[HN Gopher] Biohacking Lite
___________________________________________________________________
Biohacking Lite
Author : askytb
Score : 410 points
Date : 2020-06-12 16:44 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (karpathy.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (karpathy.github.io)
| gtrubetskoy wrote:
| I wouldn't rank glucose above fats. As I understand it, it's not
| exactly a "shorter battery" than fat - it is simply a form of
| energy that is abundant in plant life, but fat is still a (much)
| "better battery".
|
| The reason our body always favors burning glucose first is NOT
| because glucose is "better" but actually because it is an
| inferior type of fuel (it creates "pollution" and is difficult to
| burn - you can develop diabetes from too much of it) - so our
| evolved system tries to get rid of it first, while hanging on to
| the "good stuff" for as long as it can.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| > The reason our body always favors burning glucose first is
| NOT because glucose is "better" but actually because it is an
| inferior type of fuel (it creates "pollution" and is difficult
| to burn - you can develop diabetes from too much of it) - so
| our evolved system tries to get rid of it first, while hanging
| on to the "good stuff" for as long as it can.
|
| This is not the standard textbook biological view of the bodies
| use of glucose and fats.
|
| I'm all for having heterodox opinions but I think you should
| let people know what is a heterodox position, and provide more
| supporting evidence than when giving a textbook explanation.
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| You don't develop type 2 diabetes from being fat, you develop
| diabetes from high average blood glucose levels triggering
| insulin resistance.
|
| Also, what is the pollution you are talking about? From what I
| understand, lipolysis generates ketones, which at normal
| lipolytic amounts aren't toxic.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_2_diabetes?wprov=sfla1
| gtrubetskoy wrote:
| > Also, what is the pollution you are talking about?
|
| For example reactive oxygen species.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1865572/
| centimeter wrote:
| No mention of ketosis, which uses vastly different metabolic
| pathways. It transmits energy without using glucose - instead
| using ketone bodies like acetone. It's very likely that this was
| a frequent (perhaps the _most_ frequent) state occupied by our
| megafauna-hunting ancestors.
| fudged71 wrote:
| As a personal trainer I'm really impressed by the technical depth
| of this post, although it really only centers on the idea of
| caloric deficit, which is relatively basic compared to the other
| topics he mentioned.
|
| It's so hard to visualize small long-term biological changes
| without moving averages. "Trust the process" is so important.
|
| "Trust the algorithm" is even more apt:
|
| * what/when to eat,
|
| * what/when to train, and
|
| * what/when to rest.
|
| If you haven't seen exercise/nutrition through an algorithmic
| lens, you might be surprised how straightforward it is to make
| progress day-to-day and how much progress you can really make in
| a short period of time. I wish strength training had more
| academics/coders and fewer 'meatheads' because the documentation
| around it is so anti-intellectual.
|
| Even as a trainer it's taken time to find reliable resources to
| optimize this algorithm, but I've been using a solid combination
| of tools and methodologies that make this complete and
| quantitative. I have clients that have lost a lot of weight and
| are lifting serious weight in a short span of time.
|
| It's great to see software engineers speak about health topics in
| general.
| tomp wrote:
| So... where can a non-PT find this kind of advice? Maybe you,
| or any other trainer you can recommend? Or some online
| resource?
|
| (Personally, I'm probably above-average knowledgeable about
| fitness, but I _still_ find the information unmanageably
| overwhelming - train every day, every 3 days, every muscle once
| a week, every muscle 3 times a week, big muscles less often
| than small muscles, focus on strength, focus on growth, focus
| on flexibility, cardio, no cardio, ...)
| fudged71 wrote:
| I think that's essentially what online training is these
| days: a cheaper way to get access to a fitness 'sherpa' to
| guide you. Someone who lives and breathes this stuff to save
| you a lot of time and effort. Most of the real, practical,
| and current knowledge right now is spread across a variety of
| $1000 courses for personal trainers.
|
| I'm in the process of building the largest online fitness
| database of its kind to democratize a lot of this
| information. I'm not sure what sort of business model I will
| pursue yet. But I want to collaborate with likeminded people
| and make the foundational information open to the public.
