The solution to obesity is eating less and going on a walk or two during the day. The solution to your back getting blown out by moving boxes is… giving up your job.

That’s the whole point.

I think the takeaway is none of us is getting out of this alive.

That's something I think we need to spend a lot more time acknowledging. The preeminent idea makers that have created a lot of our modern framework of thinking about the world were not very good at answering the question "what's the point?"

Slow loss of ability to function and then death is inevitable. People are not going to be optimal workers their whole lives. We still need to keep the machines running, which is incredibly difficult and probably always will be due to the majority of us being limited bumbling morons, and the safeguards we need to put in place to prevent the morons who think they aren't morons from messing up the efforts of the minority of competent productive people hiding out there. But being the best worker for as long as you can is not the point of life.

This sounds trite to most modern thinkers, but it's not: genuine, actual, familial support, acceptance and loyalty between you and your tribe is something that can transcend the trials and tribulations of life and our inevitable death. Another ingredient in acceptance of the human condition is acknowledgment of the mysteries of the world and the strangeness of human perception and consciousness. Neither of those are sufficiently reflected upon in any organized manner like they used to be.

We all will die eventually.

But till then I actually would like a healthy balance of mental and physical work.

Obesity and weight gain in general is mainly caused by diet, not exercise. You can run 12 hours a day but if you eat 10k calories a day, you're going to end up fat.

I think the mainly part is correct, but 12 hours of running like 6-7k calories for an 150 lbs. person. As you get heavier it’s going to go up fast (and non linearly)—essentially any kind of extreme exercise is going to put an upper limit on your weight.

I’m unsure if your body can even process 10k calories in day. The basal metabolic rate for a 1000 lbs person isn’t that high.

They were making a point with an exaggerated example, not suggesting that 12 hours of running or 10k calories/day is actually reasonable.

I never said that the OP implied it was reasonable. My point is that there's a level of activity at which you likely can't eat enough to get fat.

Michael Phelps is probably the only most valid extreme example!

https://olympics.com/en/featured-news/michael-phelps-10000-c...

Lots of ultra distance runners and cyclists eat and burn more than that. The point is with sufficient exercise it is almost impossible to stay fat.

And the counterpoint is that most people aren't able to do that much exercise. Because it's A LOT. Basically full time athletes or highly physical workers. So that excludes all people with a sedentary or only partially physically demanding work.

Sufficient is a lot. If you eat a fast food meal (burger, fries, soda) above maintenance you're looking at half a marathon to burn that off. And most people aren't pro cyclists that are able to sustain 400 watts+ for a hour.

Sufficient is a lot, but it’s nowhere near as extreme as that example makes it sound.

That’s a half marathon for a 150 lbs fit person, running efficiently. A 250 lbs person who is a little out of shape will burn that in a 2.5 hour walk.

Obviously 1300 calories a day above maintenance is extreme for most people, but energy expended scales non linearly with weight. There are also a lot quicker ways to burn calories than marathon running.

Written like someone whose knees have never been blown out on the job

Both can be true.