paper-machine comments on Minimum viable workout routine

Comment author: OrphanWilde 21 June 2012 07:37:16PM 4 points [-]

3.) It is painfully and obviously wrong. We don't burn food, our metabolic processes are vastly different than the measuring techniques used in the lab.

But that doesn't mean that it can't also be right.

I put together a spreadsheet because I thought that calories were clearly stupid; I went around online and found formulas for calculating my caloric requirements. I put in my initial weight, and created two columns; one for my measured weight, and one for my predicted weight. And then I tracked everything I ate, over a three month period, as well as my body weight, and (using an electronic scale), my fat percentage.

And, much to my surprise, calorie consumption predicted body weight.

So, even if the assumptions behind calories have some clear holes in them, they nonetheless (for this sample size of one extremely skeptical individual) have at least -some- predictive value.

Comment author: [deleted] 21 June 2012 08:11:30PM -1 points [-]

Even if everything you say is true (and, e.g., you weren't recording completely bogus fat percentage numbers, you measured your weight consistently, the internet didn't mislead you on calorie counts, etc. etc.), this gives you extremely weak evidence to expect that other people would benefit from doing the same.

Not that this argument hasn't been tried before.

Comment author: OrphanWilde 21 June 2012 08:39:36PM 3 points [-]

It is weak evidence, bordering on if not outright in anecdotal, which is why I was careful to indicate that the predictive value is limited. And my body fat percentages probably were not precise - it's an electronic scale - but they were at least consistent, which was enough for my accuracy purposes. And yes, I measured my weight consistently; I measured once in the morning when I got up for work, once in the evening while preparing for bed, and averaged these values.

I will also add that I follow a relatively well-balanced diet, and wouldn't expect the results to hold as well if, for example, I consumed significantly fewer carbohydrates.

I started out an extreme skeptic. But I tested the theory instead of rejecting it. Well, to be completely accurate, I rejected it, and mocked some people who held to calories, and then later decided I should test my hypothesis instead of relying strictly on my intuition on how food works, and was entirely taken aback by the results.

As for your link, I'm not arguing for a position I think is a good one; if anything, my bias going into the experiment was expecting it to fail miserable. I'm defending one which I initially opposed, and still think is probably bad, but nonetheless works at least some of the time.

Comment author: denisbider comment score below threshold [+] (12 children)

Comment author: [deleted] 22 June 2012 01:52:04PM * 1 point [-]

If someone sounds crazy to you, maybe you have misinterpreted them.

The original post said that nutrition was "fairly easy", and that one should follow the rule of "calories in, calories out" and that one should eat "micronutrient dense food." CI:CO is broken because it's difficult to measure CI with any accuracy and intractably hard to measure CO. It ignores all sorts of subtleties like getting enough protein in your diet and the difference between bulking and cutting.

For example, good luck seeing gains if you're eating 20% fat, 70% carb, and 10% protein on a 10-15% caloric deficit. All the micronutrients in the world won't save that diet. But you're still following CI:CO!

Sigh. If this point is really so hard for people to get, maybe it's just not worth making. It's probably easier to let LW devolve into a bunch of badly-sourced self help advice than to continue tilting at windmills.

Comment author: Zaine 22 June 2012 07:47:29PM 0 points [-]

It's not so hard to measure calorie intake. Just memorize the relative base amounts of calories in the composing parts of one's meals, and learn to judge when one is hungry from physiological cues (ergo gratia consistently drinking water in sufficient amount that the scratchy, parched feeling at the back of one's throat indicates hunger and not thirst, the difference between digestive sensations and starving sensations, where one's stomach is, etcetera).

