# Burn



## Eddy Edson (Mar 4, 2021)

New book from Herman Pontzer: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/603894/burn-by-herman-pontzer-phd/

Leading metabolism etc researcher, made his name studying the Hadza hunbter-gatherers in Tanzania.  As a practical guide to losing weight, not sure it adds much new: exercise won't do it, you have to eat less; try increasing fibre/protein and reducing processed foods to achieve that. 

But it's an entertaining explanation of how the human metabolism came to be and how it sometimes doesn't fit very easily with the modern world.  Plus some funny stories.


_We burn 2,000 calories a day. And if we exercise and cut carbs, we’ll lose more weight. Right? Wrong. In this paradigm-shifting book, Herman Pontzer reveals for the first time how human metabolism really works so that we can finally manage our weight and improve our health.

Pontzer’s groundbreaking studies with hunter-gatherer tribes show how exercise doesn’t increase our metabolism. Instead, we burn calories within a very narrow range: nearly 3,000 calories per day, no matter our activity level. This was a brilliant evolutionary strategy to survive in times of famine. Now it seems to doom us to obesity. The good news is we can lose weight, but we need to cut calories. Refuting such weight-loss hype as paleo, keto, anti-gluten, anti-grain, and even vegan, Pontzer discusses how all diets succeed or fail: For shedding pounds, a calorie is a calorie.

At the same time, we must exercise to keep our body systems and signals functioning optimally, even if it won’t make us thinner. Hunter-gatherers like the Hadza move about five hours a day and remain remarkably healthy into old age. But elite athletes can push the body too far, burning calories faster than their bodies can take them in. It may be that the most spectacular athletic feats are the result not just of great training, but of an astonishingly efficient digestive system._​


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## Eddy Edson (Nov 26, 2021)

The great Kevin Hall has integrated Pontzer's model with a retrospective look at a study his group did 10 years ago, looking at what happened with "Biggest Loser" contestants over a 6 year follow up.


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1463548802103590914
Back in the day, the most surprising thing was this: even though contestants on average regained about two-thirds of their weight loss over 6 years, their resting energy burn didn't change from where it had reduced to at the end of the competition period.  The metabolic change wasn't just to do with weighing less; it had fundamentally slowed down.

Over the same period, Pontzer was observing that Hadza hunter gatherers on average burn about the same amount of energy as Western office workers, adjusted for body sized, despite being way more active.  It must be that some other parts of their energy budget are relatively lower to accomodate the increased expenditure from activity. 

(The details aren't clear, but reduced chronic inflammation, as you see with weight loss and resolution of metabolic syndrome, is one likely candidate.)

Read the tweet thread for how Hall integrates these findings.


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## Eddy Edson (Feb 17, 2022)

A nice profile of Pontzer just published in _Science:_






						Science | AAAS
					






					www.science.org
				




He's great, but I hope that being a metabolism legend in his own lunchtime doesn't turn him into a quack in the end. Happens too often   People get addicted to the limelight (and for males, I think, far too often the otherwise unwarranted attention of young females) and once they have nothing true & interesting left to say, they start to make stuff up ...


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## Eddy Edson (Apr 8, 2022)

Danielle Belardo's podcast with Pontzer: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wellness-fact-vs-fiction/id1447250475?i=1000556404687

Worth a listen.


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## harbottle (Apr 8, 2022)

I need to show these links to a lot of friends who spend vast amounts of time and money on gyms and running and don't lose weight - and struggle to understand why I lost so much weight with nothing more than a modest daily brisk walk and a change of diet. Most people I know buy food and eat double portion sizes, i.e. a whole bag of microwave rice rather than half a bag - the main difference between now and the past for me is that meals are more measured (And also more filling)

For a few of them it's the old 'I've run for six miles, where's chocolate bar?'


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## Eddy Edson (Apr 8, 2022)

harbottle said:


> I need to show these links to a lot of friends who spend vast amounts of time and money on gyms and running and don't lose weight - and struggle to understand why I lost so much weight with nothing more than a modest daily brisk walk and a change of diet. Most people I know buy food and eat double portion sizes, i.e. a whole bag of microwave rice rather than half a bag - the main difference between now and the past for me is that meals are more measured (And also more filling)
> 
> For a few of them it's the old 'I've run for six miles, where's chocolate bar?'



I totally endorse this guy's recs for the three key books to read:


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1511770828421189635
Plus the studies by the great Kevin Hall:  https://www.niddk.nih.gov/about-niddk/staff-directory/biography/hall-kevin/publications


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