Most of this person’s weight loss seems to have been from eating fewer calories, not walking. I posted this reply to a prior submission of the same article (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26744434):
43 pounds in 16 weeks is 2.7 pounds per week. A pound is 3,500 calories, so 2.7 is 9,450 calories per week, or a deficit of 1,350 calories per day.
Even if he was walking a very low 3,000 steps per day previously, an extra 7,000 steps/day - about 3-4 miles - is walking for perhaps 60-80 minutes. For someone who weighs about 260 pounds, 1 hour of moderate walking would burn about 450 calories. So, assuming he didn’t do other exercise that the article omitted, the remaining ~900 calorie/day deficit came from eating less than his metabolic rate (BMR).
Walking sped up the process, but he would have lost the weight just by eating fewer calories - and food changes account for about 2/3rds of the loss.
(I’m assuming he neither added nor lost much muscle mass, which seems likely from the description.)
Its a combination and a psychological shift to ensure reinforcement of success. I went from 270 down to 200 over 8 months. It slowed down, but went lower over several more months. I started with walking and adjusting my diet. Had I not started seeing success quickly I may not have continued the diet.
When I started, walking up a moderate hill after a mile was tough. It got easier each day and overall health improved. I was eventually able to add some running and other exercises.
Also, at the very start, I am certain it was more than 450 calories per hour after weighing that much in my case. It certainly came down as the body got used to it and did build muscle mass in legs. Same with food, the body will get used to the calorie restriction over time and calorie restriction alone won’t take you the distance.
> Most of this person’s weight loss seems to have been from eating fewer calories, not walking.
This is likely true for everyone losing weight. Exercise gets you fit(-ter than you were before), though, and there are a lot more health benefits from being fit than thin. I'm pretty sure being thin just helps you with your sugar.
I think there are two components to this (they might be related, though, I don't know).
On the side, exercise does make you fitter, and consume some calories, etc.
But then, I find that it also has a non-negligible effect on the food I crave. I find it much, much easier to not eat tons of "junk food" when I exercise. And by that, I mean I practically don't feel like eating any, at all. I actually crave vegetables and meat. And those have a tendency to be "filling" and not have you want to eat again 2 hours later.
So it's much easier for me to actually lower my calorie intake when exercising.
For me, cycling to and from work helped me eat less, in the sense that I wasn't hungry while cycling and for at least half an hour afterwards.
So I could skip breakfast, jump on the bike, and then have a late-breakfast/early lunch at work. At the end of the work day I'd start to get hungry, but then I'd jump on the bike and when I got home I still had time to make and eat dinner before the raging hunger kicked in.
This helped me skip an entire meal per day, which made things a lot easier for me.
Nah that's typical I think. If I'm biking a longer way I have to force myself to eat some around like 35 to 40 miles, and then every 15 or 20 after. I don't feel hungry but I start getting noticably weaker.
In fact, when building up for distance cycling, I felt like learning when to eat and making my saddle and handlebars more comfortable was equally as important as building strength. Extra strength makes you finish your trip faster, but you'll probably still complete it even slowly, but if your saddle isn't right for you, the pain can be insurmountable.
When I'm going on a trip I pack like a light lunch (cheese sandwich and chips or fruit) and stop, but if I'll be back home that day I go for the type of stuff you get at a bike shop, cliff bar or those weird but kinda good energy gummis with electrolytes sugar and a little caffeine and just snack as I ride.
Worth noting that the longer someone is in a caloric deficit, the more their non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT) drops. NEAT is the caloric burn from this like random movements and fidgeting, walking around the house, etc. Maintaining a baseline step count creates a NEAT floor, so you're more able to stay in a deficit towards the end of the diet.
translating this into basic english: burning calories through exercise causes you to move around less otherwise (because you have less energy?), but tracking your steps ensures that you keep moving around as much as before (compensating the lower non-exercise movement with more deliberate exercise movement) and therefore ensuring that you keep burning the same amount of calories.
I think of non-exercise activity thermogenesis as being like the idle rate of an internal combustion engine car. If you increase the idle engine rate, it doesn’t affect the fuel consumption at higher activity speeds, but at times when the car is slow or stationary, it would burn more fuel than necessary. In a car, that’s a bad thing.
The claim is that doing exercise increases your “idling speed” (NEAT) , or rather stops your body’s idling speed from dropping the way it would normally do during calorie restriction. If you are trying to lose weight, burning “more calories than necessary” would be a good thing
so that actually means that more exercising has the additional side-effect of also burning more calories even when the body is not moving.
but eating less causes the body to reduce burning calories because less calories are coming in.
so eating less while exercising more maximizes the effect of weight loss because the body is forced to use up more of the stored fat reserves to compensate for less incoming calories while also needing to burn more due to the exercises.
While dieting contributes the most to weight loss, I believe some simple exercises + calorie counting goes a long way. When you understand how much physical effort is needed to burn off that snickers bar you're thinking about snacking on, it becomes much easier to put it off.
I believe the giant misconception in 'cardio calories burned' is the fact that exercise affects your resting metabolism quite a lot and people that exercise burn calories throughout the day.
While diet is a 'major factor' - for people who are sedentary, then walking 2 miles a day can be a huge step up.
Walking us also incredibly stress-relieving, so I would imagine if you're a stress or boredom eater, walking probably creates a second effect where you're less likely to eat.
Absolutely, and walking - and getting any exercise at all - is great. Unfortunately, this article doesn’t cover it that way, and their explanation won’t help readers.
I don’t think the article gives enough detail to make that case. We could torture the scenario any number of ways to arrive at whatever conclusion we’re after but the comment about weight loss being more attributable to a caloric deficits from eating less generally stands. For most people, it’s much easier to eat calories than exercise it off.
Saying someone is "wrong" then jumping into a pedantic point isn't very constructive.
Ultimately using your own figures (400 Vs. 600) it doesn't alter the person above's overarching point: That most of the weight loss was from diet changes (as is typically the case).
43 pounds in 16 weeks is 2.7 pounds per week. A pound is 3,500 calories, so 2.7 is 9,450 calories per week, or a deficit of 1,350 calories per day.
Even if he was walking a very low 3,000 steps per day previously, an extra 7,000 steps/day - about 3-4 miles - is walking for perhaps 60-80 minutes. For someone who weighs about 260 pounds, 1 hour of moderate walking would burn about 450 calories. So, assuming he didn’t do other exercise that the article omitted, the remaining ~900 calorie/day deficit came from eating less than his metabolic rate (BMR).
Walking sped up the process, but he would have lost the weight just by eating fewer calories - and food changes account for about 2/3rds of the loss.
(I’m assuming he neither added nor lost much muscle mass, which seems likely from the description.)