As somebody touching 20st (127kg) I recently started working on a client site and had a choice, drive by car or catch a train and cycle the 5 miles to the client site. Into my second week and finding the cycling is really making a difference and can get desk to platform in 31 minutes (unlocking of bike etc) down from 35 minutes at the beginning.
I'll weigh myself at some point but honestly feel I'm physically getting into a better place and fantastically alert. There is also the challenge of riding hard on the way home to make sure to catch the train ;)
What is more interesting is that a lot of people in the office are surprised where I catch the train from (Newport,Wales) and that cycling is possible to Cwmbran without riding with traffic. The Monmouth canal is disused and the wildlife down there is amazing as are the views.
I basically go to the gym for an hour a day and I don't have a choice. I have to go no matter what. The weather is a bit crazy at the moment but there is no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothes ;)
I cannot recommend enough the idea of working out a way to cycle to work. Build fitness into your lifestyle and just make it a necessary function of your day. I've lasted at most 3 weeks at a gym. They feel inherently boring to me. My contract is for 6 months.
For those who want to know I'm on the tall side (6'2") so finding a suitable fold-up bike (train friendly) that was 'strong' enough to hold my weight was difficult. I ended up with a Xootr Swift. Beautiful ride and not had a problem on trains ( https://scontent-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xaf1/v/t1.0-9/103836... )
Well … when I was still very obese (162kg, just as tall as you are) I was also struggling with high pulse (around 90) and high blood pressure as well as, you know, just a general discomfort, a feeling of shortness of breath, …
After I started restricting calories nearly a year ago I also started driving around 30 min every single on the ergometer bike (always the same amount of kilojoules per day to be consistent, first 1,000 and now 1,350, first at 120 Watt and with breaks, now at 210 Watt and with no breaks). I also started taking long walks every day, around 6km. (I know people have strong opinion about what is right and more correct to do and I know that my exercise plan is weird and unbalanced, but the most important thing to me is to have something that works and that I can easily get into the habit of doing. Habits are fucking powerful and wondrous things if you make them work for you, devilish, evil things if they work against you. For now I have something that works and that I’m very comfortable with. I can always make improvements, sure, and I want to. Just slowly and with consideration.)
To my astonishment my vitals started improving almost immediately, before I had lost any significant amount of weight. My pulse was down to around 60 (resting) or lower only a couple of weeks after I started, when I was still very much extremely obese. I’m a coward when it comes to measuring blood pressure, so I have no data on that, but I do know that it’s either optimal or normal right now that I’m merely very slightly overweight (94 kg). All the discomfort went away almost immediately, also before I had lost any appreciable amount of weight.
My dad also always has been struggling with his weight, but doctors have told him repeatedly that health wise he's actually doing relatively well, presumably because he also has a similar and very consistent exercise regiment (that also includes daily cycling).
The nice thing with exercise was that I felt its effects on my health more or less immediately. Weight loss is much, much harder to notice and a much more longer term process.
But, to be honest, I feel like I can only start to be really happy about this when I manage to keep it steady for a couple years (though currently that is going quite well and I feel that my previous tendency to naturally overeat is seriously lessened, mostly probably through lasting and habitual diet changes, but probably also through consistent weight tracking).
Worth mentioning that in the UK, a lot of employers are enrolled on the Cycle to Work scheme.
This allows employees to buy a bike through their company/business (normally worth up to £1,000), and pay it back over a period of time, through a salary sacrifice, i.e. pre-tax.
In the UK, use http://www.cyclestreets.net/ it can highlight non-traffic routes so enable you to plan a more pleasant ride.
Of note, don't just assume it gets it right. In my case, it put me at the front of the train station, rather than at the back. This caused the routing to take me out of my way. Always worth exploring an area/talking to people to work out if there is anything out there that has missed.
Biking to work is the number one thing I miss now that I work from home. I highly recommend it to everyone.
I didn't used to bike to work this time of year, because the path I'd use is covered in snow, but even in upstate New York, riding in March and November is surprisingly enjoyable with the right gear.
Yup. It's totally feasible to bike year round in many places even in the winter. I rode a bike ~6km to work year round in Ottawa, Canada where temperatures were routinely lower than -10C (14F) (my coldest day riding was -31C (-24F)).
I find riding in a couple inches of snow to be quite enjoyable but it can become overly burdensome when it gets too deep.
The main thing is to just dress appropriately and take your time. There's quite a few blog articles you can find about tips for bike commuting in the winter.
That working from home can be an exercise trap. I spent the last 6 months with a startup and exercise started dropping off rather quickly towards the end. Ended up making sure I rode with friends twice a week...usually to a pub but it wasn't about losing weight, just keeping up a general level of fitness.
Monmouth canal (Newport to Cwmbran) is unused (no boats) so has way more wildlife than I've seen on any other canal path. I've had to face off against a swan, a rather large number of ducks and the odd suicidal moorhen. Recent wind meant I was climbing through fallen trees :D
"Exercise more" in reference to weight loss is also often promoted by fast or processed food companies, in an effort to divert blame for either not displaying nutritional information or making it misleading.
running does use up calories. timing your exercise so that it's just before a fixed portion of a meal means you have used more calories than if you had not - and you still feel full. the surprising part is how little of a difference running makes, but it does make a difference.
while i agree, this concept is easier to sell if you approach it from a different direction - i.e. "you can't outrun your fork."
this is much easier for most people to comprehend, since anyone who's ever been in a modern gym even once knows you can run an hour on a treadmill and wipe it out with a single donut.
