UKC

Well I still cant get my head round it really, but this seems to be the general synopsis from what I could gather from this (near the end)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001n8b6

(warning contains Brian Cox)

I've always been a big believer in losing weight by doing more exercise eg calories in and out and all that. Seems I might be wrong.
 

Thats certainly not my experience. Winter climbing and Munroing certainly effects weight loss. Two weeks of hard work in Scotland and I lose weight no matter how many mars bars I eat. Body fat converts to muscle with exercise and muscle is heavier than fat (allegedly) so the weight loss might not be as much as expected.

It's definitely always been the case for me. I used to fell run / run / cycle a lot and basically have only lost weight when I've dieted. Exercise has minimal impact on my weight. I suspect its not true if you are doing serious amounts of exercise but for the general population I think it is.

Yep, abs are made in the kitchen and you can't out run a bad diet!

I have never lost weight by exercising, only through diet. 

Of course, that should not discourage anyone from exercising, the benefits are enormous! It just doesn't control your weight. In fact, it makes me want to eat more, even though I don't need it!

It is calories in vs calories out - it can't be anything else, physics doesn't allow energy to come from nowhere.

You eat more if you exercise more and probably don't even notice yourself doing it.  And your metabolism can adjust too (both ways).

The thing that's of more note is that calorie burn through exercise is smaller than people think, and calorie content of food is higher than people think.

But it's not. 

Our bodies process different calories differently, some are more available to us than others. And when our bodies are in different states of rest or activity, they process things differently too. Also at different stages of life, our bodies act differently. 

My body doesn't believe in burning calories at all 🤷 It didn't particularly when I was younger, and now in my 40s I only have to sniff some junk food and the weight goes on! I can run as much as I want, and it does wonders for my cardio fitness, good for bone health, muscle health etc, but has no impact at all on my weight.

I've always thought the same too! But its not that simple from the sounds of it

yep basically its this I think. We are gonna burn x amount of calories a day. If we choose to go to the gym, climb or run etc out bodies will use some of those calories to do that exercise at the expense of other stuff.

I got lardy during lockdown. Started doing long rides on the bike and watching what I ate. Cut down on alcohol and no snacks. Weight disappeared quickly. I calculated the calorific expenditure of cycling distance regularly as the equivalent of 1 day's worth of food each week. That's got to help. If calories out is greater than calories in, then you must lose weight - it's just a case of how quickly. What is fairly clear is that exercise alone won't be enough - you end up eating more to compensate. 

I don't thing they are saying otherwise. Worth a listen 

cheers

That's nonsense. The energy to do the exercise has to come from somewhere, and if that's at the expense of other functions you're on the path to RED-S.

Exercise levels, hormone levels, stress levels, environmental conditions,  and all sorts of other factors influence daily calorific requirements.

I normally eat around 3000 to 3500 kCal/day in a moderately lifestyle, when I was training for ironman racing I was up to 6000 kCal/day and still losing weight.

I think the basic outcome of the old study was that if you exercised, then you compensate by being less active rest of the day. Thus calories burned balanced out over 24 hours etc.

It is that simple.  Physics mean it can't be otherwise.  Energy can't come from nowhere, so it can only come from either shoving things in your mouth that are processed to create it, or by burning things that are already there.  Those are the only two options.

For those who think otherwise, where do you think it comes from?

The things that complicate it are the metabolism (which if you go on a strict diet can go right down, which does tend to create plateauing, which is why some people seem to have more success with intermittent fasting than with a continuous strict diet) and the incredibly strong motivation to eat (which stuff like semaglutide deal with by switching that off).  That's why some people (me included) find it hard to lose weight, not because they're photosynthesizing or something.

That and people eat more when they exercise.  They might not realise it, but they will be doing.

Eating in a deficit is for many quite psychologically hard - the body is conditioned not to let you do it.  That's where the new drugs come in.  But eating in a deficit WILL cause weight loss, it can't not do by the laws of physics.  Anyone who isn't losing weight isn't eating in a deficit - and the reasons for *that* is where it can get complicated.

And that'll be because your calorie intake equals your calorie burn.  It can't be otherwise unless you don't believe in the law of energy conservation.  Yes, some foods are easier to turn into glycogen etc than others, but fundamentally if you eat less than you burn you gain, and vice versa.

I'm not saying it's easy to eat in a deficit - from experience it's very much not - but if you're not losing weight you're not eating in a deficit.

I dont think the boffins are saying otherwise Neil. What they are saying is if u go the gym for an hour and burn 500 calories or whatever, you body is going to stop doing other stuff to compensate over a relative time window of x hours or days.

Just listen to the last 10-15mins

I'll listen to the whole thing later on.  But yes I totally agree with that part - it'll probably even include stuff like whether you fidget and if your body lets your core temperature drop a bit.  Or whether you sneak a biscuit you wouldn't normally do.

But I'm just disagreeing with people who are saying that it's not calories in vs. out.  It can't not be.  It's just that what defines "calories in" and "calories out" can be a bit complex, which I guess is what they're saying?  That's why semaglutide works - it turns off the hunger response so you can whack the "calories in" right down and so lose that way.

Fundamentally, telling someone "just eat less" is more likely to create an eating disorder than weight loss - but that is what we're aiming to achieve overall.

And the thread title and first post are just oversimplification.

yeah sorry Neil I didn't mean to imply that - this is what they are saying too, eg if you want to lose weight eat less than 2K calories a day (or whatever your number is). But you are gonna burn 2k calories a day even if that includes going to the gym for an hour or not

i think. 

That's a bit rich from the person who said this:
"It is calories in vs calories out - it can't be anything else, physics doesn't allow energy to come from nowhere."

Someone was always going to say it on a thread like this mind.

It is not an oversimplification to suggest that if you eat in a calorie surplus you will gain weight and if you eat in a deficit you will lose it.  This is a fact of physics and cannot be false.

What's complex is how you get an individual person in a deficit for a significant period of time.  Instinctively the body doesn't want to eat in a deficit - it'll do lots of things to try to avoid it, e.g. motivating you to eat more or move less, which is where medications potentially come in because they tweak with that.

