Obesity and Fitness Are Revolutionized By Reddit, Not Doctors

As a developer I bristle at the idea that 'if it's not in the curriculum, what can you do?' The doctors are at fault here for not reaearching and advocating for the research needed.

I firmly believe that for most things, fitness and health included, the internet will always be lightyears ahead of what is published in peer-reviewed journals.　Now, new ideas get thrown on a blog for millions to (potentially) see, the ideas are read and analyzed by a portion of the general population, and then they're either rejected or expanded upon. It's the perfect meritocracy of ideas, and the slow peer review process can't keep up.

> the internet will always be lightyears ahead of what is published in peer-reviewed journals

The thing is, its not as if r/fitness or /fit/ invented the low-carb diet or the paleo diet. They just spread it to people who'd otherwise never engage in debate/discourse about nutrition (which is of course commendable.)

> It's the perfect meritocracy of ideas, and the slow peer review process can't keep up.

I think Reddit and blogs have seen enough false witch hunts and outright lies to know that the internet is very, very rarely a meritocracy. Peer-reviewed processes aren't meant to serve as a proxy for the general population, or to spur rapid progress; in fact, their goal is serve as objective judges of validity and accuracy.

This is somewhat akin to when people complain about the difficulty in passing legislation in the U.S. Things like bicameral legislature and checks and balances were instituted specifically to slow down the passage of legislature and allow a more deliberate review process.

Disclaimer: this post is going to go into some of my personal experiences with weight loss, fitness, and reddit.

In March 2012, not all that long ago, I was considered obese. Living a life primarily behind the computer screen while leading an engineering team at a rapidly growing startup (over 100% growth in the last year alone) left little time for me to consider my fitness.

I'd eat trash -- burritos four or five times a week, pizza or fast food the rest. I never cooked, because I "didn't have time." I didn't work out for the same half-assed reason.

I realized in early April that I weighed more than I ever had before, that I was not satisfied in my appearance, and that I was very likely introducing unwanted health issues.

Like many other things in my life (coding, managing, infosec, etc.) I took the "dive deep" approach into health and fitness.

I experimented with several diet and fitness plans, until finally finding one that seemed sustainable for me. I'm not trying to start a flame war about diets -- I've seen far too many of them in the last few months -- but a very low-carbohydrate, ketogenic diet (called "keto") works extremely well for me.

I found a reddit community (surprise!) called /r/keto that shares recipes, support, and tips with each other. Especially in the beginning of my diet, it was an invaluable resource.

I started my keto diet on April 18th, at about 255 lbs. Today I weigh 189.

I'm still not where I want to be (yet), but I can personally attest to the extremely kind and supportive atmosphere that reddit provides when working towards a goal like this. We rejoice in each others' victories and help each other through the harder times.

That said, there are downsides, too. I already mentioned the diet/exercise flame wars that go on -- for example, Low-Carb/High-Fat (LCHF) diets vs. High-Protein/Low Fat vs. Low-Fat Generalized, etc. I think that each of these diets can work (science supports that), but different people need to figure out what works for them.

The problem with these subreddits -- /r/fitness included -- is that they develop a hive-mind towards their respective goal. /r/fitness almost makes a joke of it ("join a gym, quit facebook, get girls"), and "starting strength" is recommended all the time, in response to pretty much everything. Not that these are bad recommendations at all, just something that I see a lot.

The communities are very welcoming, but when an individual strays from the hive mind, they can also be very discouraging.

Hope this lends a little insight and personality to the article!

What's missing in this article is mention of actual scientific evidence. I can believe that traditional nutritional recommendations are on flimsy ground, but replacing them with new cargo-cult ideas isn't necessarily better. Do these newer recommendations have good science behind them? My lurker experiences in /r/fitness are quite mixed; they seem like nice people, but the specific diet plans are very heavy on anecdotal evidence, with people professing very high confidence in recommendations relative to how much evidence there is (if anything, it reminds me of alternative-medicine communities). They're also a bit too focused for my interests on bodybuilding/image/etc. rather than measurable health outcomes, e.g. reduction in heart-attack or diabetes risk rather than muscle definition.