[StevePerkins]

I can't help but groan at some of the "obvious" health and weight loss platitudes that get smugly thrown around.

"Calories in, calories out!"

"You can't outrun a bad diet!"

"Weight is lost in the kitchen!"

Sure, things ultimately boil down to intake-vs-expenditure. However, it IS more complicated than that in practice. As software developers, we complain when management makes decisions based on inadequate or poor metrics. But likewise there so many more benefits to physical exercise that aren't captured by a diet and exercise tracking app.

During times when I've been 100% sedentary for long periods, I experience overwhelming cravings for sugar and crappy foods. When I force myself to take up any consistent exercise, even just a 30 min walk in the morning or lunchtime... then the cravings subside and regular meals are sufficient. This is fairly common.

Exercise has so many physical and mental health benefits. But even just looking at weight management alone, exercise tends to ramp up your metabolism for hours after each exercise session. Something that doesn't get captured by your tracker app or wearable gadget.

So often, when I hear somebody smugly minimizing the importance of exercise to health and weight management, it's a person who is too-clever-by-half. They're constantly dabbling with soylent shakes or paleo/keto fad diets... because the truth is they're just lazy and don't want to get off their ass, and look to rationalize that.

EDIT: At least half of these replies are completely missing my point altogether. I'm not saying that there is a binary choice to be made between "good diet" OR "exercise", and that you should make the latter choice rather than the former. I'm saying that treating this as a binary choice in the first place is ridiculous.

Exercise correlates with proper eating, it's not incidental or ancillary. It's ineffective to tell someone to "go the gym" without changing their eating habits? Well sure, but telling them to "go keto" without worrying about physical activity will be no more successful a year out. It's the pretense that most people can consistently stick with one of these things, and not both together, that is absurd.

[jedrek]

I think you're misreading the function of those slogans. First off, they're hardly "obvious" when you account for the overwhelming FUD around nutrition anybody who's tried to lose weight. And you get it from everybody: your Mom, magazines, movies, the news, pop sci articles, the government, etc.

But more importantly, those things are TRUE. Anybody with significant weight to lose will not be able to out-exercise a bad diet. What fat people hear a lot more often is, "oh, you gotta hit the gym". Hitting the gym is great if you're 15 lb overweight, but at 50 or 100 it's all but useless.

> exercise tends to ramp up your metabolism for hours after each exercise session.

Yep. If you spin hard for 45 minutes you get an extra 170kcal through the rest of the day. That is... 2 fun sized Snicker bars, 19 grams of butter, or 17 Pringles chips.

Caloric intake is the absolute key to weight loss. Everything else is complementary. Telling people who are more than a few pounds overweight to hit the gym as the base of their weight loss strategy is complete un-based in science and almost always self defeating.

[watwut]

The worst thing you can do is to focus on calories only. That is the worst advice out there and you get it from everywhere.

YoYo effect guaranteed, cravings guaranteed, lesser ability to focus at work guaranteed and so on and so forth. And you will be miserable and won't keep it long term.

You don't just loose fat when you exercise, you build muscles, your cardio system is getting better etc etc. The way people here talk about it all sounds as if they would be putting on makeup - there is more to health and performance (including mental) then just how quick you lost few kilo.

[bitexploder]

Running at a moderate pace for 45 minutes is an easy 90-110kcal / mile depending on your weight.

Running is a double edged sword on appetite. It tends to shut down your gut for a while, making you less hungry for a period after the workout. But, people tend to misjudge how much they burn on shorter workouts or runs.

Often people only need 2 or 3 habit changes to create a long term deficit. Example: run a few times a week (30 mins, 3 miles each time, -900 kcal). Cut out sugar drinks (2 per day? -1400 kcal / day easy). One per day? (-700kcal) / week). Exercise is likely to simply make you feel better and in my experience causes me to at least think about healthy eating choices. Many people who don't exercise and drink sugary drinks can do just those two and end up with an easy 1600-2500 kcal deficit without thinking much about diet change etc. Even doing that is a huge change, and to sustain that over the course of years is a huge undertaking for anyone.

