Ezra Klein has a bloggingheads diavwossname in which he makes – among other points – pretty much the same point he makes at the end of this column. Namely, a good diet isn’t a function of not eating a huge amount on Thanksgiving. It’s a matter of eating a little better consistently. But then he goes on to note that it’s surprisingly hard to get people really to get this, never mind actually doing it. (The major problem not being convincing people they can enjoy Thanksgiving, but making them appreciate that minor bits of diet discipline can make a major difference.) If so, it seems to follow that people are more clueless about diet than exercise. Because very few people think it makes sense to get up one morning, notice you haven’t exercised for years, and try to fix that by going to the gym for 8 hours. You could injure yourself pretty bad, true. Apart from that, one day won’t matter. But somehow the diet fix (the quick make or break) seems to have a certain fetishistic appeal. That carton of Ben & Jerry’s killed my diet! No weight-lifter ever thinks skipping bench-press for one day caused his pectorals to shrivel. Bodies don’t work like that. Or are there people out there so luckless in the metabolic department that whenever they gain a few pounds, even from a single big meal, their body sort of ratchets up and locks at that level? I do recognize that people have metabolic ‘set points’, and some folks are less lucky in that regard. Are there metabolic types such that every higher weight becomes a set point? If so, I feel sorry for you. For the rest: Happy Thanksgiving! Eat a lot! (It’s fun, and sociable!)
But you knew that already.
So what do you think: are significant numbers of people more confused about how eating works than are confused about how exercise works, in that they mistakenly believe in the quick make or break strategy?
{ 15 comments }
Matt 11.26.09 at 3:10 pm
very few people think it makes sense to get up one morning, notice you haven’t exercised for years, and try to fix that by going to the gym for 8 hours.
I’m not so sure this is exactly right. I think people do think something like this, but that it works for that bad. That is, they think that only doing a lot of exercise will matter (not 8 hours a day, but that they’d really need to do a lot- several hours a day most days, say- to make much of a difference. They realize that they can’t or won’t do that, so they think they might as well do nothing at all. (Also, my understanding is that there’s some evidence that for many people, small amounts of exercise largely leads to being somewhat hungrier, and that this in turn leads to eating more, often enough more than the calories burned in the exercise, leading them to actually gain weight. The general point, of course, about eating somewhat better every or most days is perfectly right, though. As is the point about thanksgiving. As Seneca said, one should do everything in moderation, even over-indulgence. )
Ray 11.26.09 at 3:16 pm
I think with dieting there’s also the “may as well be hung for a sheep” idea – once you have that bar of chocolate you have broken your diet. Since it’s going to stay broken for at least a day, and there’s that packet of crisps over there…
David 11.26.09 at 3:21 pm
I find that average people have a hard time thinking at the margin, and tend, instead, to think symbolically. Hence a greater focus on not overeating at Thanksgiving or Christmas or other holidays.
Ben Alpers 11.26.09 at 4:12 pm
I find that average people have a hard time thinking at the margin, and tend, instead, to think symbolically
Which is one of the many reasons that New Classical economics works as poorly as it does (though I fear saying so makes me a Category 4 Commenter).
Glen Tomkins 11.26.09 at 5:00 pm
Categorical thinking
Rephrase your aobservation as the idea that people seem more inclined to moralize diet than exercise. And moralism brings with it very unrealistically rigid and categorical thinking, the sort of categorical thinking that people would never indulge in over anything at all practical, anything they actually did on a regular basis.
The point about overeating on Thanksgiving is that it is seen as sinful behavior, the violation of some sort of code of conduct, an dnot in any very practical light. Now, people who are casual and not very serious about exercise might also look upon missing a planned exercise session in the same light, as some moral failing, but people who actually exercises regularly have to have come to some more reasonable accommodation with reality, or they wouldn’t actually exercise regularly. In your examples, you contrast regular exercisers with dieters, and I can assure you as a physician, that no one is regular, practical or serious about dieting, or at least those that are have long since lost the need to worry about their weight, and I don’t hear from them. You probably don’t either. The difference in attitudes will seem less striking if you compare apples to apples, wishful thinking exercise with wishful thinking dieting. I think what got you turned around was that wishful thinkers make up only part of the universe of exercisers, but all of the dieting universe.
ajay 11.26.09 at 5:16 pm
they think that only doing a lot of exercise will matter (not 8 hours a day, but that they’d really need to do a lot- several hours a day most days, say- to make much of a difference. They realize that they can’t or won’t do that, so they think they might as well do nothing at all
Because they tend to think of ‘exercise’ as something discrete, like, say, ‘reading’, and not something that you can work into your normal day. It’s not exercise unless you put on silly clothes and cause yourself pain.
des von bladet 11.26.09 at 6:03 pm
So what do you think: are significant numbers of people more confused about how eating works than are confused about how exercise works, in that they mistakenly believe in the quick make or break strategy?
I think you’d be better off asking them what they think than me what I think they think, unless you’re just trying to find out if I think they think the way you think they think, which is only really a relation over the two(2) of us although none the worse for that, except as a way of studying what they think in cases where they are neither of us, at which I doubt it is any good at all.
