5 ms·

Or just eat less. To quote former FDA commissioner David Kessler from the book I just read (and the impetus for this post), The End of Overeating, “People get

by dkarl 17y ago

Or just eat less. To quote former FDA commissioner David Kessler from the book I just read (and the impetus for this post), The End of Overeating, “People get fat because they eat more than people who are lean…we finally have strong evidence that weight gain is primarily due to overeating.” Period. This has been conventional wisdom for years now. Everything else is just details, though people love to obsess about the details, because "eat less" doesn't provide the same level of excitement and optimism as "eat this freaky diet." Even the theory behind most of the low carb diets is that avoiding high-glycemic-index foods smooths out your insulin levels, which helps regulate your appetite, which helps you avoid overeating. Likewise, exercise is a big help for me in eating less, because it improves my mood, which makes it easier for me not to overeat. I've talked to lots of other people who, like me, find that a moderate amount of exercise actually decreases their appetite. (If you burn enough calories, you end up driving your appetite back up, but not many people burn many calories in relation to their intake. I work out about three days a week; averaged over the week, I burn about 150 calories per day, which is helpful but not a big deal.)

KirinDave 17y ago
So you put "Don't eat delicious things" higher up the chain that he does. And then you still burn a huge chunk of free time accomplishing no tangible thing in exchange for a dubious assurance of a fractionally longer life. I used to be in much better shape than I am now, but my life was miserable. Exercise did not make me feel better, coming to terms with my life and my environment and having some control over my situation made me feel better. My opinion has been that the "workout high" is more about having control over yourself and your situation than any real lasting benefit.
- rms 17y ago
  Eat all the delicious, unhealthy things you want, just keep it around 2000 calories. So if you want to have an enormous, 1500 calorie meal at a casual dining restaurant, go for it, just keep it light for the rest of the day.
  - mannicken 17y ago
    Anecdote: I've been running 40-50 miles a week, tried various diets, but I still was chunky. Last two months I run 5-10 miles a week, eat sugars and crap but I record everything and eat around 1200-1500 calories a day. I've lost a crapload of weight. Yeah, I'm also a 6'3'' and I was 220 in March so I'm probably grossly undereating but after a week of hunger and headrushes you get used to burning fat (I also drink coffee) for energy and feel great while losing weight.
    - enobrev 17y ago
      Well done! At 6'6", I've lost 25 lbs in 3 months (from 252 to 227) strictly from keeping my calories between 1200 and 1700 per day. This includes a high intake of alcohol and otherwise I eat the same crap I always have - just far less of it. Although, now that I'm beginning to plateau, I guess I'll have to start going outside to play a little more often to get rid of the next 20 lbs.
- dkarl 17y ago
  You can eat delicious things. Just eat less of the same thing. The only reason you'd have to give up certain delicious things is if you were a strict vegetarian -- eating a low-calorie vegetarian diet and getting enough protein isn't rocket science, but it doesn't leave any room for splurging on empty calories. You already said you enjoy outdoor activities. Isn't that exercise? If you limit the definition of exercise to joyless and repetitive activities with no intrinsic interest, then I have to agree with you that exercise is not worth it.
  - KirinDave 17y ago
    "You already said you enjoy outdoor activities. Isn't that exercise? If you limit the definition of exercise to joyless and repetitive activities with no intrinsic interest, then I have to agree with you that exercise is not worth it." I agree with this statement, but I'm responding to the article's specific brand of exercise, not exercise in general. Personally, I am on a slow downward trend in weight because I'm making an effort to do things I like and pick and choose my foods more carefully. I am just tired of people like the poster, who literally play both sides of the fence in one article ("I demand credit for the effort I make to make my body look this way" vs. "I am not a health freak.") I also find it funny how inevitable the course of those posts are. It would have a been a good article if he hadn't made the transition from descriptive to prescriptive, but he did and here we are asking, "Why on earth would I inflict LL Cool J on my ears in 2009?"
    - dkarl 17y ago
      I am just tired of people like the poster, who literally play both sides of the fence in one article ("I demand credit for the effort I make to make my body look this way" vs. "I am not a health freak.") I sympathize with the poster. I'm tired of people treating me like a freak just because I care about my weight and have actually accomplished something in that direction. I used to be a mess (5'9" and over 200 lbs, on a relatively small frame) and now I'm much better -- still overweight, but in better shape than some of my friends. That creates some resentment for people around me who are self-conscious about their weight. I'm expected to completely avoid talking about my efforts to get in better shape. It's not a matter of demanding credit; they simply don't want to hear that I have to work at it! When I have a beer with them and they ask me how I'm feeling, they don't want to hear that I had a good run this morning, or that I feel bad because I had a bad run. Okay, fine, I get it, I won't mention it. But what can you really do? You can't do a Jedi mind trick when you wheel your bike into work. "This isn't a bike. This is just something I found in the parking lot, after I parked my car." What do you say when somebody asks what you were doing when they left you a voice mail earlier? "Uh... stuff. Yeah, I was doing stuff." When somebody asks you why you didn't eat all the fries that came with your burger, are you supposed to lie and say