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How To Lose Weight And Influence People

mikealrogers.com

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Re: How To Lose Weight And Influence People

#41

Post by [deleted] »

eof wrote: post #28
jacques_chester wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to elaborate? I can only suspect that, as usual, this will turn out to be a dispute over the boundaries of the system we're discussing (single-human-body-mass-system vs economy-society-and-single-human-body-system). If you genuinely believe that net calorie balance isn't the sole determinant of long term average mass, then I'd like to know what else it could be. Saying "oh it must be more complex than that!" isn…

For example, it is possible I am eating 2000 calories a day, burning 1900 and shitting out 100. EDIT--because I am too lazy to wait to post to daughter comment-- It is possible, for example, that if I eat a FOO, which has 100 calories, it will change effeciencies of systems in my body in tangental ways so as to cause it to burn 5% more calories than it would have if I didn't eat a FOO. I could also eat a candyBAR whi…

[deleted]

Re: How To Lose Weight And Influence People

#42

Post by Peroni »

forgottenpaswrd wrote: post #38
Peroni wrote: post #10

Devils Advocate Time. Technically I'm morbidly obese. I'm 6'3" and I weigh in just shy of 300lbs. This shocks most people as I don't look like someone who weighs close to 300lbs although I'm very obviously overweight. I'm working hard to lose weight purely to prevent myself from dying young so that my son has a Dad he can grow old with. In the mean time, let me dispel a myth: Fat != Lazy I have absolutely no doubt th…

I'm over 6,7, or as a European 2m height, and 90kilos. Being tall means you could weigh more and be healthy, and it depends on your body structure, like bones and so. But probably you need someone else and not you to judge what is your ideal weight. "I can maintain focus at a consistently high level throughout my typical 14 hour work day" I have yet to see a person that really works 10 h/d, let alone 14 hours a day,…

Start thinking that you are in a hole and you need to get out of it and your life will be better when you get out(if its so good it will be even better).

I think you missed my entire point. I've been heavier. I'm already losing weight. I don't consider myself to be 'in a hole'. I consider myself to have an affliction that's easily cured with a bit of discipline.

Re: How To Lose Weight And Influence People

#43

Post by TeMPOraL »

jacques_chester wrote: post #33
TeMPOraL wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think I'm you, but I do agree with what you wrote :). I also found the basic understanding of control theoery... enlightening, in many areas of life, not only dieting. I hate when people argue over whether A causes B or B causes A, and fail to notice a feedback loop in work.

Learning about feedback loops has definitely been enlightening. Somewhere I have the bones of a super ginormo followup post to my original "fat and simple" one where I discuss causality itself in more depth (for example, I came up with 4 axes for categorising kinds of causality; I can only imagine that some long-dead philosopher has beaten me to it). Lots of these debates actually resolve around definitions. Anyhow,…

Write that followup please, I'd love to read it.

As for the causality things, I don't know about philosophers, but there is some good writing on the topic by Eliezer Yudkowsky, both the older texts[0] and the new ones about causality, like [1]. I found them very insightful.

Anyway, off to reading systems stuff ;).

[0] - http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences

[1] - http://lesswrong.com/lw/ev3/causal_diagrams_and_causal_model...

Re: How To Lose Weight And Influence People

#45

Post by jacques_chester »

fingerprinter wrote: post #39
jacques_chester wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My overarching theme in my blog post is that the underlying complexity (which absolutely exists) is utterly optional for actually controlling weight. You just don't need to know it or understand it. Eat less --> weigh less and Eat more --> weigh more Are sufficiently good that you can form a working control system with them. No other variables need be observed or cared about.

I'd content that is absolutely awful advise for people. It gives them free reign to drink soda, eat pizza and sugar without knowing what it is doing to their body so long as "they are within the calorie limit". This is bad. See my other comment on hormones. They play a HUGE role and not understanding them leads to statements like "it's all about the calories" or "I'm only eating 1000 calories" etc etc.

> This is bad.

It can be, sure. Tooth decay, vitamin deficiency, muscle and bone wasting, all that jazz.

But are we still talking about weight control or not? Because people love to make it super ultra complex when the basic control mechanism is fairly straightforward.

My hyper-elaborate advice for the more general "health control" case (as opposed to "weight control") is:

1. Eat more to gain weight, less to lose weight, and about the same to stay about the same.

2. Make sure you get plenty of protein. It's good for you.

3. Eat a variety of foods.

4. Lift weights.

5. Do something that makes your heart pump really hard for a while.

I mean for myself I have zillions of tweaks. But it's easy to go off the deep end chasing that 1-2% optimisation when all most people want is the 20% of information that gives 80% of the result.

Re: How To Lose Weight And Influence People

#46

Post by lookACamel »

jacques_chester wrote: post #21
mipapage wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While admittedly I haven't taken the time to read your entire blog post, I'm throwing this link out there for your perusal: http://thatpaleoguy.com/2012/12/19/calorie-rants-and-ketosis... Quite simply, you have to consider how a calorie takes the path to becoming a calorie in our system, imo.

My overarching theme in my blog post is that the underlying complexity (which absolutely exists) is utterly optional for actually controlling weight. You just don't need to know it or understand it. Eat less --> weigh less and Eat more --> weigh more Are sufficiently good that you can form a working control system with them. No other variables need be observed or cared about.

"Eat more --> weight more"

HOW much more? (HOW much less.)

Lizzie Velasquez trivially demonstrates the inadequacy of your observations.

