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Six Days without Food: Hacking Your Mind to Make Do with Far Less

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Re: Six Days without Food: Hacking Your Mind to Make Do with Far Less

#91

Post by driverdan »

dextorious wrote: post #35
tptacek wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really believe that? Maybe the antibiotics in the chicken --- although truly healthy chicken is spectacularly expensive, and even products labeled "organic" can still be flooded with antibiotics "to prevent disease outbreaks" which are inevitable in factory farms. Other than antibiotics, I generally call BS on the health benefits of "organic" and "grass fed" protein. You should eat organic --- or, VERY prefera…

Do you think a) chicken fed not with grass/organic food but with whatever's cheaper and convenient (in Europe there were several scandals where they even found that they used machine oil in chicken feed), b) packed by the thousands in small cages, c) full off antibiotics and hormones to grow them fatter, are totally as healthy as organic chicken? (I used to have a chicken den (sp?), with 10-15 chickens in my backyard…

a) Your wording is weird, but yes, they are just as healthy. All scientific research on the topic has shown no health benefits to organic plants. What makes you think organic chicken is grass fed?

b) Why do you think organic chickens are any different? USDA organic cert is a joke. It doesn't mean the chickens spend their days frolicking in fields. IIRC they can be kept in cages if they have some exposure to outdoors.

c) In the US, hormone use in chickens is illegal. Antibiotics are used in all animals, organic or not.

Re: Six Days without Food: Hacking Your Mind to Make Do with Far Less

#92

Post by ebbv »

hessenwolf wrote: post #82
ebbv wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While this is true it also applies to cardio workouts as well. They also build muscle and increase your metabolism. It's a myth that this is an advantage of weight lifting over cardio. It really comes down to personal preference. Do the workout you're going to be able to keep doing.

Personal experience, I was running for miles for the last couple of years and still piling it on. Back to weights now 2 days per week and running one, and am burning it off surprisingly rapidly. Note, though, that I wouldn't be exactly beginner level when it comes to weights.

I don't know what your pace was or whether "for miles" means 2 miles or 10. But there are plenty of apps for iOS and Android that will tell you how many calories you burned on your runs, and if it was multiple miles and you were maintaining a decent pace, you probably burned many more calories on those runs than you do lifting.

The likely reasons you kept gaining weight while running, pick one or multiple:

- Not running as often as you lift, so the total calories burned per week (or month) was lower.

- Running too slowly so that your heart rate didn't get up to the point where you were really working.

- Ramping up your carb intake, whether consciously or subconsciously this is really common when people start running -- your body starts craving carbs. Which then results in a calorie increase, which is the real problem (not carbs themselves.)

- Policing your eating better while lifting.

Ultimately if you want to lose weight you have to not only exercise but also keep your daily calorie budget at a deficit. People who have trouble losing weight usually fail at the latter one.

Re: Six Days without Food: Hacking Your Mind to Make Do with Far Less

#93

Post by gizmo »

mahyarm wrote: post #85
gizmo wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly the kind of situation where a little advice can be dangerous. Going from a sedentary lifestyle to sprinting, deadlifts, kettlebell exercises or other intense activities is a recipe for disaster. I agree with most of your advice and the implicit part that carbohydrates are the enemy and fat/protein your friend. However, the part that's dangerously missing is that your body takes a lot longer to recover…

You ramp it up then, and go see a doctor first if your really bad/old. Instead of 150 kettlebell swings, you do 20 and add 10 every few days, etc.

"Oh, I'll just ramp up slowly". That's what everybody thinks. It's common sense. But it's terrible advice. Nobody is stupid enough to start on day one with the biggest kettlebell. The point is you have to warn people, over and over again, in order to drive the point home about the dangers of overtraining. Why? Because the first time you start exercising again it feels good and you start full of energy and so forth. So the day after you feel like exercising again, you got that itch, even though you "know" your body hasn't recovered yet and you're still sore in a few spots. This is where it really takes discipline to stick to the plan. Sometimes you'll go to the gym and realize you're still sore from 2 days ago. If you start lifting weights anyway the odds are you're either going to outright injure yourself or you're going to lift in a lopsided pose to compensate for a sore shoulder or something.

It takes discipline to go home and skip a workout just after you've decided to get (back) into shape. If you tell people to just ramp it up and add a couple of swings every couple of days they're still going to make predictable and preventable mistakes and injure themselves.

Re: Six Days without Food: Hacking Your Mind to Make Do with Far Less

#94

Post by tptacek »

euccastro wrote: post #87
tptacek wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh huh. In what way meaningful to human health is the fat from conventional beef better for you than the fat from "organic" beef? The fat in local protein is way, way better than factory-farmed meat. By which I mean, it tastes much better. The fat from the pork chop of a responsibly raised pig tastes like bacon; the fat from a supermarket pork chop tastes like melting plastic. Buy local/humane protein. Just do it for…

Fat is where many toxins accumulate. If the animal you eat has been fed with pesticide-ridden, fattening-rather-than-nutritious crap and pumped up with hormones and antibiotics, I bet its fat is not as good for you. As an heuristic, taste is supposed to be a measure of nutritional quality. Sure it can be cheated, but when something natural tastes better than something adulterated, I'm pretty confident you can rely on…

Two reasons why this comment might get downvoted (it was light grey when I saw it):

(1) Supplies your intuition about whether organic food is healthier than conventional but no facts to back that up. The world is usually counterintuitive.

