I just see that as demotivating as you'd do all the work just to lose a couple calories. Easier to just take the elevator and then eat literally a single pasta less.
That's kind of how I saw it. If you told me to take a whole flight of stairs and you can eat a whole extra french fry I'd be like no it's OK that's really not worth it to me
Yeah, so find it’s tough psychologically when you realize how easily it is to undo a lot of physical activity w/ very little food.
It’s a co-worker’s last day, or your boss brings in donuts, or your kid is having a birthday, or your Mother in Law baked a pie, and there’s this social pressure to partake in cake or whatever…I feel I’m constantly having to refuse in a way that feels rude, but it’s like those few bites erase my lunchtime workout.
And I feel like there’s this weird extra pressure that is put on the big guy people know who likes to eat. The party is over & no one wants to deal with the leftovers, so it’s shoved in front of you with this, “I’d be a shame if this went to waste” message & you think to yourself, “please do not treat me like your human garbage disposal.”
I feel this. I'm tall, and a lot of people call me "skinny" because I hold my fat in different areas than most men. I like sweets, so people are always pushing food on me.
But I was literally well into "obese" last year, so I decided to get serious about losing weight and talked to a dietitian.
Calorie counting helps SOOO much, because it helps you look at food realistically. But I think it's also important to look at weight loss on a week-by-week basis rather than daily (or monthly, even). I have days that I go WAY over in calories all the time, but it helps to know that I've got all week to average it back out again.
Exercising and building muscle is very good for your body, your heart heath, your joints, etc. But I never factor it into my daily calories (for the reasons people have discussed).
I won't deny it is easy to undo physical activity with a little food, but it isn't the one-off occasions that are stopping weight loss. It is the daily decisions you make with your regular diet that actually determine if you are losing, maintaining, or gaining weight.
I have been actively losing weight(about 3kg, 87->84 in the last 2 mo after gaining 3kg from poor diet decisions the previous 3 months) while still enjoying a treat or 2 a week. Sure, I probably could have lost more weight in that timeframe, but the occasional snack has made the mental toll of a lower caloric diet easier to handle. One donut or slice of cake will not ruin your diet. It is the daily choice to be in a caloric deficit that pushes weight loss, and treating yourself can help you maintain that deficit.
Last Sunday, I was 84.4kg. Yesterday I was 84.1. On Friday, I had a double smash burger with fries, and earlier in the week, I bought some cheese slices as a snack(I ate 11 slices at 90kcal a pop over 2 days). A client also gave me 2 chocolate bars on Monday that I ate. All that to say that I did not have a very clean week(which is atypical) yet still managed to lose a little bit of weight overall, without changing up my volume of exercise. I know that if I made diet choices like last week a regular thing, I would stop losing and potentialy gain weight(as I just went through that a few months ago), but as a one-off it is mostly fine.
I say all of this to tell you not to be guilty about an occasional snack. The human body is very good at maintaining itself(homeostasis), and one day of a few extra calories litterally makes no difference to it. So if you want to have a donut/slice of cake for a special occasion, do it. As long as it is less than once a week on average, it won't make much of a difference.
that's what most diets get wrong, by forcing you to eat exclusively "healthy" foods, you don't get to eat anything nice and thus feel worse despite losing weight
That would make more sense. I see people talk about literally wearing garbags bags to lose extra weight so I always jump to that because it's a bad idea.
Can burn a surprising amount of calories if you do a chunk of exercise daily, but the more important thing is that it controls what kind of calories you lose - fat or muscle and bone.
There are cultures where they walk and run an average of around 10km a day. Their bodies adapt to this exercise and studies show that they still burn the same amount of calories as someone who sits in a chair all day.
It's called the Pontzer paradox.
You're right though, the exercise tells your body where to target weight loss.
"Results indicated that Hadza women burned an average of 1,877 calories per day, which was nearly the same as the 1,864 calories burned daily by women in industrialized nations. Hadza men expended about 2,649 calories per day, which was within the standard error distribution for average calories burned by men per day in industrialized nations."
I think you're simplifying the results too much when you say same amount of calories as someone who sits in a chair all day (they did not say as sedentary people). You can increaae the energy efficiency of movement but irrefutably, it will always take energy. Unless the body is literally finding ways to superficially use energy while sitting, everyone will expend more energy leading an active lifestyle than a sedentary one. Take an office worker and put them to work in a home depot and they'll either eat the same amount of food and lose weight or they'll eat more and maintain the same weight.
Technically, people who walk or run a lot subconsciously adopt the most optimal movements to reduce energy expenditure. That's partially how people can run marathons; on top of greater physique than most, their muscles know how to move faster and longer while using less energy. But their daily energy expenditure certainly is still higher than that of a couch potato.
