Do you know, if we also observe an obesity-epidemic in the subgroup of people who average 25k+ in daily steps? That step-requirement is a good, high standard of “metabolically healthy” to isolate. I belong in that group these days and it feels natural, relaxed and I feel far more energetic than when I was averaging 7k daily steps and was the sedentary nerd cliché, about a year ago. Now I am a nerd, who takes two walks per day, almost never sits and either stands or uses his office treadmill when on the computer. Even before, I never really got fat. But I feel, that I might not have been “metabolically healthy”, because now I feel better. So I strongly suspect that a far higher than average step-count is a hard requirement for being “metabolically healthy”.
I hear that “pregnant” people also do less mountain-climbing, even if they were exercising healthily before. No wonder they gain weight! Do we even need to postulate “pregnancy” as a condition, when their caloric intake and reduced exercise seems adequate to explain all of the observed weight gain?
I was not responding to your pregnancy-argument, but to your post higher up in this subthread from 3 days ago. The threading makes this a bit confusing. Also should have specified what I was responding to the last paragraph: ”Both are ruled out by experiments showing that (in metabolically healthy individuals before the obesity epidemic) a randomized experimental intervention to add overeating does not produce obesity any more than it produces tumors.”
Is there actually an obesity epidemic among people who walk more than 25k steps per day? (or is something like that currently known).
EDIT: I suppose my hypothesis is: Living a non-sedentary lifestyle meaning less than 20 minutes of sitting per day, 25k-ish steps per day somewhat equally spread out over all waking hours makes the “weight-gain -=> obesity”-phenomenon impossible, because it’s a sufficient requirement for robust metabological health. If that was true, it might not answer what is behind the obesity epidemic. But that’s what I would study, to check if it’s a cure or reliable prevention.
I’d say 90% chance of this being true, but mostly on intuition and with high model uncertainty. And I don’t know, if we know enough to answer this question, because non-sedentary lifestyles like that are fairly niche in all Western societies. But I recently figured out, that they’re not all that hard to adopt.
EDID2: Actually, I’d say the 90% applies to it being “reliable prevention”. No clue, how curative that would be. I never had to really lose more than a couple kg of fat. [and “had to” is really exaggerating a lot] From what I observe, it seems somehow impossible for really fat people to become not fat, despite heroic struggles which have always been strange to observe from the outside.
Is there any solid evidence that walking 25k steps per day will solve the obesity epidemic? I ask this because it’s genuinely a remarkable claim, one that if verified and implemented would save huge numbers of lives and hundreds of billions in medical expenses. The literature mostly seems to indicate that increased exercise doesn’t have dramatic effects on obesity.
There is not. That’s why I was asking him if he knows. I was not interested in the effect of exercise. Exercise means, you do some activity a couple times per week. I’m interested whether the obesety epidemic only affects the sedentary populatrion. And if being or becoming non-sedentary is protective or curative. 25k steps for me means, that my treadmill is running constantly when I’m on my computer. This is not really exercise. Movement is just my default state.
In that way, I have become closer to what an EAA-hunter-gatherer, than to a sedentary office worker does with his body. [or I would, if this had been my lifetime norm instead of something I still get used to] If the human body was sold as a machine, the sedentary lifestyle probably would void your warranty, because it’s rather extreme (dis)usage. Sedentary people being unhealthy is not surprising. It’s surprising that some sedentary people aren’t.
Anyway, “being in near-constant motion” is too specific/complicated a metric. So I’d just look for a step count high enough, that’s only feasibly doable by a non-sedentary person like me. Though, I guess any daily jogger can probably match or exceed 25k steps per day. The group of people whose 80th quantile waking hour still has >1k steps. That’s probably the better proxy, come to think of it.
Do you know, if we also observe an obesity-epidemic in the subgroup of people who average 25k+ in daily steps? That step-requirement is a good, high standard of “metabolically healthy” to isolate.
I belong in that group these days and it feels natural, relaxed and I feel far more energetic than when I was averaging 7k daily steps and was the sedentary nerd cliché, about a year ago. Now I am a nerd, who takes two walks per day, almost never sits and either stands or uses his office treadmill when on the computer.
Even before, I never really got fat. But I feel, that I might not have been “metabolically healthy”, because now I feel better. So I strongly suspect that a far higher than average step-count is a hard requirement for being “metabolically healthy”.
I hear that “pregnant” people also do less mountain-climbing, even if they were exercising healthily before. No wonder they gain weight! Do we even need to postulate “pregnancy” as a condition, when their caloric intake and reduced exercise seems adequate to explain all of the observed weight gain?
I was not responding to your pregnancy-argument, but to your post higher up in this subthread from 3 days ago. The threading makes this a bit confusing.
Also should have specified what I was responding to the last paragraph:
”Both are ruled out by experiments showing that (in metabolically healthy individuals before the obesity epidemic) a randomized experimental intervention to add overeating does not produce obesity any more than it produces tumors.”
Is there actually an obesity epidemic among people who walk more than 25k steps per day? (or is something like that currently known).
EDIT:
I suppose my hypothesis is:
Living a non-sedentary lifestyle meaning less than 20 minutes of sitting per day, 25k-ish steps per day somewhat equally spread out over all waking hours makes the “weight-gain -=> obesity”-phenomenon impossible, because it’s a sufficient requirement for robust metabological health.
If that was true, it might not answer what is behind the obesity epidemic.
But that’s what I would study, to check if it’s a cure or reliable prevention.
I’d say 90% chance of this being true, but mostly on intuition and with high model uncertainty.
And I don’t know, if we know enough to answer this question, because non-sedentary lifestyles like that are fairly niche in all Western societies. But I recently figured out, that they’re not all that hard to adopt.
EDID2: Actually, I’d say the 90% applies to it being “reliable prevention”. No clue, how curative that would be.
I never had to really lose more than a couple kg of fat. [and “had to” is really exaggerating a lot]
From what I observe, it seems somehow impossible for really fat people to become not fat, despite heroic struggles which have always been strange to observe from the outside.
Is there any solid evidence that walking 25k steps per day will solve the obesity epidemic? I ask this because it’s genuinely a remarkable claim, one that if verified and implemented would save huge numbers of lives and hundreds of billions in medical expenses. The literature mostly seems to indicate that increased exercise doesn’t have dramatic effects on obesity.
There is not. That’s why I was asking him if he knows. I was not interested in the effect of exercise. Exercise means, you do some activity a couple times per week.
I’m interested whether the obesety epidemic only affects the sedentary populatrion.
And if being or becoming non-sedentary is protective or curative.
25k steps for me means, that my treadmill is running constantly when I’m on my computer.
This is not really exercise. Movement is just my default state.
In that way, I have become closer to what an EAA-hunter-gatherer, than to a sedentary office worker does with his body.
[or I would, if this had been my lifetime norm instead of something I still get used to]
If the human body was sold as a machine, the sedentary lifestyle probably would void your warranty, because it’s rather extreme (dis)usage. Sedentary people being unhealthy is not surprising.
It’s surprising that some sedentary people aren’t.
Anyway, “being in near-constant motion” is too specific/complicated a metric.
So I’d just look for a step count high enough, that’s only feasibly doable by a non-sedentary person like me. Though, I guess any daily jogger can probably match or exceed 25k steps per day.
The group of people whose 80th quantile waking hour still has >1k steps.
That’s probably the better proxy, come to think of it.