[mr_luc]

The article itself it insightful. But, brother hackers, can we allow an article whose title is a blatant lie to be voted to the top of Hacker News?

Running is exercise.

Running 1600 meters, on average, burns 124 calories for a man. ("Energy Expenditure of Walking and Running", Syracuse Uni study). This only takes a few minutes.

Even if a person is taking in massively more calories than their body needs -- let's say, overeating by 1000 calories a day -- they could burn it all off with a few miles of jogging. Increase the amount of running they do still further, and you won't find anyone who will seriously suggest that they won't get thinner.

Or how do you think that cross-country runners got so skinny?

Olympic marathoners?

...

So ...

Exercise CAN make you thin; thus, the statement that it won't is incorrect.

[codahale]

1,000 calories, considering the modern possibilities, isn't that much. I mean, that's a bit less than two slices of toast with Nutella.

Weight loss programs have to focus on preempting and managing appetite. There's a wealth of studies connecting exercise to increased appetite (c.f. OP), especially focused, running-at-the-gym, doing-penance-for-those-donuts exercise. (Low-level activity—walking around, say—doesn't seem to provoke the same uptick in hunger. But it also burns way, way less calories.)

Your counterfactual assumes that the runner isn't more likely to eat an additional 2,000 calories, which is to say, they're already managing their appetite. If you can manage your appetite, then go for a goddamn run already. You'll be happier for it. If you're not managing your appetite, work on that—exercise will not help you lose weight until you do.

There's a great book—The End Of Overeating—which details the intersection of modern food science, evolutionary psychology, cognitive psychology, and human physiology. If you're interested, give it a go.

(BTW, bringing up elite athletes doesn't help the discussion—elite athletes regularly have 1.5-2 times the VO² max of even extremely fit people. Hell, five-time Tour de France winner Miguel Indurain could circulate 7L of oxygenated blood per minute compared with the 5-6L of his competitors and 3-4L for the fitter of us regular people. Human physiology has a statistical distribution, and bringing up people many standard deviations from the mean doesn't help any of us regular schmucks. My mutant power certainly does not involve my metabolism.)

[gaius]

1,000 calories, considering the modern possibilities, isn't that much. I mean, that's a bit less than two slices of toast with Nutella.

Yes, it is VERY difficult to out-train a bad diet. There is an example I use with friends, which is if you drink 5 pints of beer, you'll need to run 10 miles to burn that off (really). Have a pizza or a kebab on the way home, another 10 miles. Have a fry-up for breakfast, another 10 miles. So even if you ran a Marathon tomorrow, with your hangover, you've still gained fat from one Friday night. And you're doing again on Saturday night too.

On the subject, of athletes, everyone at the top of any sport is a genetic freak. That's not to disparage the effort they put in. But hey, Michael Phelps didn't get his extraordinarily long armspan from training. He didn't get his flipper-shaped feet from training. He was born with them. And he was born with an extraordinary metabolism too.

[mr_luc]

I agree that it's difficult to out-train a bad diet. But

1) Remember, we're counting the difference between what you need to eat and what you do eat. So although crazily irresponsible people doubtless are regularly eating 5000+ calorie diets, day in and day out, the amount they need to burn off to zero out would then be around 2000+ calories.

2) Impractical is not impossible. Even if you OVEREAT by 3000 calories per day, if you spent all day running and resting/drinking water from running, you could do it.

Exercise CAN make people thin. ;) I'm not saying that for a given someone, you couldn't eat enough to take yourself out of contention, but the answer to "Can exercise make you thin?" is "yes."

What I object to most in the article title is the implication that people are working hard, but somehow wasting their effort.

"Oh, the problem is that you've been getting up an hour early every morning to run and run and run, and have been undoing all of your hard work by eating Hardees Thickburgers 3 times a day!"

If you have the self-discipline to run regularly, you have the self-discipline necessary to complement it with the MINIMUM of dietary caution necessary to let it work for you.

[caffeine]

It's important to distinguish weight loss from fat loss. We want the latter - the former in itself is not particularly desirable (except perhaps for ice fishing).

- When I exercise, I tend to build muscle (and sore legs).

- When I eat less, I tend to lose some weight.

- When I exercise but eat more, weight goes up - because I'm gaining muscle.

So far, so good. But the above is completely meaningless. What really matters is:

- If I'm exercising a lot and eating reasonably, my weight goes up, BUT my %BF (percent body fat) goes down, because I'm gaining more muscle than fat.

- If I'm doing low-intensity exercise and eating sparingly, my weight goes down, but my %BF remains stable.

- If I exercise like crazy and eat very little, my weight goes down and my % BF goes down. This happens rarely because it requires inhuman willpower.

