10 ms·

Unsurprisingly, the title is sensationalist and not representative of the study. The study compares energy expenditure across different economic groups i.e. wes

• mvieira38 1y ago
  Would you say Luka, Neymar and others are outrunning their diets? Did Shaq, too? You don't automatically get a good physique by being an athlete, you still have to earn it. People just see that all of the top athletes have earned it and take it for granted, like they don't have world class dieticians and a huge financial incentive to maintain a strict diet
  • bsoles 1y ago
    Michael Phelps did outswim his diet. He famously ate a lot of junk food and pizza, and yet remained fit because of his huge daily calorie expenditure. A direct quote from an interview with him, where he states: "I just sort of try to cram whatever I can into my body. It’s pretty much whatever I feel like eating, I’m going to eat".
    • 71153750 1y ago
      I think the challenge with swimming is that there is thermodynamics of swimming through water to also contend with. So your body is also having to keep warm whilst losing heat to better heat conducting fluid (water vs air). But I still agree, if Phelps was running or even walking with the same effort he could eat similarly.
    • drdec 1y ago
      How many hours per day was he swimming?
      • recursive 1y ago
        A lot. But a possible amount.
        • drdec 1y ago
          Clearly a possibly amount since he did it. Would it be possible for someone who was not supporting themselves that way? I.e. for someone with a 40 hr / week job?
          • recursive 1y ago
            I don't know about possible, but I'm sure the Michael Phelps regimen is wildly impractical for everyone, including Michael Phelps. My personal experience is that "outrunning" a poor diet is absolutely possible, and I kind of did it unintentionally. I started biking to work out of necessity. I wasn't planning to lose weight, but it happened. I had no weight loss ambitions or plans, but it was probably a good thing.
        • audinobs 1y ago
          The problem is comparing the average person to one of the greatest Olympic athletes is completely pointless because of genetics. Shaq could easily dunk a basketball weighing 300lbs. You can't infer from that then that any person can weigh 300lbs and dunk a basketball.
  • 0x737368 1y ago
    I can't take this Luka slander. The guy carried the ungrateful Mavericks team for 6 seasons averaging 35mpg. He's not out of shape. Same thing with Jokic, 10 seasons of 32mpg average. Their mpg also go up in the playoffs. People need to stop thinking about <10% body fat as the "athletic standard". Some players are super skinny, some players have more mass to them and use it to their advantage. I do agree with regards to Shaq, the guy coasted in his talent later in his career and let himself go. Had he a better work ethic he could have been in the conversation for one of the greatest players ever.
    • mvieira38 1y ago
      I'm a Luka fan, but he does look a (hehe) little chubby these past 2 seasons and it has impacted his game noticeably. Just compare the explosiveness from his first seasons to now
      • 0x737368 1y ago
        Doesn't matter how you look, if you can play those kind of minutes and perform like they do you're in athletic shape. Luka and Jokic don't need to be super slim like Edwards, Morant and Westbrook because they don't rely on supernatural athleticism - they rely on other facets of their game where having a bit more mass is advantageous or at the very least not detrimental. In any case, Doncic got bullied and embarrassed by Mavs FO's comments about his weight and work ethic(complete lies to try and save face for their terrible and shady trade) so you can look forward to a slimmer Luka next season.
  • djtango 1y ago
    When I did my first two fights in muay thai I wasn't watching my weight neither changing my diet during fight camp and came in 6kg underweight. I was absolutely shredded and still ate stuff like katsu curry weekly
• savanaly 1y ago
  Counterpoint: that the kind of exercise most people engage in with a goal of weight loss isn't going to work, but the kind of dieting would do might work, is perfectly reasonably expressed with the phrase "You can't outrun a bad diet". I'm aware a more pedantic and literal reading gives lie to the phrase, but that is true of almost every single English true statement ever written.
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  • djtango 1y ago
    Intensity of the workout matters. When I go wakeboarding with my wife I build up a nice big appetite. When I go to muay thai I get pretty severe appetite suppression and sometimes have to force myself to eat. The other thing is that if you track >>performance<< you naturally start caring about diet and lifestyle. So for people just trying their first 5k - I highly recommend tracking and setting time goals. Nothing keeps me honest about my diet like performance
    • jorvi 1y ago
      That's the point of the study though. If you workout harder than your baseline, you will burn more calories than your baseline. But if you do that workout often enough, for various reasons you will return to baseline calorie expenditure. This means that if you want to lose weight consistently, working out is useless in that sense. You might see benefits for 1 month or 3 months or 6 months, but eventually your body adjusts. Working out is great for a plethora of reasons. And this calorie budget rebalancing is one of them, since it means inflammation or auto-immune responses get downregulated. Losing weight is not one of those benefits. Whereas it is often held up as such which leads to intense disappointment and relapse with overweight people, because they think "oh, if I just go for six intense two-hour jogs a week, I can keep eating sumptuously."