These are some simple things, yet even then most people will completely fail at a diet. A sobering statistics: http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/82/1/222S.long -- only approximately 20% of individuals are successful at sustaining weight loss.

Personal anecdote time: I dropped about 45 lbs through calorie counting and a lot of running. Eventually the running allowed me to eat more food than I was eating before I started running. This greatly contributed to satiety and addressing the psychological and mental battles anyone faces undergoing an effort to cut fat. I have maintained the weight loss for 10+ years. It is very hard to separate where the exercise stopped and the nutritional plan started in terms of addressing all of the facets of sustained weight loss. One thing that is clear to me now is that my approach was extreme and probably only a very small fraction of people can or ever will be able to adopt such an approach. I ran at least 20 miles per week, typically 30-40, and at my weight that was for sure 2500-5000 calories per week burned from exercise alone. It put me in a position of actually having to eat more than was comfortable some days just to not push things to a relatively unhealthy range of calorie deficit. My take away is this: you can't out run a diet [^1]. I like to think of myself as "not exceptional"... I am not a fast runner and I have no real gift for it. I just like doing it. (side note: it turned out to have been very effective self medication for ADHD, so it was probably much more rewarding for me than the average person, who would probably not have the same elevated positive feelings surrounding their exercise activity as I probably get).

1: Unless you turn your body into a machine capable of obliterating calories at a rate that outstrips your ability to eat yourself fat.

Also, the whole "ups your metabolism for hours after the activity" that is factored into almost any calorie calculation and the actual burn from that is almost trivial. Its a few calories, but it is mostly your heart rate recovering down to a normal resting range. It doesn't change the basic calculations (100kcal / mile of running, etc.). You nailed that one, but people tout it as an exercise benefit when... it is just calories out and not many at all.

My point about all of this is that many slogans are correct or correct enough to be a reasonable model (calories in, calories out, can't outrun a bad diet, etc.). But the shocking lack of success in sustained weight loss is something you need to look down the barrel of the moment you decide "I will lose some weight" because if you want to keep that weight off what you are really saying is "I will lose some weight; I am going to need to make moderate to significant changes to my lifestyle... forever." It really is that meaty of a decision. Many people don't succeed their first attempt, but learn enough to succeed eventually. Most people never succeed to the degree they desire. It is because completely changing your lifestyle and mentality as an adult is very hard.

So we know all of these true things about weight loss, but I think it is a mistake to narrow it too much down to any one rule aphorism. It must be tackled on all fronts simultaneously (mental, exercise, diet). Most people will try just one and fail. Some people adopt two, but lose the habits because they weren't real change. The mental approach is the hardest to "prescribe" because each individual will have different issues and triggers for their eating. Mileage will vary, but these are some things I have observed.

[pbhjpbhj]

>Running at a moderate pace //

If you're obese you will knacker your knees. Swimming is better, but be careful to exercise complementary muscle groups too.

[bitexploder]

You can walk. If you are at 50 + lbs of weight and haven't run at all fast walking will put you in the same cardio zone as running for a lighter weight runner. The math of calorie loss as it goes with running is the simple equation of how much weight are you moving and what cardio zone is your body operating in to move that weight. If you can hit low aerobic fast walking (most non runners can do that easily), just do that.

Beyond that I am not sure about how running impacts the joints of heavily overweight people. I would advise a very slow and conservative ramp of up mileage. I think as long as the body is given time to adjust it can do so with minimal risk of serious injury (even if you are running). The problem with running is your aerobic capacity will likely outstrip the rest of your bodies ability to absorb punishment. This is why so many "I am going to run a Marthon, but have no prior running experience" people end up injured and then wander about telling people how bad running is for your joints, etc.

(https://www.runnersworld.com/general-interest/runners-have-m...). Could just be a self reporting bias, but it is interesting. Several studies over the years have looked at life long runners knees and they seem to be fine compared to a non runners.