And that simply isn't true, or rather it's a gross oversimplification.  Having listened to their stuff before, they almost certainly did not say that.  Rather they probably said that *to some extent* if you move lots once in a given day you might move a bit less (or eat a bit more) to compensate, but it categorically isn't true to say you'll just burn your basal metabolism figure every day regardless of what you do.

You can tweak it yourself by eating lots of fibre rich foods which your body processes slowly or sometimes just passes out in original state. You feel full for a long time, but body doesn't take much in from it. So I have porridge for breakfast, but in with the oats I mix in various seeds and fruit. The seeds and all the fibre means it is slow to process and the seeds don't contribute anything to my calorie intake. 

A chocolate bar, however, will satiate me for milliseconds and then I am hungry again, despite having had more than enough calories!

It's both simple and not simple.  "Calories in -vs- calories out" is a statement so obviously true that it's barely worth saying, but it misses out so much nuance that it's barely worth saying (again).

"Calories in" is not a constant unless you're sticking rigidly to a plan and weighing and measuring everything.  Which is a pretty extreme thing to do really, and being hungry all the time is miserable.

Besides which,  Girlymonkey is entirely correct in what she says above "calories out" is not confined solely to calories burned via the metabolism, not everything we eat gets digested.  Perhaps it would be more accurate to talk about "calories in -vs- (calories out + calories through)".  It's a bit weird that her post above got so many downvotes, but this forum is a bit weird about diet and weight-loss.  Less so that it used to be tbh, perhaps it reflects the fact that climbers don't always have the healthiest relationship with food.

As a former physicist I have to add:

imagine a spherical cow in a vacuum....

Of course it is.  Your logic is faulty here: just because a thing is true doesn't mean it isn't also an oversimplification.

Though it isn't quite true either, the way you say it.  It isn't the calories you eat, it's the calories you metabolise.

That can't be right, it is a lot easier to lose weight whlst excercising or doing hard physical work than it is to lose weight by dieting.

i dunno anymore Tim - just off to the gym now to lift some fat iron

That's only because doing exercise (for people like those on here who enjoy it) is pleasurable, whereas being hungry isn't.

But that's where the "diet drugs" come in, they mean you don't feel the hunger...

Presumably only if you already eat a calorie deficit!

People also have different levels of the hunger and satiated hormones, leptin and ghrelin. So if you naturally feel fuller quicker or your hunger hormone is less sensitive, then you likely don't over eat anyway. 

I can genuinely do all the exercise you want, I still only lose weight when I ditch the chocolate! Which is very unfortunate, as I do enjoy chocolate!

That may be true for you, but you can't generalise it to assume it's the case for everybody all the time. 

It certainly isn't the case for me.  Exercise has many benefits of course, but for me controlling my weight is very much not one of them unless I'm also watching what I eat.  (Whether you call that 'dieting' or not is probably moot, but it does require a significant amount of willpower.)

Classic UKC. Arguing against the content provided without even listening to it

This is a testable claim- and it has been tested.

Think of it this way; if you were to attempt a "Man Vs Food"/all-you-can-eat challenge, what would you do to increase your appetite and enable/make yourself eat 'more'?

I'm arguing against the posting, not the content.  I think the OP has most likely misinterpreted what they actually said (though will listen later).

Seeds are very good for you, but high in calories like nuts . What makes you think they “don’t contribute anything to your calorie intake”?

Because they come out the same as they went in! You don't digest them and therefore don't take calories from them, just like sweetcorn. 

So why eat them?

The help your gut microbiome and bulk up your stool which keeps the gut healthy. And they keep you fuller for longer without adding any calories!

Oh, and I like a bit of texture to my porridge too!

Here's an article about soluble and insoluble fibre, which we don't digest, and why we should eat it

https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-healthy-eating/i...

Aren't they also really high in calories as they're composed of fat?

How do they help your gut microbiome if you say you don’t digest any aspect of them?
How do you benefit from the linolenic acid and lignan and other bio active compounds that lower blood lipids etc. in flax seeds for example, if you don’t digest them? I agree many will pass straight through and bulk up your stools, but you are kidding yourself if you think you don’t gain any calories from some of them. 

Calories only transfer to you if you can absorb them. You can't absorb the outer shells of the seeds so they pass through you unabsorbed.

I listened to the programme. I think the basic point was that biological factors (sex/ size/ composition), diet behaviours and genes determine your long-term trajectory rather than exercise. The section on exercise was actually confusing as they conflated the physiological with the behaviourial i.e. you will burn more calories doing the activity, but then the argument seemed to be you would compensate to regulate total output by eating more or not doing something else. I think it's a bigger data approach that fits with the general observation you've made that most people are inconsistent with exercise, overestimate the amount they do and then compensate with extra food and/ or revert back to mean over time. I think it does not necessarily mean that exercise does not have an impact for an individual, just on the balance it means that it's not the main thing to focus on if you're considered about managing your mass. Or maybe I misunderstood what they were saying.

I don't understand the workings of the gut, but insoluble fibres - the ones we don't digest - are really important for our gut microbiome! You need to ask someone more knowledgeable than me about how this happens! Much of the goodness from vegetables also comes from the fact that it's high in insoluble fibre. Yes, obviously vitamins etc are important, but the stuff we don't digest really matters. 

There may be a few seeds that he crunched, but mostly the bigger ones and by no means any great quantity of them. And as I understand, still the inside of the seed (and same with nuts etc) is high in insoluble fibre. 

That's why calories in doesn't equal calories out. Not all calories are available to us!

That's what I took from it too, when I listened to it as a podcast.

I'd like to know more about the study though. Is it the case that everybody who exercises a lot is relatively sedentary the rest of the time to compensate? Or is it - as I suspect - that when study subjects are told to exercise more than usual as part of the study, they then feel the need to rest more than usual.

In general I find it hard to believe that a lifestyle that gradually and successfully adapts to more exercise won't be beneficial in burning more calories.

Fair enough, tbf it's probably the oats and fruit sitting around the seeds that are more energy dense if I'm thinking about it logically!

You do get calories from sweetcorn. It's only the husk that doesn't get digested.

Another interesting one for you about absorption of calories from nuts (and I think seeds are pretty similar to nuts in this)

https://medium.com/@Join_ZOE/go-nuts-why-the-calorie-counts-for-almonds-and...

yes, same with seeds.

