More than 300 participants wore accelerometers similar to a Fitbit or other fitness tracker 24 hours a day for an entire week while their daily energy expenditure was measured with doubly labeled water. We found that daily physical activity, tracked by the accelerometers, was only weakly related to metabolism. On average, couch potatoes tended to spend about 200 fewer calories each day than people who were moderately active: the kind of folks who get some exercise during the week and make a point to take the stairs. But more important, energy expenditure plateaued at higher activity levels: people with the most intensely active daily lives burned the same number of calories each day as those with moderately active lives. The same phenomenon keeping Hadza energy expenditure in line with that of other populations was evident among individuals in the study.
From: ch...@wbmfg.com Sent: Monday, January 23, 2017 11:49 AM To: af@afmug.com Subject: [AFMUG] OT Calories The new issue of scientific american shows that hunter gatherers expend the same amount of calories per mass as me sitting at a computer. “But a funny thing happened on the way to the isotope ratio mass spectrometer. When the analyses came back from Baylor, the Hadza looked like everyone else. Hadza men ate and burned about 2,600 calories a day, Hadza women about 1,900 calories a day—the same as adults in the U.S. or Europe. We looked at the data every way imaginable, accounting for effects of body size, fat percentage, age and sex. No difference. How was it possible? What were we missing? What else were we getting wrong about human biology and evolution?” Part way through the article...
