Burn
by Herman Pontzer · first published 2021
86% recommend14% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Explains how metabolism and energy expenditure work, drawing on research from groups like the Hadza. Readers find it eye-opening and well written, and recommend it to anyone thinking about weight loss, diet, or exercise.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
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I can recommend the book Burn by Herman Pontzer on this: The human body can adjust the Basal Metabolic Resting Rate quite a lot in the face of exercise. Spending an extra 500 kcals on exercise can easily only lead to 200 kcals higher…
on “A little exercise each day improves muscles more than one big weekly workout” ↗I recently learned that the science has changed and I can recommend the book Burn by Herman Pontzer on this: The human body can adjust the Basal Metabolic Resting Rate quite a lot in the face of exercise. Spending an extra 500 kcals on exercise can easily only lead to 200 kcals higher…
on “A little exercise each day improves muscles more than one big weekly workout” ↗"Burn: The Misunderstood Science of Metabolism" by Herman Pontzer "Humankind" by Rutger Bregman "The Dawn of Everything" by David Graeber and David Wengrow "Work: A history of how we spend our time" by James…
on “Ask HN: Favorite Nonfiction Books of 2021?” ↗- The Hungry Brain: https://www.amazon.com/Hungry-Brain-Outsmarting-Instincts-Ov... - Burn: https://www.amazon.com/Burn-Research-Really-Calories-Healthy...
on “Open Questions” ↗…obesity epidemic. People are made of confounding factors, and the world is very complicated. The world does not owe you simple explanations. Two books have helped me understand the obesity epidemic: Burn by Pontzer - https://www.amazon.com/Burn/dp/0241388422 Podcast about above: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CSNS45RJL0 Hungry Brain by Guyenet - https://www.amazon.com/Hungry-Brain-Outsmarting-Instincts-Ov...…
on “‘Forever Chemicals’ Are Everywhere. What Are They Doing to Us?” ↗…of Renaissance Periodization and their Youtube playlists, Eric Helms, Eric Trexler, Greg Nuckols of Stronger by Science, the Barbell Medicine team and their podcast, etc. For a book, you probably want Burn by Herman Pontzer. You can get more complicated than what I've described, but you now know all the core actionable information. Learning too much can confuse lots of people, but if you stick to the simpler…
on “Predicting Weight Loss with Machine Learning” ↗…weight over the years, but it is a somewhat simplistic model. Metabolism isn't quite as simple as CICO and can adjust over time to compensate for lowered metabolic rate. Herman Pontzer's recent book, Burn: the Misunderstood Science of Metabolism, goes into metabolic differences in quite a bit of detail and is very well researched and based in science. https://www.chemistryworld.com/review/burn-the-misunderstood...
on “The Hacker's Diet” ↗I would highly encourage anyone to read Pontzer’s book, Burn. I just finished it and found it to be incredibly eye opening and well written. The TL;DR is that we need to think of calories like a relatively fixed budget rather than additive, and that the primary…
on “Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories” ↗Recommend book by Herman Pontzer from last year. "Burn: New Research Blows the Lid Off How We Really Burn Calories, Lose Weight, and Stay Healthy" Listened to on podcast 'Why is this happening with Chris Hayes' for 1 hour summary on it.
on “You're Not Losing Fat Because You're Eating Too Damn Much (2016)” ↗I think they probably abbreviated Herman Pontzer's first sentence too much and the title is kind of misleading, in the book Burn, it is quite clear that Pontzer believes Paleo as practiced by most people today is a misreading of all the historical evidence. There are footnotes for every proposition in the book if one is interested…
on “Our ancestors ate a Paleo diet and it had carbs” ↗Hungry Brain - Guyenet - You're not bad at 'losing weight', your body is exceptionally good at holding onto energy reserves. Managing hunger is at least as important as managing diet. Burn - Pontzer - Similar to above, with more historical evidence Haidt - Righteous Mind - What is wrong with the people on the "other side" - it's not about sides, it's about human nature. This is a difficult…
on “Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?” ↗I found these two books interesting w.r.t. weight loss/diet: Burn: New Research Blows the Lid Off How We Really Burn Calories, Stay Healthy, and Lose Weight, by Herman Pontzer Pontzer measures total energy expenditure vs exercise. According to his work (and others…
on “Ask HN: Is there any scientific consensus on eating / weight loss / diets?” ↗…Meal"...processed. And so on. Btw, Slaughtered and butchered meats !== processed meats. Recommened book: - Exercised - D Lieberman https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/aug/29/exercised-by-d... - Burn - Pontzer https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/07/16/1016931... - Comfort Crisis - M Easter - Scarcity Brain - M Easter https://eastermichael.com/ Also recommended, the series "The Foods…
on “Scientists discover links between Alzheimer's disease and gut microbiota” ↗…two books on this topic, and both (if I recalled correctly) mentioned The Biggest Loser (or similar). Exercised - Daniel E Lieberman https://www.npr.org/2021/01/05/953249677/exercised-explains-... Burn - Herman Pontzer (who I believe was a student of Lieberman's) https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-human-metabol... Both a fairly dry and academic, but do get into the weeds if that's your…
on “The biggest losers: Metabolic damage or constrained energy?” ↗I enjoyed reading both books, but especially Herman Pontzer's stories in Burn about his time with the Hadza people in Africa. The study is based in part on his research (Pontzer, 2018, Pontzer et al., 2021). His hypothesis does seem to be controversial and counter-intuitive. Thank…
on “Energy-based model explains how chronic stress transforms into disease over time” ↗