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> I had a friend who would drink a gallon of whole milk a day to maintain weight because he did so much at the gym. That's around 2.4k calories. That's like t

> I had a friend who would drink a gallon of whole milk a day to maintain weight because he did so much at the gym. That's around 2.4k calories. That's like three slices of costco pizza and a large coke. I can do that like 3-4 times and I am not even that fat. And that's like half to a third of the absolute peak. Like the rock who basicaly works out all day, eats 5-7k calories. The point is there are people that are eating large fries and triple thick milkshakes as snacks driving from place to place because it makes them feel happy instead of just eating to feel full. And you just can't outrun that.

lovich 1y ago
I'm not understanding your math? 3-4 times that would be 7200-9600 calories a day, already more than your example of the Rock. Regardless > The point is there are people that are eating large fries and triple thick milkshakes as snacks driving from place to place because it makes them feel happy instead of just eating to feel full. And you just can't outrun that. Yes, if you eat more calories than you expend, because you spend your time eating while driving, instead of exercising, you wont expend more calories than you consume. That doesn't change the fact that a human can exercise enough that they have difficulty maintaining weight even after eating significantly more calories than necessary for normal maintenance weight. Nothing about the human metabolism circumvents thermodynamics
- lan321 1y ago
  His point is that it's significantly easier to go way over the maintenance calories compared to making up with exercise if you just eat whatever you feel like. Essentially that you can consume X calories much easier than you can exercise it out. With proper diet I'm pretty sure the limit would be like 160kg for a healthy (TBD) body. Strongmen, when I watched regularly, were 160-185kg, with somewhat unhealthy bodies. If you eat junk, that limit comes lower since you can't exercise as efficiently. If you work 40hrs a week, that limit goes down further, since you can't live in the gym and hospital/sport clinic. Of course, realistically, the sweet spot is IMO in the middle. Don't replace water with blended ice cream but also don't live in the gym or focus too much on it. Dry scooping teacups of some sketchy preworkout called "eXTREME PsYcHo SUPREME ViOlEnCe" with a bunch of other sketchy pills that make your third leg point at people all day and make your skin itch probably isn't worth it.
weird-eye-issue 1y ago
> The point is there are people that are eating large fries and triple thick milkshakes as snacks driving from place to place because it makes them feel happy instead of just eating to feel full. And you just can't outrun that. You literally can. You just need to burn more calories than you take in. It would be difficult but not impossible and is simple math and thermodynamics.
- ehnto 1y ago
  The thermodynamics argument misses the fact that our body is not a single input, output engine. The body will use energy from several different sources, with different efficiencies. It will store energy in different forms, with different efficiencies, and it throws away a lot of energy that you put into it. Yes, if you spend energy, it has to come from somewhere, but it's only in really specific scenarios that it comes from fat. No one is measuring how much they actually burn either, so we are all just theory crafting that someone burnt X and put in Y so they should be losing fat stores. Maybe they burned Y from blood sugar, super efficient, before it was stored into fat, great. Or maybe they stored it as fat overnight, and they are burning 98% of their breakfast from bloodsugar and only 2% from fat stores. Some people's bodies will have them completely tired out before they even hit their fat, that's a lack of fitness not a caloric deficit. In general yeah, thermodynamics wins, but the details do matter.
  - weird-eye-issue 1y ago
    You are completely wrong because over the long term, thermodynamics isn’t just a theory — it’s the governing principle. No matter how “inefficient” the body is at using or storing energy, it still obeys conservation of energy. If you consistently burn more calories than you consume, your body has to draw on stored energy (fat, muscle, glycogen, etc.) to make up the difference. That’s not up for debate — it’s been proven across thousands of controlled metabolic studies. Yes, the short-term details can vary — sometimes you’re burning glycogen, sometimes fat — but over weeks and months, a sustained calorie deficit always results in weight loss. The body doesn’t magically create energy out of thin air because its “efficiency” fluctuates. You can argue that diet composition and hormones affect how easy it is to maintain that deficit, but not the fundamental physics behind it. So while you’re right that biology is messy in the short term, thermodynamics still wins every single time when you zoom out. It doesn't matter what source you are burning your energy from at any given time for long term weight. Let's say you eat a bunch of carbs and then you go for a run, well you're probably going to burn those carbs off first (depending on how hard you run and other factors). Which according to you doesn't matter since it's not burning stored fat. But if you didn't go for that run then those carbs would turn into fat later.... And if you go for a really long run (or you take it easier) then you will start burning the stored fat. But either way it doesn't actually matter because calories in / calories out still is the determining factor.