Easier to sell, maybe, but "you can't outrun your fork." is also a false statement, whereas the OP's isn't (so much - at least it's open for interpreation). You can outrun your fork.
run an hour on a treadmill and wipe it out with a single donut.
That's going to be have a pretty huge donut then :P (or I'd have to be running at a rather slow pace)
Not really. One hour on the treadmill burns about 600 calories or so. A cream filled donut the gas station next door to me sells is listed at 630 calories.
I would say a 630 calorie donut is pretty huge. After looking at the calorie info for a bunch of Tim Hortons donuts, the average seems to be around 250 calories.
Sugar (and now HFCS) in everything magnify this problem. I wonder how much calories food would have if manufacturers reduced the amount of sweeteners. Probably makes the food taste worse though.
Weird. I usually burn about 400 kilocals in a 30-minute run on an elliptical machine. Technically, I am programming it to push my heart-rate to the top of the safe "cardio zone", but, well, exercise is all about pushing yourself, no?
How much you burn depends a lot on your body weight. I am small (~55kg) so I burn about 600 kcal/h when jogging. Someone weighing 75kg will burn about 800 kcal/h if he runs at the same speed.
the problem with being pedantic like this is that you just come off as a huge nerd to everyone, even other pedantic nerds. that's why i said "easier to sell", not "technically more accurate."
Weight loss is a poor metric. I don't really care what I weigh. I'm primarily concerned with increasing my strenght and building muscle, so if my weight goes up but my %fat goes down I'm more than happy.
I believe that most "normal" people are capable of doing enough exercise (combined with good eating choices) that they can lose weight.
For example, say you have a 1-hour lunch break each day. During that lunch break, you could easily go for a 6km run (30-40 minutes), as well as have time for a shower, and grab food. If you're prepared to have a faster shower, and eat a quick snack, heck, you could even make it a 10km run (50 minutes).
And depending on where you live, you might also be able to jog, or cycle to work - that's probably another 30 to 60 minutes of physical activity, depending on how far. (I have a 15-minute cycle each way).
And maybe some mornings, you could get up early, and go for a swim, or go boxing or something.
Either way, I personally know many ordinary people who manage to get a healthy amount of exercise, and achieve their weight goals.
I also have a friend who quite honestly, eats what seems to be an incredibly unhealthy mix - think large amounts of junk food and deep-fried fast food. However, they manage to stay reasonably slim (think BMI 18) by doing insane amounts of exercise (several hours a day). So it's definitely achievable, assuming you have that sort of willpower.
What studies are you referring to, that show that "normal" exercise will not cause weight loss? I'd be very curious to see them.
Exercise is important for a healthy lifestyle, but it won't result in weight loss. The amount of calories burned are trivial.
For example:
- 30 minute run burns (150 pound individual) burns just 272 calories.
- 30 minute lap swim (150 pound individual) burns, again, just 272 calories.
A single Milky Way chocolate bar has 240 calories. A Big Mac has 530 calories. A McDonalds Chicken Classic Sandwich 350 calories. And so on. So you can exercise for an hour and then regain the weight in under a minute. That's how few calories exercise burns.
The primary way people lose weight is BMR (basal metabolic rate), this is calories burned just keeping you alive. You literally lose weight while you sleep due to BMR.
People often like to claim "'calories in' need to be lower than 'calories out'" and while that is true to a point, it is an over simplification (i.e. even with identical calories certain things, like sugar, are kept as fat to a greater extent than other things, such as fiber, which are "ejected").
So, yes, please exercise. You'll live longer, feel healthier, and it might even shed one or two pounds if you're already skinny. But if you're obese and need to shed 10+ pounds then your diet is the primary means by which you'll accomplish your goals, in fact you can lose all of your weight while in a coma on a hospital bed, so all you need to do is under-eat for your BMR (but consult your doctor, and try to eat a balanced diet).
I recommend using something like MyFitnessPal. It is free. Just set it up, it will track your BMR and what you eat, and as long as you stay in the "green" (below the BMR) you'll eventually lose some weight.
However please keep in mind "water weight" is a legitimate thing. Your body does gain and lose +-5 pounds "randomly" so you shouldn't weigh yourself excessively, you'll just lose motivation. Once a week MAX, every two weeks is better.
Those are fair points regarding energy expenditure for specific exercises. However, that doesn't take into account the effects of regular exercise on BMR. That normal exercise can elevate your BMR is certainly plausible, and many people have conducted studies that have reached this conclusion.
Metabolism is a complicated thing, and there are conflicting answers on the subject. Results differ under a variety of conditions (human, animal, forced/voluntary, etc.). The abstract in this review summarizes the state of the research nicely: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14692598
> That normal exercise can elevate your BMR is certainly plausible, and many people have conducted studies that have reached this conclusion.
