People tend to over complicate this. To lose weight you need to eat less. I lost 40 lbs in 3 months last year by simply switching from 2 meals a day to 1. It’s not rocket science, if you want to lose weight, eat less.
Biohacking Lite
341–350 of 370 posts
Re: Biohacking Lite
#342Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a Chinese person born in America, you're absolutely right. If you don't cook, it's difficult to eat reasonably / "normally" in this country, even if you have money. You kind of have to pick your poison: salt, sugar, unnatural fats, etc. At least I grew up on the east coast and my parents cooked. Anecdotally, I'm shocked by what my acquaintances from the midwest eat, and the consequences really start to show up whe…
Margarine? Absolutely. Margarine was huge post-war time. In fact it was so scary to the dairy industry they lobbied to have it turned pink. That failed but you couldn't sell yellow margarine. Who knows what additives were in our grandparents' foods.
It's a heuristic, a rule of thumb. Think Michael Pollan's grandparents if you like (he's 65).
The change in American diet was not subtle; it was huge. It was due to what's cheaper / more profitable for a huge industry to produce.
It's similar to what's going on right now with the software industry -- cloud services with mobile clients is great economically and great for collecting data, but not necessarily in the short-term or long-term interests of the users.
If you believe in capitalism, you would have to explain how optimizing for cheap and superficially appealing food would NOT happen.
Re: Biohacking Lite
#343I enjoy that you put this together, as one of my favorite CS guys out there you inspire both educationally in academics, and professionally in industry. You show it's possible to tackle any interests no matter your size/workload. I also have some weird interests in (synthetic) biology, chem, ML outside of the normal fitness/nutrition ones. You've introduced CNN and ML to me, thanks to your work at Stanford and I hope I can get to a point where I also branch out or work alongside a different domain like biology or law one day. ++Karpathy
Re: Biohacking Lite
#344Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not quite. Sugar spikes your insulin, insulin provokes fat storage. This does not happen with fat, so it is harder to get fat by eating fat. If you want to get fat, like a sumo ringer, simple carbs are the way to go.
Insulin is not required for fat storage. Insulin spikes do not create energy out of nowhere and don't suddenly make the same number of input calories multiply. Also, insulin spikes are nearly unpredictable anyway. Carbs aren't necessarily the trigger, protein and fat can be too. Sometimes foods are synergistic and spike insulin together more than eaten separately. Insulin spikiness is also determined by food in your…
You are missing the point. Carbs and fat are not metabolized the same, that is my point.
> Insulin is not required for fat storage.
Insulin provokes fat storage, regardless of any other pathways that may exist. Spiking your insulin with refined carbs is going to provoke fat storage more than the equivalent caloric amount of fat.
> Insulin spikes do not create energy out of nowhere and don't suddenly make the same number of input calories multiply.
Unfortunately, this "law of thermodynamics" view of things is too simple.
> Also, insulin spikes are nearly unpredictable anyway. Carbs aren't necessarily the trigger, protein and fat can be too.
Fat has minimal impact on insulin levels. Refined carbohydrates can raise blood sugar very high, requiring a double dose of insulin to get back to baseline. Meals high in protein or more complex carbs will be somewhere in the middle.
> I summarized some articles that dispel insulin voodoo here
If there's anything that's being dispelled there, it's not something that I actually said. Seems like this is a pet peeve of yours and you're seeing someone else in me.
Re: Biohacking Lite
#345Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most Americans buy their food at the grocery store, and there's nothing in them that wouldn't be found in any other country. Most Americans make their own meals with their families, which usually consist of meat, pasta, potatoes, and/or vegetables.
You're right - there are 40,000 grocery stores in America, and only 30,000 Dollar Stores and their like. So less than half of Americans buy from Dollar Stores, if patronage equals frequency of the store. Buts Dollar stores are growing fast. That won't be true for long. I wonder at the "make their own meals". Maybe from packets or reheating frozen stuff. But the meat counter sure isn't the largest section in the groce…
That's assuming people go to the Dollar store specifically to buy food instead of going to the grocery store, which is certainly not the norm. People go to the Dollar store to buy food containers, snacks for a road trip, batteries, toothbrushes, etc. That's like assuming people buy groceries at the hardware store; the intended purpose isn't the same.
At all of the American grocery stores I've been to, the unfrozen meat section is as large as the entire refrigerated section, which are all very typical grocery stores.
Re: Biohacking Lite
#346Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course it does. Famines tell us as much. Gyms increase your burn rate, though. Running for 5 miles a day will burn up a quarter of a 2000 calorie diet. That being said, a lot of gym activity that I see is basically useless and probably taken up just to feel good about going to a gym regularly (some examples in my gym: walking on treadmills instead of around the block, paying for membership every month to solely us…
I'm sorry, but 5 miles a day is just not possible for, I'd say, the vast majority of people. As an average chump, I can barely do 2 miles every other day. Any exercise does make me feel much better, so that alone is a good reason to do it, but for weight loss, eating less is the fastest way.
No one running 5 miles a day started by running 5 miles a day
Re: Biohacking Lite
#347One of the most important things not mentioned in the article is sleep. Not enough sleep and your diet will change. Not enough sleep and your body will not finish recovering overnight. Read the book “Why we sleep”. It will change your life.
