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Comment by WizzleKake | Hacker News Reader

> Generic advice to eat well and exercise is not as effective as having a specific number you're trying to improve on e.g. lowering your ApoB count.

What. No. If you need to work on a number, why don't you try improving the number of minutes you spend doing cardiovascular exercise per week?

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Was thinking the same. Also

>The advice to "eat well and exercise" didn't seem particularly insightful

...but it actually makes a world of a difference. I think this is the most important advice and people tend to discard it as generic and useless - the truth is that it's very hard. Being active isn't a big deal, but for a week? For a full month? Full year? Full decade? Being consistent in eating well and exercising is challenging.

The doctor won't set goals for yourself, but if need a number, give yourself one and try improving on it constantly. There are tons of tools, apps, websites to help you. I've always been very active since I was a kid and still am now (~500 minutes of sports/week) and I can already see a big difference with my friends who aren't. And I'm not old at all.

If you decide to start exercising cause you have symptoms, it's probably too late.

The problem is that most people don't know what "eating well" and "exercising" really means. I will take myself as an example. When I graduated from grad. school in December of 2011, I was 270 lbs which at 5'10" is fucking fat. I had some idea that I needed to eat less. I remember going to a nutritionist and a doctor back in school. She gave me some vague ideas that were taken from the pyramid scale about how I should be having 3 full meals a day and should incorporate "some exercise" every day. It took me two years to understand that no diet actually works as well as a life style change. It took me that long to understand everything from macros, to body fat percentage and to be able to accurately predict my weekly weight based on my intake. This was all stuff that I had to learn on my own. For example, common wisdom is to exercise more, jog say 30 minutes a week. Last week, I ran 4.5 miles at 8 minutes a mile. My heart rate monitor told me I burnt 200 calories. That is one tablespoon of peanut butter. There are loads of people who spend 3 hours in the gym and then go "re-energize" with a frappucino which completely destroys the time in the gym. This shit is not easy to understand and comprehend. However, yes it is doable. I lost about 110 lbs over the past two years and have consistently kept it off but I know this will be a struggle forever to reshape myself. However, when I look back into notes I made, I realize how hard the process really is.

yep. there are tons of factors to take into account (genetic, economical, etc.), but doing this right often means changing lifestyle altogether.

congrats on the change :)

> (genetic, Oh sure. I can't control genetics but I can definitely try to work hard to control what is within my hands. E.g. I am of Indian cultural heritage. Both my parents are first generation and the cuisine is incredibly high fat, high carb and low protein. This simply sets the stage for obesity very easily (yes, ironical in a country of crippling poverty and starvation). That coupled with sedentary lifestyles has shown (at least in studies) that Indian Americans are [1] more prone to heart diseases than other sectors. This means unlearning the habits of an entire childhood and learning how to eat more carefully. It is not easy and it is definitely not simply a matter of "eating more healthy" and "exercising more".

Also, thanks!

[1] http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405274870340930...

(I have read the base scientific article but can't find the link right now.)

iirc High end athletes (not sure if ~500 minutes /wk counts) die younger due to accumulated byproducts of metabolism and accumulated damage/wear across the body.

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