| joshvm wrote:
| You probably need to be more specific about your end goal. Is
| it to lift a particular amount, run a marathon, climb a
| certain route etc? There are usually specific trainers for
| certain skills, just like in video games :) If I wanted to
| get better at bouldering, I'd find someone at the climbing
| wall, not a generic trainer at the local gym.
|
| For generic "get fit" goals, stretch every day and some
| amount of cardio/resistance training three times a week is
| hard to get wrong. The important thing is to read your body
| and don't push your luck. Also, to stop when you lose good
| form.
|
| There is a lot of overwhelming information, but a lot of it
| is conflicting and anecdotal. You can find information online
| to support pretty much any theory you like (particularly
| about training frequency).
| downshun wrote:
| Surprisingly well written and researched.
|
| One thing missing is the effect of testosterone on lean mass
| creation.
|
| Wonder if the fat to co2 process can be ventilator assisted
| without hurting the lungs .
| scythe wrote:
| I've studied nutrition out of my own curiosity for more than ten
| years now. When I opened this article, one of the first things I
| did was ctrl+F "potassium" -- the most underrated nutrient.
| Average potassium intake is below recommended levels and
| resolving this may lead to significant reductions in
| mortality[1]. Potassium may also reduce the severity of
| osteoporosis[2], although I (male) don't need to worry about
| that. Improving potassium status is also associated with simply
| feeling better[3].
|
| 1 -
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00256...
|
| 2 - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00198-008-0666-3
|
| 3 - https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-
| of-n...
|
| Good sources of potassium include fruits, vegetables, legumes,
| nuts, milk, yogurt and eggs -- or, in other words, anything
| except meat, cheese, grains, and overly-processed crap. (When
| cheese precipitates from milk, most potassium remains in the
| liquid phase. I am not sure if the same happens with tofu.)
|
| I haven't ever really tried to lose weight, but I've always had
| very strong motivations to maintain low body fat:
|
| - my mother's family has a history of cardiovascular disease
| (grandfather d. stroke at 67, aunt d.m. type 2)
|
| - my father's family has a high prevalence of obesity
|
| - I have scoliosis with associated back pain
|
| With these factors in mind, I've spent a lot of time combing the
| USDA nutrient database: http://fdc.nal.usda.gov/ . I don't use an
| "energy out" calculator -- rather, I keep track of my intake and
| habits and correlate these to changes in my weight.
|
| The strategies I use are mostly quotidian: every meal must have
| some dietary fiber; avoid snacking -- drink water first and
| choose foods with fiber if you must; stay active etc. Possibly
| the most valuable thing I've learned, though, is how many things
| -- particularly vegetables -- you can prepare using nothing but
| an oven and aluminum foil, without making more dirty dishes. This
| is invaluable for continuing to make healthy choices when it's
| late and you're tired, or improving a meal that already requires
| substantial effort. Fatigue is your most formidable enemy, and
| "lazy cooking" techniques ward it off.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| Any websites for healthy lazy cooking options?
| cschneid wrote:
| Sheet pan roasted stuff is a great lazy meal that the
| grandparent comment was discussing.
|
| Our personal favorite sheet pan meal is: chopped red onion,
| chopped bell peppers, cherry tomatoes, box of dry gnocchi.
| Toss it all with a bit of oil and salt and pepper, and
| whatever seasoning you may want, spread on baking sheet and
| bake for a while until veggies look tasty.
|
| Serve with a few shreds of parm or other hard cheese.
|
| 5 minutes to prep, 20-30 min to cook. A bowl to wash, and
| it's mostly veggies and the components sub out really easily
| for anything you have in your fridge.
| fudged71 wrote:
| I switched from table salt to "No Salt" or "Lite Salt" which
| cuts the sodium with potassium. It isn't noticeable in most
| dishes, and it's a great simple substitution for getting an
| important mineral.
| gdebel wrote:
| 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-added, except in Asian
| restaurants (and even there, food is often sweetened). Of course
| it is biased because I have no access usually to a kitchen when I
| travel.