Once one learns how to tell when one is hungry, and how hungry, they can estimate how many calories lasts one how long, and thus measure one's average caloric need per hour, and therefore one's caloric need per day. Since it takes about twenty minutes to have an accurate sensation of hunger or satiety, at first one's estimates will only be accurate to within about 100 calories. As one tests their predictions of how many calories one needs per hour by: eating, judging when one will next be hungry based upon the estimated amount of calories consumed, then losing oneself in a non-stressing activity until one feels hunger sensations; noting the time one feels the sensations, if the time is when one predicted they would next be hungry, and if one is fairly certain one isn't guilty of a bias or a bias blind spot (good on one if they can detect these); one can accurately estimate to within about 50 calories their caloric intake.

Caloric outtake could then be measured by being slightly hungry when going to sleep, and tallying up the total amount of ingested calories that day (caloric intake per 10-16 waking hours).

Note this may take one a couple of years.

Comment author: [deleted] 22 June 2012 08:12:21PM 0 points [-]

It's not so hard to measure calorie intake.

[...]

Note this may take one a couple of years.

Please recognize that this advice is really quite far from what the original poster was proposing, and uses a radically different assessment of difficulty.

Your method of measuring caloric outtake is wrong, because the body doesn't use only the calories ingested that day during that day. (Yes, perhaps the calories ingested from the past and used today can be balanced out by the calories ingested today and stored for the future, but that assumes a whole host of processes are weakly varying over a long period of time.)

Having said that, I prefer your method to any other method I'm familiar with, perhaps even to the point of implementation...

Comment author: Zaine 22 June 2012 09:51:36PM * 1 point [-]

Your method of measuring caloric outtake is wrong, because the body doesn't use only the calories ingested that day during that day.

I suppose so, but as long as one's caloric intake caters to cues from physiological needs (which can be co-opted by MSG and to a lesser extent HFCS and sugar alcohols, and should thus be avoided at most costs), measuring one's caloric outtake doesn't really matter so much. I'm trying, but can't see how knowing caloric outtake would be necessary when the sole criterion for calorie intake levels is physiological need, as determined by learning the cues. If one learns their average hourly caloric need at relative metabolic rest, one can judge whether they have over- or under-eated. Learning one's average heart beats per minute, and what different degrees of elevated bpm feel like, they can additionally learn by what estimate exercise increases their caloric need.

The one caveat to this, though, would be if one has imbalanced ghrelin and leptin levels - that would disable one's ability to trust their body's cues. If this condition is a concern, I think it can be tested through blood work.

However, maintaining a steady rate of metabolic activity is crucial to learning one's average caloric need per hour. Drinking cold water to just adequate levels of hydration (as judged by urine color), and consuming calories at a rate sufficient to maintain near-constant levels of digestion are of tremendous help in achieving this. I'd recommend erring on the side of unnecessarily diligent hydration (consistently clear urine) when learning what is the 'just-right' amount of hydration for one's body; learning what this amount is may take a while.

I can go into detail about why maintaining near-constant levels of digestion is helpful, but I think it might be unnecessary, and will thus abstain.

Having said that, I prefer your method to any other method I'm familiar with, perhaps even to the point of implementation.

As you may have gathered, this is essentially what I do (at the most basic level). I cannot yet accurately judge its effectiveness as a strategy, considering I may still be young enough for my naturally-high metabolism to significantly confound other variables' effects. There are also many other factors to consider, like blood sugar levels, inflammation, certain types of foods' effect on immunological processes and such processes corresponding effects upon digestion, etcetera.

In general, though, the logic should be sound. In regard to its difficulty, since becoming fluent enough with one's physiological cues takes a while, the effort expended may sum to a very high net amount of expended effort. During acclimation, however, only minimal amounts of effort would need to be expended at any one time (even less if one already has self-control/self-discipline).

Comment author: [deleted] 22 June 2012 10:05:27PM 0 points [-]

I suppose so, but as long as one's caloric intake caters to cues from physiological needs (which can be co-opted by MSG and to a lesser extent HFCS and sugar alcohols, and should thus be avoided at most costs), measuring one's caloric outtake doesn't really matter so much. I'm trying, but can't see how knowing caloric outtake would be necessary when the sole criterion for calorie intake levels is physiological need, as determined by learning the cues.

We're in complete agreement here.

