Biohacking Lite

Agree! (and wrote a bit more in a comment above). I think IF was the high order bit that enabled me to achieve a long-term consistent deficit. I used to track it with Zero but stopped later because there isn't much to track. I strictly stick to 12-8pm window (often 12-6), which does not need an app for tracking.

> Adipose tissue (fat) is by far your primary super high density super high capacity battery pack. For example, as of June 2019, ~40lb of my 200lb weight was fat. Since fat is significantly more energy dense than carbohydrates (9 kcal/g instead of just 4 kcal/g), my fat was storing 40lb = 18kg = 18,000g x 9kcal/g = 162,000 kcal. This is a staggering amount of energy. If energy was the sole constraint, my body could run on this alone for 162,000/2,000 = 81 days. Since 1 stick of dynamite is about 1MJ of energy (239 kcal), we’re talking 678 sticks of dynamite. Or since a 100KWh Tesla battery pack stores 360MJ, if it came with a hand-crank I could in principle charge it almost twice! Hah.

I'm not following this math here. 678 * 239kcal ~= 162Mcal. But that's a thousand times 162kcal. Seems like 40lb of fat only contains the energy of .678 sticks of dynamite.

>all of which I won’t go into full details of because it lets a bit too much of the mad scientist crazy out.

This is a bit disappointing, but I know how the author feels. I can definitely feel like I am going to be judged for being crazy telling people about the strange ways in which I try to empirically optimize my health.

But, nothing is more important than our health, and I think it would have great effects on readers for the author to continue to expand on all of these other great health topics they're interested in. Speaking for myself, I became much more interested in this stuff just after reading some great detailed blog posts from others that are very into biohacking and related areas, and it had a wonderful effect on my life.

I'd love for others to be able to receive the same, much of us often focus too much on technical endeavors and lack giving the proper attention to diet, exercise, and much more. It becomes a lot more interesting and fun to some people when they realize the level of detail, optimization, quantification, and so on, they can put into this.

The best part is that instead of having your code run faster or your customer retention go up, you literally increase your life span and decrease your risk if diseases.

If people are looking for alternative approaches to weight loss, I would consider simply buying a blood glucose monitor. They cost about $100 on Amazon or less and test strips less than $0.50.

The thing that makes it alternative is that it sets you up to be reactive rather than prescriptive. A lot of people end up rebelling against prescriptive rules for eating and then fall off the wagon in frustration.

The Blood Glucose monitoring approach is to see what spikes your blood sugar on the idea that higher levels are more likely to lead to reduced insulin sensitivity which often leads to more of the calories you eat being stored as fat. I just take the measurement first thing in the morning.

I find that how I eat shows up in my morning BGL and so I can be a little bit more reactive. If the level is high, then I need to pull harder on some of the levers that day.

This way of thinking also sets you up to have a better personal sense of what levers matter. For me, pasta is much worse than chocolate chips. What really flips my levels though is two high carb meals in the same day.

> the downside is that we’ve lost a great deal of local culinary tradition

I don't think we've lost anything; it's just that, in an era of cheap economies of scale from mass-production, artisanal anything (including artisanal cooking) is going to cost more—possibly enough to put most "authentic" / "traditional" cuisine out of reach of the working class, unless they're willing to make it themselves. (And who has the time for that?)

If you live in a city, look through restaurant reviews for a couple minutes and you'll probably be able to find a dozen local places in your own neighbourhood that have been open for 80 years or more, keeping up the tradition of serving the same food, the same way, that they always have. The only thing that such places have changed between then and now, are their prices.