      • SirMaster 1y ago
        How exactly can your body adjust that much though? There is some minimum baseline level of calorie burn to stay alive and keep your body temp etc. If you workout enough calories that exceeds the minimum baseline to keep you alive, the body can't adapt below that or adapt into the negative. For a 200 lb man, jogging for 2 hours burns like 2000 calories, so that's 12,000 a week for 6 times a week. What's the lowest a body will adapt to slow it's baseline metabolic rate? I am reading that the BMR can only reduce by like maybe 15-20% due to body adaptation. This would put their baseline calorie burn at around 1500, and then if they are burning ~1700 a day from their jogging, they can eat 3200 a day to maintain or 3000 to even slowly lose weight over time, which is a decent amount that you can have a pretty fun "diet" of what you consume IMO.
• drooby 1y ago
  Magnus Midtbo has Kristian Blummrnfelt on his show, who is the Olympic gold medalist for triathlon. Kristian essentially eats pasta and Nutella and bread all day. So technically, yes, you can outrun a bad diet.. Though me thinks this article is aimed at the average person.
  • rojeee 1y ago
    Nitpick but Alex Yee won gold in 2024, Blummenfelt was 12th!
• jmyeet 1y ago
  I don't think the existence of elite athletes alters the central point: it is vastly to go into calorific deficit by altering diet than increasing exercise. Running is around 600 calories per hour [1]. A large fries from McDonald's is 480 calories. A can of Coke is 140 calories. What's easier? Not eating the fries and drinking the Coke or running vigorously for an hour? When you look at the group who have become morbidly obese, you see diets that reach 10, 20 or 30+ thousand calories a day. You get to 600+ pounds and you actually need like 20,000 calories just to maintain that weight. When such people decide to change, they're often put on a medical diet of ~2400 calories. There is no way they could exercise down to this kind of calorie deficit. Peple should think of food in terms of how much exercise it is because it becomes impossible to ignore just how much easier it is to alter diet than it is to increase calorie expenditure. [1]: https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/weight-loss/in-depth/exercise/art-20050999 https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/weight-loss/in-...
  • dragonwriter 1y ago
    > I don't think the existence of elite athletes alters the central point: it is vastly to go into calorific deficit by altering diet than increasing exercise. You left out the key word in that sentence, which should have appeared after “vastly”. I assume you mean easier, but in fact that’s not true for a lot of people. > You get to 600+ pounds and you actually need like 20,000 calories just to maintain that weight. That's wildly inaccurate. It’s more like 5k than 20k. Maintenace calorie requirements are basically linear with weight given similar activity patterns. Also, most people who need to lose weight haven't already gotten to 600+ lbs.
    • kelnos 1y ago
      > You left out the key word in that sentence, which should have appeared after “vastly”. I assume you mean easier, but in fact that’s not true for a lot of people. Not sure I agree with that. I think it's probably true that adopting even a minimal exercise regimen is easier than adjusting diet, for most people. But actually turning that new exercise regimen into a calorie deficit is significantly harder. Not only do you have to exercise probably quite a bit per week to get you into a deficit, you have to actively work to not eat more. If you start an exercise regimen, I guarantee you're going to be hungrier, and unless you're very strict with yourself, you can easily eat enough extra to wipe out most or all of the new calorie "savings".
• nightski 1y ago
  I feel you are precisely making the opposite point. Athletes eat more because of their energy expenditure. The same happens with people trying to lose weight. It dramatically increases your hunger making a cut that much harder. I've found that engaging in simple activities like walking is a sweet spot for weight loss. Anything more rigorous and I just can't do it. But that is very anecdotal and may not apply to many people. I would not say I have the strongest willpower when it comes to hunger, especially when stressed due to work or life.
• swat535 1y ago
  > The sample dataset explicitly excluded 'athletes', so would exclude people that _are_ outrunning a bad diet. You can't outrun a bad diet. This is such a myth and I have no idea where it's coming from. Perhaps it's a nice lie one can tell himself to continue eating junk and not feel guilty about it. Athletes, especially body builders require a lot of calories but their diet is surprisingly healthy. They eat plenty of protein, carbohydrates minerals, vitamins and healthy fats.
  • filleduchaos 1y ago
    You very much can outrun a bad diet as far as weight loss/gain goes, which is the topic at hand (not general health).