What I'm arguing against in my comments above is the standard implementation of "calories in, calories out" (as seen in popular self-help dieting books and even in such august bodies as r/fitness, for example) does not involve learning physiological cues at all (rather, usually, ignoring them as "bad") but instead attempting to count the calories in the food one eats, come up with some justification for a value for BMR, estimating additional expended calories due to exercise, and so on.

The more I think about your method, though, the more I like it.

Comment author: Zaine 23 June 2012 04:18:04AM * 1 point [-]

If you want to talk more about it, feel free. I think I laid out all the major caveats to consider.

Comment author: denisbider 21 September 2012 01:47:32AM -2 points [-]

I haven't checked this thread for a while, so sorry for the late reply.

You make it out as though diet by CI:CO is too difficult to be practical. Maybe it is, for people who can't track stuff to save their lives.

For me, it's been easy. When I'm dieting, I have a spreadsheet where I record the calorie and protein content of everything I eat.

Yes, calculating calorie content for homemade meals is a fair amount of work, and takes dedication. It takes me up to 30 minutes of lookups and calculations to calculate calorie and protein content in a meal, and that's after my wife has weighed and recorded all the ingredients.

Because of this complexity, I stick mostly to prepared foods that display their calorie content, or homemade meals made of well-known ingredients in well-known proportions.

I have a fair amount of confidence in my calorie calculations. I know from experience that when I keep the daily sum of calories under a certain level, my waist size goes down. It works.

I don't know anyone else who brings this level of dedication to their diet. I know people who don't, and so they're fat.

I accept your argument that CI:CO is hard for people lacking conscientiousness, but this is different from saying that CI:CO doesn't work.

Also, for people lacking conscientiousness, chances are that no diet is going to work.

Comment author: [deleted] 21 September 2012 02:20:17AM * -2 points [-]

My argument had nothing to do with conscientiousness.

There is currently no convenient way to accurately track your caloric intake and caloric expenditure. Attempts to do so have all the usual sources of error that this thread already covered.

In particular, adding up the numbers on the labels of the things you eat is not a sufficiently accurate method of determining caloric intake, see for example the FDA's Food Labeling Guide, questions N30-37. That's before we begin to talk about preparation loss ratios, nutrient bioavailability and the vagaries of the human metabolic system.

So when somebody recommends CI:CO, they're recommending either 1) vapid numerology or 2) a time-sink that is also largely numerology. It's unreliable, and therefore not something I would ever suggest to somebody else.

All your self-congratulatory narcissism is also largely off-topic. In particular,

I don't know anyone else who brings this level of dedication to their diet. I know people who don't, and so they're fat.

is such a bizarre source of evidence that I can't imagine why you bothered stating it. Is it really so controversial that pseudoscientific magic is bad advice?

I was right in the grandparent. I'm tapping out.

Comment author: denisbider comment score below threshold [+] (3 children)

Comment author: bcoburn 21 September 2012 02:54:50AM 0 points [-]

Yes, that is exactly what they are saying. It happens to be the case that this thing works for you. That is only very weak evidence that it works for anyone else at all. All humans are not the same.

We recommend getting over being insulted and frustrated when things that work for you specifically turn out to be flukes, it's not a surprising thing and sufficiently internalizing how many actual studies turn out to be flukes would make it the obvious result. Reality shouldn't be strange or surprising or insulting!

Comment author: denisbider 21 September 2012 05:42:56AM * -2 points [-]

It doesn't only work for me. It's how most people I know, who are into fitness, manage their weight. The "Calories In" part is not eating too much. The "Calories Out" part is maintaining your metabolism by eating small meals regularly, exercising, and eating lots of protein to gain and preserve muscle mass.

It works. It works for a lot of people.

In fact, aside from gastric bypass surgery, it's the only reliable way to lose weight that I know. And gastric bypass surgery is a form of CI:CO!