This article suggests there is still quite a high calorific quotient in nuts and seeds, not that you do not absorb any. The quoted figure is "So, a one-ounce portion of almonds may contain just 56 calories for one person and 168 calories for another!" depending on how processed they are or how you absorb them. One ounce is about 30 grams, so per 100g you could be absorbing knocking on 500 calories. That's energy dense. You wouldn't probably eat that many in one go but if you're chucking that on top of oats, with some fruits as well etc. every day of the week it's going to add up. Not saying don't eat them, I mean I love peanut butter and marmalade sandwiches, but they're not calorie neutral.

Depending on how processed they are....

They are not, they are whole seeds and they come out the other end whole! They are mostly too small to chew, and the casing doesn't break down in stomach acid. 

Nuts will always be a bit more processed, as you will choke if you swallow them whole so your teeth process them. I suspect some of the discrepancy as to how many calories people get from them depends on how much people chew. 

Muscle mass is difficult to increase and metabolically expensive to maintain. Active people tend to have better body composition than the sedentary, so their resting metabolic rate would be higher. 

Several studies of hunter-gatherer tribes like the Hadza have found that their physical activity level was greater than that of Westerners yet average daily energy expenditure of traditional Hadza foragers was no different than that of Westerners after controlling for body size.

Why do so many online article and now in forum try to compare which is "better" for losing weight, regular exercise or controlled diet? The answer is obvious and common sense -- do a bit of both!

Because the evidence is that your 'common sense' is actually incorrect.

Which says to me that people who exercise a lot find exercise easier! Which makes a lot of sense; the level of effort involved in your average marathon charity runner is enormous, while a top marathoner would be able to jog the course while feeling like they're having a virtual rest day. 

To work out a car's fuel usage you need to know not only the weight of the car and the speed/distance travelled but also the efficiency of its engine!

Such efficiency of exercise is also the reason why I think that calorie figures on treadmill machines are little short of absolute bollox!

Seeds are a different proposition to sweetcorn though, aren't they. Lots of them have specifically evolved to get through a digestive tract intact as a method of distribution. Sweetcorn's husk isn't complete so there's an easy way for your body to get at the digestible contents without having to get through the fairly indigestible husk. And it's large enough to have a high chance of getting chewed up anyway. I find it much more plausible that seeds small enough to mostly avoid getting chewed could effectively give you no calories. They'd be ineffective at their evolved purpose otherwise. Though you'd surely have to eat an awful lot of them to have any significant impact on how full you felt.

Yep, efficiency is a huge part of it in terms of macro changes (neurological changes to optimise movement, physical adaption, upregulation of metabolic pathways), and also in more subtle ways; the human body is evolved to 'spend' around 2500kcal a day so it needs to find ways to burn excess in the sedentary (eg fidgeting), or save calories in the active (deeper sleep, reduced inflammation etc...).

All I’m disputing is girlymonkey’s sweeping statement that “seeds” have zero calories when eaten. For things like pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds the digestion starts in the mouth when the molars break the husk (if chewed properly). She was the one who said they bulked up her food and made her feel fuller for longer, not me. Smaller seeds (e.g. flax) that avoid being chewed will pass through without the calories being absorbed, but her sweeping statement that “seeds” have zero calories when ingested is wrong (unless you don’t chew your food I suppose).

I bulk up my stools with wood pellets. Cheaper than seeds and do the same job.

I think it was this one, though a few years since I first read it.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5388457/

calories in vs calories out has always been nonsense , body doesn't burn calories / respond to different food types  homogenously in the way they are measured. You you only have to  look at keto to know that's outdated.

Ah yes, another weight loss thread. People always get so uptight about it!

I remember a nice quote from a similar thread on these forums, well over a decade ago:

"Losing weight is 90% diet and 10% exercise, but getting fit is 90% exercise and 10% diet".

Thanks.

Seems to indicate that, at higher levels of exercise at least, people will compensate by being relatively immobile while not exercising. 

Makes complete sense if they're perpetually knackered!

Or maybe just feel they "deserve" a glass of wine or two, or a couple of beers.

Keto works primarily because it avoids insulin spikes* so you eat less.  It's still CI vs CO.

Secondarily you bulk with fruit/veg which are lower calorie rather than pasta/rice/spuds which are higher calorie.

* e.g. if I have a breakfast of sugary cereal I'm starving by 11, but if I have nothing I'm not even massively hungry by 1.

Not necessarily, it's been known for years is that unless you do really very large amounts of exercise your caloric requirements don't increase much if at all. So if you are infantry in the arctic you need five thousand calories a day (huge amount of exercise), but if you are an ordinary person doing an ordinary amount of recreational exercise then it has little effect on your calories burned.

But... in this superficial edutainment a lot of detail has been lost. Common sense isn't useless. Calorie counting and the quality of food eaten is obviously important, as the Americans would say "no sht Sherlock". It's against common sense that 1000 kcal of candyfloss will have the same effect as 1000 kcal of varied fresh vegetables and pulses. So what you eat being important, is common sense, why do we need clever docs to "discover" that? Just like how you gain the calories how you expend the calories is common sense too. If I burn say 300 kcal watching several episodes of antiques road trip, versus 300kcal going for a jog, yes my caloric requirements long term won't be any different. But are we saying that there's no benefit in doing exercise, ignoring the constellation of health benefits for now... from a weight standpoint if I exercise the weight I have will be more likely as lean weight than fat weight, which makes continuing the weight loss easier.

Body fat percentage is as important or more than simple weight on the scales. Fat doesn't just sit there being fat, it does stuff. It's an important component in the endocrine system (and seems to have an effect on the immune system too) and can do things like, just as one example, convert testosterone into estrogen (aromatase conversion) . So yes, exercise is very important in weight loss just Not for the calorie burn number (unless you start doing huge amounts of exercise). Like the quality of the calories-in is important, the quality of calories-out is also important too.

And guess what... that's common sense. You could have got this advice 100 years ago...

It's surprising how quickly you will be shot down for saying this.  I'm getting my popcorn.

I think there are myths on both sides, many are surprised how few calories are burnt running a mile(rough 100), or many other sports. Plus even if you run for an hour, you'd still have burnt some calories even if you just sat on the sofa, so net gains are small. Add in the fact that you might run alternate days and a kilo of fat is over 7000kcals... it's a given that weight loss through a few runs a week will be negligible. 