  • 3acctforcom 1y ago
    I've lost 100 lbs twice. You absolutely can outrun a bad diet lol. It's just a LOT of exercise and counting all of your calories. A 1600 calorie bag of chips is 4 hours of cardio :)
    • kelnos 1y ago
      So you didn't outrun a bad diet. You counted calories and matched your diet to your exercise (or vice versa) to get the weight outcome you wanted. I think some here are narrowly interpreting "bad diet" to mean "lots of junk food". While yes, that's not a great diet, what's really meant is a diet where calorie intake regularly exceeds expenditure, regardless of what you're eating. Even if you eat only the healthiest of foods, if your intake is too much for what you're burning, that's still a "bad diet".
      • lukeschlather 1y ago
        I don't think that's a reasonable way to define the phrase. If "bad diet" is defined in terms of how much exercise you do, then "you can't outrun a bad diet" is a tautology.
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• reverendsteveii 1y ago
  >the link between economic development and obesity is likely related to food (dietary intake) [rather] than daily activity. --you >Food — not lack of exercise — fuels obesity --the article headline I'm being genuine and not at all snarky when I say I'm having a hard time seeing daylight between these two positions. I would love for someone to help me understand better please.
• bawolff 1y ago
  > The study compares energy expenditure across different economic groups i.e. western people sitting in offices versus hunter-gatherers in Africa, and found that difference in energy expenditure does not account for differences in obesity, so points to consumption as the likely reason. That seems like a kind of large assumption to make. Obviously it seems like it has to be either diet or exercise, but if the obvious answer was always right we wouldn't need to do studies in the first place.
• smhenderson 1y ago
  Why unsurprisingly?
• bgro 1y ago
  I think the current default knowledge you could expect a random average person to understand is limited to approximately the following single sentence: “A balance of diet and exercise is the key to losing weight.” This is technically correct, but is so misleading that I classify it as incorrect. That statement is exploitative of how the English language is understood, even if not intentionally so, that the lack of any other key points or instructions is itself used as contextual information. In other words, the sentence likely translates something similar to the following incorrect statement: “A perfectly level 50-50 effort balance of both lowering daily calories to the [2000] calorie limit for [your demographic], because this is the stated necessary calories to support a healthy [demographic] for 1 day, as well as achieving the minimum daily recommended exercise limit of [1 hour for your demographic] plus [1 hour per 100 calories] consumed over [2000 calories] are both of equal value in the goal of losing weight, and are equal requirement to support the other such that one holds no value without the other.”
• stouset 1y ago
  > anyone who has done extensive 'athletic' physical activity knows that if you don't up your calorie intake that you will lose weight. Anyone who has done extensive athletic physical activity knows that you will up your calorie intake unless you take explicit and intentional effort not to.
  • Natsu 1y ago
    > Anyone who has done extensive athletic physical activity knows that you will up your calorie intake unless you take explicit and intentional effort not to. It also seems to be harder to dial your dietary intake back down if you cease that extra activity.
  • kelnos 1y ago
    This doesn't even require you to be an athlete, or do extensive physical activity. Add even a half-hour jog three days a week to your otherwise-mostly-sedentary routine and you'll tend to engage in "compensatory eating" even if you don't realize it. This is why exercise alone often doesn't cause you to lose weight, or at least not as much as you'd expect given the extra calories you're burning: you're probably eating more (or the same amount, but foods with higher calorie density) than you were before, even if you didn't consciously choose to do so.
  • paulddraper 1y ago
    Absolutely. This is one reason bodybuilders (the closest thing to professional dieters) will only do low intensity cardio -- walking etc -- when cutting weight. High intensity cardio burns calories but increases appetite disproportionately. Albeit otherwise excellent for overall health.
    • Der_Einzige 1y ago
      I hate /fit/ and the bodybuilding forums so much. Stupid memes like this, SS, GOMAD, and related exist and continue to be parroted because of them. No, using a segway to move in between weight machines will not preserve your gains. The amount of mental gymnastics performed by these guys to justify hilariously stupid physical decisions is simply colossal. I applaud folks like Chloe Ting (a "cardio bunny" aesthetic youtuber who specialize in Calistenics) who roast these guys by challenging them (bodybuilder roid bros) to keep up with her on her exercise routines. Watching these dudes collapse again and again because they have pathetic endurance and don't do meaningful cardio reminds is delicious to say the least. If you get your diet advice from Zyzz, Rich Piana, or the rest of the memeloards of fitness, you deserve what's coming to you. Don't skip leg day.