It is true that they have conducted these studies, it is inaccurate to claim that it any great impact on BMR, and the study you linked (which you can read in full [0]) supports that conclusion. The 48 hour improvement is inconsequential, and there are no improvements beyond that.
As I said before, exercise is important for a healthy lifestyle (you'll literally live longer), but for weight loss it is much much less important than diet, in particular for people who aren't looking to shed a small amount of weight.
All you're claiming is that for a 30 minute workout you might lose 300 calories instead of 270 calories due to BMR (and that's being generous looking at the study). Which doesn't change the overall point that without diet changes you won't lose significant amount of weight through exercise alone.
I think you are ignoring the elephant in the room.
Active people have higher BMR because they build up bigger muscles. Not talking about bodybuilders - though that is the extreme of a continuous, but anyone who does regular exercise builds up some lean mass.
Off course, if you ever stop your body will pick up the signal and decide to not sustain the extra muscle anymore. If no change in diet follows immediately, you will pick up body fat pretty quickly.
I'm using MyFitnessPal and for the first time in years I'm losing weight. I've known I need to lose weight, but the number just kept going up instead. I second what you say. Exercise helps, but ultimately restricting calories by eating less and eating more correctly is the only way to "stay in the green".
It is amazing and absurd to me how many calories some things have. I had no idea! For example, ketchup is loaded with calories. Same with cheese. I used to load down all my food with tons of ketchup and snack on cheese slices. Way too "expensive"!
You're correct, those foods that you posted are very caloric dense - however, you don't necessarily need to choose to eat those foods. There are far healthier alternatives that will fill you up, and have way less calories.
E.g. my breakfast is 6 sticks of wheatbix + skim milk, 3 apples, 3 pears. Probably similar calories to a large chocolate bar, and way more satisfying =). My lunch is a wholemeal sandwich with fresh tomatoes, lettuce and some chicken breast, plus fruit. Very tasty, and not as caloric dense.
For me, during my lunchtime run or swim, I usually burn between 300-350 calories (Garmin GPS watch with heart-rate monitor, I'm assuming it has reasonable accuracy).
Then the cycle to work, 100 calories, the cycle back home, another 100 calories.
Then 2-3 nights a week, I go to a kickboxing or weights session, that's probably 400-500 calories (This is very much an estimate - I can't wear my heart rate band during those sessions).
Then weekends, you can go for a longer run/swim. It's fun! Ultimately though, you need to find activities you enjoy, otherwise you won't do them.
You just need to find the healthy food you like eating, and the exercises that you like doing.
Of course; eating exactly the number of calories that are required to maintain your weight, and then you start to exercise - yes, you will lose weight.
But people don't do that. They think "hey, I need a post-workout meal", and suddenly they're eating that in addition to everything else. And then it's the weekend, and they feel they deserve something extra because they've worked out a lot. Or they're already getting too many calories, and working out just makes them get fatter slower.
Energy is fungible. Eating less can result in the same caloric deficit as exercise over a "normal" diet.
Since fasting itself has some health benefits, it's probably better to do any exercise at all while reducing food intake, than it is to eat "normally" and try to make up for it with exercise which is not likely to confer much more marginal health benefit.
> I believe that most "normal" people are capable of doing enough exercise (combined with good eating choices) that they can lose weight.
The point is there is there no set point of "enough" exercise to induce weight loss. It is highly variable between people and it is very unlikely that any individual can keep weight off in this fashion over a period of time. Linking exercise and weight is a time waster and, more importantly, can dissuade people from exercising when they don't achieve an impossible standard for weight loss.
> For example, say you have a 1-hour lunch break each day. During that lunch break, you could easily go for a 6km run (30-40 minutes), as well as have time for a shower, and grab food. If you're prepared to have a faster shower, and eat a quick snack, heck, you could even make it a 10km run (50 minutes).
First of all, the majority of workers do not have hour long lunch breaks. Second, that exercise during the middle of the work day sounds like a great way to ratchet up stress rather than be relaxing since now you are stuck in a time management game. This isn't an appropriate approach for everyone.
> Either way, I personally know many ordinary people who manage to get a healthy amount of exercise, and achieve their weight goals.
Again, this notion of a "healthy amount" of exercise is a fiction w.r.t. weight loss.
> I also have a friend who quite honestly, eats what seems to be an incredibly unhealthy mix - think large amounts of junk food and deep-fried fast food. However, they manage to stay reasonably slim (think BMI 18) by doing insane amounts of exercise (several hours a day). So it's definitely achievable, assuming you have that sort of willpower.
This person would likely still be a low BMI even without exercise.
> What studies are you referring to, that show that "normal" exercise will not cause weight loss? I'd be very curious to see them.
For a compilation of study data about weight loss, see the first half of Health at Every Size [1] (this is not an endorsement of a HAES lifestyle, but this book does collect the evidence).
To be honest, I find exercise during the day to actually be helpful - it gets me out of the office, and lets me recharge.