The point of this (admittedly anecdotal) chart is that weight change and %BF change are NOT correlated. In particular, the way one achieves a low body fat is:

1. Increase muscle, lowering %BF.

2. Lower overall weight, causing net fat loss AND muscle loss, probably increasing %BF slightly.

3. GOTO 1.

If you lose more %BF on step 1 than you gained on step 2, you win. This zig-zag is what body builders do, because it's nearly the only method that works. And step 2 is very diet-sensitive, and rather finicky.

And that is why the article sounded stupid to me. The study, in particular, of women who exercised intensively compared to those who didn't. I hope they measured % body fat in that study, because it's the only thing that matters when talking about obesity.

When the article says something like "Everybody lost a bit of weight, but some of the exercisers gained weight! So exercise doesn't make you thin." That's crap. "Lean" is a measure of % body fat, not total body mass. The exercisers probably decreased %BF if their weight remained stable. In other words, they probably look better now than they did.

[gaius]

if you spent all day running and resting/drinking water from running, you could do it.

Well, I am a Marathon runner. I know what burning 3000 extra calories in a day feels like. There is no way I could do that every day, and the average person is a LOT less fit than me.

Exercise is important for many reasons, but fat loss is mostly about the diet.

[nopassrecover]

1000 calories for toast with Nutella!?

I assume by calories you mean kilocalories in which case you are probably looking around 1000 KJ (kilojoules) for two slices of toast with Nutella. That's around 239 (kilo)calories.

[codahale]

Wheat bread's about 75 calories a slice, so 150 for just the bread. I don't know about you, but I put it on thick—maybe a serving-and-a-half per slice, which according to the Nutella website is 570 calories. So 720 total. Not 1,000, but closer to it than 239.

[bhousel]

Really? here are the numbers I just got for comparison off the containers (both are serving size 2 Tbsp)

   Nutella:                190 calories, 11g fat, 21g sugar, 3g protein
   Organic Peanut Butter:  210 calories, 18g fat, 2g sugar, 8g protein

Nutella isn't really that bad. I'll sometimes eat it on bread before a long run.

[codahale]

A serving size is 2Tbsp, which is what I put on a serving size of bread (1 slice) when I'm paying attention to how much I'm putting on. Like I said, though, I tend to slather it on (mainly because Nutella is so damn good)—so I'm really getting 1.5-2 servings of Nutella per slice.

Two slices—75kcal * 2—and a hunk of Nutella—190kcal * 3—is way the hell more calories than I should be eating as a snack (720kcal). Veeeery easy to go overboard.

[nopassrecover]

Okay wow I had no idea that Nutella was that high. That's freaking insane. You could have 2 and a half Snickers for that.

[Retric]

If you think of exercise as 30 minutes a day 3 times a week then diet is by far more important. But, at extreme levels of exercise it's hard to eat enough calories to keep from losing weight.

At the true elite level Michael Phelps is fueled by 12,000 calorie a day diet, eating that much food just hard. Think 60 Twinkies a day plus a 3000 calorie diet.

But even 1/2 that and most people would still have problems keeping up for months at a time. The average human body could do 8 hours of exercise a day 7 days a week for years after training. So we don't really need to look at the true extremes of human capability to find a level of exercise that will balance all, but the most ridicules diet.

PS: If you are going to work a desk job, then nights and weekend exercise is not going to cover a horrible diet.

[kscaldef]

> At the true elite level Michael Phelps is fueled by 12,000 calorie a day diet, eating that much food just hard. Think 60 Twinkies a day plus a 3000 calorie diet.

Even at much less intense levels, it's challenging to eat as much as necessary to maintain weight if you have a healthy diet. When I was training 100 miles a week (not all that much for a serious cyclist) I ate around 3300 calories a day. If my diet included stuff like Big Macs and triple mochas with a muffin, that would be easy. But if you aren't in the habit of eating lots of processed and fast foods, it's actually quick a bit of work to eat that much.

[jodrellblank]

It is not incorrect because it does not claim that it can't make you thin.

All it claims is that inside the article is an explanation of why exercise will not make you thin. Which there is. Even if you disagree with it, there is still one. Even if it was "because exercise has 8 characters and words with 8 characters are bad" it would still be an accurate title.

It's not a lie or a blatant lie.

[bokonist]

Or how do you think that cross-country runners got so skinny?

My guess is that the causation is reversed. Skinny people find running more enjoyable. I used to enjoy running cross-country when I was younger. As I've gotten older, I've filled out. I'm not fat, but I'm no longer thin and scrawny. As a result, I find running much more straining. I can feel it pound away on my knees, and I tend to get shin splints pretty quickly. So now I no longer run. I enjoy exercise - biking, soccer, etc. - but pounding pavement for 3 miles a day is no longer enjoyable.

