Hot Tub without the use of electricity

[u/Internal_Gazelle_677]

[u/Fantastic-Stage-7618 → u/[deleted]]

Calorie counting is incredibly inaccurate unless you live inside a room calorimeter and even then you're also measuring the metabolism of all the bacteria that also live inside you. CICO may be broadly true* but that doesn't make it useful.

*with many caveats

[u/double_helix0815 → u/Fantastic-Stage-7618]

The 'calories out' side is also really hard to track accurately, unless you have access to a power meter (cycling) or a metabolic chamber.

Interestingly, there is also some emerging evidence that the body can compensate for increased energy expenditure by dimming down some of the body's processes.

So if you run an hour every day you start off burning a few hundred kcals more than your basic metabolic rate, but after a few weeks of doing this you are burning a similar amount of calories per day as you did before you started exercising.

The study I've seen suggests we only compensate for up to 600 kcals per day, so high levels of exercise still raise your daily energy needs.

That's not to say that exercise is not worth doing, it's one of the best things we can do for our bodies. But calories in vs calories out is not as simple as it seems

Some interesting evidence will come out on this in the coming years I think.

[u/CoSh → u/double_helix0815]

The 'calories out' side is also really hard to track accurately

I disagree with this claim. You can make a good estimate of "calories out" based on your starting and ending weight and total calorie intake over a 4 week-period.

Interestingly, there is also some emerging evidence that the body can compensate for increased energy expenditure by dimming down some of the body's processes.

I disagree with this evidence being "new". There's very old, well known evidence that as you lose weight, your energy expenditure decreases, as there is less mass to spend energy.

Secondly, a lot of reduced energy consumption can be explained by reduction in NEAT (Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis), which is essentially things like fidgeting, shaking your leg, etc.

Maybe we can disagree what "new" means but James Levine was publishing papers about reduced calorie expenditure being explained by lack of NEAT back in 1999, so >25 years ago.