However, you do need to find an activity that you enjoy - if it's running 10km, then do that. If it's swimming 2km, do that. Or maybe you like doing weights, then do that. Or rock-climbing after work. It can't be something that you hate. (There are days you just don't feel like it though - sometimes you just need to grit your teeth and do it).
Also, what is a "healthy amount" of exercise?
I argue that it is possible to combine good food choices with a reasonable amount of exercise that will help you lose weight.
The below calorie burn numbers are from myself, using a HR band and a sports watch.
E.g. your lunchtime run/swim will burn say 300-350 calories.
If you jog or cycle to work, you can easily burn another 100 calories each way, so 200 calories both ways.
And maybe after work, you go to the gym, or do kickboxing, or play a sport you enjoy (e.g. touch footy, hockey, water polo etc.) - that's another 300-500 calories. (I don't wear a band during my sports though, since it'd come off - so these are rough guesses). You might only do that 2-3 nights a week though.
Either way though, if you choose to, you can be very active.
It is optional if the goal is only to lose weight. I personally found it harder to lose weight when I started exercising since then I could no longer fast as much.
For example, yesterday I burned ~750kcal on the treadmill. Are you trying to tell me this makes no dent in the calories I consumed throughout the day?
If my objective was to lose weight, are you implying that doing such a workout couldn't lead to a calorie deficit and therefore expenditure of stored fat?
I suspect he meant something a bit more holistic/behavioral ("In a study of people who promised to X...") rather than in a purely mechanical/metabolic sense.
If the person is only thinking "exercise will make me weigh less", that outcome is unlikely because modern society makes it deceptively easy to wipe out all your gains with a "small" snack, and because the conversion of fat to muscle doesn't show much on a scale.
What do you define "normal exercise" as? You cannot break the 2nd law of thermodynamics: if you calories in is less than your calories burned you must lose weight.
Your body can regulate your appetite and your calorie spending to a certain degree, e.g. people who exercise often eat more afterwards, which negates the calorie burning effect (but it can also lead to changes in body composition: Fat is replaced by muscles).
That's the first law of thermodynamics, not the second (although you can't violate the second either).
In general, through my life, I've found the best way to think about it is exercise for fitness, diet for weight maintenance.
What happens to you once you have responsibilities to others (wife, kids, etc.) unless you are a professional-level athlete is that you really don't have the time and energy to burn enough calories. It's hard to burn 400 kcalories, but it's easy to not eat that piece of pie (or to have a small piece and no bread with your meal).
There are exceptions, and most of us who are somewhat active have probably gone through that phase of life where we do 5000 kcal workouts 5 days a week and so on, but it's a very time-and-energy consuming proposition. I have known some men who have made it a point to continue that lifestyle into middle age, but they are exceptional and almost to a person never married (gay I think) or several times divorced. In other words, it takes total self absorption and those of us with normal family and community responsibilities have to let it go eventually.
That's also the failure I see with people and their New Years' Resolutions to get fit: quit drinking, go to the gym twice a day, etc. It's not sustainable.
There's a bit more happening than the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Our body does a lot of things.
I understand how comforting it can be to put it in "in -> out" terms, so simple. But it just doesn't reflect in any way the complexity of a living organism, and doesn't reflect the experiences of people trying naively to just eat less for instance.
I think he/she means that normal exercise, or rather the typical amount of exercise that people do, is insufficient to burn the calories in a normal diet. So while the exercise you do is healthy, you shouldn't be expecting weight loss, though at the same time you should expect less weight gain (which I wouldn't consider as weight loss).
No, it's that people who exercise more tend to eat more, even when their primary reason for exercising is to lose weight. They either don't think about it or overestimate the calories burned by their exercise and allow themselves to eat a bit more, mistakenly believing that the net result is still negative calories.
Moderate exercise is good for you whether or not you want to lose weight, but if weight control is one objective, you need to be more careful than most people realize to avoid eating more when you exercise more.
Daily hard exercise - the panting, heart-pounding, drenched in sweat kind of exercise - increases your metabolism. You can eat whatever you want, as much as you want, and you won't gain fat.
The 2nd law of thermodynamics has little if anything to do with calorie counting.
I wish. Maybe it's my age, but I do a high intensity exercise class 5-6 times a week and I sweat a lot. I didn't see a significant weight loss until I changed my diet. I guess it's true when they say it's 70% diet, and 30% exercise, at least for me.
> Daily hard exercise - the panting, heart-pounding, drenched in sweat kind of exercise - increases your metabolism.
This is not true for all people and can be highly variable between different people, let alone not necessarily possible for folks with metabolic disorders.
The disconnect between what our bodies are built for and the lives we're living in 2015 is the source of many modern diseases. Daniel Lieberman [1] has an excellent book on the matter called The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health and Disease [2]. Reading it was a deep realization for me that I needed to change my way of life and forced me to eat better (more fruits, vegetables, slashing everything processed from my diet) and exercise more.
I think the "In Europe" bit missing from the title is kind of important. It could happen that in other places (and I am not looking to anyone in particular here) the numbers are different.
I recall overweight professional cricketers and rugby players. They drank a lot of beer.
Alcohol, chicken and sugar. Cut those three for effective weight loss.