you didn't like them? There's no way to completely hide the fact that yes, you are trying to do something a little different. Plus, the same people who get annoyed when I talk about my struggles with my weight feel free to talk about their own. They want to talk about their efforts at diet and exercise as if it's normal, but we have to pretend that mine are beyond reasonable. Never mind that the only difference between us is that I'm twenty pounds overweight and they're fifty pounds overweight. I'm supposed to remember that if my lifestyle were normal, then that would reflect poorly on them, so we have to pretend that their lifestyle is just one or two small tweaks away from being totally healthy, and my lifestyle is the product of an eccentric, overenthusiastic, probably unhealthy interest in fitness. What? I'm still freakin' twenty pounds overweight! I'm not trying to be a freak. I'm just trying to be NORMAL, trying to live a lifestyle within the bounds my body is engineered to tolerate. I'm just trying not to eat so much food that it harms me. I'm trying not to live a lifestyle so sedentary that my body doesn't know how to cope with it. That's all.
- Periodic 17y ago
  I've found that I generally just don't enjoy physical activity. It just isn't pleasant much of the time, particularly on days where I'm already tired. The only way that I manage to get a good amount of exercise is by biking to work. I can sort of trick my schedule by overlapping with commuting time. If I had to drive to work and the gym I just wouldn't go to the latter. I now bike about 50 miles per week and my appetite is enormous. I start getting hungry about 3 hours after eating, and if I have lunch at 12:30 I can actively seeking food around 5:00, walking to other buildings just to get a handful of chips, i.e. I don't eat just because it's there. I'm also pretty tired in the evenings after the ride sometimes. I sometimes wonder if it's worth it.
  - jules 17y ago
    50 miles isn't much. You'll need about one extra day of food per week (about 14% more food).
  - kscaldef 17y ago
    Vigorous biking burns a ton of calories, and if you avoid junk food it can really be a chore to eat enough, in my experience. This spring I was riding about 100 miles a week, and I had to eat about 3300 calories a day to maintain my weight. Most days I ate 3 or 4 breakfasts before I started to feel fully awake and alert for the day.
  - shard 17y ago
    Don't give up, keep exploring possibilities. Would holding a cute person in your arms make physical activity fun? Try dancing. Does nature or landscape photography excite you? Go hiking. Like shooting things? Play paintball. Want some self defense skills? Take up martial arts. Like flowers? Take up gardening. Use your imagination to combine interests and activities.
jodrellblank 17y ago
This has been conventional wisdom for years now. It's also wrong. At least, it's not the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I was watching a video of a Gary Taubes lecture which I can't find where he addresses this, and cites many examples from history of societies and situations where groups of people were fat despite eating very few calories, where groups of people grew fat as their diet changed despite the calorie count not increasing, and vice-versa. I think this is the same talk: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4362041487661765149 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4362041487661765149
- dkarl 17y ago
  Sure, it's not the whole picture. The problem is that the additional parts of the picture are more like "details" than like "exceptions." Lots of people have been looking for many years for ways to hack around the issue of quantity, and nobody has come up with anything that fundamentally changes the equation. How many people lose weight on the Atkins diet? Anyone who sticks with it. How many people lose weight on a vegetarian diet based on beans and whole grains? Anyone who sticks with it. It just turns out to be really, really, really freakin' hard to do that, and there are any number of fascinating little details you can explore to avoid facing up to that basic truth. Really, I think we're just too hard on ourselves. I think we'd make a lot of progress if we'd just admit that we have a problem saying no. I'll be honest about my problem with food: right now I'm almost ten pounds heavier than when I was in my best shape, which probably means twenty pounds over my ideal weight. I got injured playing sports, couldn't exercise much for two months, got depressed, and gained ten pounds. Now I'm in the process of taking it off. How much I eat is roughly a function of how optimistic I feel about my life, so my weight wanders up and down within a fifteen pound range. (However, the top of this range is 25 pounds less than I weighed ten years ago, so it's not like I haven't made any progress.) I know exactly what I need to do to get in the best shape of my life by October, without taking any time away from my other priorities. Maybe it will happen, but the smart money says no. This isn't a problem of nutrition or exercise physiology -- those problems are solved. It's a problem of psychology. The only reason people deny it is because they're ashamed that they aren't in complete control of themselves.
  - 17y ago
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
baddox 17y ago
All these facts, myths, and rules of thumb depend on the operating definition of "fat" as well as what group of "fat people" are being analyzed. People who are medically "overweight" or "obese," meaning having a BMI over 25, eat more on average than those with a BMI under 25. I would consider exercising and eating to be of tantamount importance in correcting this, but certainly genes and upbringing can instill a predisposition to obesity or even hinder sincere efforts to lose weight. However, I think what the article is talking about is skinniness as opposed to being "chubby" or "soft," not flat out obese. If you're somewhere in the region between "skinny" and "chubby," but not near being under- or overweight, then what you eat and how you exercise is important; even subtle changes to your routine can have noticeable effects.