• cthalupa 1y ago
  This isn't the first study to show that our bodies adjust to fairly set caloric expenditure - the constrained total energy expenditure model isn't new, and Ponztner and his team aren't the first to advocate for it, but we should be clear that he is an advocate for it, and has been for a while. Obviously, energy has to come from somewhere, so enough exercise will overcome any adaptations your body makes, but the current evidence seems to suggest that there is a lot of wiggle room for your body to cut energy expenditure to make up for any exercising you do. The evidence suggests this takes time, but it does also suggest that the 20 minutes on the bike daily that helped you drop some pounds at the start will not do much for your weight a year in. I don't know if it's true or not, but when I first read one of the studies, it did make some intuitive sense to me - humans have spent much of their evolutionary history having to expend significant energy to procure food. If you had to walk 30,000 steps in a day to forage or hunt, it makes sense that limiting other movements while idle, etc., to help preserve energy stores would be beneficial.
  • hermitcrab 1y ago
    My understanding is that the research shows that a highly active hunter gathering and an inactive office worker burn roughly the same number of calories per day. But I find that hard to believe. What is the office worker's body doing to make up the difference for all the movement and muscle contraction?
    • wredcoll 1y ago
      Human bodies are highly efficient at certain movements, e.g. walking. There's also a complicated part of hunter gatherer life style where you don't know if you'll find something if you walk another mile, so often the response is to just... not do that. Being able to have a life style where you're constantly expending energy, like training athletes do, really only works if you're guaranteed food, which is generally not how hunter gathering works.
    • cthalupa 1y ago
      Lots and lots (and lots) of small subconscious movements throughout the day. Many thousands of them. Moving your heard around, tilting it a bit, wiggling your toes, rolling your shoulders, scratching an itch, etc. Anecdotally, I believe I have a personal example of the sort of thing that changes. I went from being ultra-sedentary to exercising 5+ days a week over the past year. My body had enough of these tics that they had long since passed over the subconscious and unnoticed level into "why the fuck do I keep bouncing my legs around all the time when sitting or in bed." Now, I never do. After years of trying, I stopped making any sort of intentional effort to stop - and even things like weighted blankets, etc., in the past did nothing. Now, I just don't do it. I fidget less at my desk while working. I make a whole lot less 'random' movements for no discernible reason. Add up enough of all these tiny things over the course of a day, things you probably don't even realize you're doing, and each tiny fraction of a calorie expended eventually pushes you to the levels you see with more regular exercise. (Now, of course, exercise is hugely important for a variety of other health factors)
• rendaw 1y ago
  > Instead, it suggests "that dietary intake plays a far greater role than reduced energy expenditure in obesity related to economic development." That sounds like more or less exactly what the title says to me. > anyone who has done extensive 'athletic' physical activity Yes, and there are few such people. Extensive athletic physical activity, becoming an athlete, are at odds with working an office job. You can get out of work and go play soccer for 2-3 hours every day instead of doing household chores, pursuing other hobbies, etc, but most people won't - it's a huge ask. > not really useful for personal or localised health advice It absolutely is useful. Becoming an athlete or doing extensive athletics takes a huge time commitment. Eating less does not. I'm not claiming that there's zero issues with eating less, or that people shouldn't exercise, just that the arguments seem to be off base.
  • edanm 1y ago
    I'm going to push back on this a bit, though I agree with some of the sentiment.; to the average person wanting to lose weight, I think the best advice is obviously to eat less via whatever diet works for them (I personally recommend counting calories, but it's not for everyone). That said, you write: > Yes, and there are few such people. Extensive athletic physical activity, becoming an athlete, are at odds with working an office job. First of all, office jobs are probably dominant in the industry, but there are still lots of jobs that aren't office jobs, and you seem to be excluding all of those. Secondly, I know plenty of people with demanding careers (e.g. doctors), with kids, who nevertheless train for marathons and run almost every day. There absolutely are people who exercise enough to make a meaningful difference to their caloric expenditure. > It absolutely is useful. Becoming an athlete or doing extensive athletics takes a huge time commitment. Eating less does not. I'll reiterate that I agree with this and this is the correct advice for someone who wants to start losing weight. I just wouldn't discount the many people who do also exercise to the point of it making a difference.
  • tpm 1y ago
    > Extensive athletic physical activity, becoming an athlete, are at odds with working an office job. You can get out of work and go play soccer for 2-3 hours every day instead of doing household chores, pursuing other hobbies, etc, but most people won't - it's a huge ask. > Becoming an athlete or doing extensive athletics takes a huge time commitment. Eating less does not. Yet perhaps taking a huge time commitment during which you won't be able to eat much is exactly what is needed.
• xg15 1y ago
  I think if the goal is to find out what strategies help average people lose weight - who are mostly not athletes or bodybuilders - then excluding athletes is exactly the right thing to do.