Exercise CAN make you thin; thus, the statement that it won't is incorrect.

The article does not claim exercise can't make you thin. It claims it won't make you thin. No matter how many calories you burn, your body will send you overwhelming urges to eat more, to compensate for the lost calories. These urges - known as hunger - are incredibly difficult to resist, and thus you will not get any thinner.

[barrkel]

Only a stubbornly dense reading of the title is a lie, like the cliched way imaginary characters like Spock or Data take statements literally.

[ohlol]

What calculator are you using? 1000/124 = 8

Eight miles is more than a couple.

[mr_luc]

Bloops -- changed to "a few".

At a leisurely 10 minutes per mile, that's 1.3.. hours of running. Well, overeating by a thousand calories is a lot.

But even assuming you burned 0 other calories, still, the argument holds.

You can, indeed, get thin by exercise.

If one stubbornly insisted on ONLY getting thin by running, and steadfastly refused to take responsibility for what went into one's piehole, STILL -- it would be possible, if perhaps impractical, depending on just how irresponsible one's eating habits were and how much free time they had to exercise.

But plenty of people get up early enough, for instance, to run for an hour. So it's not only doable, but EMINENTLY doable.

[abecedarius]

Your argument assumes invariant appetite and metabolism. Weight regulation is complex; see Gary Taubes's book _Good Calories, Bad Calories_ or this article: http://sethroberts.net/about/whatmakesfoodfattening.pdf

[dkarl]

Running an hour a day is a dicey proposition because of the possibility of injury. I would say it's impossible for the vast majority of people who are overweight, no matter how carefully they worked up to it. You'd have to be skinny, have excellent form, and not have any unfixable pre-existing injuries or weaknesses.

[kscaldef]

running an hour at a 10 minute mile (6 mph) is unlikely to lead to injury.

[dkarl]

Over forty miles per week with no rest days == too much for most people, way too much if you're overweight. Sure, some people do a lot more, but there are always exceptions. Every running trail and running club is disproportionately populated by people who have better resistance to injury. Steady running is one of the most challenging things you can do to your joints. (I find doing fartlek over a given distance a lot easier to recover from than steady running.) Running slowly isn't necessarily better, since a lot of injuries are caused by the up-and-down impact, and there's a limit to the extent you can reduce the up-and-down.

The obvious solution is cross-training, but there aren't many things you can do by yourself that burn calories as well as running.

[dasil003]

Let's not forget the role that Nike has played in this by popularizing the running shoe based on perpetuating the notion that padded soles reduce injury when in fact the effect is the exact opposite.

[kscaldef]

Okay, so first, I'm certainly not saying every sedentary person should hop up and run for an hour tomorrow. I'm saying you can get there in a month or two of reasonable effort.

And, if you'd prefer, get on a bike for an hour instead. It's lower impact, and you'll burn at least as many calories as running.

[Retric]

"aren't many things you can do by yourself that burn calories as well as running."

All activity's at your aerobic limit burn the same number of calories. You can run, dance, row, weigh lift, or just bail hay, and you will encounter the same limit. It's basically a question of how much oxygen you can absorb though the lungs and dump into your blood stream.

[bootload]

"... running an hour at a 10 minute mile (6 mph) is unlikely to lead to injury. ..."

Over short distances maybe, but longer distances? Your modern western person isn't even setting enough time to do 20 minutes of exercise per day let alone moving a 10 minute mile. To move this speed for periods of time requires serious effort. As for injury well it depends how far, how long. I know, I've been doing 10Km on a regular basis for 770Km this year across a cross-country course and I'll tell you now, moving at the speed you suggest will cause damage unless you're conditioned, fit and motivated.

[nico]

You can ride a bike instead of running.

[redcap]

Or go for a swim. In fact I'd suggest either of those over pounding your feet against the concrete.

[anamax]

> So it's not only doable, but EMINENTLY doable.

I'll bite - how many hours/week do you run?

[seasoup]

The article states that people compensate for increased bouts of exercise by either consuming more calories or decreased activity later in the day. It goes on to cite a number of studies showing this effect.

Basically, if someone runs a few miles, they will reward themselves with a treat that negates or even overcompensates for the calories expended. Failing that, they will do less physical things later in the day... sit and watch TV instead of working in the garden for example.

Sure, some people have the willpower to go for a run and not eat more to compensate, but the majority of people do not. Any those that do might not even notice that they decrease later exertions to compensate.