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In Dieting, Magic Isn’t a Substitute for Science

nytimes.com

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Re: In Dieting, Magic Isn’t a Substitute for Science

#71
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post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't with carbs, protein, fat or subcategories of those, the problem is with more calories being eaten than calories being burned. caloric intake > caloric burn -> weight gain caloric intake = caloric burn -> weight stabilises caloric intake weight loss You can alter your caloric intake by changing the amount and type of food you eat. You can alter your caloric burn by changing the amount of exercise / l…

I absolutely agree that weight is regulated by calories consumed vs calories burned. In practice though, trying to say that is the only important aspect is complete bull. Try getting all your calories from wood chips and let me know how that work. In order for consistent weight loss to occur, we need to eat healthy foods so that we feel good. Feeling lousy will cause you to overeat. Eating bad foods could also make y…

Well yes, of course your diet should be well-rounded and contain all the necessary vitamins, fibers, protein your body needs.

My comment was more a reaction to all the different kinds of diets, and how they're supposedly a better way to lose weight than the previous diet. If you want to lose weight, and you already have a varied diet that meets your body's daily intake requirements, it can be useful to calculate your calorie consumption and burn rate and try to tweak both of those so that you end up with a caloric deficit.

Of course this only directly affects your weight, and you need to also take care of your body's general health. I would hope it's obvious to most that you shouldn't start a wood chip diet.

Re: In Dieting, Magic Isn’t a Substitute for Science

#72
post #70
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seth is a very interesting fellow with some fascinating ideas (butter improves mental reasoning, standing on one leg can improve sleep, flavorless calories interfere with weight setpoints), but I think he's made a mistake in arguing against man-made climate change.

He isn't arguing against climate change. He is arguing that the people who do argue climate change are making arguments from religion, rather than science. And I tend to agree.

As near as I can tell from his writing, his key objection is the inaccuracy of climate models and their predictive failure. While it's a truism that any model with enough free variables can "fit" a data set, this does not render the exercise useless.

Nor are models the only reason we think people are driving the global temperature change. There are still large numbers of plausible biological/chemical explanations for man-made global warming, and fewer that involve random fluctuations.

In the end, though, I think the best argument is simply caution. There's no backup planet if people like you are wrong, so it's best to proceed as if we're tiptoeing on the edge of a cliff. If 99% of scientists are wrong, then all we'll have wasted are funding dollars as effort. If you're wrong, we might see the coasts become uninhabitable, and wars break out over things like water and land.

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