by dkarl 17y ago

KirinDave 17y ago

So you put "Don't eat delicious things" higher up the chain that he does. And then you still burn a huge chunk of free time accomplishing no tangible thing in exchange for a dubious assurance of a fractionally longer life. I used to be in much better shape than I am now, but my life was miserable. Exercise did not make me feel better, coming to terms with my life and my environment and having some control over my situation made me feel better. My opinion has been that the "workout high" is more about having control over yourself and your situation than any real lasting benefit.

rms 17y ago
Eat all the delicious, unhealthy things you want, just keep it around 2000 calories. So if you want to have an enormous, 1500 calorie meal at a casual dining restaurant, go for it, just keep it light for the rest of the day.
- mannicken 17y ago
  Anecdote: I've been running 40-50 miles a week, tried various diets, but I still was chunky. Last two months I run 5-10 miles a week, eat sugars and crap but I record everything and eat around 1200-1500 calories a day. I've lost a crapload of weight. Yeah, I'm also a 6'3'' and I was 220 in March so I'm probably grossly undereating but after a week of hunger and headrushes you get used to burning fat (I also drink coffee) for energy and feel great while losing weight.
  - enobrev 17y ago
    Well done! At 6'6", I've lost 25 lbs in 3 months (from 252 to 227) strictly from keeping my calories between 1200 and 1700 per day. This includes a high intake of alcohol and otherwise I eat the same crap I always have - just far less of it. Although, now that I'm beginning to plateau, I guess I'll have to start going outside to play a little more often to get rid of the next 20 lbs.
dkarl 17y ago
You can eat delicious things. Just eat less of the same thing. The only reason you'd have to give up certain delicious things is if you were a strict vegetarian -- eating a low-calorie vegetarian diet and getting enough protein isn't rocket science, but it doesn't leave any room for splurging on empty calories. You already said you enjoy outdoor activities. Isn't that exercise? If you limit the definition of exercise to joyless and repetitive activities with no intrinsic interest, then I have to agree with you that exercise is not worth it.
- KirinDave 17y ago
  "You already said you enjoy outdoor activities. Isn't that exercise? If you limit the definition of exercise to joyless and repetitive activities with no intrinsic interest, then I have to agree with you that exercise is not worth it." I agree with this statement, but I'm responding to the article's specific brand of exercise, not exercise in general. Personally, I am on a slow downward trend in weight because I'm making an effort to do things I like and pick and choose my foods more carefully. I am just tired of people like the poster, who literally play both sides of the fence in one article ("I demand credit for the effort I make to make my body look this way" vs. "I am not a health freak.") I also find it funny how inevitable the course of those posts are. It would have a been a good article if he hadn't made the transition from descriptive to prescriptive, but he did and here we are asking, "Why on earth would I inflict LL Cool J on my ears in 2009?"
  - dkarl 17y ago
    I am just tired of people like the poster, who literally play both sides of the fence in one article ("I demand credit for the effort I make to make my body look this way" vs. "I am not a health freak.") I sympathize with the poster. I'm tired of people treating me like a freak just because I care about my weight and have actually accomplished something in that direction. I used to be a mess (5'9" and over 200 lbs, on a relatively small frame) and now I'm much better -- still overweight, but in better shape than some of my friends. That creates some resentment for people around me who are self-conscious about their weight. I'm expected to completely avoid talking about my efforts to get in better shape. It's not a matter of demanding credit; they simply don't want to hear that I have to work at it! When I have a beer with them and they ask me how I'm feeling, they don't want to hear that I had a good run this morning, or that I feel bad because I had a bad run. Okay, fine, I get it, I won't mention it. But what can you really do? You can't do a Jedi mind trick when you wheel your bike into work. "This isn't a bike. This is just something I found in the parking lot, after I parked my car." What do you say when somebody asks what you were doing when they left you a voice mail earlier? "Uh... stuff. Yeah, I was doing stuff." When somebody asks you why you didn't eat all the fries that came with your burger, are you supposed to lie and say you didn't like them? There's no way to completely hide the fact that yes, you are trying to do something a little different. Plus, the same people who get annoyed when I talk about my struggles with my weight feel free to talk about their own. They want to talk about their efforts at diet and exercise as if it's normal, but we have to pretend that mine are beyond reasonable. Never mind that the only difference between us is that I'm twenty pounds overweight and they're fifty pounds overweight. I'm supposed to remember that if my lifestyle were normal, then that would reflect poorly on them, so we have to pretend that their lifestyle is just one or two small tweaks away from being totally healthy, and my lifestyle is the product of an eccentric, overenthusiastic, probably unhealthy interest in fitness. What? I'm still freakin' twenty pounds overweight! I'm not trying to be a freak. I'm just trying to be NORMAL, trying to live a lifestyle within the bounds my body is engineered to tolerate. I'm just trying not to eat so much food that it harms me. I'm trying not to live a lifestyle so sedentary that my body doesn't know how to cope with it. That's all.
Periodic 17y ago
I've found that I generally just don't enjoy physical activity. It just isn't pleasant much of the time, particularly on days where I'm already tired. The only way that I manage to get a good amount of exercise is by biking to work. I can sort of trick my schedule by overlapping with commuting time. If I had to drive to work and the gym I just wouldn't go to the latter. I now bike about 50 miles per week and my appetite is enormous. I start getting hungry about 3 hours after eating, and if I have lunch at 12:30 I can actively seeking food around 5:00, walking to other buildings just to get a handful of chips, i.e. I don't eat just because it's there. I'm also pretty tired in the evenings after the ride sometimes. I sometimes wonder if it's worth it.
- jules 17y ago
  50 miles isn't much. You'll need about one extra day of food per week (about 14% more food).
- kscaldef 17y ago
  Vigorous biking burns a ton of calories, and if you avoid junk food it can really be a chore to eat enough, in my experience. This spring I was riding about 100 miles a week, and I had to eat about 3300 calories a day to maintain my weight. Most days I ate 3 or 4 breakfasts before I started to feel fully awake and alert for the day.
- shard 17y ago
  Don't give up, keep exploring possibilities. Would holding a cute person in your arms make physical activity fun? Try dancing. Does nature or landscape photography excite you? Go hiking. Like shooting things? Play paintball. Want some self defense skills? Take up martial arts. Like flowers? Take up gardening. Use your imagination to combine interests and activities.