|
| I think sugar is the main problem (not fat) and I'm not convinced
| calory count is key. We did not evolved to eat processed sugar,
| which is not easily found naturally in the environment.
|
| My 2 cents: - eat as much vegetables as you want (learn to cook
| them, with a little bit of olive oil) - eat as much fish as you
| want (no need to cook! Low temperature baking, 1h at 70-80deg,
| the best cooking you'll ever have) - eat meat in reasonable, "as-
| if-you-had-to-hunt-it-with-a-bow" quantities - ban every
| processed food, sauce, appetizer.... If you would not eat a spoon
| of every single ingredient of some food, don't eat it. - ban all
| added sugar, except (real) honey in reasonable proportions.
|
| This implies to know/learn how to cook (not so hard but this is
| easier when the local/family culture allowed you to learn
| passively).
|
| It looks like this is hard to do in the USA: you don't easily
| find, for example, yogurt without sugar added. (Or I didn't look
| at the right place, once again this is not judgemental).
|
| Generally speaking, it is easy to find online high-level cooking
| courses, but hard to learn the basics of how to cook your onions
| or tomatoes in different ways in everyday life, or make an
| healthy meal with what's left in the fridge; this could be
| interesting to have.
|
| --edited for typing errors
| LegitShady wrote:
| My recommendation, if you're staying at a hotel, is to ask if
| they have a BBQ for guest use. Most do, and then you can stop
| at the grocery store and buy some chicken/fish, some vegetables
| (also a roll of aluminum foil), and cook it on the bbq.
|
| I travel quite a bit for work (at least, when there's no
| pandemic) and even though my per diem would cover restaurants,
| I have almost completely switched over to hotel BBQs and eat
| better for way less money.
| slothtrop wrote:
| I held much the same view but it occurs to me that in many East
| Asian countries, added sugar to dishes is common and overall
| sugar consumption not necessarily that low. Not to say it's
| healthy, but it seems an insufficient explanation.
|
| The proliferation of junk foods, boxed refined products, seems
| higher in North America. As you say dining out tends to
| comprise the Standard American Diet of high fat and carbs, low
| fiber.
| nugget wrote:
| Remember that (almost) everything in America is a business.
| Sugar is cheap and addictive. I had an "aha" moment when
| digging into Starbucks' nutritional labels. I realized that,
| with certain types of drinks, Starbucks had essentially
| legitimized drinking a milkshake for breakfast. I'm not sure
| how much that contributed to their success but it must surely
| have been a component.
| outworlder wrote:
| > I'm puzzled by how difficult it is to "eat normally"
|
| That very much depends on your location. High tourism locations
| will often have lots of junk food places. If you can move
| larger distances (i.e. rent a car and the like) you'll find
| wonderful and cheap restaurants pretty much anywhere. Even in
| otherwise expensive places like SF or NY.
|
| Here's the problem though: portion sizes are _enormous_ . It
| took quite a bit of time to adapt, and adapt I did, if my
| measurements are any indication. If you want healthy portions,
| you'll either waste food, or you'll have to ask for a take out
| box. Essentially, a lot of places will serve you portions that
| are enough for two meals.
|
| Ingredient availability varies a lot. In larger centers you can
| find almost anything you could possibility want. Even farmer's
| markets if you are lucky, which will often have locally sourced
| produce at lower prices compared to big supermarket chains (and
| sometimes even lower if you get there near closing hour ;) )
| dialamac wrote:
| > We did not evolved to eat processed sugar, which is not
| easily found naturally in the environment
|
| The flour you make French bread with is not found any more or
| less naturally in the environment than the sugar you get from
| cane or beet.
|
| This whole thing about evolution and nutrition is entirely
| pseudoscientific woo.
|
| If humans had to eat the same way as our ancestors (ie actual
| paleo, not some hipster fad diet) humanity would have died out
| long time ago.
|
| The French thing makes this all the more ironic... I can't
| imagine much more triumph in modern processing than the five
| mother sauces.
|
| Clearly the American diet has a crazy oversupply of sugar...
| fructose, glucose, sucrose... at the amounts we're talking
| about in the average American diet it doesn't fucking matter
| (making the whole HFCS controversy always a joke).
