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exercise →

perversesheaf:

nostalgebraist:
On the other hand, changing the amount of fat in your body is famously difficult. It’s hard to get people to lose nontrivial amounts of weight (or gain nontrivial amounts of weight, through methods other than muscle-building exercises) even if you’re running…
I agree that modifying your weight – and especially body fat – through diet alone can be tricky. But that seems to be the only viable way to do it. (And that’s what I meant when I said that weight and body fat are mostly functions of diet.) For example, most sources seem to agree that steady-state running is an ineffective weight loss method. (Interval training appears to be slightly more effective, but I’m not sure how much more.)

Oh, yes, I agree – or at least that is a thing I have read in a number of places. (My impression of interval training is “some studies say it might be really effective, but there’s a lot of variance within the studies and more research is needed.” Steady-state aerobic exercise is definitely ineffective.)

This is cynical, but a part of me feels like the “it’s diet, not exercise” idea is out there largely because people who want to sell weight loss methods find diet an easier sell. There are a wider range of possible diets that don’t sound totally implausible (Seth Roberts’ ”the secret to losing weight is drinking olive oil at specific times” seems bizarre, but less prima facie unpromising than “the secret to losing weight is doing this obscure gluteal workout”), and many diets are relatively easy or fun to try.

(The ones that involve starving yourself aren’t fun or easy, but the various Atkins-like ones are for some people, and the “weird tricks” like Roberts’ can be even easier. While I was in middle school, a school administrator lost a large amount of weight and attributed it to either “not eating white-colored foods” or “eating only white-colored foods” – I literally can’t remember which. There are endless variations possible here, and people will buy into them)

(via perversesheaf-deactivated201508)

11th May 201518 notes

exercise

perversesheaf:

nostalgebraist:
On the other hand, changing the amount of fat in your body is famously difficult. It’s hard to get people to lose nontrivial amounts of weight (or gain nontrivial amounts of weight, through methods other than muscle-building exercises) even if you’re running a study and can order them to do extreme things because they signed a consent form. Losing weight through exercise isn’t impossible, at least not for everyone, but describing it as “low-hanging fruit” seems very inaccurate. It’s a strategy that many, many people have put large amounts of time into for, in most cases, remarkably little effect.
I thought it was fairly well known that weight and body fat is most a function of diet, not exercise? E.g. you can lift as many weights as you want, but if you aren’t eating more than your base metabolic rate, you aren’t going to gain weight.

This is a really complicated and controversial area, which I don’t want to pretend to be any kind of expert in. Certainly you can’t gain muscle if you eat too little (or get too little protein). Beyond that, though, my impression is that aside from strength training, which actually works, weight and body fat aren’t functions of much of anything. People have weight set points, and the body will work very hard to keep you near yours. (Obviously this is not true in literally every case, as there are examples of people who have lost large amounts of weight and kept it off, etc.)

There are all kinds of other ideas out there, like the idea that carbohydrates make the body gain weight (advocated by Gary Taubes among others) and Seth Roberts’ idea about changing your set point by eating flavorless food at certain times. I get the sense that none of these work all that well for your average person, or else the numerous people out there who want to lose weight and are willing to try anything once would have converged on the really effective one.

(via perversesheaf-deactivated201508)

11th May 201518 notes