Burn: New Research Blows the Lid Off How We Really Burn Calories, Lose Weight, and Stay Healthy

Herman Pontzer PhD

Mar 2021 · Sold by Penguin

About this eBook

One of the foremost researchers in human metabolism reveals surprising new science behind food and exercise.

We burn 2,000 calories a day. And if we exercise and cut carbs, we'll lose more weight. Right? Wrong. In this paradigm-shifting book, Herman Pontzer reveals for the first time how human metabolism really works so that we can finally manage our weight and improve our health.

Pontzer's groundbreaking studies with hunter-gatherer tribes show how exercise doesn't increase our metabolism. Instead, we burn calories within a very narrow range: nearly 3,000 calories per day, no matter our activity level. This was a brilliant evolutionary strategy to survive in times of famine. Now it seems to doom us to obesity. The good news is we can lose weight, but we need to cut calories. Refuting such weight-loss hype as paleo, keto, anti-gluten, anti-grain, and even vegan, Pontzer discusses how all diets succeed or fail: For shedding pounds, a calorie is a calorie.

At the same time, we must exercise to keep our body systems and signals functioning optimally, even if it won't make us thinner. Hunter-gatherers like the Hadza move about five hours a day and remain remarkably healthy into old age. But elite athletes can push the body too far, burning calories faster than their bodies can take them in. It may be that the most spectacular athletic feats are the result not just of great training, but of an astonishingly efficient digestive system.

Revealing, irreverent, and always entertaining, Pontzer has written a book that will change how you eat, move, and live.

Ratings and reviews

Americans are not Hazdas. The majority of our waking hours are involved in the work which pays the bills. We have very little time for walking, running, swimming or cycling. To exacerbate the situation, I can easily eat in 5 minutes more calories than it would take several hours to burn off. Hours I do not have available to use for calorie burning activities. Therefore obese Americans. This book is an interesting read but nothing new. Our modern world is packed with calories and our lives are too sedentary. Do you want to lose weight... burn more calories than you eat. No special diets needed. Works every time. We have to learn to eat less and stay away from high caloric foods. We are a food culture and our lives revolve around it. We have to knock food off its pedestal to break the cycle of obesity and use the spare time we have to do calorie burning activities. This means selling the golf carts, four wheelers, jetski to walk, run, cycle, swim.

About the author

Herman Pontzer is an Associate Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology at Duke University and Associate Research Professor of Global Health at the Duke Global Health Institute. He is an internationally recognized researcher in human energetics and evolution. Over two decades of research in the field and laboratory, Dr. Pontzer has conducted pathbreaking studies across a range of settings, including fieldwork with Hadza hunter-gatherers in northern Tanzania, fieldwork on chimpanzee ecology in the rainforests of Uganda, and metabolic measurements of great apes in zoos and sanctuaries around the globe. Dr. Pontzer's work has been covered in The New York Times, BBC, PBS, Washington Post, The Atlantic, NPR, Scientific American, and others.