Yep, that's why people are surprised they don't lose with exercise - unless you're massive it doesn't burn that much.

“Regular” exercise doesn’t do much to burn fat. High intensity exercise, eg high intensity intervals does. Cycling with a number of hills at maximum effort works for me, and also increases one’s capacity to burn more fat per hour as fitness increases

Haven’t watched the programme yet (but will).

Has anyone else read Dr Chris Van Tuleken’s book, Ultraprocessed People?

It covers a massive amount of ground around diet, nutrition, the food industry and what we, often quite unknowingly, put into our body.

Fascinating but quite depressing 

As usual everyone hates a moderate.

1. It is CICO, it can't be anything else

2. CI is moderated by a variety of things like how well you digest various foods, it isn't necessarily the number on the packet, plus whether you're craving because of insulin spikes or running a deficit (but also moderated by e.g. medication).

3. CO is moderated by your metabolism, whether a deficit slows it, how much you move, whether any meds slow it down etc.

2 and 3 are why some people find it physically hard (and the motivation to eat is physical and fundamental) to lose weight, me included.  It doesn't mean 1 is false - physics dictate that it can't be.

Unless, of course, one chews them.

If you don't surely they're just expensive sawdust?

I dimly recall some commentator talking about this in the radio and saying that whilst one metabolises roughly the same whether active/inactive the sedentary person will burn those calories to lay down fat (not so good) vs using them to do work.

That makes some sort of sense.

This works for me too.

The nail in the coffin of the calories in/out "fallacy" is that it fails to account for the nutritional value of those calories, and our need to eat if we feel hungry. In particular, the post-alcohol munchies is a diet-killer.

But then you're back to the argument that it might burn more per minute, but how many minutes can you do, compared to an hour of steadier training.  Cycling isn't very good anyway as there's too much opportunity to rest.

Re. exercise in general. calories in/out - efficiency, how trained you are has a big impact as well.  If you're very good at running, knocking along at 6 min miles has a different energy requirement to if you're not very fit.  

There any number of studies like this , and there always have been

I agree with much of this - particularly on food quality. 

Regarding the Arctic Warfare scenario, yes calories will be high initially - but over time the body's metabolism adapts - as it does to any diet and exercise regime, so ultimately the soldier would/and does fall in line within norms of expenditure.

You are right that bodyfat is metabolically active, but we've still not found the mythical 'lipostat'. What is clear is that body fat and metabolism play out over time and will beat willpower.  However, William Banting's diet advice from 1862 holds good for many people to achieve & maintain leaness.

well thank’s for the insight, clearly my scales are knackered; I’ll sent them away for recalibration.

https://www.hindawi.com/journals/jobe/2011/868305/

The reason that some people are wealthy is because they have more money coming in than going out. It can't be anything else.

Causality is everything. 

The reasons for CI being higher or CO being lower are many and diverse.

It doesn't in any way prevent that being the basic equation of physics.

Again physics dictates otherwise (though a more efficient gait can help).  Calories burned running are a factor of weight, height gain and distance, pretty much.  That is, the physical energy required to do the work to move the body.  Speed is indeed of little relevance which is why very heavy people will do well starting out with walking.

The reason the person who can rattle along at that speed with little perceived effort is skinny is simply because they'll do 50 miles plus a week and I'll struggle with ten.

I'm agreeing with you!

My point is that counting calories in or out is not necessarily the best way to achieve leaness - particularly in an adaptive biological system. 

*that diet plus exercise is more effective than diet alone or exercise alone

What is your evidence that this is incorrect?

When I look for systematic reviews comparing diet only with diet plus exercise they nearly always conclude the latter is more effective for weight loss.

For example, Wu et al 2009 "In summary, a combined diet-plus-exercise programme provided greater long-term weight loss than a diet-only programme." https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-789X.2008.00547.x

Or Williams et al 2014 who found no difference between men and women in this respect "Current evidence supports moderate energy restriction in combination with exercise for weight loss in both men and women."

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/obr.12241

This is before considering the many other benefits of exercise on body composition and other physiological and psychological measures. 

It does, however, significantly reduce its usefulness. It's true but not particularly helpful as a lens through which to view weight loss or design a healthy diet/lifestyle. The complications are so myriad that simplifying it down to that two-sided balance gives no real insight.

It would be like a drag car enthusiast saying "it's all about the weight of the vehicle versus how much power it can put down" and then throwing that into every discussion about the complexities of engine design and tyre rubber as if it's all a solved problem and everyone's wasting their time still talking. The simplification isn't fundamentally wrong on the physics, it just doesn't add much to the discussion.

I think everyone's on the same page about that really, it's just that the language people use to acknowledge it varies. You maintain that it's still a true and important basic tenet of the discussion. Other people see the complexities surrounding it and think it's so over-simplified as to be effectively wrong, because the conclusions people understandably take from it are incorrect.

Gary Taubes book "Why we get fat" explains a lot of the stuff being discussed on this thread. I haven't looked at this thread in detail so someone may already have suggested it.   

I'm hesitant to believe what you've said.

I've always been slim, no matter what I eat. Started doing long distance ruining this year, and for the first time in my life I have a problem with weight. I.e., how to keep it on. Really can't afford to be loosing weight so I'm having to make a conscious effort to eat more fats and proteins to try and keep some weight on.

So doing exercise clearly does make you loose weight, even if you eat more to try compensate.

Note: I think weight is a pretty useless measure. It ignores your make up in terms of muscle and body fat, so you're weight can stay static, but you could be gaining muscle and losing fat. 

Note 2: I haven't listened to it as I would need a BBC account and as I don't have a license I don't know if I'm allowed. So it would be useful if you would summarise what's been said rather than telling everyone to listen to it.

The elephant in the room is appetite,

For me anyway (and for a lot of other people) jogging increases my appetite. I don't see how excluding exercise as a major component in weight loss is helpful. Agree that for too long the fitness industry have falsely promoted it as the biggest factor for weigh loss. And we should probably recognise too that for many individuals exercise can have de-merits as well as merits, because over active appetite (I am an adept at that) is a huge factor for weight gain.