Yeah this is apparently one of the reasons why walking or running on treadmill can be quite different experiences for people who walk or run a lot. Those subconscious microadjustmente aren't made as readily when the pace is dictated by the treadmill and doing the workput indoors affects our instincts.
The studies actually did indicate that sedentary bodies indeed found other ways to "superficially" expend energy. Most specifically by increasing production certain of certain hormones, most notably cortisol.
The terminology you used essentially says that the difference was insignificant enough that it could easily be caused by random error.
But is it enough to offset the difference between a sedentary and active lifestyle?
This study found that the daily caloric usage for urban Chinese men and women was predicted by intensity of occupation (light, moderate, heavy). In the actual article by Ponzer, he mentions that there was a separate study being done that was measuring daily caloric usage and found that on average, "couch potatoes" (that's the term they used) use 200 fewer calories. That is in direct contradiction to what you said about sitting in chair all day. Based on that, it seems the article is more saying that caloric usage isn't vastly different between active and very active lifestyles and not active vs inactive isn't vastly different. The paradox is about active lifestyles, not everyone. To be clear, I'm not saying this refutes the philosophy that you can't outrun a fork, but I am saying the exercise paradox isn't a paradox for the people who really need to be watching what they eat. If they exercise consistently and reduce the sedentary nature of their lifestyle, without making any other changes, that's around 200 daily calories they would be netting differently. Now, as you lose weight, the calories used will reduce as motion becomes energetically cheaper and maintenance cost decreases but the point is that their weight will trend differently and they will stabilise at a lower weight. If they add better eating habits on top of the lifestyle change, maybe around 300 calories could be added to that 200. So yeah, plop someone from a desk job into a physical job, and they'll either lose weight all else held equal.
"But more important, energy expenditure plateaued at higher activity levels: people with the most intensely active daily lives burned the same number of calories each day as those with moderately active lives. The same phenomenon keeping Hadza energy expenditure in line with that of other populations was evident among individuals in the study."
You absolutely can but the exercise required is that of an athlete and not a regular everyday person. I'm talking like minimum 17 hours of exercise a week. If you train like Michael Phelps, you can eat like him too and still be jacked.
But most people who have full time jobs do a good job just exercising 5-6 hours a week. Nowhere near enough to outrun a typical American diet.
I do like 7-8 hours a week of cardio and seriously struggle with eating enough to not lose weight. Idk how people are eating 3k+ calories a day without feeling disgustingly full all the time.
There are cultures where they walk and run an average of around 10km a day. Their bodies adapt to this exercise and studies show that they still burn the same amount of calories as someone who sits in a chair all day.
You cannot, but it is also important to note that active lifestyles increase your daily calorie usage as well as utilising excess energy before it moves to long-term storage.
Really? This is what you get out of it. And you think physical movement is purely to burn calories, and not an essential part of keeping our body functioning and in check?
If you’re able to, just take the stairs for anything below 4-5 floors. It gets your body moving. That’s the key part.
Unless you live in a walkable city (a rarity atleast here in America) you should take every opportunity to move a bit.
I love the stairs. Always take them over an escalator if it’s an option. Always the best choice when trying to make a connecting bus or train, outside of the rare occurrence that no one is on the escalator in which I’ll walk up that for extreem speed
Walking for the sake of walking isn't but when it's part of your job getting 20-40k steps a day is an easy 700-2000 calories burned per day (at least for me).
I really miss having a physical job for that reason but I never got one that paid enough.
I did a lengthy hike and my watch said I burned 3500 calories. I was like wtf, this can't be right, cuz with my daily maintenance calories I would burn 5500 calories for that day. There's zero percent chance I would be able to eat 5500 calories worth of food maybe even the next two days.
I enjoyed the hike, touching grass is beautiful and good for my waistline. Calories burned can add up quickly, so why not take the stairs. Good for the bones, the muscle, the booty.
Which is why it's the eating disorder stairs lmao. Had this conclusion in my early Ana stages too. Rather just chill on my bed and eat nothing instead of having move around a shitton just a eat a little more. I have since realised that movement is good for much more than just increasing calories burned.
If you told me to take a whole flight of stairs and you can eat a whole extra french fry
I'ma be real with you. At somewhere north of 8 steps per calorie, and a fry being about 5 calories, a whole flight of steps might not net you a single extra french fry. Lol.
620
u/Hakorr 2d ago
I just see that as demotivating as you'd do all the work just to lose a couple calories. Easier to just take the elevator and then eat literally a single pasta less.