jodrellblank 17y ago

This has been conventional wisdom for years now. It's also wrong. At least, it's not the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I was watching a video of a Gary Taubes lecture which I can't find where he addresses this, and cites many examples from history of societies and situations where groups of people were fat despite eating very few calories, where groups of people grew fat as their diet changed despite the calorie count not increasing, and vice-versa. I think this is the same talk: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4362041487661765149 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4362041487661765149

dkarl 17y ago
Sure, it's not the whole picture. The problem is that the additional parts of the picture are more like "details" than like "exceptions." Lots of people have been looking for many years for ways to hack around the issue of quantity, and nobody has come up with anything that fundamentally changes the equation. How many people lose weight on the Atkins diet? Anyone who sticks with it. How many people lose weight on a vegetarian diet based on beans and whole grains? Anyone who sticks with it. It just turns out to be really, really, really freakin' hard to do that, and there are any number of fascinating little details you can explore to avoid facing up to that basic truth. Really, I think we're just too hard on ourselves. I think we'd make a lot of progress if we'd just admit that we have a problem saying no. I'll be honest about my problem with food: right now I'm almost ten pounds heavier than when I was in my best shape, which probably means twenty pounds over my ideal weight. I got injured playing sports, couldn't exercise much for two months, got depressed, and gained ten pounds. Now I'm in the process of taking it off. How much I eat is roughly a function of how optimistic I feel about my life, so my weight wanders up and down within a fifteen pound range. (However, the top of this range is 25 pounds less than I weighed ten years ago, so it's not like I haven't made any progress.) I know exactly what I need to do to get in the best shape of my life by October, without taking any time away from my other priorities. Maybe it will happen, but the smart money says no. This isn't a problem of nutrition or exercise physiology -- those problems are solved. It's a problem of psychology. The only reason people deny it is because they're ashamed that they aren't in complete control of themselves.
- 17y ago

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

baddox 17y ago

All these facts, myths, and rules of thumb depend on the operating definition of "fat" as well as what group of "fat people" are being analyzed. People who are medically "overweight" or "obese," meaning having a BMI over 25, eat more on average than those with a BMI under 25. I would consider exercising and eating to be of tantamount importance in correcting this, but certainly genes and upbringing can instill a predisposition to obesity or even hinder sincere efforts to lose weight. However, I think what the article is talking about is skinniness as opposed to being "chubby" or "soft," not flat out obese. If you're somewhere in the region between "skinny" and "chubby," but not near being under- or overweight, then what you eat and how you exercise is important; even subtle changes to your routine can have noticeable effects.