kind of folks who get some exercise during the week and make a point to take the stairs. But more important, energy expenditure plateaued at higher activity levels: people with the most intensely active daily lives burned the same number of calories each day as those with moderately active lives. The same phenomenon keeping Hadza energy expenditure in line with that of other populations was evident among individuals in the study.
episteme 2y ago
It depends on what you call exercise. Doing 5 minutes of simple body weight exercises no, but weight lifting or cardio that actually makes you break a sweat uses a non-trivial amount of calories. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25162652/#:~:text=Caloric%20expenditure%20was%20significantly%20(p,%C2%B1%201.25%20kcal%C2%B7min) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25162652/#:~:text=Caloric%20....
- Tade0 2y ago
  Yes it does, but it's not like your metabolism tracks your activity like that. Until relatively recently(20 years) studies have been measuring the wrong thing, assuming metabolism is flexible and follows activity. Studies measuring actual energy expenditure (using methods like double labelled water) confirmed, counterintuitively, that adjusted for weight, lean mass and age, people have roughly the same metabolic rate regardless of activity. It's an evolutionary adaptation for periods of low food availability - the body does everything it can to not touch those fat stores.
  - episteme 2y ago
    I feel like this is a misinterpretation of the findings. I think the finding is that your metabolic rate doesn't change much if you are very active but you still burn a lot more calories doing the activity. Physically moving weight around (weightlifting) or moving your body for tens of miles (marathon runner) requires a large amount of energy, your body can't just take this from other processes, it needs more input or it will have to burn the fat. People who train any sport need to eat a lot more too maintain their weight.
    - Tade0 2y ago
      Nope. It's actually "no real difference between active and sedentary people". Here's a podcast with one of the researchers who studied this: https://theproof.com/rethinking-diet-exercise-with-herman-pontzer-phd/ https://theproof.com/rethinking-diet-exercise-with-herman-po... The gist is that he went to a modern hunter-gatherer community, studied their activities and measured their energy expenditure. To his incredulity, the results indicated that these very active people use as much energy as their sedentary counterparts living in civilisation. Initial conclusion was that there must have been a mistake somewhere, but the same measurement using a different method yielded the same results.

polar8 2y ago

You are correct that weight management is 100% diet. But movement and exercise have myriad benefits beyond burning excess calories.