I didn't even go into some of those "soft" benefits of regular exercise, such as the mental boost it gives (which seems like it would support weight loss), along with the obligatory lymph system circulation which is likely to improve immune health and help with waste cycling. As long as someone isn't overtraining, that is :)

[naravara]

>During times when I've been 100% sedentary for long periods, I experience overwhelming cravings for sugar and crappy foods.

This is very much a YMMV deal. I am like you in that when I train a lot my appetites for food become healthier leading me to crave more fiber and protein.

My wife, however, is the exact opposite. When she's sedentary she's fine eating whatever. When she's active and training she starts craving junk food and snacks which she has learned to use as a coping mechanism for stress.

I suspect this depends a lot about how you're socialized around eating. She grew up on processed food and her family used sweets and junk food as a rewards when she did well at things. In contrast, my mother regularly cooked from scratch and we only ever ate those "dopamine-hit" foods and snacks on special occasions so in my mind, those are more tied to times of year and social context rather than personal reward or fulfillment.

[deadmetheny]

For someone who is very badly overweight, cutting calories is still a very good step. My first 100 lbs lost were from doing exactly that. After you get down to merely overweight from terribly obese is when you really need to start caring more about being active and attempting to work exercise into the routine as well. At least from my experience, cutting calories is something that beginners can fairly easily wrap their heads around that actually shows results (provided they are actually counting properly).

A couple years after deciding that it's time to get serious about taking care of my body and I'm very close to reaching a healthy weight, and additionally have become reasonably strong due to a weight training regimen. But I wouldn't be here if I hadn't seen the results of calorie counting and taken the next step after the benefits of that started slowing down.

[masklinn]

> For someone who is very badly overweight, cutting calories is still a very good step.

It's more or less the only possible step: unless you have an absolutely freaky metabolism, exercise will not be able to mitigate an unhealthy diet until long-term (through increasing basal metabolism by building up muscle mass), and when significantly overweight it's easy to exercise "wrong" and hurt yourself.

[deadmetheny]

Indeed, which is why I dislike seeing people who pooh-pooh on the idea that "calories in < calories out" is not a good first step. It's absolutely the correct first step, IMO. There's obviously more in play beyond that, but for a lot of people it's the most basic first step they need to grasp to move further down the scale. After getting eating habits under control, then people can worry more about how the body burns different calorie sources differently and balancing exercise with healthy eating.

[bitexploder]

It is a great first step. But it is complicated.

People don't like being uncomfortable and we all actively avoid pain. Exercising at a level that significantly impacts weight loss is hard. It can be extremely uncomfortable and even painful at times. We are soft and we have a universe of terrible pre-processed foods at our disposal. It is just a fact of life that people actively avoid uncomfortable situations and so much of modern life is all about YOU being the star of your own universe and your comfort.

I think exercise and doing physically uncomfortable things consistently and at a high volume (with appropriate and healthy ramp up, of course) can shock a system into being able to cope with discomfort, the kind of discomfort required to break through previous weight loss barriers and habits. Along with understanding the problem and displacing unhealthy eating habits (and those habitual triggers) I think a lot more people would be successful at sustaining weight loss. A very small percentage of people will sustain weight loss (studies put it at 5-20%).

The sayings and weight loss facts are all missing a very large component and that is focusing on how to make weight loss sustainable per individual. No one wants to hear "You are about to embark on one of the most difficult tasks human beings in western society regularly undertake. Your chances of a failure are very high. In order to succeed you will have to learn to be uncomfortable. You will have to dedicate time and real effort to this over a course of years." That said, there are plenty of diet only programs that can sustain weight loss as exercise heavy programs.

http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/82/1/222S.long -- This is a great look at what things are more or less successful over a longer period. One of the most interesting things is that triggers (medical events) are very good at starting and sustaining weight loss. To me this is one of those system shocks that can tilt the balance in favor of "okay, I have to tolerate this lesser discomfort now because I now I will face a much greater and debilitating discomfort in the future". Only, unhealthy eating for most people is almost always a major medical event 10-20 years down the adult road. It takes it being shoved into the forefront of the mind before people take it seriously. Anyway the summary is gold:

"Findings from the registry suggest six key strategies for long-term success at weight loss: 1) engaging in high levels of physical activity; 2) eating a diet that is low in calories and fat; 3) eating breakfast; 4) self-monitoring weight on a regular basis; 5) maintaining a consistent eating pattern; and 6) catching “slips” before they turn into larger regains. Initiating weight loss after a medical event may also help facilitate long-term weight control."

