Burn: The Misunderstood Science of Metabolism

The book provides an excellent overview of the state of our knowledge on diet, body mass and exercise and how it all plays together.It is a much needed antidote to the multitude of dietary advice and based on actual scientific evidence.The author is not only an internationally leading expert in the field but also an excellent writer who makes this book not only highly informative but also immensely readable.

Enjoyable and easy read except the part explaining the kleb cycle I came across this when doing a short course on nutrition and never really understood it and still dont. I get the concept and moved on. It is quite a long read and I did not get as much out of it as I would have liked. You only burn 50 kcals walking a mile, calculation of basic metabolic rate. Very interesting when explaining how your body has a limit on how many calories you burn no matter how much you exercise. Need to move more etc and wonderful references to the latest scientific studies from all over the world. Exercise is not effective when trying to lose weight but great for other things and also for keeping your weight off once you lose it. I originally ordered this book then cancelled it when I checked the index and there was no mention of alcohol which is 10% of my daily diet and much higher for friends and family. I am glad I changed my mind thought. I don't understand how he says a mans daily calorie intake is 2,500 -3000. I did a food diary for 1 year and mine was just under 2000 a day to maintain my weight.

Well, I couldn't disagree more with those reviewers he felt the author was too cynical. I was with him, maybe I'm too cynical too, but when he got a bit exercised about he simplistic assumptions often made, I felt he had a point, and he always came over as a real person with a bit of a personality, which made me trust him more. I personally liked the no-bullshit approach, maybe some people find it a bit too informal and outspoken. Despite the more conversational asides, the author explains beautifully how life forms use energy all the way up from the basic principles. If you don't care about the biochemistry you can skip those bits.There is plenty of interesting information about the authors research (both the research findings and how they went about doing the research, which is often rather entertaining). There is also enough useable advice on how to best apply the findings in the service of keeping healthy - and losing weight if necessary. This advice is not overly detailed but that is because the author's conclusion on that question is that the detail doesn't really matter a lot - much as people have a seemingly insatiable appetite for ever more new miracle diets, the actionable advice is simple: eat a varied and ideally unprocessed diet, reduce calories if you want to lose weight, and exercise regularly in order to stay healthy and keep the weight off long-term.I really enjoyed the journey of reading this book as well as the debunking of over-sold trends like paleo and low-carb diets. And as a bonus, right at the end the author explains the bigger picture of energy use that I had never before appreciated: how use of energy underpins all life and how our lifestyles (back in prehistoric times, centuries ago and now) can all be quantified in terms of calories, and thus compared in a really simple way. It makes for a stark conclusion to the book.This is one of my two favourite reads this year and goes very well with the second one, The Story of the Human Body by Daniel Lieberman (author of Exercised, another good book), who happens to have been Pontzer's supervisor during his studies or PhD if I remember correctly.

This book totally blows up my preconception that, if you exercise more, you can eat more!It’s extremely engagingly written. The only exception is a chapter on the details of the pathways for metabolising each kind of nutrient. I found that very dense. But that does not detract from the extreme readability of the book as a whole. Recommended.

I'll sum this up really quickly and factually.Burn suggests that exercise doesn't increase overall energy expenditure, instead we compensate in other areas to maintain balance.I.e. if you 'burn' 300kcal through exercise, your body will seek to reduce expenditure elsewhere.The science is valid, impeccable and well explained.BUT it's not quite that simple.There is a point where your body can't compensate and you will enter negative energy balance (or burn more fuel).The book doesn't adequately convey this.For Average Joe or Jane it's an eye opening read, but if you're a serious athlete (capable of burning double your BMR through exercise) then you may find yourself getting frustrated as you read.

It's engagingly written with facts and stories and some unexpected findings which were only determined by being able to actually properly measure human metabolic activity over a sustained period. I always puzzled a bit when reading all the usual dietary and fitness articles as to how your body knew whether it should store or burn fat at any point as it wouldn't know whether you were going to eat or exercise later.This explains that it's not the simple base rate plus exercise that many other sources quote but a complicated web of interconnecting factors where your body does its damndest to stop you burning too much or eating too little and in many ways the choice of diet doesn't matter (for weight loss that is, nutrition is another matter). The findings of why the hunter gatherers were lean flew in the face of the usual logic.I've read it twice already.