THE Solution to our Oil Addiction

You're right - you should eat more to lose weight.

In your defense, that does appear to be what the bulk of Americans are doing.

... Brad

 

I didn't say that. I said that increasing your caloric intake doesn't make you gain weight. Increasing your insulin levels, on the other hand, will.

If you don't burn the excess energy through exercise you'll convert it to heat. Studies with anorexics, on a 4000 calorie a day diet, show that. They don't gain a lot of weight because they just burn it off as heat (they're not allowed to exercise excessively either).

Conversely, numerous studies have show that eating a 3500 calorie/day high fat/moderate protein/low carb diet will result in weight loss for heavier patients. This clearly contradicts your argument that Ein and Eout are independant variables. There are numerous studies that have demonstrated this fact, and I've seen it in my own experience as well.

So you can roll your eyes all you want, but if you look at the data, they don't support your argument.

I will grant you that there's no real reason to eat 3500 calories a day unless you're a professional athlete (golfers excepted). Americans probably do consume too many calories, and they generally consume the wrong kind to boot. But they can bicycle until they drop and it won't do a bit of good until they change their eating habits.

 

My bike club is talking about this same stuff (same article about biking means more pollution because of food intake). Here is a direct, though obviously anecdotal, comment from one of our members:

Before I did my weight-loss I was at 350 pounds (a range 320-350). I sustained a daily caloric intake of about 3,000-3,500 per day without gaining weight. Now I weigh 190 or so and it takes about 1,800 calories/day to sustain that without exercise. So being relatively sedentary and obese still allows/requires (for me) twice the calorie intake to sustain.

 

There's nothing wrong with anecdotal evidence, that's his/her experience. What kinda stuff was he (I'll just assume it's a lad we're talking about here) eating when intaking 3500 calories/day? From what I've read and seen (experienced directly and gathered in talking with other people), carbs are the real weigth culprit. The highly refined stuff, not pinto beans, mind you.

For instance, by business partner... he's a big lad. 6'4'' and was about 245lbs. He cut out diet soda, white bread, and snack junk. He replaced that with water (he still has a pint or 3 a day), nuts of various kinds. He continues to eat things like brats and other high fat meats (and the nuts too, of course) and has lost about 15 pounds over the course of 2 months. Nothing too extreme, just a steady loss. He isn't hungry all the time. He's not restricting his caloric intake at all. He just changed what he eats.

I've done the same thing (except I don't eat meat on account of my arthritis) and even though I'm not exercising regularly, I haven't gained any weight. I've got a bruised metatarsal, so no soccer for the last 3 months (which sucks fearsomely, but there it is). I'm actually making a pretty decent effort at going vegan to see if my arthritis will go away (no more hienous drugs, which is good).

Exercise is excellent, but the lack of it is not why so many Americans are obese. The "typical American diet" that Chogan has been talking about is the real culprit. More people cycling to work wouldn't be a bad thing, unfortunately, decades of cheap petrol have really conspired to make change quite difficult for most folks. Good public transit is a much more realistic answer to the problem, esp with we can electrify it.