lovich 1y ago

I'm not understanding your math? 3-4 times that would be 7200-9600 calories a day, already more than your example of the Rock. Regardless > The point is there are people that are eating large fries and triple thick milkshakes as snacks driving from place to place because it makes them feel happy instead of just eating to feel full. And you just can't outrun that. Yes, if you eat more calories than you expend, because you spend your time eating while driving, instead of exercising, you wont expend more calories than you consume. That doesn't change the fact that a human can exercise enough that they have difficulty maintaining weight even after eating significantly more calories than necessary for normal maintenance weight. Nothing about the human metabolism circumvents thermodynamics

lan321 1y ago
His point is that it's significantly easier to go way over the maintenance calories compared to making up with exercise if you just eat whatever you feel like. Essentially that you can consume X calories much easier than you can exercise it out. With proper diet I'm pretty sure the limit would be like 160kg for a healthy (TBD) body. Strongmen, when I watched regularly, were 160-185kg, with somewhat unhealthy bodies. If you eat junk, that limit comes lower since you can't exercise as efficiently. If you work 40hrs a week, that limit goes down further, since you can't live in the gym and hospital/sport clinic. Of course, realistically, the sweet spot is IMO in the middle. Don't replace water with blended ice cream but also don't live in the gym or focus too much on it. Dry scooping teacups of some sketchy preworkout called "eXTREME PsYcHo SUPREME ViOlEnCe" with a bunch of other sketchy pills that make your third leg point at people all day and make your skin itch probably isn't worth it.

weird-eye-issue 1y ago

> The point is there are people that are eating large fries and triple thick milkshakes as snacks driving from place to place because it makes them feel happy instead of just eating to feel full. And you just can't outrun that. You literally can. You just need to burn more calories than you take in. It would be difficult but not impossible and is simple math and thermodynamics.

ehnto 1y ago
The thermodynamics argument misses the fact that our body is not a single input, output engine. The body will use energy from several different sources, with different efficiencies. It will store energy in different forms, with different efficiencies, and it throws away a lot of energy that you put into it. Yes, if you spend energy, it has to come from somewhere, but it's only in really specific scenarios that it comes from fat. No one is measuring how much they actually burn either, so we are all just theory crafting that someone burnt X and put in Y so they should be losing fat stores. Maybe they burned Y from blood sugar, super efficient, before it was stored into fat, great. Or maybe they stored it as fat overnight, and they are burning 98% of their breakfast from bloodsugar and only 2% from fat stores. Some people's bodies will have them completely tired out before they even hit their fat, that's a lack of fitness not a caloric deficit. In general yeah, thermodynamics wins, but the details do matter.
- weird-eye-issue 1y ago
  You are completely wrong because over the long term, thermodynamics isn’t just a theory — it’s the governing principle. No matter how “inefficient” the body is at using or storing energy, it still obeys conservation of energy. If you consistently burn more calories than you consume, your body has to draw on stored energy (fat, muscle, glycogen, etc.) to make up the difference. That’s not up for debate — it’s been proven across thousands of controlled metabolic studies. Yes, the short-term details can vary — sometimes you’re burning glycogen, sometimes fat — but over weeks and months, a sustained calorie deficit always results in weight loss. The body doesn’t magically create energy out of thin air because its “efficiency” fluctuates. You can argue that diet composition and hormones affect how easy it is to maintain that deficit, but not the fundamental physics behind it. So while you’re right that biology is messy in the short term, thermodynamics still wins every single time when you zoom out. It doesn't matter what source you are burning your energy from at any given time for long term weight. Let's say you eat a bunch of carbs and then you go for a run, well you're probably going to burn those carbs off first (depending on how hard you run and other factors). Which according to you doesn't matter since it's not burning stored fat. But if you didn't go for that run then those carbs would turn into fat later.... And if you go for a really long run (or you take it easier) then you will start burning the stored fat. But either way it doesn't actually matter because calories in / calories out still is the determining factor.