(2) Suggests with a straight face that palatability is a good proxy for healthfulness, a measure that suggests health food stores should stock up on Doritos.

Re: Six Days without Food: Hacking Your Mind to Make Do with Far Less

#95

Post by driverdan »

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #76
emp_ wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was just thinking about this, will give the Warrior diet a try (never did a diet, at 211 lbs 5'9") but mostly because I've been eating really little (fish+rice+lettuce salad) in the past 3 months without much effect. The idea of only eating a nice meal at night is great to me since I hate the food around work (from fast to fancy), and dislike bringing it everyday from home even tho I absolutely love the wife's cook…

Did you already lose your water weight? If not, drink 10 8-ounce glasses of water a day, and you'll lose 10-15 in less than a month. I don't know about this "one big meal a day" stuff. I used to do that as my normal diet in my early to mid 20s (not trying to lose weight) and it did not keep me in shape. I lost weight when I started eating more, normal sized meals (yogurt or granola for breakfast, sandwich and apple f…

Where did you get this idea from? Drinking water isn't going to help you lose much weight, especially not 10-15 lbs in a month.

1-3 lbs a week is a normal rate for people dieting, water alone isn't going to come close to that. It will help keep you satiated but not enough to cut 500 kcal out of your diet a day.

Re: Six Days without Food: Hacking Your Mind to Make Do with Far Less

#97

Post by driverdan »

mahyarm wrote: post #88
sambeau wrote: post #23

I tried giving up eating for a week and it was a fascinating experience: if you are curious, try it. It won't kill you and it probably won't harm you unless you are already ill. It gives you an interesting insight into ancient man and how well our bodies are made to cope with hunger and starvation. The first day-and-a-half was the hardest I felt really hungry. Then suddenly the hunger stopped and I felt great: really…

The problem I have with fasting or reducing calories below maintenance is that I have a really hard time focusing mentally on anything. I'm reduced to TV watching. I can't program, study or do any other sort of mental work with any sort of effectiveness. Any suggestions on dealing with this?

Try switching to a ketogenic (ultra low carb / high fat) diet for a week or two beforehand.

The reason you have no focus or energy is due to a lack of glucose (sugar). When you fast your glycogen stores (carbs) will deplete and your body will start running on fat. During the transition, before adjusting, you'll feel slow, weak, and have trouble focusing.

Re: Six Days without Food: Hacking Your Mind to Make Do with Far Less

#98

Post by driverdan »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #59
jmtame wrote: post #16

Sounds like your body transitioned into ketosis during the third or fourth day. You can know for sure by buying ketone test strips and drinking enough water. I've tested out ketosis for myself and experienced some strange effects: salad tasted better, but I had no cravings and no hunger; some days all I had was an egg. It's not a good idea to stay in ketosis for more than a few weeks, since it's making your liver wor…

You also don't want to stay in it too long because your body will start eating muscle, not just fat.

For fasting, yes that's true. For a ketogenic diet with adequate amounts of protein, no it won't.

Re: Six Days without Food: Hacking Your Mind to Make Do with Far Less

#99

Post by tptacek »

driverdan wrote: post #91
dextorious wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think a) chicken fed not with grass/organic food but with whatever's cheaper and convenient (in Europe there were several scandals where they even found that they used machine oil in chicken feed), b) packed by the thousands in small cages, c) full off antibiotics and hormones to grow them fatter, are totally as healthy as organic chicken? (I used to have a chicken den (sp?), with 10-15 chickens in my backyard…

a) Your wording is weird, but yes, they are just as healthy. All scientific research on the topic has shown no health benefits to organic plants. What makes you think organic chicken is grass fed? b) Why do you think organic chickens are any different? USDA organic cert is a joke. It doesn't mean the chickens spend their days frolicking in fields. IIRC they can be kept in cages if they have some exposure to outdoors.…

Chickens are omnivores, not ruminants like cows. They'll eat grass but can't subsist on it. There's no such thing as "grass-fed chicken"; people who say "grass-fed", when they know what they're talking about, mean cows.

Small farms do not flood their livestock with antibiotics to increase yield. It's a bit of a straw man to suggest that people are saying antibiotics should never be used on animals; it's their routinized use in factory farms that's the issue.

Otherwise, I agree: "organic" isn't meaningful, and even the "real" good chicken isn't more healthful (apart, again, from the antibiotic issue), just better tasting.

I'll happily slice up and saute kosher (conventional) chicken breast for a salad or pasta dish. But if I'm serving roast chicken, I use the good stuff.

Re: Six Days without Food: Hacking Your Mind to Make Do with Far Less

#100

Post by fennecfoxen »

baddspellar wrote: post #73

Radical, one-time, short-term actions like this aren't lifestyle changes. They're not sustainable, so they don't work in the long term. If the author said he made sustainable lifestyle changes I'd have some reason to believe he's won his weight battle. If he said he's been getting up an hour early each morning for the past 3 months to walk, or has been learning how to prepare tasty low-calorie meals and has kept that…

It doesn't sound like immediate weight-loss is what he's after here. It sounds like it's more about developing self-control in the face of abundant food, and being able to skip the candy bar. A one-time super-fast exercise may actually be able to help with that.

(Disclaimers etc go here.)

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