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The Dangers of Eating Late at Night

nytimes.com

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Re: The Dangers of Eating Late at Night

#81

Post by contingencies »

MichaelGG wrote: post #76
infinitone wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never heard of Jainism... interesting. But you're right, in that many religions do have a ideas that are good for you.

Markov chains can also generate good ideas.

That's a pretty disrespectful comment but fair enough on an objective level. To take the same analytical approach, however, what you are advocating is a modern scientific mode of enquiry. You may be interested to learn that Jainism, Buddhism and other early philosophies of India did in fact have significant (core) portions of their scriptures dedicated to formalistic enquiry in to the nature of being, mind, and senses; and from the results of those enquiries, philosophical extrapolations. After taking a formalistic approach they decided to veer away from rigid analytical inquiry and embrace empathy. Einstein famously had this to say, which can can be applied with somewhat reduced accuracy to Jainism:

Buddhism has the characteristics of what would be expected in the cosmic religion for the future: It trancends a personal God, avoids dogma and theology; it covers both the natural and the spiritual, and it is based on a religious sense aspiring from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual, as a meaningful unity. - Albert Einstein

You should not be so quick to dismiss other traditions.

Re: The Dangers of Eating Late at Night

#82

Post by joelrunyon »

ajcarpy2005 wrote: post #53
joelrunyon wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Probably #1 too about skipping breakfast. Actually - skipping breakfast helps you keep your insulin low and promotes lean body mass. Your body is in prime fat burning mode in the morning and holding off on breakfast (and spiking the blood sugar / insulin levels) can help you keep burning fat through mid-morning.

To a point but logically it could be concluded that skipping breakfast offers a longer period of time where the blood sugar and insulin response has a chance to drop lower which might hypothetically make a resulting spike from food intake actually higher in comparison.

That doesn't make any sense.

The point is that maintaining lower insulin levels promotes your body using its fat storage rather than food.

Yes, you will eventually eat and that spike will happen, but it's not going to be demonstrably higher of a spike because you fasted.

Re: The Dangers of Eating Late at Night

#83

Post by cafard »

learc83 wrote: post #34
zamio wrote: post #22

"In France, for example, a serving of ice cream is typically a single modest scoop, while in America, it’s often three gargantuan scoops." This was the first thing that struck me when I first moved here. Portions for all kinds of food from ice-cream, to coffee are huge. Why are huge portions such a common thing here?

I think it was because America was the first country that could eat afford to eat like that, so we did. Look at the differences in traditional Italian food and Italian American food. Dealing with virtually unlimited quantities of food is a very recent problem, and Americans were the first to have this problem at scale. Most of the rest of the world now has this problem too. If you look at overweight trends, most deve…

But portions have gone up considerably over the last 40 years. Take a look at the size of dinner plates from 1960 and those from 1980 or since.

Re: The Dangers of Eating Late at Night

#84

Post by rowill »

kolev wrote: post #58
kolev wrote: post #47

Ori Hofmekler for years has been promoting his evidence-based Warrior Diet [1], which claims that humans have always been nocturnal eaters and that only the slaves were eating during the day and warriors were feasting at night. I reduced my meals to two a day (within 6 hours), mostly at night, and have since lost a few pounds although I've increased my caloric intake from fats. I slowly want to shift to a single meal…

Carbheads on a downvote crusade again...

The diet sounds like absurd marketing, there isn't some "carbhead" (whatever that is) crusade stalking you with downvotes.

Re: The Dangers of Eating Late at Night

#85

Post by dllthomas »

KMag wrote: post #73
kolev wrote: post #47

Ori Hofmekler for years has been promoting his evidence-based Warrior Diet [1], which claims that humans have always been nocturnal eaters and that only the slaves were eating during the day and warriors were feasting at night. I reduced my meals to two a day (within 6 hours), mostly at night, and have since lost a few pounds although I've increased my caloric intake from fats. I slowly want to shift to a single meal…

I hope this warrior diet is a good diet, and the things in your description that make me cringe are just marketing gimmicks. What was the average life expectancy of a warrior at the time and place this diet was based on? Likely under 35. Your description makes it sound like the diet's creator started with a bad premise and unhelpful constraints and used (hopefully) good science to hill-climb his way to some local max…

"It would be much better to throw out the flawed starting point."