Activity doesn't need to mean Gladiator training at the gym. It should mean what you want it to. I started learning and messing around with wood-working/craft recently. Good amount of non-mouse and keyboard activity, lots of standing up and moving short distances, clamping things, sawing and drilling. Won't give me a six-pack but keeps blood flowing.
One of these things is not like the others. Are you thinking of KFC or the lean skinless chicken breasts that bodybuilders almost exclusively use as their main source of protein (aside from shakes/supplements) when cutting?
PS. I have been effectively able to lean out by dropping added sugar and alcohol from my diet. It sucks going out when relegated to drinking soda water instead of beer, but it's a relatively easy diet to maintain.
Exactly, blood flowing is very important. Biology is a slow process, and it only deal with long term mechanisms.
Tissues can't deal with intensive tasks very well. They can, of course, but I'll always think of death as a progressive slow down of activity. Biology works best when it's being used at a minimum. "Use it or lose it" has some kind of truth.
I think the problem is that our civilization is built in the idea of comfort and economic specialization.
I don't think our bodies are prepared to that sort of pattern where you stay inactive for 5 hours, while your brain is still very active, and stop to run non stop for 1 hour.
So we either sit thinking about civilized work, or do short but very intense physical activity to compensate the accumulation of stress. I don't think our far ancestors' metabolism really saw that. So of course people are going to get sick. Nobody on earth has genes suited to work in an office. We're still wired to constantly move, searching for food.
Worst thing, I'm almost sure that this accumulation of stress can slow down productivity. Maybe forcing people to work in 2 or 3 hour sessions, and ask them to go walk for 15min, might have some positive effects. I'd love to try walking on a treadmill writing code. I already tried standing in front of a computer, but my ankles started swelling after 2 hours.
> I don't think our bodies are prepared to that sort of pattern where you stay inactive for 5 hours, while your brain is still very active, and stop to run non stop for 1 hour.
Isn't that pretty similar to the lifestyle of a hunter? Short periods of very intense activity separated by long periods of inactivity?
A common method seems to have been to just run after the animals slowly, so they can't rest but don't run yet, until they die from exhaustion. Our heat dissipation system is better than most animals, so it works better when it's hot. It's possible to do it alone, and hunt big animals with only a knife to kill them in the end, if you know what you're doing. However, it means you have to move for a long time.
That's a pretty good observation – I expect you're right, and it would probably play out like that in practice! Not sure of the background research though. Certainly there are likely to be complicating factors (e.g. the damage caused by sitting, specifically.)
I don't think a hunter really sits around, not using his muscles. Hunters are not inactive like people working in an office. Hunters roam. So they still do physical exercise and do spend more energy.
Here are the recommendations from the Wikipedia page on Paleolithic lifestyle [1]:
- Adopt a Paleolithic diet as much as possible: plenty of fruit,
fish, vegetables, nuts, and meat while avoiding most forms of
food not in existence in paleolithic time. It implies avoiding
all processed food, and in particular junk food and food with a
high glycemic load, such as sweets and cultivated crops like
potatoes and cereal grains (in particular wheat).
- Exercise frequently, but with a variety of durations and
intensities (including rest periods) rather than doing always
the same, extended routines in a gym or while jogging.
- Perform a variety of complex "natural movements" (e.g. walking,
running, jumping, crawling, climbing, carrying, throwing,
swimming) that use the whole body rather than artificially
constrained exercises that focus on specific muscles (like those
afforded by most gym equipment).
- Maximize contact with nature, e.g. by keeping plants, gardening,
working with animals, hiking in the woods, or climbing trees (as
also proposed by the biophilia philosophy).
- Use a minimum of clothes and don't wear shoes: exposure to heat,
cold, pressure, and other natural forces strengthens rather than
weakens the body.
- Expose yourself regularly to the sun or at least to natural
light, to get sufficient vitamin D and prevent depression.
- Try to sleep at least 8 hours a day, preferably in line with
natural day-night rhythms (though people in pre-industrial
societies do not sleep in contiguous blocks - see anthropology
of sleep and segmented sleep).
- Spend sufficient time relaxing, playing, and just "being in the
present", without worrying about later.
- Reduce overall levels of stress; avoid overworking in favor of
downshifting and simple living.
- Allow contact with dirt: soil contains plenty of beneficial
bacteria that strengthen immunity. Eat fermented foods like
sauerkraut, kim chi, kombucha, etc. Lifelong exposure to a
variety of microbes may actually be necessary to prevent
allergies and autoimmune diseases, as proposed by the hygiene
hypothesis.
- Rear children the way hunter-gatherers do: extended
breast-feeding, carrying of babies on the body, co-sleeping,
while allowing older children to play and explore
autonomously.
- Sit with legs level with rear end (essentially, in the squatting
position), as people in indigenous tribes do.
- Socialize and interact closely with a small group of real
friends, instead of staying alone or "networking" with thousands
of superficial acquaintances.
What?! I didn't mean to imply that everything on this list is necessarily relevant to modern lifestyle. It also says nothing about vaccination. The parent comment asked for how human lifestyle looked like in prehistoric ages, that's why I posted it. It also mentiones that our ancestors presumably performed a variety of different movements each day (climbing, throwing etc.) which I think is relevant. Maybe I should have removed the word "recommendations" to not step into prejudiced territory.