I'm not going some rabbit hole of how elevated grehlin interacts with HGH and lipids and/or perceived hunger yadah yadah .....  I just mean being very hungry all the time increases the risk that someone eats too much (or even mindlessly scoffs a bit of food, like a leftover on a plate and not even aware they did it and not record it on their calorie dairy).

"Master appetite...  and you defeat fatness "      (not sure if that was in Kung Fu Panda, but if not it should've been)

Disclaimer, in my case that is a work in progress

I think a lot of people have jumped to the wrong conclusion as usually happens if you only take a few words from the headline of a study. (So I'm probably about to do the same by summarising his words after listening!)

His words were that your caloric requirements are based on age*, sex and body composition.

You can't consistently alter your exercise habits without altering your body composition.

So it follows that any consistent alteration of your exercise habits will alter your caloric requirements.

* Interestingly, this contradicts the findings that were discussed in another podcast that I listened to a couple of months ago (sadly, I'm not certain which podcast or episode it was. I suspect it was either Zoe or Real Science of Sport) which concluded that age had no significant impact and that the reason that most people put on weight as they age could be entirely explained by the changes in their exercise and diet habits. I don't know which is correct.

I would agree on the relatively immobile.  I rode 610km over the weekend, and have been taking it easy yesterday and today.  Body needs time to recover.

It’s odd, I’ve always found exercise, particularly intense exercise to be a bit of an appetite suppressant. To the point where I sometimes have to force myself to eat after a hard session.

Boredom on the other hand, now that makes me hungry.

I suppose you’d have to have a large enough sample size of calorific requirements, purely based on sex and body composition to see if age is irrelevant.

Given the hormonal changes puberty - young adulthood - middle age - senior age, the big changes of aging.

In addition to broad-brush comments about hormones, there are also studies showing the link between changes in memory with age - in particular people's future memory (like remember to do something later, or why did I come upstairs again??? etc)  and appetite, to the point where they start to appear as 2 sides of the same coin

It is flat out unreasonable that some people suggest that age is not very relevant to a large chunk of the population for weight gain/loss, especially in the period middle age to retirement

I find that I actually lose fat during the couple of days recovery rest after a particular hard day’s cycling effort

Tom given a 36 old male and a 57 old male are 69kg and 14% body fat, will their calorific requirements be different because of age?

Ha you’ve reminded me today is my weekly weigh in in my body composition scales.  I shall have to see what the numbers are compared to last week 😀

I find that waist measurement at belly button level is a good metric to use alongside body composition scales

I find I can eat as much as I like(and it’s a lot) without putting on weight. However I cycle , run and climb. Total usually about 20 hours a week. I also do the 80/20 thing where 20% is in zone 3 or 4. After strenuous exercise metabolism is raised as body works hard to regulate temperature and rebuild. I’m 67 this year and same weight as I was as a fit 25yo.

Exactly.  I've arrived very late to this thread but I'm amazed no-one's referred to Herman Pontzer's work yet.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Burn-Misunderstood-Metabolism-Herman-Pontzer/dp/01...

Also important to remember that even though exercise isn't the most effective way to lose weight, it still has lots of other health benefits!

Yep, I’m 65. I had let my cycling go over last couple of years and put on some weight despite regular steady exercise sea kayaking etc. Over the last few weeks I’ve started cycling again on my local hills, only couple of hours at a time but a good part of that at threshold (just short if going into the red) which is HIT, 80/20 call it what you will and lost a couple of kg already 

I would say the “deserve / reward” category is more linked to those who see exercise as a means to weight control.  For those doing very high levels of exercise I wouldn’t say they have that mentally / link the two together.

Disclaimer I am not qualified, take with a lot of salt.

Quite possibly....

Just one (of very many!) mechanisms...  and this is hypothetical and a just-for-fun example of different individuals having different basal metabolic rates despite being the same weight and bodyfat etc.

Imagine, just for fun, your cells' mitochondria are like little rechargeable batteries and that respiration charges them up. One way to consider the energy inside rather than ATP etc is to think of it in terms of protons. There is a potential  difference between the outside of the mitochondria and inside its membrane.

Now think back to cheap and nasty rechargeable batteries, they can self discharge over time just left in a drawer for ages. Well with mitochondria there can be a leakage across their membrane a bit like a discharging rechargeable battery, this leakage causes "uncoupled respiration" because it is respiration but not coupled to "useful" stuff in terms of things you want the cell to normally do. It is lost as heat.  The rate of uncoupled respiration depends on the rate of proton across the membrane and this is mediated by T2 (thyroxine) 

In this example suppose our entirely fictitious 36 year old and the 57 year old might have different caloric requirements due to differences in uncoupled respiration due to hormonal changes of aging

Although this example is a bit artificial, because it's unlikely you'd find 2 subjects like that with the same % bodyfat unless the older one is putting in more effort for diet and exercise to maintain it. Just for fun, don't take me too seriously, and I'm not a doc

These are hardly a new thing

You might find this interesting, 

“The third phase is adulthood, from 20 to 60 years of age. Total and basal expenditure and fat-free mass were all stable from ages 20 to 60 years”

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abe5017

And that's why semaglutide works - it turns off hunger.

Cant listen to the link at work.... but the title of the thread is obviously untrue

https://www.health.harvard.edu/diet-and-weight-loss/calories-burned-in-30-m...

30 mins of high intensity exercise burns 10x more calories than sitting reading for 30 mins.

So what is the link claiming?

I'm concerned about elevated thyroid cancer with that, especially as the risk is of an otherwise rare form that is a bit obscure and unlikely to get identified early.

Sadly my wife's cousin got a thyroid cancer which is not a usual one. Cancer was picked up relatively early but by the time they finally worked out that thyroid was actually the origin, by then it had been too late... by quite some time.

semaglutide sounds "too good to be true" and you know what they say about things that sound too good to be true? 

I'm concerned about elevated thyroid cancer with that, especially as the risk is of an otherwise rare form that is a bit obscure and unlikely to get identified early.

Sadly my wife's cousin got a thyroid cancer which is not a usual one. Cancer was picked up relatively early but by the time they finally worked out that thyroid was actually the origin, by then it had been too late... by quite some time.

semaglutide sounds "too good to be true" and you know what they say about things that sound too good to be true? 