It might be interesting to pick a bunch of different starting points and see how much convergence you get, though.

Re: The Dangers of Eating Late at Night

#86

Post by dllthomas »

joelrunyon wrote: post #82
ajcarpy2005 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To a point but logically it could be concluded that skipping breakfast offers a longer period of time where the blood sugar and insulin response has a chance to drop lower which might hypothetically make a resulting spike from food intake actually higher in comparison.

That doesn't make any sense. The point is that maintaining lower insulin levels promotes your body using its fat storage rather than food. Yes, you will eventually eat and that spike will happen, but it's not going to be demonstrably higher of a spike because you fasted.

It makes sense - it's fairly common that we see things that get bigger/worse when postponed. It's entirely possible that this doesn't happen with post-fast insulin spikes, but it seems a reasonable thing to want to check on. At this point it's no longer a question that can be resolved without measuring things (or finding other people who have measured those things), though.

Re: The Dangers of Eating Late at Night

#87

Post by kolev »

rowill wrote: post #84
kolev wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Carbheads on a downvote crusade again...

The diet sounds like absurd marketing, there isn't some "carbhead" (whatever that is) crusade stalking you with downvotes.

The diet is not absurd. It's the easiest form of intermittent fasting. Marketing? Well, he sells whey protein and some other things, but they are not anything specific to his diet. Yes, based on comments, there are way too many carbheads and kalesippers here. What's funny is that most "hackers" are not really ready to hack their diet.

Re: The Dangers of Eating Late at Night

#88

Post by kolev »

KMag wrote: post #75
kolev wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Carbheads on a downvote crusade again...

I didn't downvote you, but I think your downvotes are probably from people who read your summary as a diet based on a flawed appeal to nature. I'm not sure if a carbhead advocates a high carb or low carb diet, but I imagine most of the downvoters would probably also downvote a post advocating a high-carb or low-cab diet that appeared to use poor logic as a starting point.

By "carbhead" I mean a person caught in the vicious circle of high-carb addiction. But I meant refined carbs, not all carbs are evil. Think pothead. And this is why carbhead is similar to pothead: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/120904095856.ht...

Re: The Dangers of Eating Late at Night

#89

Post by kolev »

ska wrote: post #56
learc83 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it was because America was the first country that could eat afford to eat like that, so we did. Look at the differences in traditional Italian food and Italian American food. Dealing with virtually unlimited quantities of food is a very recent problem, and Americans were the first to have this problem at scale. Most of the rest of the world now has this problem too. If you look at overweight trends, most deve…

I think there is some truth to this, but it also seems to be true that on average the US is valuing quantity over quality (in food) more than many other economies that can certainly afford to overeat.

If we have to use the info from [1], it could be argued that America can afford the most!

[1] http://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/our-research...

Re: The Dangers of Eating Late at Night

#90

Post by kolev »

KMag wrote: post #73
kolev wrote: post #47

Ori Hofmekler for years has been promoting his evidence-based Warrior Diet [1], which claims that humans have always been nocturnal eaters and that only the slaves were eating during the day and warriors were feasting at night. I reduced my meals to two a day (within 6 hours), mostly at night, and have since lost a few pounds although I've increased my caloric intake from fats. I slowly want to shift to a single meal…

I hope this warrior diet is a good diet, and the things in your description that make me cringe are just marketing gimmicks. What was the average life expectancy of a warrior at the time and place this diet was based on? Likely under 35. Your description makes it sound like the diet's creator started with a bad premise and unhelpful constraints and used (hopefully) good science to hill-climb his way to some local max…

Warriors died young from violent deaths or infectious diseases, not from a chronic diseases. The appeal to nature is simply following the idea that we are what we're best adapted to, but I agree that working solutions and not always the optimal ones. In this case though, it's more of an attempt to avoid poorly working ones. That's why I strongly believe in having a solid base as a diet and optimize using "hacks" like turmeric and coconut oil, for example. I'm not adapted to those as my predecessors didn't eat those foods, but I eat them and they optimize my ancestral diet further.
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