Nice. First time I hear about this but it certainly contains lots of things which make a lot of sense to me or which I do already myself and/or are backed up by reserach. Except the part of the squatting position :P
Not everybody accepts this though. Especially about point 2 and 3 I've had discussions, almost religious fights sometimes. People sometimes get offended when I question if just going to the gym and train a couple of standard groups or just jogging are sufficient exercises. They might be, just from the point of 'getting enough exercise', but I somehow believe it is better for your body in general to have way more types of movement trained, like the third point says. Not sure if this is backed up by research but it just seems logical to me? Another impression I have: the body of a person doing all kinds of sports always looks way more natural and healthy to me than persons doing only one or two sports where not all muscle groups are trained.
I agree with everything you say. Unless it is particularily beneficial to do special exercises to counteract deficiencies of our modern life style, it should be sufficient to roughly simulate the movements our ancestors did.
I'm wondering whether our ancestors did stretching exercises. I could imagine that the occasional yawn/stretch and a variety of different movements is sufficient to avoid contracture.
I do think ancestors did stretch: nobody ever learnt me to stretch yet I've been doing it when waking up before getting out of bed since I can remember and I'm definitely not the only one, on the contrary. Some other animals do so as well. I know these are mere observations and no hard evidence, but I would be surprised to learn I'm wrong on this point. Whether they did actual stretching exercises is another thing though. I would guess they did if they were able to figure out by experience stretching had positive effects. Also sort of depends what you mean with ancestors, i.e. how many centuries ago.
>I don't think our bodies are prepared to that sort of pattern where you stay inactive for 5 hours, while your brain is still very active, and stop to run non stop for 1 hour.
I disagree strongly with this part of what you're saying.
This seems exactly what human civilisation has traditionally done: conserve physical energy until it's the right time to hunt, do some very intensive hunting, spend a lot of mental energy figuring out better tools and systems.
The article measures activity as: cycling, running, swimming, etc. That's intensive activity. Missing that out had a higher risk of death.
Possibly, but this pattern has been shifted at such a dramatical rate since the last 10k years and the advent of agriculture that evolution and genetic selection may not had time to catch up. It's even possible that some forms of applied science (via medical care) is introducing a bias against natural selection by relieving some pressure bu it's possibly too short a timespan to judge that, although evolution sometimes can operate at very short timescales. (Short term I'm OK with that but lacking data I can't decide if long term this is good for us humans... Well we'll end up merging with our metal overlords anyway!).
> This seems exactly what human civilisation has traditionally done: conserve physical energy until it's the right time to hunt, do some very intensive hunting, spend a lot of mental energy figuring out better tools and systems.
Civilization is pretty young when you compare it to the evolution of humans. I think you're also missing out the difference of energy spent when comparing hunting versus agriculture. Even when you're not hunting, there is still a lot of physical activity around it. Not to mention automation.
I think the problem is that our civilization is built in the idea of comfort and economic specialization.
Agree. But in order to change that, we have to change our value system.
Worst thing, I'm almost sure that this accumulation of stress can slow down productivity.
That's the worst thing? As you can see, productivity is still our highest value. Health and well-being are not worthy goals on their own, but they are pursued to get more productive.
> If that's the worst thing, then productivity is still our highest value, and health comes second.
But wouldn't better mental health increase productivity ? I mean a healthy horse might be more productive. Of course at some point, maybe better health doesn't increase productivity so much. But I tend to think that cerebral workers would work much better if they have less stress or better mental health.
> Maybe forcing people to work in 2 or 3 hour sessions, and ask them to go walk for 15min, might have some positive effects.
It's kind of funny that you put it this way because that is exactly what people do at my job and it is encouraged. A walking break every hour or two is accepted, managers do it, we were even encouraged to install something on our computers that would remind us every X minutes.
And I work for a giant corporate entity which you would think would never encourage this.
That said, when you're working on a hard problem its very easy to lose track of time. I kick myself on the days where my only walking break is at lunch.
Try it with an anti-fatigue mat, they do wonders. I think, it takes about eight weeks to get used to the new position. Definitely talk to a doctor regarding the swelling first though.
'Homo sapiens' is a very rough category. If you would call a 250,000 year-old animal a homo sapiens, you'd probably call its grandparents one too. Time-frames used this way are only really applicable to talking about some static history, not active evolutionary processes.
Humans will still be Homo Sapiens in 1 million years as long as we still call them that. In other words, "how old" homo sapiens is is a rather arbitrary matter of convention, so it doesn't make a good argument.
> If you would call a 250,000 year-old animal a homo sapiens, you'd probably call its grandparents one too.
Sure, and conditional on that I'd probably call their grandparents H. sapiens too, and conditional on that, probably also their grandparents. But it doesn't take that many generations before all these "probably"s multiply out to a "probably not".
I don't think the distinction between homo sapiens and not-homo sapiens is so fuzzy that we can't distinguish between evolution working on 250,000 and 1,000,000 year timescales.