In reply to Mike Stretford:

The link (near the end of the podcast) states what's been demonstrated for some time that although doing some vigorous exercise burns way more calories during the exercise than sitting still, the overall calorie burn when averaged over a longer period is relatively unaffected unless the exercise regime is really high, and even then over time the body can adapt and lower that to a certain extent. Nobody is saying that if you run marathons every day and burn say 2300 kcals you won't lose weight on a normal (e.g. 2,500 kcal) diet, but what they are saying is that ordinary amounts of exercise have marginal impact compared to eating a bit less AND the importance of eating well as compared to scoffing junk. None of this should surprise people

Although it's always nice to hear of empirical studies to support what is already widely known, as sometimes what we think we've always knew wasn't quite right

In reply to Brass Niples:

Very interesting, will have to have a good read of that. Thanks!

Have you ever considered chewing your food

To be fair I hought I was responding to a gross generalisation in the OP

I think that I would probably expect to gain far more appetite and capacity by reducing my food intake before the challenge than I would by excercising.

 

It’s a simplistic argument missing nuance. Example: I did a fell race Sunday and Garmin tells me I burned 1300 kcals in a couple of hours. Whilst allowing for smartwatch dodgy data, the shows says that had I not raced, I would have burned that extra fidgeting, being anxious or with ‘inflammation’. That’s a lot of anxiety. I ate a bit more but the show tells me I piled it all back in. I didn’t, but more importantly I have a choice in that. It’s not all determined by some crazy calorific central governor.  There’s truth in what they say, but not the whole truth.

Really? Interesting, the way my stomach seems to behave is that if I reduce my food intake I find I can eat far less than I normally can. To eat a tonne I need to have a few days of eating a lot and then go hungry for just a little bit longer than normal.

"  I rode 610km over the weekend, and have been taking it easy yesterday and today.  Body needs time to recover. "

Wow, that's impressive. Are you doing LEJOG? or just like being out of the house?

I would agree with that, I wasn't really thinking of a long term reduction in intake.

I certainly wouldn't expect to manage a huge intake due to excercise alone as I doubt that it would significantly alter my ability to eat a lrage volume which is what man vs food seems to be about.

haha yes apologies for the clickbait thread title 

agreed, thanks.

Have you ever heard the phrase "working up an appetite"?

Doesn’t sound very scientific!

Yes, but I have also heard the phrase "raining cats and dogs" and I have sweated buckets whilst misguidedly following the old adage "cast ne'er a clout before the month of March is out"

Also very late to the party, but will add I've been baffled by the issue of exercise since reading H. Pontzer's article in New Scientist (June 2019).

Just to quote his summary of his research from there if anyone's interested:
"Hadza hunter gatherers burn the same number of calories a day as adults in the US and Europe, despite being five to 10 times as active. It isn't that exercise is less energetically expensive for the Hadza. Instead, their bodies have adjusted to their physically active lifestyle by spending less energy on other tasks, which keeps their total daily calorie expenditure in check. The same seems to be true for people everywhere: being physically active doesn't change the number of calories your body spends each day, it changes how you spend them."

All very weird.

Touche! 🤣

Swimming has a particular orexigenic effect - something we've all experienced, I'm sure:

An acute bout of swimming increases post-exercise energy intake in you... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0195666320303408 

It's May not March (and may be the blossom rather than the month).

And other theoreticians who, to be fair, include Brian Cox.

You can quote lab research, observational studies or paleo-speculation all you like to claim exercising shouldn't or should result in weight loss. The proof of the pudding is in the randomised controlled trial.

Still waiting for a response to the systematic review evidence that adding exercise to restriction diets increases weight loss compared to restriction diets alone.

And as my strength and conditioning coach says, he is not there to help me loose weight, he's there to help me survive a car crash. Fair enough. That works for me. It also helps win the local climbing comp so that's also worth having. 

It is definitely March in our neck of the woods, maybe we are a bit hardier.than them as lives around you

No I ride audax brevets, things like Paris Brest Paris.  That one is 1230km in just under 4 days time limit.  Something like LEJOG you would ride in a little under 5 days under applicable time limits.

When exercising, stressed, scared your body prioritises blood flow to things like large muscle groups and slows down things like the digestive system. When you’re back to resting it plays catch up. That’s been well established for I don’t know how long.

That’s why long distance runners can have trouble with food. It’s also relevant to why exercising doesn’t increase energy use as much as we often expect; the body is busier than we realise when we are resting and all day long is modulating blood flow to where it’s most needed rather than just supplying a constant rate to everywhere. 
 

Edit: I don’t agree that the body will burn X calories regardless of anything else, but it’s certainly not nonsense that some of the energy used for exercise would otherwise be being used elsewhere in the body. 

I don't think they're really saying that, not "regardless of anything else".  They take the science seriously, but it's mostly a comedy programme meant to be entertaining above all.  It's a comment about the effect on your day, your week, of hitting the gym or getting out for a run, not a radical change of lifestyle.

I like the Infinite Monkey Cage and this is one of the better ones, it's well worth giving the whole thing a listen.

I didn’t mean the show was saying that, I was just clarifying that I didn’t wholly agree with the post Ciro was replying to which said “We are gonna burn x amount of calories a day…”

Ah, my mistake soz.  That seems to be the assumption underlying a lot of comments above.

Yes, that’s why I thought I’d go back and try to clarify that that wasn’t my interpretation. It seems my clarification lacked clarity! Not the first time, won’t be the last. 

Absolutely, but once you have established a regular exercise routine, your body will adjust to that load to make sure it's still using the right amount of energy for those other tasks.

I suspect we're largely in agreement but talking slightly at cross purposes.

I would agree that unusual levels of exercise, in the short term, might not burn as much as we expect, but I would say that with habitual exercise you will burn as much as you expect.

So reducing intake is probably a more effective measure in the short term, but in the long term exercise and diet changes are important.

Deffo May in terms of original expression. Not actually sure what a 'clout' is though in this context, so can't say whether it really holds true (surely every month is a month for random brawling?)

That might rather depend on what you expect. 

