Burn: New Research Blows the Lid Off How We Really Burn Calories, Stay Healthy, and Lose Weight, Herman Pontzer (Avery, 2022). Compare these two covers. The one on the left, with the cover design that says “this is pop science to shelve with your Malcolm Gladwell,”
Thanks for the review. My sole comment is; I think, because over the last 60 years of trying to keep fit (and maintain weight within a 20 lb range(up and down), that exercise builds muscle that weighs more than the lost fat. Perhaps the studies of limited (or zero) weight loss over controlled time periods may have not taken into account the amount of fat that was lost and replaced by muscle.
Muscle also has higher energy burn per pound. I definitely felt I could eat more and maintain weight when more of my bodymass was muscle than if the same weight was fat.
Hmm, if not exercising means that we burn more calories through other body processes which increase inflammation, does that mean that less exercise is the reason behind the increase in allergy prevalence in modern times compared to the past?
That’s certainly one implication. I’m not sure how you would disentangle it from the hygiene hypothesis, since unusually active populations tend to be unusually outdoorsy (and thus exposed to dirt, parasites, etc) populations, and a lot of allergies first show up in children small enough I’m not sure there’s a lot of difference in physical activity levels cross-culturally, but it’s not incompatible with Pontzer’s theory.
This is great, thanks. It's been plane* for years that the vanilla CICO model of weight had problems, but I had no good model to replace it with. Separating diet and exercise seems like a key insight and I'm going to have to let the ideas process for a while.
Have you read "The Emperor of Scent", it's a fun science story centered around the mechanism by which we smell things. And it's got all the 'right' actors. The hide bound, stuck in group think, establishment. And plucky individual researcher... I won't spoil the rest of the tale.
I'm not totally sold on Pontzer's model, but it seemed intriguing! And I haven't read Emperor of Scent, but I have read Burr's other book about perfume and, uh, I own both big volumes of Luca Turin's books about perfume, so it's very much the kind of thing I'll want up for middle-of-the-night reading after the baby's born.
Yeah kids! My kids are 24 and 22, (fully launched) and perhaps my only regret would be we didn't have more. But we started late. Yeah I have no idea about Pontzer's model, it's better than any other I've heard about. (My only other idea was some 'fat' set point in your body, but I'm an engineer so set points and control loops are my first thoughts.)
Oh please write a review about smell! But no hurry, kids first.
Thanks for the review! Fits into a broader pattern where efficiency and nuance (in this case, exercise and diet) matter way less than massive impacts to critical bottlenecks - I think you made a similar point in your review of Energy and Civilization.
Could be interesting to see if this theory foots on a broader level with the data we see in societies - e.g., assuming fixed energy burn, does the weight increase per person since ~1970 foot with the increased per-person calorie intake?
Thanks for the review. My sole comment is; I think, because over the last 60 years of trying to keep fit (and maintain weight within a 20 lb range(up and down), that exercise builds muscle that weighs more than the lost fat. Perhaps the studies of limited (or zero) weight loss over controlled time periods may have not taken into account the amount of fat that was lost and replaced by muscle.
Muscle also has higher energy burn per pound. I definitely felt I could eat more and maintain weight when more of my bodymass was muscle than if the same weight was fat.
Hmm, if not exercising means that we burn more calories through other body processes which increase inflammation, does that mean that less exercise is the reason behind the increase in allergy prevalence in modern times compared to the past?
That’s certainly one implication. I’m not sure how you would disentangle it from the hygiene hypothesis, since unusually active populations tend to be unusually outdoorsy (and thus exposed to dirt, parasites, etc) populations, and a lot of allergies first show up in children small enough I’m not sure there’s a lot of difference in physical activity levels cross-culturally, but it’s not incompatible with Pontzer’s theory.
This is great, thanks. It's been plane* for years that the vanilla CICO model of weight had problems, but I had no good model to replace it with. Separating diet and exercise seems like a key insight and I'm going to have to let the ideas process for a while.
Have you read "The Emperor of Scent", it's a fun science story centered around the mechanism by which we smell things. And it's got all the 'right' actors. The hide bound, stuck in group think, establishment. And plucky individual researcher... I won't spoil the rest of the tale.
*sorry my writing sucks :^)
I'm not totally sold on Pontzer's model, but it seemed intriguing! And I haven't read Emperor of Scent, but I have read Burr's other book about perfume and, uh, I own both big volumes of Luca Turin's books about perfume, so it's very much the kind of thing I'll want up for middle-of-the-night reading after the baby's born.
Yeah kids! My kids are 24 and 22, (fully launched) and perhaps my only regret would be we didn't have more. But we started late. Yeah I have no idea about Pontzer's model, it's better than any other I've heard about. (My only other idea was some 'fat' set point in your body, but I'm an engineer so set points and control loops are my first thoughts.)
Oh please write a review about smell! But no hurry, kids first.
Thanks for the review! Fits into a broader pattern where efficiency and nuance (in this case, exercise and diet) matter way less than massive impacts to critical bottlenecks - I think you made a similar point in your review of Energy and Civilization.
Could be interesting to see if this theory foots on a broader level with the data we see in societies - e.g., assuming fixed energy burn, does the weight increase per person since ~1970 foot with the increased per-person calorie intake?