Richard Harmer 11.26.09 at 7:44 pm
Ben at #4: My own research has taught me that most people, in their consumption patterns, are in fact able to think at the margin, but that most economists have only a half-developed conception of what, for consumers, that consumption margin actually is.
polyorchnid octopunch 11.27.09 at 1:46 am
Actually, I think that the real issue between why people can think more reasonably about excercise than diet has to do with how money is made from excercise vs. dieting, and its implications for how its marketed.
Exercise is an activity, and the only way to make money from other people exercising is to figure out how to get them to pay you for doing that activity. That means that you have to be an instructor/leader, or you have to rent facilities. Either way, the key to riches is for your customer to repeat the behaviour. This lends itself to selling it as a short activity repeated often… if you can get your customer base into your gym or into your class every other day for half an hour, you’re way better off than if they come in once a month for four hours when the guilt strikes.
However, with dieting, you’re not making money by participating/facilitating the activity of eating; you’re making money by selling them something (diet food), and the best way to make money is to make sure they buy all their food from you. This leads to a completely different marketing approach oriented towards maximizing their purchases of what you have to sell them… and the tried-and-true method for selling people stuff they don’t need is to appeal to fear and base instincts. So, the marketing for exercise is oriented towards the activity, while the marketing for diet is oriented about the stuff you eat, not the activity of eating.
Forty years on into the marketing revolution that started in the late sixties, with a couple of classes on nutrition in high school vs. the non-stop marketing barrage about “eat this! It’s better! Honest!” and “if it’s good for you, eat more!” while not ever discussing that the best way to eat well is to eat good basic food and not too much of it (’cause “not too much” will cut sales of what you’re flogging), and most people have almost no conception of how to eat healthily (which has a lot more to do with how you prepare it and how much of it you eat at any given time rather than any specific properties of any specific product you mash down your gullet).
Needless to say, this leads to all kinds of whacked out behaviour around food.
Sebastian 11.27.09 at 6:39 am
I read the column and it doesn’t have any evidence that people don’t “get” this. Does Ezra present any in the bloggingheads (sorry, too lazy to watch all that)?
Because otherwise it would seem that people are bad at doing either (and there certainly are a lot of symbolic exercise machines and fitness studio memberships out there) and not that there is some fundamental difference between dieting and exercising.
Even more, I’d at least speculate that the same people who are good at consistent exercising are good at consistent dieting.
This only leaves the question why people are very concerned about holiday-overeating. I think the reason for that is mainly that food is such a big issue on Thanksgiving that it’s just bound to be on people’s mind.
Ray 11.27.09 at 9:21 am
“if you can get your customer base into your gym or into your class every other day for half an hour, you’re way better off than if they come in once a month for four hours”
Well, no. Gyms would rather you signed up for membership and then disappeared, or just came in once a month, because you don’t pay per session, you pay annual membership. A lot of classes are the same – you sign up for ten and you pay up front, you don’t pay per class.
And people selling diet plans aren’t often selling food they produce, they’re selling a set of instructions – ‘points’, or ‘no carbs’, or something along those lines.
John Holbo 11.27.09 at 12:44 pm
Klein doesn’t really offer any evidence, but I have a sense that some people really do tend to have a ‘that box of cookies killed my diet’ attitude, whereas people don’t fixate on particular exercise failures (barring injuries) as having ‘broken their exercise routine’. Also, I think it’s true – and a separate point from the ‘one day does’t matter’ point – that people don’t appreciate how small a change could make a significant difference, if it is only made consistently. A health-changing diet doesn’t have to be a really life-changing diet. Here again, I think people appreciate this more with exercise. It isn’t surprising to hear that 15 minutes of light exercise, every morning, make you feel significantly better. You don’t have to become a gym rat to get significantly more fit. But it is a bit surprising to think that just foregoing chips with lunch every day could make a significant difference, if you do it every work day for a year.
I think there might be minor (or major) cases of addiction, or eating disorder re: the holiday and diet-breaking case. It’s obviously true that drinking a lot a couple days a year, at Thanksgiving and X-Mas, won’t give you a drinking problem, or constitute one. But it’s not good advice to an alcoholic to say: aw, you can drink just on holidays. That’s the thing about addiction. You can just never do it. (Maybe.) This is a variant on Ray’s point, above, except it might really be more chemical. Having that one drink – eating that one sweet thing – just triggers a kind of biochemical craziness.
In general, if you have discipline problems, letting yourself make exceptions ‘sometimes’ might be bad advice, however reasonable, because it’s vague, hence a poor focus point. But then the sensible thing would probably to have a firm and somewhat arbitrary rule. I am allowed to have ice cream twice a month. Or whatever.
John Quiggin 11.27.09 at 12:59 pm
At this point, I step forward from the crowd and say “Thanks to Dr Holbo’s miracle plan of exercise and sensible diet , I’ve lost 12 kilos in a year”. No, really!
andrew 11.29.09 at 2:04 am
I’ve been following the “or whatever” plan for years and haven’t missed a day yet!
dveej 12.01.09 at 2:55 pm
“Are there metabolic types such that every higher weight becomes a set point?”
Yes. All metabolic types.
Two of the horrible facts about the universe are:
1) Brain cells, once dead, never come back;
and
2) Fat cells, once alive, never go away.
Have a nice day!
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