If you currently burn 2000 kcals a day and get into the habit of more or less continuing as you did but also putting on a smartwatch and using it to track yourself doing a 500kcal daily workout, would you expect to then be burning 2500kcals a day from then on?

That would be habitual exercise, but I'm willing to believe Chris Van Tulleken, if I've understood him correctly, when he suggests you would not burn as much as you expect.

But if you set off to spend the next few months on a polar expedition, well, fair enough.  I don't think he'd seriously claim your daily calorie intake/output wouldn't change, and I'd be much less likely to believe him if he did.

It's a piece of clothing, your warm winter clothes presumably.  'Casting a clout' is taking your jumper off, more or less.

The theory being posited on the podcast (which I have now listened to in full) appears to be literally that - that each person has a "calorie budget" everything is taken from.  I do get that if I ran 10 miles today I'd probably do nothing at all active tomorrow, so there's something there, but the idea that it's that formal and that a person can't increase their activity level such that they increased their calorie burn over the long term is just tripe.  Or if it wasn't, I'd not have piled a load of weight on in 2020 when immobilised due to illness but not really changing what I was eating.

Doesn't seem that way to me.

BTW..
Did you hear the part earlier on where Brian Cox says "first law of thermodynamics" and there's just a sort of unspoken "yep.. anyway.." for a second before the discussion immediately moves on?  That's because it was just obvious, worth mentioning possibly, but Cox certainly doesn't think he's delivered some great insight.  So it was said, acknowledged and everyone moved on from that in two seconds flat.

Perhaps I should listen again, but that part of it jumped out at me for its absurdity.

If he didn't say that, he didn't make a very good job of not saying it.  It's true that if you go and do something really active then you'll likely be lazier for a bit (or fidget less), but the idea that your body has a fixed level of calorie burn and you can only take from that, which was what was said as far as I'm concerned, is just absurd.

It’s not that your body isn’t using the “right” amount of energy for other tasks, it’s just delaying some of those processes while there’s an acute energy demand elsewhere. It’s more efficient to do that than run everything full whack all the time.

Your body switches between sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system responses depending on situation. It prioritises energy expenditure based on present demands. Hence why even experienced runners would struggle to eat a large heavy meal mid run.

Body fat cannot convert to muscle; it’s a myth. Yes muscle is denser and therefore putting on muscle will add slight weight, but this is obviously far preferable to being fat and less healthy. On all the multi day climbs and cycle routes I’ve undertaken I’ve always lost weight and at altitude in the Himalayas at least 8Kg and there wasn’t a lot of me to start with. If people exercise regularly and still gain weight they need to honestly check their calorie intake against what is a healthy diet. Look how skeletal TdeF riders appear after three weeks. They simply can’t take in enough food to offset the weight loss on what can be repetitive 6k calorie days.

You can’t draw any conclusions from what a fat bastard Bunter Johnson is despite all the “running” he appears to do…

Well if you regularly exercise and the total energy expenditure has increased then your body with do at least two things.  Get lighter, become more efficient at what it does, it adapts.  Being more efficient and lighter your BMR will decrease.  When exercising you’ll be able to do what you did before, expending less energy. When not exercising your body will need less energy to do what it needs to do. Your total energy requirements over 24 hours, a week, a month etc has decreased.

But only to a point.  Talking of running up hills, the basic equations of physics can't change - it takes X joules to lift Y kg upwards.  And Y kg won't become zero.

If you take all Bunters runs over the last 15 years, I doubt you would reach a quarter mile

Correct, you’ll achieve a lower equilibrium weight where your original energy intake and expenditure output are balanced again.  Whilst physics won’t change, the energy efficiency of the body will.  For every x joules lifting y kg upwards , another 3x joules will be used generating heat.  It’s not pure physics but also the efficiency of the biological system generating the mechanical output to climb a hill etc.

Here's a good link with more detail

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/sep/19/exercise-dieting-publi...

That does make sense, but doesn't quite seem to be what he was saying and definitely not the same as the thread title.  Possibly I misinterpreted it, possibly he explained it badly, or possibly a bit of both.

Daughter was a cox for a Cambridge College men’s first team. The guys needed in excess of 6500 calls per day when they were training to fuel efforts and maintain weight.

Exactly so!

Yes, exercise does increase the calories burned and will - all other things being equal - cause you to lose more weight than if you hadn’t exercised. Physics, innit?

But all other things are not equal; the body compensates for that increase in activity by reducing its energy output once the activity stops. So over a longer period the average energy consumption tends to be the same as if you hadn’t bothered. 
 

it doesn’t mean exercise doesn’t cause weight loss

it means that it’s a hard way to get the weight loss because you have to use your conscious mind to overcome that subconscious protective mechanism.

Yep - the way I read it is that 'for most levels of exercise', compensatory eating/relaxing levels the playing field. For longer and more intense exercise, the compensatory mechanisms just can't keep up.

p.s. more interesting information about a 'fixed' energy expenditure... 

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-exercise-paradox/

It turns out that a sedate westerner doesn't burn many less calories that a hunter gatherer Hudzu tribesman... 

Appreciate the thread title was click bait. This is UKC. A couple of the key passages for me were:

The really interesting thing is that what we're increasingly sure about is that when you do lots of exercise you don't burn more calories and in fact we've been studying this for a very long time using quite sophisticated double water-labelled methods. And so when we talk about this energy balance, what we're more and more sure about is that while inactivity is very harmful, activity, if you do lots and lots of activity in your day, it doesn't increase your total calorie burn. It just takes from your calorie budget, which is the same in everyone.

What does that mean? I'm burning 2,500 calories a day, roughly every day of my life, and either I can go for a run and spend some of those calories or I can sit at my desk and I will then have to spend those calories, like the council road budget, and I will spend them on anxiety, on inflammation, and on reproductive hormone elevation. And if you go for the run, you stop yourself burning the calories on all those things that we know are harmful. So it helps explain why exercise is so good for us, which we know it is. But it also explains why we've never, ever found that exercise helps people lose weight. And it really doesn't. There's loads of data. But you'll live longer. You will live longer if you do lots of activity and exercise.

Can I (me) prove this? Doubt it. Would I dismiss it out of hand because it doesn't agree with my common sense thinking? No.

So it did say what I thought it did, and I believe it is oversimplistic.  Physics dictate that the body can't drop enough processes to offset running a marathon every other day, for example.

