Why do we get fat

Chapter 9 Exercise to lose weight, does it really work? (2)
So why not skip those stairs, skip these buns, and let workout weight loss stop there?After all, if a person climbs 20 flights of stairs in a day, chances are he can't resist eating an extra slice of bread by the end of the day, no? !

Yes, the more high-intensity workouts, the more calories you'll burn -- and it's true that losing weight is more effective when you're working hard enough to sweat.However, it will also make you hungrier.

Hugo Rony of Northwestern University pointed out in 1940: "Intense muscular exercise usually leads to an urgent desire to eat a big meal, and the continuous energy expenditure leads to a corresponding change in appetite. Therefore, engaging in People who work physically will unconsciously eat more than those who are sedentary. Statistics show that the average daily intake of lumberjacks exceeds 5000 calories, while tailors only consume about 2500 calories. When those who reduce physical exertion People whose work changes to physical work soon show a corresponding change in their appetite, and vice versa." So if a tailor turns into a lumberjack, he gets used to eating as much as the lumberjack.So shouldn't the same be true of a fat tailor who chooses to work (and exercise) like a lumberjack every day?
Those of you who ever believed you could lose weight and keep it off by exercising, you have Jean Mayer in your favor. (Translator's Note: From the following, the author does not agree with Mel's point of view on weight loss, which should be ridiculed and ironic.) Mel started his career at Harvard in 1950, and then became a nutritionist with far-reaching influence in the United States.For the next 16 years, he served as president of Tufts University, which now houses the Gene Mayer Human Anti-Aging Nutrition Research Center under the USDA.

As a nutritionist and weight loss expert, Meier is worthy of attention among the new generation of scientists.His predecessors, such as Bruch, Wilder, Ronnie, Newberg and other scholars, are doctors who have had close contact with obesity.But not Mel.He majored in physiology, and the subject of his doctoral thesis at Yale University was the conversion and utilization relationship between vitamin A and vitamin C in mice.So far, he has published hundreds of papers on nutrition, many of which aim to answer "why we get fat".

It can be said that it was Mel who instilled in the public the "common sense" of weight loss that is now commonplace.He suggests that a sedentary life is the single biggest contributor to obesity and the chronic diseases that come with it.Modern humans are inert, Meier says, compared to their pioneering forebears, who often performed hard, manual labor.By this logic, every modern piece of machinery, from lawn mowers to electric toothbrushes, designed solely to reduce the calories we burn, is responsible for our obesity.Meyer wrote in 1968: "The spread of obesity is largely due to a civilization that lacks forethought. A civilization that only knows to spend tens of billions of dollars a year on automobiles instead of building swimming pools, tennis courts and other sports facilities. included in the city plan."

In fact, in Meier's earlier work with obese mice, he had found that none of them had very good appetites.Since then, though, he's touted exercise as a way to manage his weight.Since eating too much was not the cause of the obesity in the mice, Meier naturally assumed that sitting still was the culprit.Of course, these little white mice do often squat and seldom move.By 1959, a New York Times op-ed gave Mel credit for having "revealed" the value of exercise for weight control, while the "popular theory" that exercise had nothing to do with weight loss was wrong.

But Mel didn't bring you the truth about weight loss.Mel admits that appetite increases with physical activity, but that's not always the case, and there's a loophole.Meier explained it this way in 1962: "If exercise is reduced to a certain amount, food intake will no longer be reduced. In other words, walking 90 minutes a day may be equivalent to consuming only 4 slices of bread. Calories, but if you haven't walked the full 90 minutes, you still want to eat 4 slices of bread."

Of course we didn't eat that much bread in a day, and Mel was good at exaggerating, and he didn't get tired of it.What he's saying is that if you're sitting still, you're eating the same amount as if you were moving a little and expending some extra energy.

Meier's conclusion comes from two of his own studies (and only two).

His first studies were with mice, to show that when these mice were forced to be active for several hours a day, they ate less than those that were completely inactive.Note that Meier did not say that the mice actually lost weight, only that the mice ate less.It was later found that the mice in the exercise group ate more on the days when they were not forced to run, and when they could stop exercising, they consumed less energy than before.What's more, they weighed as much as those sitting still.Not only that, after the mice were removed from the exercise group, they also ate more and gained weight faster with age than those mice that were allowed to sit still.In hamsters and chipmunks, exercise also increases body weight and body fat percentage.So in fact, exercise made these particular rodents fatter, not leaner.

Meier's second study assessed the diet, exercise and body weight of factory workers and retailers in West Bengal, India.This article is still cited today by the Institute of Medicine and the like to prove that being physically active doesn't necessarily lead to a big appetite -- because it's the only example left.Despite the development of methods for assessing human diet and energy expenditure over half a century, this example has not been replicated by other researchers.And we all know that science believes that if a study cannot be replicated, it probably means that the conclusion itself is problematic.

According to Meyer's report, workers at the Indian factory ranged from "extremely lazy, sitting around all day with nothing to do" to "furnace workers who shovel coal ash to earn a living."The evidence presented in the Meier report can be used to prove anything (that is, prove nothing).For example, factory workers who do more work weigh more and eat more than those who work less.As for those who sat and worked, the longer they sat and the more they ate, the less weight they lost.Workers who live in factory dormitories and sit all day are not only 10 kg lighter than those who walk 4.5 kilometers to work—even those who walk to work and play football every day—and consume an average of 400 calories more.Meyer's Bangladesh survey is a living example of just how bad so-called groundbreaking research can be in the field of nutrition.

But the research helps Meyer sell his weight-loss theories of exercise with the fervor of a moral crusade.As Meyer's political influence grew throughout the 20s, his belief that exercise was good for weight loss gained widespread admiration. In 60, the U.S. Public Health Service first advocated that diet and increased physical activity are the keys to weight loss.It was Meyer who wrote the report.Three years later, he chaired a White House conference on food, nutrition and health. "Successful solutions to the obesity problem will necessarily involve far-reaching changes in lifestyle," the conference report concluded, "including changes in diet and increased physical activity." He's like a diet doctor peddling patents."Exercise makes you lose weight faster and, contrary to popular belief, doesn't whet your appetite," he wrote enthusiastically.

At the same time, examples in life cannot support Mel's hypothesis that "exercise helps lose weight".Not in animal experiments, and certainly not in humans.

(End of this chapter)