Comment by cheepin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cheepin | Hacker News Reader

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Exercise clearly helps, but it all comes down to energy balance. You can eat less, or increase calories burned through exercise to generally get the scale heading in the right direction. The problem some people have is when exercise increases their appetite to the point where they continue consuming too many calories.

I looked at the article that OP referred to. It's main critique is using exercise instead of diet as a weight loss tactic. The point was that you don't need exercise to maintain a healthy weight as long as the energy balance is there.

On one end of the spectrum, athletes in certain sports can maintain a lean physique while eating insane quantities of calories. On the other end, maintaining a healthy bodyfat is possible in the absence of exercise by nutrition alone.

Exercise comes with its own set of benefits independent of bodyfat, and it sounds like you have chosen to meet your energy balance by increasing calories burned instead of decreasing caloric intake, but it's not the only strategy that can have success.

Sources:

"Can't outrun a bad diet" http://bjsm.bmj.com/content/49/15/967

> The problem some people have is when exercise increases their appetite to the point where they continue consuming too many calories.

It's very difficult to overeat good exercise with good food.

If your idea of exercise is to sit around at the gym for an hour and do a couple of lifts, that's not gonna help. I've seen a lot of that. People go there for two hours, but only get like 15 minutes of real exercise done.

But if your idea of exercise is to go on a 10k run, or doing a boxing class for an hour ... well those are going to burn around 700 calories. That's a lot of calories for someone who's supposed to eat 2000 a day.

Eating 2700 calories (your normal 2000, plus the 700 you burned) is hard if you're not eating cake and stuff. I personally struggle every day to keep my weight from plummeting because the amounts of food I have to eat are astounding. Especially on the days when I do a 30km run (that burns 2500 calories).

Honestly, it's taken me over a year of sustained effort to train my metabolism to digest these sorts of quantities of food.

And yes, I am an edge case. My point is that you can outrun a bad diet. It will take a lot of running though.

PS: the biggest mistake people make is thinking that weight == health. You can be skinny and still super unhealthy.

> (...) if you're not eating cake and stuff.

Ding ding ding. That's the nutrition part. I could easily eat that 700 extra calories by eating pizzas. Hell, I'd probably eat 900 extra calories after a big exercise. (But I would absolutely not run 30 km...)

The problem is that the people eating this stuff are continually being told that they need to exercise more. Then they get hungrier and eat the stuff that you can always eat more. They kill themselves on the treadmill and see absolutely no difference.

Yeah, I see your point.

Is nutrition really that hard for people? It doesn't take much, just avoid the obviously bad stuff like candy, pastries, and anything non-dry that can stay fresh for over two weeks without freezing.

You don't even have to eschew sweet stuff, just opt for the artificial sweetener. They don't add hidden calories and [probably] won't give you cancer despite what the FUD says.

And in my experience, people who do eat the bad stuff, start craving more real foods when they exercise well. The body needs nutrients and it will ask for them. You just have to listen.

But I'm probably out of touch with how hard this is. It's been years since I started fixing my diet.

You're putting down the weight lifters but I would argue that weights is better than cardio. With weights you build your strength, your muscles then consume more even when not exercising. Too much cardio starts burning your muscle giving you the skinny fat look.

Cardio takes a long time, an hour each day for 5 days is 5 hours. Can burn more at the weights. Unless you do sports that need endurance (MMA, boxing, rugby, …) you don’t need cardio. Strength training will increase your cardiovascular fitness above average.

I don't think Swizec was trying to say that cardio is better than lifting, but rather that a high volume of exercise is needed to burn a lot of energy. A lot of people go to the gym, but mostly do it for the social meaning of "going to the gym" rather than actually using that time efficiently on a good workout.

Lifting is awesome. But you have to actually do it, not just sit around chatting or lifting at 40% your capacity like I see way too many people do.

If you aren't sweating, you aren't getting a workout.

Coincidentally cardio will make you better at lifting. When I recent got back to lifting for a few months I could power through 20 sets of compound lifts in an hour. By the time I change weight, I'm ready to go because my regenerative capacity is so quick (boxing will do that to you). Back when I was just lifting, 20 sets took over teo hours and the gains were very comparable.

I'd lift more, but it makes me slow.

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