It seems it would be more accurate to say that small amounts of exercise don't help weight loss.

If an average male's basal metabolism is 2500 calories, and a quick Google suggests an average person burns about 2600 calories in running a marathon, physics dictate that that statement is physically impossible to be true once you get beyond the basal figure, and unlikely to be true at even half of it because most body processes can't be shut down.

I was really disappointed by the podcast, to be honest - its presenter should know better, being a physicist and all that (I think).

its not More or Less by a long way

Eh?  Could you quote some context to your reply?

I always presume everyone is a radio4 aficionado like myself!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qshd

Ah

In effect it is saying that the body will compensate for small amounts of exercise through reducing energy consumption at other times. I suspect that isn’t too controversial. The idea that we all use the same amount of energy regardless of activity (compensated for weight) is clearly wrong and probably comes from assumptions around quite inactive lifestyles.

Yes, agreed.

The system can cannibalise itself - and (IIRC) upregulate processes such as cellular autophagy. As starvation experiments show, pushing to far, too fast with CICO, you can experience significant behavioural changes as the brain/body seeks to protect against the deficit.

It’s biology rather than physics and the reduction in total energy expenditure is down to the things I’d mentioned previously.

Which physics theories dictate the body can’t drop enough processes?  Do you think it quantum or relativity doing the dictating?

The simple fact that if basal metabolism is 2500 calories in that person it is physically impossible to turn off enough systems to bring it down by 2600.

You can call it basic maths if you prefer.

What the body can however do is burn stored glycogen then fat (or muscle), which is what it will do.

Whether you are on a diet or not, I would take anything Brian Cox says with a pinch of salt. More entertainment than science, IMO.

If you believe popular science sources, then science gets turned upside down every week or two.

True, but biological processes must obey the laws of chemistry, physics and thermodynamics.

They are not a law unto themselves.

Oh for the love of god.  It's a lighthearted panel discussion programme, on which a couple of the panellists were discussing a counter-intuitive (but scientifically proven) effect that makes exercise an ineffective tool to lose weight for normal people doing normal things. 

Biology is not physics, it's much more complicated and much more difficult to apply hard and fast rules to even relatively everyday situations. 

Here's the link timparkin posted above again:
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/sep/19/exercise-dieting-publi...

That's reporting on a randomised controlled trial that compared cohorts of hundreds of subjects wanting to lose weight and variously doing 0, 72, 136 or 194 minutes of exercise per week in addition to their normal daily routine.

Obviously, obviously, Chris Van Tulleken was not talking about people who run a marathon every day.  The topic of discussion was ordinary normal (and somewhat overweight) people leading ordinary normal lives.  Not Gary McKee FFS.

If you'd listened to a few more editions of the Infinite Monkey Cage you would know that Brian Cox is not at all shy about shouting up when he thinks something violates the laws of physics.  When it's appropriate or amusing to do so, which in this case it wasn't.

That study, as far as I can tell,  reports that the regular exercise under discussion induced additional calorie intake. That's hardly surprising.  

The original claim, as far as i can tell, is that the body compensates for regular exercise by burning fewer calories at other times.

That may be true, but I'm sceptical that a BBC science programme is giving an unbiased view of the available evidence.

Does look that way.

Kinda.  To a certain extent.  Though lots of posts above are arguing against a supposed contention that the number of calories burned are absolutely fixed and that no amount of exercise makes any difference whatsoever - I think that's a strawman, Van Tulleken doesn't explicitly say that.

It's a science-based comedy panel show.  Like a sort of scientific radio version of QI.  Maybe lighten up a bit.

Here's another link:
https://www.vox.com/2016/4/28/11518804/weight-loss-exercise-myth-burn-calor...

But posters are simplifying it to, if I go up this hill of x height you burn this much energy.  That’s a gross oversimplification and different people, even those of the same weight, will burn different amounts getting up a hill in the same time, at the same time.

The efficiency of biological systems at turning available energy into mechanical is not as simple as people make out.  Whilst some of the laws from the areas mentioned will set limits, it usually not those limits dictating the energy burn.

He literally does.  The transcript is quoted upthread.

It's such utter tripe that I was shocked.  And listened again.  And yes, he does.

It utterly discredits him and the programme.  I know it's light hearted, but what he said is utter and complete crap.  The kind of thing I'd expect to hear on GBeebies.

Sure, if you walk round the block every day and didn't before it will make half of no difference.  But what they said, quoted above, is far more categorical (and flat wrong) than that.  They explicitly say that exercise makes no difference.  And it is absolute tripe.  High levels of exercise absolutely do make a difference.

In reply to deepsoup:

The link posted at 1935 explains the situation better.  You'll see that upthread I accept this detailed explanation - that is, small amounts of exercise make no difference because the body adapts, but larger amounts absolutely do because basic maths/physics dictate so.  The average male body can find 100 calories by reducing metabolism etc, but it can't find 2600.

The podcast doesn't, it states incorrect absolutes.  And the first post of this thread is even worse.

As I said, reference to concentration camps is in very poor taste, and my example of running marathons is far better as a result, but the underlying facts of that post are correct.

The podcast meanwhile is a gross and misleading oversimplification of the kind found in the likes of GCSE Physics, the sort where when you start A level or a degree the first thing they do is tell you to forget.

Yep, quite so.  Here's a snippet from the article I linked to above. 
(Which in turn contains links to lots of primary sources.)

"We've long thought of weight loss in simple "calories in, calories out" terms. In a much-cited 1958 study, researcher Max Wishnofsky outlined a rule that many organizations — from the Mayo Clinic to Livestrong — still use to predict weight loss: A pound of human fat represents about 3,500 calories; therefore, cutting 500 calories per day, through diet or physical activity, results in about a pound of weight loss per week. Similarly, adding 500 calories a day results in a weight gain of about the same."

"Today, researchers view this rule as overly simplistic[1]. They now think of human energy balance as "a dynamic and adaptable system," as one study[2] describes. When you alter one component — cutting the number of calories you eat in a day to lose weight, doing more exercise than usual — this sets off a cascade of changes in the body that affect how many calories you use up and, in turn, your bodyweight."

[1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4035446/
[2]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25323965/