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Biohacking Lite

karpathy.github.io

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Re: Biohacking Lite

#131

Post by gdebel »

systemvoltage wrote: post #125
thebean11 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What part of the US were you in? I think your experience will vary widely; in NYC there are healthy meat n veggies fast food places every couple blocks. That being said I think you are accurately describing the majority of the country.

The general jab at the Americans. If I look at Europe food culture with a certain lens, I just see shitty doner kebab places in every corner and turkish grocery/meat stores that smell horrible. Obviously, that lens is cracked, tinted with biases. Some points are valid though. Honestly, as an American, we've got some awful vegetables and tasteless food just about everywhere unless fat/sugar is added to them. Probably…

I made clear I have no anti-american views (and I don't feel like US citizens, generally speaking, are so much more open to external opinions than Europeans by the way). The problem is not related to the quality of soil or to the borders but to the fact that we humans have a recent tendency to over-engineer a very natural process : eating simple, normal, things.

Re: Biohacking Lite

#132

Post by blacksmith_tb »

karpathy wrote: post #94
abnry wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the OP meant natural sugar, not added! And sadly, many jams and pies have extra sugar added, I much prefer the no/low sugar versions.

Yes natural sugar is just barely better than added sugar (due to the fiber it's typically mixed in with). The apples we eat today are candy bars, they just happen to grow on trees. Trees shaped extensively via artificial selection for thousands of years to pack in more glucose, trees that are nowhere near to what our ancestors have encountered for millions of years.

A Snickers bar has 27g of sugar in it[1], almost 3 times the 10g in the 'average apple' (without the fiber or water to slow down metabolizing it). I haven't encountered anyone claiming that obesity and diabetes are rampant in the US due to over-consumption of fruit (though fruit juice is not doing us any favors).

1: https://www.myfooddiary.com/foods/22930/snickers-regular-siz...

Re: Biohacking Lite

#133

Post by julianeon »

I was a little bit disappointed that the title promised an introduction to biohacking, but in practice, by the end, it amounted to how to lose weight. The "hacking" part is in understanding how the body processes energy and how eating affects that, I guess. Still, from that title, I think it was fair to expect a different article.

Re: Biohacking Lite

#134

Post by gdebel »

dnhz wrote: post #123
gdebel wrote: post #51

I'm French (and incidentally a doctor,and my post is not judgemental in any way, this is not the point). Everytime I travel to the USA, I'm puzzled by how difficult it is to "eat normally" (= by my own standards). You can find really good junk food everywhere, or pay a really high price to eat in high-level Italian restaurants for example, but it is very difficult to eat standard meat-with-vegetable-without-sugar-add…

Neither pure white sugar nor vegetable oil occur naturally in the environment. Can't just blame sugar when fat has twice the energy density of sugar and is used abundantly in the processed foods that we like to overeat.

Right but don't you think that olive oil for example was eaten since centuries? I often refer myself to the so-called "Mediterranean diet" as a good reference when I'm asking myself if I should eat something. This is based on data to some degree also.

Re: Biohacking Lite

#135

Post by kleinsch »

hinkley wrote: post #17
curiousgal wrote: post #2

As someone struggling to gain weight it always bugs me how "being healthy" is only associated with weight loss.

I was a bean pole into my early twenties, and would have been 20 lbs skinnier still if not for cycling. I never gained any more weight until I dumped the classical advice and did my own thing. Everyone tries to compress a workout into a single time interval in the day, where you do n sets of each exercise and then go home. To do three sets in three minutes, you're going to have to pick a very conservative goal. Doing…

What were the exercises you ended up doing at home spread out over the day? Given the current situation, seems like a unique time lots of us could try out that type of workout.

Re: Biohacking Lite

#136

Post by RoidzForeva5p »

k__ wrote: post #36

Isn't the problem of many weight lifters that "lean body mass" isn't consumed before the fat, but at the same time?

Lean body mass is a misnomer (and DEXA scans aren't reliable).