Re: How To Lose Weight And Influence People

#47

Post by jacques_chester »

eof wrote: post #35
jacques_chester wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My overarching theme in my blog post is that the underlying complexity (which absolutely exists) is utterly optional for actually controlling weight. You just don't need to know it or understand it. Eat less --> weigh less and Eat more --> weigh more Are sufficiently good that you can form a working control system with them. No other variables need be observed or cared about.

Your logic is flawed. The only limiting factor is calories in. It is impossible to gain weight for calories you have not eaten. None of your analysis in anyway shows, or even hints at the 'fact' that Eating more will necessarily make you weigh more. It is totally possible that someone can eat 3k calories a day, but no carbs, and this could have all types of effects; like a slight increase in body temperature due to a…

> None of your analysis in anyway shows, or even hints

The words "net calorie balance" are carefully chosen to encompass your objection (I have it filed under "Diet Debate Gotcha #3,947: Thermogenic Effect of Food").

> But, then you go too far and say this is the only thing at play.

I do and I don't. What I say is that it's all you really need to know in order to control your weight. It's also, in the strictest narrowly-drawn causality, the completely explanatory mechanism of weight control.

I'm not arguing that folk on ketogenic diets lose weight. I'm not arguing that there's no such thing as ketogenesis. I'm just saying that in the long run, the direct, immediate cause (such as it is) is one of net calorie balance modulo noisy oddities like water retention.

Re: How To Lose Weight And Influence People

#48

Post by learc83 »

jacques_chester wrote: post #32
eof wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For example, it is possible I am eating 2000 calories a day, burning 1900 and shitting out 100. EDIT--because I am too lazy to wait to post to daughter comment-- It is possible, for example, that if I eat a FOO, which has 100 calories, it will change effeciencies of systems in my body in tangental ways so as to cause it to burn 5% more calories than it would have if I didn't eat a FOO. I could also eat a candyBAR whi…

Hence net calorie balance . All the words are meaningful in that description. For the same reason, I say "long term average mass". Weight is sufficiently noisy that I can be pinned to the mat on a silly debate-club technicality while the larger issue remains unaddressed. When I say "net calorie balance" I'm not talking about subtracting the calories on the elliptical machine from the calories on the chocolate bar. Th…

>You just look at the scale or the mirror and change your behaviour.

The question is what do you change.

If I wake up one morning and decide I'm going to make a change and reduce my caloric intake. Instead of having my normal 1000 Cal eggs and and bacon, I decide to have a 500 Cal glass of sugar water.

By lunchtime I'm starving and I feel week so without thinking about it I consume an extra 600 Cal over what I normally would for lunch.

Furthermore, keto fans aren't arguing that ketosis violates the laws of physics. Of course in the end it's energy in vs energy out. But the core belief is that the body doesn't process all food equally.

They are arguing in essence that the calorie is an imperfect measure of energy available for extraction by the body. Eating what is labeled as 1000 Cal of food A may cause more weight gain that eating 1000 Cal of food B. They aren't saying that the body magically shunts energy into the ether as long as you don't eat carbs.

Consider a completely imaginary hypothetical. What if 1000 Cal of food A was processed 100% efficiently so that no waste left your body. And 1000 Cal of food B was processed such that 50% of it left your body as waste. Additionally consider that different combinations may affect the percentages. So that for whatever reason eating food A with food B, may decrease the efficiency with which food A is processed.

I'm not saying that the above scenario is in any way true, but if someone proposes that this is the case you can't say he is denying the laws of physics.

Re: How To Lose Weight And Influence People

#49

Post by TeMPOraL »

lookACamel wrote: post #46
jacques_chester wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My overarching theme in my blog post is that the underlying complexity (which absolutely exists) is utterly optional for actually controlling weight. You just don't need to know it or understand it. Eat less --> weigh less and Eat more --> weigh more Are sufficiently good that you can form a working control system with them. No other variables need be observed or cared about.

"Eat more --> weight more" HOW much more? ( HOW much less.) Lizzie Velasquez trivially demonstrates the inadequacy of your observations.

> HOW much more? (HOW much less.)

Doesn't matter. Just keep loosing / gaining until you reach the desired weight and then adjust to stabilize. It will take different time for different people and/or food combination, but in principle, you can just adjust the amounts and you'll get there.

Re: How To Lose Weight And Influence People

#50

Post by jacques_chester »

lookACamel wrote: post #46
jacques_chester wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My overarching theme in my blog post is that the underlying complexity (which absolutely exists) is utterly optional for actually controlling weight. You just don't need to know it or understand it. Eat less --> weigh less and Eat more --> weigh more Are sufficiently good that you can form a working control system with them. No other variables need be observed or cared about.

"Eat more --> weight more" HOW much more? ( HOW much less.) Lizzie Velasquez trivially demonstrates the inadequacy of your observations.

If I had a reliable method for producing accurate and precise numerical forecasts of the future behaviour of complex systems with a large number of unobservable variables, then I would be a multi-quintillionaire.

This doesn't mean that weather forecasting, economics, agile software methodologies -- to pick just a few famous examples of subjects dealing with complex systems -- are totally broken tools that must henceforth be discarded.

It just means that we have to pick our battles.

Controlling systems by incremental adjustments works perfectly well. In fact it works for highly predictable simple systems too -- you can take variables like shell mass, powder load, wind velocity, humidity and predict with enormous accuracy where an anti-aircraft shell will go when fired.

Or you can use tracer bullets.

(Yes, this is the elegant little example from The Pragmatic Programmer).

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