People have had this argument many times on Less Wrong and elsewhere, and you are the one who is wrong here. Calories vs physical exercise is not a physical law. Of course you will only lose as much carbon as you can join to the oxygen that you breath out your mouth. But there is no physical law that says there has to be any particular proportion between that and the measurable exercise you perform externally, and in practice there is no fixed proportion—people have different proportions, just as it seems to them.
(The fact that you bring up conservation of mass and conservation of energy suggests the absurd idea that you lose weight by converting mass directly into energy—if that was the way you lose weight, you could eat once and live a few years off that, or more.)
Calories vs physical exercise is not a physical law.
I said energy in / energy out. On the way in that means calories in, on the way out, around 30%(or more) of your daily burn is your base metabolic rate while you are awake, the things your body does to keep you alive. Heart pumping, stomach churning, breathing stuff.
Exercise is probably less than 1/6th of your daily burn. Unless you are marathon running in which case you are probably eating enough to more than compensate for it.
the idea that you lose weight by converting mass directly into energy
Okay… I never suggested weighing the food you eat, but that was a dieting fad in the 60s or so (it didn’t last for reasons of that’s now how energy in food works)
Motte and bailey. You stated, “If a human could eat significantly more calories for the same amount of work and not put on weight we would be prodding them in a lab for breaking the laws of physics on conservation of mass and conservation of energy.”
If you understand “work” there to mean whatever your body does to lose weight, then you might be right. But you made the claim to support this:
“If you ever had that conversation it goes something like,
“How are you so thin?”
“raah raah metabolism”
“raah raah I dont know why I don’t put on weight”
“Take advantage of the habit”
Well I have had enough. You’re wrong. You’re lying and you probably don’t even know it.”
But that conversation is completely consistent with your new interpretation of work. With that interpretation, it is consistent with the laws of physics for someone to double all of his meals and continue with the same daily routine, every day, and not gain any weight, because “work” means something quite different then the normal stuff that a person does every day and considers to be work or exercise.
it appears that I should have been more clear. Yes. Work does have several definitions, one is, “all energy exerted including energy to persist—i.e. sleep, Base Metabolic rate, incidental exercise and actual purposeful exercise”, and the other is, “the actual activity alone, excluding the base metabolic rate”.
I intended to use this definition for the whole post: “all energy exerted including energy to persist—i.e. sleep, Base Metabolic rate, and actual activity”
If you only count the work that people purposely do − 90% or more of the picture will be left out. Similar if I only counted the food I ate while “dieting” (or “having a meal”) and not the food I eat while “snacking” or “being hungry” or other definitions of what doesn’t count.
People have had this argument many times on Less Wrong and elsewhere, and you are the one who is wrong here. Calories vs physical exercise is not a physical law. Of course you will only lose as much carbon as you can join to the oxygen that you breath out your mouth. But there is no physical law that says there has to be any particular proportion between that and the measurable exercise you perform externally, and in practice there is no fixed proportion—people have different proportions, just as it seems to them.
(The fact that you bring up conservation of mass and conservation of energy suggests the absurd idea that you lose weight by converting mass directly into energy—if that was the way you lose weight, you could eat once and live a few years off that, or more.)
I said energy in / energy out. On the way in that means calories in, on the way out, around 30%(or more) of your daily burn is your base metabolic rate while you are awake, the things your body does to keep you alive. Heart pumping, stomach churning, breathing stuff.
Exercise is probably less than 1/6th of your daily burn. Unless you are marathon running in which case you are probably eating enough to more than compensate for it.
Okay… I never suggested weighing the food you eat, but that was a dieting fad in the 60s or so (it didn’t last for reasons of that’s now how energy in food works)
Motte and bailey. You stated, “If a human could eat significantly more calories for the same amount of work and not put on weight we would be prodding them in a lab for breaking the laws of physics on conservation of mass and conservation of energy.”
If you understand “work” there to mean whatever your body does to lose weight, then you might be right. But you made the claim to support this:
“If you ever had that conversation it goes something like,
“How are you so thin?” “raah raah metabolism” “raah raah I dont know why I don’t put on weight” “Take advantage of the habit”
Well I have had enough. You’re wrong. You’re lying and you probably don’t even know it.”
But that conversation is completely consistent with your new interpretation of work. With that interpretation, it is consistent with the laws of physics for someone to double all of his meals and continue with the same daily routine, every day, and not gain any weight, because “work” means something quite different then the normal stuff that a person does every day and considers to be work or exercise.
it appears that I should have been more clear. Yes. Work does have several definitions, one is, “all energy exerted including energy to persist—i.e. sleep, Base Metabolic rate, incidental exercise and actual purposeful exercise”, and the other is, “the actual activity alone, excluding the base metabolic rate”.
I intended to use this definition for the whole post: “all energy exerted including energy to persist—i.e. sleep, Base Metabolic rate, and actual activity”
If you only count the work that people purposely do − 90% or more of the picture will be left out. Similar if I only counted the food I ate while “dieting” (or “having a meal”) and not the food I eat while “snacking” or “being hungry” or other definitions of what doesn’t count.