Diet vs exercise for weight loss - new info
Posted: Tue Mar 02, 2021 4:48 pm
New evidence that exercise, while important for health, is *not* a good way to lose weight comes from today's NY Times.
An anthropologist studied kids in Ecuador, one group living out in the countryside, the other in the city:
"The in-depth study found that the rural children, who run, play and forage for hours, are leaner and more active than their urban counterparts. But they do not burn more calories day-to-day, a surprising finding that implicates the urban children’s modernized diets in their weight gain." (my emphasis)
One explanation offers an evolutionary perspective:
"Dr. [Herman] Pontzer concluded that, during evolution, we humans must have developed an innate, unconscious ability to reallocate our body’s energy usage. If we burn lots of calories with, for instance, physical activity, we burn fewer with some other biological system, such as reproduction or immune responses. The result is that our average, daily energy expenditure remains within a narrow band of total calories, helpful for avoiding starvation among active hunter-gatherers, but disheartening for those of us in the modern world who find that more exercise does not equate to much, if any, weight loss. (Dr. Pontzer’s highly readable new book on this topic, “Burn,” will be published on March 2. )"
Full article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/24/well ... mazon.html
An anthropologist studied kids in Ecuador, one group living out in the countryside, the other in the city:
"The in-depth study found that the rural children, who run, play and forage for hours, are leaner and more active than their urban counterparts. But they do not burn more calories day-to-day, a surprising finding that implicates the urban children’s modernized diets in their weight gain." (my emphasis)
One explanation offers an evolutionary perspective:
"Dr. [Herman] Pontzer concluded that, during evolution, we humans must have developed an innate, unconscious ability to reallocate our body’s energy usage. If we burn lots of calories with, for instance, physical activity, we burn fewer with some other biological system, such as reproduction or immune responses. The result is that our average, daily energy expenditure remains within a narrow band of total calories, helpful for avoiding starvation among active hunter-gatherers, but disheartening for those of us in the modern world who find that more exercise does not equate to much, if any, weight loss. (Dr. Pontzer’s highly readable new book on this topic, “Burn,” will be published on March 2. )"
Full article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/24/well ... mazon.html