5 ms·

I didn't give the article a super-close read, but it seems to assume that people eat proportionately to how much they walk/exercise. Looking around, that seems

I didn't give the article a super-close read, but it seems to assume that people eat proportionately to how much they walk/exercise. Looking around, that seems unlikely to be the case.

bunderbunder 12y ago
It also assumes that walkers and drivers cover the same distance. I don't think that's remotely true. For example I know people who think nothing of driving ten or more miles in order to buy groceries from the trendy grocery store (often, ironically enough, a Whole Foods) instead of the one that's less than a mile from home. Same for bars and restaurants.
- x1798DE 12y ago
  I don't see how that's relevant. If it were true that driving is more energy efficient than walking, then if all you cared about was energy efficiency, you'd prefer to drive the shorter distance, assuming the result holds even when driving short distances (which it very well may). (Though the author of the article is suggesting instead that you may want to somehow increase the energy efficiency of walking by more efficiently producing food.)
  - bunderbunder 12y ago
    You might prefer to drive the shorter distance, but that's not a realistic option. Car-centric infrastructure tends to take up a lot of space. The wide multi-lane streets and seas of parking lots you get in communities where driving is the primary mode of transportation massively increase the amount of land area needed to provide the same amount of services, which in turn greatly increases the actual distance being covered. Last time I lived in the 'burbs, the nearest grocery store was 5 miles away, and accessible only by roads with speed limits of 45mph+. Walking or riding a bike to buy a loaf of bread simply wasn't an option. Whereas part of the reason why it's common for people to not own cars (or own fewer than one car per adult household member) in more walkable communities is that it's simply not practical - cars take up a lot of space that can't be used for other things, and making a community dense enough to permit easy walkability doesn't leave a lot of space left over the swaths of 200 square feet that it takes to temporarily store a car that isn't currently being driven. So the laws of supply and demand place those spaces at a premium.
x1798DE 12y ago
At the very least it seems to me like the average value is roughly balanced. Anecdotally, people seem to change their eating/exercising habits more frequently than they undergo dramatic shifts in their weight. In the long run, you can expect your net calorie balance to be zero - you'll lose or gain weight until your BMR equals your net calories. Based on that, and using [1], a 5'10", 25-year-old male weighing 150 pounds would have a BMR of ~1720. If they add 250 calories (approximately 1 snickers bar) per day, they would initially gain about 2 pounds per month and asymptotically approach their new, heavier weight (~190 pounds, >40 pounds more!). If instead they added 250 calories per day worth of exercise without compensating with more food, the opposite would happen, and they'd eventually lose 40 pounds. It's not like you never see this sort of thing, but it seems to me like most people tend to maintain a pretty stable weight, which makes me think that on average we have some natural inertia when it comes to weight loss or gain. 1. http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/ http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/

I didn't give the article a super-close read, but it seems to assume that people eat proportionately to how much they walk/exercise. Looking around, that seems unlikely to be the case.

bunderbunder 12y ago

It also assumes that walkers and drivers cover the same distance. I don't think that's remotely true. For example I know people who think nothing of driving ten or more miles in order to buy groceries from the trendy grocery store (often, ironically enough, a Whole Foods) instead of the one that's less than a mile from home. Same for bars and restaurants.

x1798DE 12y ago
I don't see how that's relevant. If it were true that driving is more energy efficient than walking, then if all you cared about was energy efficiency, you'd prefer to drive the shorter distance, assuming the result holds even when driving short distances (which it very well may). (Though the author of the article is suggesting instead that you may want to somehow increase the energy efficiency of walking by more efficiently producing food.)
- bunderbunder 12y ago
  You might prefer to drive the shorter distance, but that's not a realistic option. Car-centric infrastructure tends to take up a lot of space. The wide multi-lane streets and seas of parking lots you get in communities where driving is the primary mode of transportation massively increase the amount of land area needed to provide the same amount of services, which in turn greatly increases the actual distance being covered. Last time I lived in the 'burbs, the nearest grocery store was 5 miles away, and accessible only by roads with speed limits of 45mph+. Walking or riding a bike to buy a loaf of bread simply wasn't an option. Whereas part of the reason why it's common for people to not own cars (or own fewer than one car per adult household member) in more walkable communities is that it's simply not practical - cars take up a lot of space that can't be used for other things, and making a community dense enough to permit easy walkability doesn't leave a lot of space left over the swaths of 200 square feet that it takes to temporarily store a car that isn't currently being driven. So the laws of supply and demand place those spaces at a premium.

x1798DE 12y ago

At the very least it seems to me like the average value is roughly balanced. Anecdotally, people seem to change their eating/exercising habits more frequently than they undergo dramatic shifts in their weight. In the long run, you can expect your net calorie balance to be zero - you'll lose or gain weight until your BMR equals your net calories. Based on that, and using [1], a 5'10", 25-year-old male weighing 150 pounds would have a BMR of ~1720. If they add 250 calories (approximately 1 snickers bar) per day, they would initially gain about 2 pounds per month and asymptotically approach their new, heavier weight (~190 pounds, >40 pounds more!). If instead they added 250 calories per day worth of exercise without compensating with more food, the opposite would happen, and they'd eventually lose 40 pounds. It's not like you never see this sort of thing, but it seems to me like most people tend to maintain a pretty stable weight, which makes me think that on average we have some natural inertia when it comes to weight loss or gain. 1. http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/ http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/