| agumonkey wrote:
| Few years ago I had some eating disorder, I could only eat raw
| vegetables.
|
| My diet habit shifted 180deg in 48h, it's a weird realization:
|
| 1) eating raw vegetables tickles your brain differently (raw
| veggies make you feel full faster)
|
| 2) most probably because there's no fat nor sugar added (which
| makes you want to eat more I guess)
|
| 3) even dressing is bad, so raw is best to have a natural
| negative feedback system
|
| 4) even the most mundane raw veggies have a lot of flavour.. I
| eat carrots like M&M's nowadays, it's sweet. Same for lettuce
| or tomato. I really think modern western culture is hurtful
| there.
| borski wrote:
| Fat actually satiates you more than almost anything else, so
| I suspect your culprit is sugar, not fat. If you cooked those
| veggies in some butter or olive oil, I would bet you'd get
| full faster.
| novok wrote:
| Yup I agree. I call it the food gravity problem of america.
| Trying to eat healthy here is like trying to beat gravity:
|
| This youtube video goes into more detail about the US problem
| compared to japan: "Why is it so Easy to be Thin in Japan?"
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lr4MmmWQtZM
| tvanantwerp wrote:
| Last year I went to Europe for a two week vacation. I stuffed
| myself like a greedy pig for two weeks, but I barely gained any
| weight on my return to the US. The next week, I went on a staff
| retreat for only 3 days and stuffed myself again. That time, I
| gained more than twice what I'd gained in Europe.
|
| I'm convinced that the quality of European food is, on average,
| vastly superior to what's available in America.
| [deleted]
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| I don't understand how you could possibly think this is a
| meaningful data point at all.
| PoachedSausage wrote:
| Not to worry, you guys will be sending us boat loads of
| Chlorine Washed Chicken and pink liquid cow shortly:
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-47426138
| starpilot wrote:
| I remember a question of MetaFilter about this. A bunch of
| Europeans said that whenever they went on vacation in the US,
| they lost weight. You're on vacation, walking around all day.
| [deleted]
| dnhz wrote:
| 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.
| gdebel wrote:
| 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.
| lumberingjack wrote:
| As an American that avoids sugar like the toxin it is I agree.
| The food manufacturers put it in everything. I got an off brand
| of milk the other day because of the shortage, a local brand it
| had added sugar, I took two gulps and said "WTF". Bread it's
| like a staple now in baking white bread fuck it pack it with
| sugar from corn. Pizza make %50 of the sauce sugar. Drinks,
| would you like 100MG of liquid sugars in every $5 bottle?
| Coffee: Have some bean filtered water with that Mocha sugar
| sludge.
| jacobush wrote:
| Bean filtered water, that's what we had during the war. What
| is your war? :-)
| voisin wrote:
| When the production of sugar and related sweeteners is among
| the most subsidized industries in the country, is it any wonder
| that these find their way into everything?
|
| And a handy side effect for producers is that satiety is short
| lived, leading to repeated demand in the short term when
| included in a product.
| fudged71 wrote:
| The problem with restaurants (globally!) is they have zero
| responsibility or incentive to serve food that fits the
| nutritional needs of their customers.
|
| * Restaurants don't sell food, they sell satiation, taste,
| brand, ambiance, customer experience.
|
| * You rarely can ask for an ingredient list, you often can't
| see who made your food, it is a black box in a black box.
|
| * All we really care about are omissions: the list of
| chemicals, macronutrients, hormones, and ingredients that are
| excluded from our menu items.
|
| Not only does this disconnect us from the ingredients in our
| food... I think this is a huge problem that compounds toward
| multiple health crises such as obesity and diabetes. Chefs are
| seen as food experts, yet the nutrition aspect of restaurant
| food is entirely ignored. We expect individuals themselves to
| be their own nutrition experts (curating meals and ingredients
| for their own health).
|
| I don't know what the solution is. But at the very least I
| think every restaurant owes its customers the macros and
| ingredients for every product they serve, in accessible
| formats. It should be easier to get that information onto your
| phone than a tweet. Food receipts should list macro and calorie
| breakdowns. Tools for nutrition analysis should be free,
| standard, integrated, and widespread. etc
| choeger wrote:
| Quick remark: Sugar, as other carbohydrates, is _cheap_. It
| also tastes well, objectively (as much as taste can be
| objectively measured).