My point is that we distinguish species based upon their features, not timescale. So you cannot use this timescale-based differentiation to make a good argument to counter a feature-based differentiation.
How many generations would it take for some evolved feature to become part of homo sapiens has nothing to do with how many features are needed to not be homo sapiens anymore. Other than the fact that they both take time and are statements about evolution, there is no relation between the two.
> you cannot use this timescale-based differentiation to make a good argument to counter a feature-based differentiation.
I don't know what you mean by this. I don't know what feature-based differentiation I'm supposedly countering, and I don't know what it would mean to counter it.
What argument do you think I'm trying to make, exactly? Because all I'm saying is, "evolution makes significant changes on timescales significantly less than millions of years".
This thread isn't actually particularly interesting to me, so I may tap out now.
YMMV, but I find that exercise is essential for me to loose weight. If I get a lot of aerobic exercise, enough to tire myself out with out casing too much pain or damage, then I sleep much better. I'm clear minded, and able to make better decisions about what I eat. Also, exercise helps me to control stress, which is a major factor in overeating. Oh, and when I exercise I don't like to get so full, so it's easier to control my portion size.
I can loose weigh through diet alone, but it isn't consistent. Diet and exercise together work much better in the long run.
Where is the evidence that diet alone can cause autoimmune disease? As far as I am aware, development of autoimmune disease is a complex process involving many factors such as genetics and the effect of infections on the immune system. Certainly there is anecdotal evidence of people improving their symptoms or possibly eliminating them through diet but this is not the case for every patient.
Yes, there are many factors, but our diet is the biggest (and greatly underestimated by the medical profession). Many people with autoimmune would benefit from eating paleo, not saying 100%. And yes, it's all anecdotal, but there is a great deal of science behind it. I recommend reading [1] for a better understanding.
Again, anecdotal, but my wife has autoimmune that attacks the thyroid, causing her to have 180 bpm heart beat (24/7). Doctors recommended medicine that further attacks the thyroid, but she went with a paleo diet instead, after a recommendation from my bio PhD sister who also has autoimmune. Her symptoms stopped within a week or two, her values are now back to normal. Could be something else, but I doubt it. She had the same thing 6 years ago and it lasted for 6 months, while eating this medication that damaged her liver.
Turns out gluten in particular is linked to many autoimmune diseases. Here are some shorter blog posts by the same author [2] on gluten, autoimmune and AIP.
Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be many large scale studies on diet and autoimmune, but personally, after understanding the underlying mechanisms better, and having personal as well as overwhelming online anecdotal evidence, I'm fairly convinced. I recommend keeping an open mind about this one and start reading.
Obesity is an epidemic we are accelerating. Then to top that, far too many do not understand the difference between obesity and morbid obesity. The latest fads of Fat Acceptance and Healthy At Every Size show the trend quite well.
Then to make matters worse, in the US hospitals and doctors can be punished for trying to help obese, especially very obese patients. The ACA brought along patient satisfaction scores. So if you don't like what your being told you can score the hospital/doctor lower. While the economic impact might be measured in small percentages the tightness is costs makes this a big factor. You can guarantee this affects how the obese and very obese are treated, in many cases they will be coddled and never once will their weight be mentioned.
Finally we have far too many people inactive in this country and many others because government benefits programs are sufficient to allow them this lifestyle. Simply put, if you keep paying and feeding people not to work just what do you expect them to do? Idleness is not a good state, its worse when we institutionalize it.
Anecdotal but I am sure many have the same experience, there are two groups of co workers who are out the most, very obese people and smokers. Why should either be acceptable? If we can stamp out smoking we can stamp out obesity.
So you're saying that nobody would be obese if it weren't for benefits programs? That is utter bunk. There are plenty of obese people that work for a living.
More likely culprits:
* The "cheapness" and accessibility of junky food.
* The inaccessibility of heathy food in poor neighbourhoods (which may only have a corner store that primarily sells processed, packaged foods and no fresh veggies).
* The creep of sugar/HFCS into everything.
* The optimization techniques used by junk food companies to determine the right balance of taste so that people don't do things like eat in short bursts, but get sick of the flavour fast. [They basically run a ton of focus-groups on a bunch of small variations of the formula until they get one where people can -- for the most part -- just keep eating and eating it without getting sick of it.] If you liked potato chips, but got sick of the flavour after a single "serving" then you would eat fewer chips.
> The latest fads of Fat Acceptance and Healthy At Every Size show the trend quite well.
Fat acceptance is not a fad as you put. It is about people being able to accept and love themselves as they are. Fat people are bombarded with messages that they are not acceptable and they should not be exist. Fatness is described as a thing to be exterminated, which implies that fat people should be exterminated. This is not hyperbole, you can see this message reflected in advertising, media portrayals, and what people say (your own post has elements of this).
> Finally we have far too many people inactive in this country and many others because government benefits programs are sufficient to allow them this lifestyle. Simply put, if you keep paying and feeding people not to work just what do you expect them to do? Idleness is not a good state, its worse when we institutionalize it.
Have you even ever lived on an assistance program like food stamps? The amount of money given is never enough to completely cover's one's needs, folks are constantly looking for and finding ways to raise money by working, whether its official employment or grey market.
