The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
-
Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
-
Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
-
Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
-
Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
On Outrunning a Bad Diet
We've probably all heard the phrase, "you can't outrun a bad diet". There's certainly some wisdom embedded there, particularly for anyone that's just starting to get a handle on their weight and fitness - burning enough calories to significantly outstrip dietary intake isn't really an option for most people most of the time, and even if they do start burning quite a few calories, many people find it easy enough to outeat that burn rate anyway. Nonetheless, I find that the phrase irks me a bit, I think because people use it in a fashion that I think is stronger than what's consistent with either the general set of facts or my own personal experience. I've been thinking about this more lately for reasons I'll get to shortly.
As a bit of background, I'm a running enthusiast that picked the sport up in my late 20s when I had started to look at little doughy around the middle. After entering a couple races, I found that I really enjoyed the sport, wanted to be more competitive, and embarked on what's now a more than decade-long journey through the sport. Over that time, I've had ups and downs due to work schedule and injuries that resulted in my mileage fluctuating from a then-highpoint around 2200 miles back in 2015 down to about 1100 miles in 2020. Over the past couple years, I've been lucky enough to finally sort out both my work and injuries well enough to have set a new yearly mileage PR last year, knockout a great marathon training cycle to start 2024, culminating in a marathon PR to close the spring race season. During that time, I saw, "you can't outrun a bad diet" quite a few times on various message boards, and I'd quibble a bit with it on the basis that it sure seemed like controlling my weight had become a lot easier since I started my running life. Nonetheless, it was true that it fluctuated a few pounds and that I had to consider my calories a bit, so at least the weak form of the claim seemed true even for a consistent runner.
In the last couple months, that's changed. Now, I am outrunning a bad diet. After I bounced back from my marathon, I just started running every day with recovery days being slower and shorter rather than true rest. After finishing my morning run today, I'm at just a shade over 500 miles in 50 days, and the result is that I've lost a few pounds of fat. What's more, I'm seeing some additional muscular remodeling through both my torso and legs as I adapt to the consistently higher mileage. Going even a shade further, we got a dog and I'm walking more now too, with Garmin saying that my total movement per week is about 105 miles. I haven't made any conscious changes to my diet and haven't noticed any sharp increase in appetite, so without any dietary effort at all, I'm getting leaner.
To be clear, what do I mean by a "bad diet"? I think the first thing to note is that I kind of object to the term, I think most foods are fine in their proper time and place, and to the extent that food is "bad", it's contextual. Donuts are a terrible idea for diabetics, but there's nothing wrong with someone walking in from ten mile run and smashing a donut. At 140 pounds, I generally eat about 3000 kcal per day and I'm not at all particular about "eating clean". I drink too much beer (particularly big stouts and IPAs), I eat potato chips, I grill a lot of burgers, beef and onion fried rice is a huge go to, slow-cooker pork shoulder is great, cheese is definitely a go, fries or tater tots from the freezer are great, I'm happy to have pizza, and so on. It's not comically bad or anything, and I don't have a sweet tooth, but I just eat a lot of basically whatever I want.
So, is there any real point, any lesson to take away here, or am I just being a smug, pedantic asshole in saying that ackshually I outrun my diet? Well, admittedly there's more than a little of the latter. But really, I do want to note that I think people take the framing too far and undervalue exercise as part of maintaining a healthy weight. While it's true that a fat guy probably can't run enough to get skinny, the flip side is that a guy that isn't fat that takes up running or cycling really probably isn't ever going to get fat because of the way these sports change your relationship to food, giving you a real perspective on what you're eating and how much you need to eat for a given task. The metabolic impact is also crucial as easy aerobic work both burns fat directly and improves the capacity to use fat as a fuel for exercise. As with many other things, this isn't very helpful for digging out of a hole, but it's great for avoiding that hole in the first place.
"You can't outrun a bad diet." generally refers to excessive calorie intake above all else, and while you might think/feel like you're consuming a lot at 3,000 kcals a day you've got to think bigger. A quick google search suggests that your average American (who is overweight if not obese) consumes 3600 calories a day, so you're eating less than the average American and probably in the top 1% among them for physical activity.
I promise you can't outrun my obese roommate's diet, which I've started to occasionally observe as the fast food trash clogs up my kitchen trashcan. Some bangers from the last week: Thursday's lunch was a 20 piece McNuggets, three double cheeseburgers, and two medium fries from McDonald's (about 2800 calories). He came home from the bar with a Taco Bell bag later that night. Saturday night's dinner was eight 3 cheese chicken flatbread melts from Taco Bell along with a 7.75 oz bag of potato chips (about 3900 calories in total).
That is, um, more than I expected. I'm personally closer to OP, and thought my 2500-3000 calories was a lot, although admittedly I try to make it pretty healthy within that allotment. There have been times in my life where absurd volumes of low-intensity exercise (think through-hiking) have actually made it difficult to physically eat enough in a day to keep up, some of that is having to carry the food and not sitting down often to eat it. I hear the polar explorers of a century ago (and perhaps still today) were eating butter by the stick just to cram in enough calories.
That said, I think OP should worry about getting a sufficiently well-balanced diet: macros are important even for endurance athletes (who frequently need more carbs than weightlifters), and I've heard enough anecdotes about various micronutrient deficiencies that I try to balance things out a bit. But while running, especially longer races? Even the professionals there are consuming lots of sugar to maximize performance. I do recall an anecdote from a professional triathlete trying to explain to his dentist that he deliberately consumes about a gallon of sugary sports drink daily, because that can still cause issues for teeth.
I realize they're probably not unusual, but your roommate's diet as you describe it sounds terrifying.
Affirmative - during the last marathon I ran, I downed a 100-calorie gel every half hour and took Gatorade at aid stations.
More broadly, I got to thinking about the whole thing precisely because I had arrived at a pretty homeostatic position with regard to diet and 40-50 mile weeks over the course of years and was surprised when my recent increase led to inadvertent (though not entirely unwelcome) fat loss. As dopey as it sounds, a cheeseburger actually is tolerably macro-balanced. Likewise, my go-to meals of rice with meat and onions are fairly balanced. As I get into the next training cycle, I'll generally pay more attention to specifics when I have structured workouts.
More options
Context Copy link
You have to remember that close to 10% of Americans are morbidly obese, and as with alcohol consumption the heavy users drag up the average (It's more dramatic with alcohol, but there are vastly more severely obese people than anorexics.). On that note, the "10th decile drinkers drink 10 drinks a day" is probably an overstatement, but 10th decile drinkers still likely consume far too much.
My roommate's diet is simultaneously infuriating (He's literally going to eat himself into being bedbound at this rate and that much fast food has to cost a ton of money.) and sad (Binge Eating Disorder is a thing.). I get that it's really easy to become overweight or obese (Otherwise most people wouldn't be one or the other.), but to get your BMI over 40 or 50 takes work (unless you're really short and inactive, I suppose).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link