russ_watters said:
You failed to address the point I made even a little bit. Besides the irrelevancies you disucssed, like the effects of different types of food (which may be interesting, but have nothing to do with exercise), you used the same logical disconnect as the article did!
Ok, very convenient way of dismissing all the info/links/research I presented.
I let moderator unpleasantness drive me away from PF once, but not again. I should have been able to develop a thick skin by now
Let me try again.
You said - "The human body's weight gain or loss is determined by the caloric balance: calories in - calories out = calories stored. If you increase the calories out while maintaining the calories in, you lose weight. Period."
To which I responded with - "Unfortunately, that's not true. Our body is far more complex than a simplistic calories in = calories out. The laws of theormodynamics are not violated (obviously!) but the set point changes depending on the type of calories.
For eg, if you feed 2 groups the same 2000 calories, but one where 80% are from carbs (mostly refined) and the other where 80% is fat, the 2 groups will gain different amounts of weight.
One simple factor is the energy the body uses in the digestion process, which is called the thermic effect of food. The thermic effect of protein is about twice that of carbohydrate or fat.
I will find the link later, but there was a study done at the City of Hope Medical Center in Duarte, California. Here they studied two groups of overweight people, both on medically supervised low-calorie liquid diets. One group added 3 ounces of almonds to their daily diet, while the other group added the same amount of calories from complex carbs like popcorn and Triscuit crackers. Both groups ate the same number of calories daily, about 1,000. During the 24-week study, the almond-eating group lost more weight even though they ate the same number of calories as the carb group.
There have been other studies done as well, I will need some time to dig them out.
Meanwhile, here's a nice article from Dr. Feinman
http://www.nutritionj.com/content/3/1/9
Quoting from the conclusion -
A review of simple thermodynamic principles shows that weight change on isocaloric diets is not expected to be independent of path (metabolism of macronutrients) and indeed such a general principle would be a violation of the second law. Homeostatic mechanisms are able to insure that, a good deal of the time, weight does not fluctuate much with changes in diet – this might be said to be the true "miraculous metabolic effect" – but it is subject to many exceptions. The idea that this is theoretically required in all cases is mistakenly based on equilibrium, reversible conditions that do not hold for living organisms and an insufficient appreciation of the second law. The second law of thermodynamics says that variation of efficiency for different metabolic pathways is to be expected. Thus, ironically the dictum that a "calorie is a calorie" violates the second law of thermodynamics, as a matter of principle.
Plus eating fewer than a certain threshold of calories puts your body in starvation mode and drastically reduces your metabolism too."
Re:
your exercise claim, I responded to
that with - "Maybe
this guy is a weirdo, but that does not matter. Resorting to ad hominem won't negate his evidence. And the evidence is there.
The Terry Wilkin study of childhood obesity, for e.g.
http://adc.bmj.com/content/early/200...35012.abstract
There were no associations between physical activity and changes in any measure of body mass or fatness over time in either sex (e.g. BMI-SDS: r=-0.02 p=0.76). However, there was a small-to-moderate inverse association between physical activity and change in composite metabolic score (r=-0.19, p<0.01). Mixed effects modeling showed that the improvement in metabolic score among the more active compared to the less active children was linear with time (-0.08 z-scores/year, p=0.001).
Exercise is beneficial for lots of other things, but not weight loss.
Merely saying that if you starve and exercise you lose weight is no solution to anything. Its your bodies complicated homeostasis mechanism which makes you hungrier when you exercise. Which is what makes the calories in = calories out cliche a myth."
The fact that eating affects weight gain/loss does not in any way imply that exercise doesn't. The fact that eating less works better doesn't change the fact that exercising more still works. The fact that people who exercise more tend to start eating more doesn't change the fact that if they exercise more while holding their food intake steady they lose weight.
Please
read what I wrote. I said that
exercise was not a useful method for weight loss. Period.
Precisely
because you cannot eat the same if you exercise more. Our body's homeostasis works to ensure that we compensate by eating more too. Artificially and forcefully starving yourself will never work long term and is not sustainable. What is far more likely to work is something which keeps you full and makes you less hungry.
Also, I don't agree that if you eat the same number of calories, the more you exercise, the more weight you will lose. Show me a study which shows this linear or geometric relation. I also contest that the type of food you eat will also affect how much you lose. As stated above, the laws of thermodynamics have been incorrectly interpreted for too long w.r.t nutrition and weight loss.
guy that actually gets up off his rump to go find food instead of just driving to Publix.