And then we have a bunch of people on Less Wrong, all of whom appear to be convinced that human bodies can somehow violate the rules of thermodynamics. Or that the calorie content of foods varies so wildly no one can ever track it well enough to lose weight. Then when challenged, you resort to arguments like this:

The sun is dark green.
No, it's bright yellow, I saw it this morning.
That's anecdotal evidence. It's no good as science. It's green, stop spreading your bullshit.
I'm pretty sure that it was yellow every time I saw it in my life. It was never green.
More anecdotal evidence. What you see is not what other people see. Learn to science, man!

Ad hominems are the last thing to resort to, but this conversation has become so ridiculous, I am left with no more credible explanations for this denialism than that you guys are chronically fat, and hiding behind excuses because you lack the will power to stop slurping Double Diet Mountain Dew. Then, you make endless posts about beating akrasia.

continue this thread »

Comment author: wedrifid 21 June 2012 04:13:53PM 3 points [-]

is that this is yet another attempt at spouting advice without the backing of theory.

I was more concerned that the acceptable advice was based on bogus theory.

Comment author: RomeoStevens 21 June 2012 09:50:20PM * 2 points [-]

It won't work better than SS. It is explicitly not supposed to be an improvement to SS in terms of results. It is an improvement to SS in terms of time/mental commitment. The 5 exercises SS asks you to learn are all difficult and require a willingness to watch videos, read articles, and continuously check your form. The 3 exercises from this routine can be learned ridiculously quickly. People who use it will see a result close to the results from SS.
This article is mainly for people who don't like exercise and thus are interested in health benefits with minimal input. If you're interested in cardio for some other reason, great, have fun.
If it is painfully and obviously wrong there should be plenty of studies on people who maintain their caloric consumption and activity level but change whatever you think is the true culprit and lose weight. The main reason people think CI:CO is not true is due to errors related to not accounting for BMR and TDEE change.

Comment author: [deleted] 21 June 2012 10:30:26PM -1 points [-]

Already covered by wedrifid elsewhere, and I largely agree with his analysis of your routine.
"Health benefits" does not mean the same thing as "reducing mortality", which in turn does not mean the same thing as increasing cardio capacity. You dismissed cardio because of the third, but addressed it to people looking for the first.
Who is your audience? Now it seems like it is people who don't like exercise but are also willing to do enough calculation and lifestyle management to make CI:CO even remotely applicable. It seems far more likely to me that a significant proportion will fall into one of the well-documented failure modes associated with such advice, e.g., malnutrition, neuroticism, burnout, and etc.

Comment author: RomeoStevens 21 June 2012 10:35:57PM 1 point [-]

I dismiss cardio for the newbie. I believe that cardio completely screws up a newbie's ability to get in the habit of exercise because of the difficulty, both psychological and physical.

This was not primarily a nutrition related post. My audience includes people who aren't going to fix their diets, as some exercise with a crappy diet is better than no exercise and a crappy diet.

Comment author: taryneast 19 February 2014 11:01:42AM 0 points [-]

Why subscribe to calories in calories out when it is painfully, obviously wrong?

There are two ways to represent the statement "calories in calories out".

The first way assumes that if you eat X calories - then you will gain X calories-worth of fat. This is painfully and obviously wrong. One calorie (as measured in the lab) does not equate to one calorie of body fat. There are all sorts of complicated reasons why this is so.

The second way is to realise that if I ate no calories, and only expended them - I would have a net loss of fat. If I ate way too many calories,and expended none - I would have a net gain of fat.

So... 1 calorie in does not exactly equal 1 calorie of fat gained... but there is still obviously some correlation between intake of calories and the laying-on-of fat.

Therefore, if I restricted the intake of calories (ie reduced calories in) while maintaining the calories out... I would at some point expect to see a reduction in the amount of fat on my body. Likewise if I increased the calories going out (while maintaining the calories coming in) I would also see a reduction in my body fat.

Therefore "calories in... calories out" DOES work as long as you don't assume that "calories in - calories out == 0"

because THAT would be painfully and obviously wrong.

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