P.S. I do marathon training and glycogen storing as well as activating the fat burning are essential!
Re: Biohacking Lite
#348Earlier quoted context omitted.
> No point in focusing on hormones so much. I somehow don't see people fretting over their ACTH or progesterone. I respectfully disagree. When I go to USA or Mexico in particular, the frequency of obesity is astonishing. Perhaps with more understanding of the mechanisms around the phenomenon, there would be more success in dealing with the problem. As I mentioned earlier, around 25% of the entire human population has…
> I'm not saying that every person must study these metabolic pathways in detail, but rather that the quick and simple rules and choices people make in daily life should take advantage of what is known, hopefully for a better outcome than what is currently observed. I agree. I'm simply pointing out the fact that with the picture as complex as we know it is I have a knee jerk reaction to people going from "how to have…
> As we go on you reference Fung (and defend him) a fair bit
I defend Jason Fung because he's one of the few in this area of science and medicine who has gone to the trouble of writing books that ordinary people can understand, and yet still have some scientific rigor. I could cite innumerable scientific papers that very few have the training to read, or the one author who took the time to write something anyone literate can at least follow along with.
There are hundreds if not thousands of researchers and practitioners in this area, so it is convenient to point to someone that anybody literate can read and rely on. His books (several of them overlap greatly) cite hundreds of papers, so that work mostly a compilation of other's work (as it should be).
> He does not hold (to my knowledge) a PhD nor has he published any peer-reviewed studies.
From his books there are some references to his published scientific work on fasting, diabetes, CKD, and so on. See also https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=jason+fung+intermittent... , https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=jason+fung+diabetes , https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=jason+fung+ckd , and https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=jason+fung+pcos for examples.
I'm not sure what a PhD has to do with anything, most of my scientific work was published before I got mine, or even started it, as is common in industry and applied sciences.
> That being said - the link you provided on FFA is about cholesterol. I fail to see how that's relevant to discussion about FFA impact on insulin resistance?
I'm sorry you don't see the connection regarding FFA, perhaps you can re-read what he wrote and click through to the underlying reference to get a better idea (the title is "Fat Oxidation, Body Composition and Insulin Sensitivity in Diabetic and Normoglycaemic Obese Adults 5 Years After Weight Loss"). I couldn't find the text of Fung's book online, but the other paper he references in this connection is "The role of fatty acids in insulin resistance" (2015) which I did find online, here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4587882/ .
> Alas, to make my point. Obesity is certainly a multifaceted problem. Thermodynamics certainly matter, human psyche, inflammation, hormones - essentially all of that has its place. Looking from a systems point of view there's no reason (and probably there isn't one) to look for single causative agent though some certainly play a grater role. In my experience both time-restricted feeding, caloric restriction and macro restriction work and have their place depending on the individual. Generally as a rule IF and low-carb are certainly good ideas, I'm not a fan of keto for everything.
I agree in general. I think IF is fine, I'm favor of balanced diets not very low or high in anything in general, and I believe without regular blood work and expert supervision, keto is downright dangerous for most. Thermodynamics are present, true, but this is in practice perhaps not the most helpful perspective, since things like willpower, hunger, and sustainably maintaining a healthy diet matter more; the thermodynamic perspective fails to model the feedback control system that regulates the human behavior component. Nonetheless, I agree with the overall thrust of your comment.
Best regards, and thank you for the conversation!
Re: Biohacking Lite
#349Earlier 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…
as an american i wish we had a few of their Kebab shopes and a few less Burger joints. within walking distance of my job my option for food i didn't bring myself are two Mcdonalds three other burger chain store, a taco bell, and a little ceasers pizza, there used to be a mom and pop "asian" food place but it caught fire. i would kill for a curry, shawarma, or falafel restaurant. the food available in noncoastal small town america are fastfood monoculture.
Re: Biohacking Lite
#350Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There's a distinction between processed and ultra-processed (or highly processed). For example, canned fish is processed (added salt and oil), while a frozen TV dinner is ultra-processed (many ingredients added, some of which you probably don't have in your kitchen). Sure, but OP said ban all processed food. That's what I'm responding to, not "ban all ultra-processed food." That said, I do find your categorization…
I generally agree with your points, especially with the flagrant discrimination between processed and unprocessed food, but I think you're being unproductively predantic, especially if it comes to what might be useful for the "general population". My impression is that it's easiest to be consistent if you adopt a fairly simple (unnuonced) set of principles that guide your doet and lifestyle, then adapt it as you gain…
> My impression is that it's easiest to be consistent if you adopt a fairly simple (unnuonced) set of principles that guide your doet and lifestyle, then adapt it as you gain more control. Exercise good, processed bad, is probably a great place to start for most people —including the author if they hadn't already done the research.
Exactly. Approximations are good, because they allow you to start doing things now, rather than procrastinating because you need to do proper research first.
You don't need to research the best exercise in the world before you start exercising. Just start exercising, and don't hurt yourself.
You don't need to do the nutrition research. Eat lots of vegetables, cut down on sugar and salt.
...and of course, you can still do the research later, if you want to. But if the proper research will take you say 10 years, it is better to spend those 10 years already exercising and eating vegetables and avoiding sugar.