> Anecdotal but I am sure many have the same experience, there are two groups of co workers who are out the most, very obese people and smokers. Why should either be acceptable?
Nobody is obligated to live their life if a way you find acceptable. Nobody is obligated to be healthy or to drop unhealthy habits like smoking. Health systems that seek to punish people will not produce good health outcomes, it will simply drive those people away from seeking out medical care when they need it. Accusatory and attacking beliefs about health are what cause doctors and medical professionals to blame health outcomes on that status even when it is unrelated.
I used to run 7 neurotic miles a day since 8th grade. I did it to feel better, and control stress. I know have a heart
murmer. No one in my family has a murmer. I think it was do
to overdoing it? As I got older, in Order to control anxiety, while saving my knees--I walk/run. It's usually every other night. I don't exercise enough to work up a big appetite. I eat a basic diet, and don't eat a lot of sugar, or fat--
out of poverty, and just lasyness(don't like to shop). My last blood tests said I have a low risk of death by cardio vascular disease. My point is I don't think you need to buy a Fitbit and push yourself in order to keep your
heart healthy; just a good brisk walk/run for 30-40 minutes
every other day? Plus, my walks have done much more for my mood than Any hetro, or tricyclic antidepressant. If I could do it all over again I would have never asked to see a Psychiatrist for anxiety/depression.
Obesity does not imply inactivity, though there is some correlation. From the article:
> Obesity and inactivity often go hand in hand.
>
> However, it is known that thin people have a higher risk of health problems if they are inactive. And obese people who exercise are in better health than those that do not.
And further down:
> "The greatest risk [of an early death] was in those classed inactive, and that was consistent in normal weight, overweight and obese people," one of the researchers, Prof Ulf Ekelund told BBC News.
>
> He said eliminating inactivity in Europe would cut mortality rates by nearly 7.5%, or 676,000 deaths, but eliminating obesity would cut rates by just 3.6%.
So the point is that irrespective of your weight, within your weight class you will be less likely to be healthy if you are inactive.
Exercising more may help you cut weight, but chances are that unless you specifically want to use it as an aid to cut weight you are likely to eat more to compensate for increased hunger. As such increased activity is by no means likely to drastically reduce obesity, but it can still reduce mortality.
Right, I thought thats what you were talking about. It's only a theory, and it's not that well supported in the literature[1]. Even presupposing it's true, the literature shows that it can be changed -- you're not stuck for it for life[0]. The issue I have with set-point theory are rather numerous, to be perfectly honest, but the key part is that it's used by some to "give up" and assume that being obese is "natural", which considering the massive negative effects it has on your body, doesn't sit right with me.
I'm happy to be proven wrong, but all of the research I've read on it shows that for the most part it's not a given that it's a real phenomenon. Human nutrition and metabolism is super complex, for sure, but those sorts of twee "too easy" explanations are rarely correct.
I didn't say it can't be changed, just that it's very very difficult.
> but the key part is that it's used by some to "give up" and assume that being obese is "natural"
You are not born with any particular set point, you gain one based on your life (although there are tendencies). But once you have it, it's very hard to change.
I think of it like hysteresis - you need to work extra hard to get past it, but then it settles on a new value.
> I'm happy to be proven wrong
My personal experience of trying to change my weight for a full year, all sorts of methods, and eventually gave up for a while and one day weighed myself just to see how I ended up: The exact, to the 1/5 of a pound! weight I started with a year ago!
So I'm quite certain it's real, and yes, I'm giving up - somewhat.
I've been obese while I worked out a lot. I know others in the same situation, and these train MMA, submission wrestling, and brazilian jiu jitsu, several times per week.
Eating more than required caloric intake is amazingly simple, if you're used to it. The calorie count in alcoholic beverages, fast food, candy, chocolate and potato chips is amazingly high.
In addition, the extra amount of calories you need to maintain weight when working out, is not a lot.
I agree. Article makes it sound as if inactivity causes poor health (which it may). Alternatively inactivity maybe is just an indicator of poor health and not the dirct cause.
I'll weigh myself at some point but honestly feel I'm physically getting into a better place and fantastically alert. There is also the challenge of riding hard on the way home to make sure to catch the train ;)
What is more interesting is that a lot of people in the office are surprised where I catch the train from (Newport,Wales) and that cycling is possible to Cwmbran without riding with traffic. The Monmouth canal is disused and the wildlife down there is amazing as are the views.
I basically go to the gym for an hour a day and I don't have a choice. I have to go no matter what. The weather is a bit crazy at the moment but there is no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothes ;)
I cannot recommend enough the idea of working out a way to cycle to work. Build fitness into your lifestyle and just make it a necessary function of your day. I've lasted at most 3 weeks at a gym. They feel inherently boring to me. My contract is for 6 months.
For those who want to know I'm on the tall side (6'2") so finding a suitable fold-up bike (train friendly) that was 'strong' enough to hold my weight was difficult. I ended up with a Xootr Swift. Beautiful ride and not had a problem on trains ( https://scontent-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xaf1/v/t1.0-9/103836... )