I'm just gonna copypasta the end of the article here, since you seemed to angry to actually read (not skim) past the title.
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At this point, I know what some people are thinking. “Well, Dick. If you’re so smart and it’s not about willpower, I guess no one is at fault for being fat then, huh?”
On the contrary. If there’s one thing I’ve seen in my decade of talking to thousands of people between forums, clients, Fitocracy, and real life, it’s that people are responsible for their own failures. Most times, it is their fault.
But it’s not for the reasons that most people think. Most don’t fail because they didn’t eat less or move more.
They failed because they could not see beyond the oversimplification of “eat less, move more.”
Many times, this is a problem of hubris; they failed to be curious, introspective, and mindful. These people also beat themselves up for all of their past failures, not realizing those plans had them doomed for the start.
The Biggest Loser will have you believe that fitness success is about being tough, being hardcore – dangerously hardcore. In fact, it’s about the exact opposite.
Fitness success is about humility – realizing you cannot reduce one of the world’s most challenging problems to “eat less, move more,” and then seeking out the knowledge to improve yourself. Success also requires compassion – forgiving yourself for past failures so that you can try again.
Those things are the exact opposite of being “hardcore.”
That’s the ultimate irony. It’s why people are ultimately responsible for their failures – not because they failed to shrink their waist, but because they failed to expand their horizons."
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Hth! ^_^ gl with your reading comprehension goals in 2013
>Are they really that set apart from the rest of the population and that similar to one another?
Yes. :) Lifestyle is one of the biggest factors into fitness regimen fit. The lifestyle of folks who work in tech/startups, especially with regards to variability, tend to be far different than your average working Joe.
hi @chollida1 – while I certainly don't mind the eventual traffic to MVF, my main intention was to share thoughts around cardio... discipline/exercise selection tends to be a make or break thing in fitness.
Regarding the discount for founders, it's more because I remember how much it sucked being broke when I started Fitocracy. :) I'd assumed it'd be easier for employee #1 just because at that point, some de-risking had probably occurred. Really wanted to do funded/non-funded, but that would've been unfairly glorifying raising money for raising's sake.
This is exactly my point. :) Progress and adherence are both prerequisites in order to exercise "for health." The mere act of engaging in healthy activities alone do not make them healthy.
Friedenreich found that the test group lost more weight than the control group as well via. cardio. Yet I posted it in support of my argument anyway. Why?
It took an average of 35 hours of cardio to lose 1 lb of fat.
I'm not saying that it does not cause weight loss. I am saying that it's ineffective. Of course cardio will cause some weight loss vs. doing absolutely nothing. Of course it's good for your health. No one is arguing that.
Then again if you're saying that someone should run 1 hour/day for 5 days a week... which is unrealistic for 99% of the population, and unnecessarily complicates weight loss (not to mention makes it unsustainable)... then you probably don't have a problem with 35 hours to lose a pound.
This is a joke right? I almost stopped at the first sentence.
There are many studies detailing the inefficacy of cardio for weight loss for various reasons -- from Friedenreich (2010) which actually compares cardio vs. non-cardio groups... to Willbond et. al (2010) which talks about the overestimation of caloric expenditure.
^ this. I've done a lot of research/experimentation/thinking about keto, and this is definitely one of the factors. Along with the increased satiety from higher dietary fat, higher TEF from increased protein, improved insulin sensitivity (less hunger crashes), etc, of course. :)
Far from alternative medicine. The beliefs touted by /r/fitness, such as intermittent fasting, increased protein consumption (many times more than the FDA recommendation), progressive load resistance training, and NOT focusing on cardio for weight loss are highly researched. The leaders of the /r/fitness community are incredibly well-versed in science and there are extremely intelligent debates that take place on /r/ fitness. The problem is that these concepts rarely make it to the mainstream on their own.
There's lot of links to the research, but this wasn't the appropriate article to include them. :)