Lean body mass = Total Body Mass - Fat Mass

That's "lean body mass," but it's not 1:1 "muscle mass," because bones, organs, and etc. do not constitute as skeletal muscle, but still take up weight.

And muscle mass itself is a misnomer, because the actual weight of your muscle protein is not 1:1 to the actual weight of your entire muscles.

Most people think muscle is made out of protein, but while that's true, it's not the main way you muscles get "bulk." The main compound that gives muscles "bulk" is water. Usually that's because your muscles have hydrophillic compounds like glycogen (stored sugar), electrolytes like potassium and sodium, and creatine. These latter compounds draw the water into the muscle, and make up for most of its weight and size.

All these compounds get used up during exercise, so your muscle hold less water, and it's technically "consumed" during exercise, and needs to be replenished after. A coincidental fact is that once these stores are depleted, they become "super-sensitizied" that means they're much more likely to take up compounds out of the bloodstream than before. So, exercise depletes them, but if you eat enough after, you can fill them up to be bigger than where they were before.

Re: Biohacking Lite

#137

Post by rrrrrrrrrrrryan »

dnhz wrote: post #117
yutopia wrote: post #30

After years of experimentation, lately I’ve decided that eating like my grandparents (i.e., eating like a traditional Japanese) is the easiest way to keep myself lean and healthy. Traditional Japanese meals follow a standard format [1]: a bowl of rice, several small sides (which can change by the day), and an optional cup of miso soup. Sticking to this format every day can be boring, but it keeps my diet reasonably b…

The funny thing is that eating rice isn't even that old of a tradition, and neither is eating it in polished, white form. White rice only became ubiquitous when milling technology improved, and spoilage of the oils in brown rice became a concern for storage. > Despite its long history in Japan rice was, for a long time, a food reserved for the warriors and the nobility. It was consumed by the majority of the populati…

I currently work for a company that makes glucose monitors for people with diabetes, but we (non-diabetic) employees sometimes get to try the products out.

As far as I'm aware, all the current medical literature states to avoid simple carbs (like white rice) to prevent insulin spikes, and to eat things like whole grain breads instead. But, we noticed that this seems to only be true for people of European descent - my Asian co-workers were able to process white rice just fine. Which kind of makes sense - East Asian people eat a ton of rice, and yet they're thin.

This is all purely anecdotal of course, and I'm not a doctor, but we do know that different ethnicities process food differently (e.g. lactose), and it's not so hard to imagine that our current dietary recommendations might be a bit skewed, because the people in the datasets are mostly of European ancestry.

Re: Biohacking Lite

#138

Post by throw1234651234 »

jackschultz wrote: post #48
thechao wrote: post #11

If anyone else wants to get into this, there are a few really strong measures that correlate fairly well to the DEXA scans. My favorite (because its easy): measure your waist just above your belly button. This area has virtually no "bulky" muscle and is one of the principle deposits of "internal" body fat. The two measures I take everyday are: 1. Body weight; and, 2. Waist size. I use the following routine for weight…

Big shoutout to saying low impact cardio. Running is the big example that can cause pain where people's bodies are so different that it's not clear what the correct form is for them or if there's even a good form. I play and follow golf and the big injury issue with Tiger that made him multiple surgeries, and also had to reshape his golf swing from the pain running caused. Here's an article[0] about that from Running…

Running is also by far the most efficient form of cardio in terms of calories burned / time.

Re: Biohacking Lite

#140

Post by dorian-graph »

gdebel wrote: post #51

I'm French (and incidentally a doctor,and my post is not judgemental in any way, this is not the point). Everytime I travel to the USA, I'm puzzled by how difficult it is to "eat normally" (= by my own standards). You can find really good junk food everywhere, or pay a really high price to eat in high-level Italian restaurants for example, but it is very difficult to eat standard meat-with-vegetable-without-sugar-add…

This may sound dumb, but any suggestions on how to eat (i.e. a recipe book) in what you describe as "normal"?
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