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Comment by claar | Hacker News Reader

> move their fat bottoms

I wish people would stop repeating this myth.

You cannot outrun the fork.

Being overweight is primarily an eating issue, not an exercise issue. The calories burned while exercising are minuscule compared to food intake.

Daily recommended calorie intake averages ~2000 calories. I was going over that by ~1000 per day before adjusting my habits, and I don't think I was unusual.

A marathon is estimated to burn 2600 calories. The hardest 30-minute CrossFit workouts burn ~300 calories. So every day I should have run 1/3 of a marathon, or completed 3.3 max-effort CrossFit workouts.

You cannot outrun the fork. I've lost over 60 pounds in the last year by changing my eating habits. I started doing regular Freeletics (like CrossFit) 8 weeks ago, and actually stopped losing weight.

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You cannot outrun the fork

I've never heard it said this way. I learned this lesson the hard way.

I struggled with weight for a few years after highschool. No matter how much more activity I added, I couldn't lose the fat.

Then about 6 years ago I drastically changed my diet for just 4 months (paleo) and dropped from 240lbs to 185lbs. At that point, I was almost sedentary but still eating at least 1-2 very large meals a day, every day. Even though I've recently been less disciplined about my diet and exercise I've still kept most of that weight off.

Move their fat bottoms away from the table when they’re done eating.

On a more serious note, you are of course correct, though I can imagine that having a link between somewhat-abstract calories and a timespan that you know you need to work out to get rid off these calories might help to restrict yourself? As in, “This cake has 600 calories” doesn’t sound like a lot, “I have to work out for an hour on a level that will leave me entirely crushed if I eat this cake” may be more relatable?

That is because you are gaining muscle mass. Which is not bad at all.

I think BMI should be correlated with the the body fat percentage in order to estimate how many calories one should eat daily (because you are right, you cannot outrun the fork, but you can adjust a bit how many calories you can eat based on how many you burn). And, by extension, have a good indicator of a healthy energy balance.

I mean it in a generic sense of 'doing something' (like having a better diet)

And high-performance athletes (like Michael Phelps or The Rock) eat around 5k calories per day

Adding muscle mass decreases insulin resistance. You can still have an unhealthy bodyfat percentage at a "healthy" BMI level.

> The calories burned while exercising are minuscule compared to food intake.

Not at all true; since I've started tracking my burn rate, my high-exercise days are about 50% higher than my low-exercise days (at not even at the extreme ends of either; high extreme is about 100% higher than the low extreme.)

> Being overweight is primarily an eating issue, not an exercise issue.

Being overweight (at least, insofar as its a particular health concern, which is mostly about body fat rather than weight) is a complicated issue that varies between individuals and can involve lifestyle -- particularly both eating and exercise -- and other health conditions. The most valuable intervention -- whether its dietary changes, exercise changes, medication, surgical intervention, or otherwise -- may be different for different people.

> Daily recommended calorie intake averages ~2000 calories.

That's the standard used for the bases for percentages of daily recommended intake of various nutrients in FDA-mandated labels, for a variety of reasons [0], but its not actually the average recommendation for maintenance intake. [1]

> I was going over that by ~1000 per day before adjusting my habits, and I don't think I was unusual.

So, you were eating about maintenance level for a young adult male, but probably living a sedentary lifestyle. Either increasing activity to an active lifestyle or reducing eating could correct that.

> You cannot outrun the fork.

Repeating that multiple times doesn't make it true.

> I've lost over 60 pounds in the last year by changing my eating habits.

And after stabilizing my weight by altering my eating habits, I lost over 60 pounds in a year by altering my exercise habits (a combination of twice-weekly 1-hour gym workouts and something like 15 hours a week of dance class/parties/practice.)

> I started doing regular Freeletics (like CrossFit) 8 weeks ago, and actually stopped losing weight.

If you didn't ramp up your eating, the most likely reason is because you've been gaining lean body mass at the expense of body fat. That's at least as good as just losing body fat (and better than losing weight if it isn't body fat that is being lost.)

[0] http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/08/why-does-t...

[1] http://www.webmd.com/diet/estimated-calorie-requirement

I agree with your post, so thank you for your reply (and congratulations on your habit changes!).

I admit my comment was over-stated; intentionally so to combat the popular notion that fat people just need to go to the gym more.

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