That is it. I think you need to have a plan in mind that incorporates all of these and I think from the outset they should all be a part of your weight loss habits for the most success. My own experience bears this out, having beaten the odds by (unknowingly) doing almost all of these things save for having a medical trigger (I did have a "looking in the mirror" type trigger somewhere after my first son was born and I realized I was an out of shape lazy ass that could never keep up with my kids at the rate I was going). I am pretty passionate about this topic because so much of my family got stuck in the Jenny Craight / Weight Watchers / Atkins -- just do this one thing and lose weight habit and it has never worked. I think folks on hacker news that have high enough emotional intelligence can probably work it out with just food management, but I think long term that is just as hard as trying to exercise out your bad habits. These strategies all go together to address all the areas people are likely to fail creating a safety net to prevent habit relapse.

[eropple]

> They're constantly dabbling with soylent shakes or paleo/keto fad diets... because the truth is they're just lazy and don't want to get off their ass, and look to rationalize that.

This is a stretch to me. Doesn't matter how much I exercise: aggressive keto diets are the only way I've ever lost weight (though not necessarily maintained it, I can maintain on a normal diet) in my life. Playing two games of full-court basketball a day or sitting around playing video games, I'm just not as hungry and the food I eat when I'm going that route just doesn't stick the way it can otherwise.

I certainly feel better, you're not wrong about that, when I exercise even moderately. But the diet matters plenty, too--it's yet another one of those more complicated in practice things that you're claiming exist in the first place.

[beardbandit]

"I can't help but groan at some of the "obvious" health and weight loss platitudes that get smugly thrown around."

On the flip side, the people that are told this are the ones that are annoyingly attempting to maintain their bad eating habits while just adding exercise, or adding fab foods, or anything really to delude themselves into thinking they can continue to eat the same way.

[StevePerkins]

I have never in my life met someone who has the physical and mental discipline to exercise regularly, yet also still sits around eating candy and pizza the other 23-hours of the day.

MAYBE if you're still in school, or a new grad in your 20's, you might know people who are physically active but also like to drink heavy / party. But by the time you're 30 or so, exercise and decent eating habits tend to correlate one way or the other.

Whenever someone strikes up a conversation with me about exercise being of minimal importance compared to diet... it's usually when I'm heading downstairs for a workout in the company gym, and some brogrammer with an energy drink in his hand takes it upon himself to justify why he isn't.

[bitexploder]

I have had periods where my diet totally relapsed but my exercise never did. That is why I think (most) people need mental, exercise, and diet based strategies to lose weight. If you only use diet and that gets sketchy for a while (life stress, whatever the reason...) then your chance of relapse and weight gain are much higher. When just one piece of your strategy falls away if you still have a few other legs holding it all up it will probably stay standing.

Plus I have met distance runners with ridiculous diets. Some of them run 50 miles a week just so they can eat a pint of ice cream every week and pizza multiple times per week. It happens, but those are always at the extremes. A balanced approach is needed for most mortals.

People will justify their beliefs in a whole bunch of different ways. Until someone has actually lived it and dropped 40+ lbs and kept it off for years I immediately down grade whatever advice they are giving as they are simply less credible (unless they are well versed on the actual science and literature of the topic, in which case they likely never gained excess weight to begin with or fall into that category of someone who has lost weight and kept it off).

The number of people I have met or know personally who diet it all off with no exercise and are convinced how right they are "I lost 100 lbs!" only to balloon back to their start weight or close to it is ... a lot.

[scarface74]

I have had periods where my diet totally relapsed but my exercise never did.

