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I'm against the mentality of Shit HN Says, but your comment really takes the cake. I'm mean really... just read it out loud. :)

• DanBC 13y ago
  No, really, research has been done. Go read it. Exercise does not help people lose weight. It might make them healthier and fitter and less likely to die but it doesn't help them lose weight.
  • deletes 13y ago
    Sure, I would love to, but I can't find anything. Can you provide any relevant/correct source?
    • DanBC 13y ago
      So I'm talking shit but you admit to being ignorant of the research? :-/
      • deletes 13y ago
        So you admit there is no research?
  • gaadd33 13y ago
    Where do the calories to burn come from in those cases? If I consume 1500 calories per day and burn 2500, where does the other 1000 calories come from if not from fat stores? I guess at extreme caloric deficit the body would start breaking down muscles but that would still cause weight loss. Any chance you can link to some of the research that shows where the rest of the energy comes from?
    • runako 13y ago
      >> If I consume 1500 calories per day and burn 2500 I think the key insight is that the body is a complex, dynamic system. So the exercise required to burn 2500 calories will vary between individuals, and even for a single individual based on any number of factors. I won't profess to have all the answers here, but I don't think it's as simple as X calories per mile x Y miles = 2500 calories, where X comes from a table on the Internet. I think it's more of f(X) calories per mile, where f is a compound function that includes the composition & fluctuations of your gut biome and its effect on your metabolic rate. My foggy memories of the research are that in practice, solving f in the real world is quite difficult. So while your calorie deficit theory works, in practice unless you're precisely measuring your compound (i.e. you plus your gut flora) metabolic rate in a lab, you don't actually have a way to know how many calories you're burning.
  • adventured 13y ago
    In fact, exercise does help people lose weight. A hundred years of research has proven it. Go read it. Your claim falls apart very quickly and very simply with basic math (and everybody can test this starting immediately): Scenario: I'm a 225 pound, 6'2" male, basically healthy. 30 years old. I keep my diet constant at 2500 calories, and begin burning 750 calories per day through exercise. I will lose weight, and likely gain muscle (which will accelerate my body's natural caloric burn rate), and there's nothing that can prevent that from occurring in a healthy person. Weight loss is a total calorie equation. Exercise forces your body to consume calories at a higher rate, reducing the total left for the body to store. It's that simple. Another extraordinarily easy proof for this: Michael Phelps. Phelps was famously consuming 10,000 daily calories, lots of it trashy carbs like pancakes. His exercise routine - swimming countless hours per day - is the sole reason he didn't balloon to a thousand pounds. So run this test: consume 10,000 calories per day, do zero exercise, watch your weight explode upwards by 50 pounds in about a month; begin exercising heavily, enough to burn the excess calories, watch as your weight 'magically' falls.
    • maxerickson 13y ago
      A lot of the questions in the science are about whether an unsupervised person adding exercise will end up with a calorie deficit. There's no one serious that questions calories in vs calories out, but there are lots of people who question whether it is the right place to start, because of things like measurement difficulty and the relative unlikeliness of adherence to a given diet/exercise regime.