When I was going through a divorce over 10 years ago in my early 30s, I was still active (like I said in a previous post, I was a part time fitness instructor) but I ate with abandon and my weight shot up. It was easier back then - eat like a normal person and the weight dropped.

I could do that then when I was working out 10-12 hours a week. But that wouldn't happen now.

[sulam]

FWIW, basic habits like you're describing will get you pretty far. Then something changes. For me, it was kids. Because of kids I couldn't get outside for the 5-10 hours I used to, and I started putting on weight. That forced me to rework how I approach eating and nutrition from the ground up.

[scarface74]

Exercise has so many physical and mental health benefits. But even just looking at weight management alone, exercise tends to ramp up your metabolism for hours after each exercise session. Something that doesn't get captured by your tracker app or wearable gadget.

I was a part time fitness instructor for over a decade, but when people asked about losing weight, I would minimize the importance of exercise for weight loss - to the surprise of many.

Sure I ate like crap and maintained my weight, but between teaching 10 hours a week, training for runs and occasional weight lifting, I was easily burning an extra 1000+ calories a day. Most people aren't in the type of shape to burn that much in a reasonable amount of time.

Since I was being paid to workout, I was very consistent. How many people will consistently work out an average of two hours a day no matter what?

When I stopped teaching and started doing the minimum amount of exercise, I had to be much more careful about what I ate and I'm still 10-15 pounds heavier than I was at my prime.

I'm not trying to dismiss the other benefits of exercise, but weight loss isn't high on the list of benefits for most people - especially not walking or low impact exercise.

[Blackthorn]

Those platitudes are also, well... Wrong. My favorite example:

> "Calories in, calories out!"

Well, sure, but those calories on the label are calculated by burning the components in a machine and measuring the heat output. The human body isn't going to convert the input food at 100%. That percent is going to depend on a lot of factors!

[NikolaeVarius]

Irrelevant. As long as you eat less than what you burn, you will lose weight.

If you're not losing weight, cut what you eat until you see results.

[Blackthorn]

You're assuming a constant factor there that isn't necessarily constant.

[NikolaeVarius]

So? Are we assuming these things are 100% off consistently? If what you care claiming is true, there should be wide swaths of people on bodybuilding forums raising hell about how inaccurate nutrition labels are. But for anyone counting calories, it seems to work just fine.

[Zanta]

Your point absolutely has merit. I know some, but not many, badly overweight people who exercise regularly. I know some, but not many, skinny people who never lift a finger.

I was mostly trying to address the direct cause-and-effect conclusion the parent comment was making with breathing hard == losing weight

[glenra]

> I know some, but not many, badly overweight people who exercise regularly.

There's a lot of reverse causality in that relationship. Being badly overweight makes exercise more unpleasant and prone to cause injury.

[adamc]

My experience supports this. Exercise helps far more than the mere calories expended would suggest.

[SomeStupidPoint]

The most important role of exercise in weightloss is hormone regulation, not the calories burned. (As you correctly point out.)

Being less stressed and routinely expending large amounts of energy simply causes your body to run differently (because of the hormones produced and burned off), which in turn changes how it processes food and fat stores, what it craves, etc.

I think proper hormone regulation is far more sustainable than the calorie restrictions necessary to offset out-of-whack hormones.

[jedrek]

> I think proper hormone regulation is far more sustainable than the calorie restrictions necessary to offset out-of-whack hormones.

Sure. As long as you have time to work out. Or you don't get hurt. Or you can afford to go to a place to work out (much of the US isn't even walkable).

[SomeStupidPoint]

You could hit the level of physical exercise I'm speaking about in 30-60 per day at home with bodyweight exercises, with a very minimal chance of injury. (To the point my 90 year old grandmother can do the exercises -- she's just slower and does lighter versions.)

That's not a priority for some people, but that's a choice they're making.

It's absolutely not about access or time -- it's about choosing to do it or not. Frankly, given how much more efficient it makes everything else, I think it's harder not to.

Other people feel differently.