|
| So if you go for industrial-level food production, you end up
| with a higher proportion of sugar than what would be considered
| healthy. Sugar per se ist not bad at all (try to have an apple
| without it ;)). But our economy demands cheap, somewhat tasty,
| calories. Hence we end up with a lot of sugar or carbohydrates
| in general.
|
| Any diet that rules out carbs works well because of that, not
| because of some intrinsic property of carbs.
|
| As a French person you would probably never consider giving up
| on a good croissant or baguette, but in France these things are
| _expensive_. I doubt anyone gives their kids fresh croissant
| before school every day.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Are croissant expensive, look to be about 50 euro-cents each
| in France (about the same as UK; _hypermarche_ /supermarket)?
| That's cheap, right?
|
| Bake at home ones are half that.
|
| Cheapest "fresh" at Carrefour are 20 euro-cents.
|
| https://www.carrefour.fr/s?q=croissant
|
| Are village bakeries still a thing in France?
| elcomet wrote:
| > Are village bakeries still a thing in France?
|
| Very much so. You find bakeries in every village / town,
| usually less than 15 min walking in any city. I don't know
| many people in France who buy supermarket croissant (except
| when you buy very large quantities for groups for example).
| And it's very common for people to go to their local bakery
| (small, 2 or 3 employee) to buy bread every two days.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Merci, je n'y suis pas alle depuis une vingtaine
| d'annees; J'adore un pain-au-choc chaud le matin.
| abellerose wrote:
| I've never known that people add sugar to their apples. I
| have lived in US & Canada and I find that odd people need to
| add sugar to enjoy an apple.
|
| Croissants or baguettes are not a daily thing if my
| assumption is correct. My experience is buying them when
| walking home from work and if I'm in the mood because bread
| isn't generally healthy for people compared to something else
| that happens to be better.
|
| edit: okay, I now understand the comment is about apples
| having natural sugar.
| citruspi wrote:
| Yeah, I think you misread the original comment. The
| "average" apple contains nearly 10g of sugar[0].
|
| [0]: https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-
| details/171688/n...
| modoc wrote:
| I think he means that apples have a lot of sugar in them,
| which is why they taste so good.
| abnry wrote:
| 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.
| karpathy wrote:
| 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.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| 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...
| labelbias wrote:
| Fortunately, apples are not candy bar. The metabolic
| effects of eating 1kg of apples is completely different
| from eating glucose and fructose extracted from those 1kg
| of apples.
|
| Natural sugar is magnitudes times better than
| processed/added sugar.
|
| Fructose consumed through fruits has never had a similar
| metabolic effect as high-fructose corn syrup.
| gdebel wrote:
| Haha, you're right kids don't usually eat croissant before
| school. This is more a Sunday morning dish (when daddy had
| the courage to wake up earlier to buy them). Good bread is
| not expensive in France by the way ! (There would be another
| revolution if that was the case ;-)
| eatbitseveryday wrote:
| > you don't easily find, for example, yogurt without sugar
| added
|
| I have a difficult time finding these, as well. The culture
| here (spoken as an American) is to avoid fats, which is why
| most products advertise "no fat" (yoghurt with no fat seems
| like a strange contradiction to me).
|
| > in Asian restaurants (and even there, food is often
| sweetened)
|
| This is also true from my experiences. Chinese restaurants add
| sugar due to believing that's part of the American palette.
| (For Chinese foods, there's also a distinction between
| "typical" and "authentic" styles, and most Americans are
| unaware of the latter.)
| gdebel wrote:
| Exactly! No-fat is a strange concept. Fat is not inherently
| bad, too much added fat is. But I'm pretty sure you can eat
| 500mg of natural good yogurt a day without being sick. Well,
| I never tried.
| dpoochieni wrote:
| As a Mexican I agree (even if I think hating on sugar is
| misguided, in an otherwise healthy diet you would be
| sufficiently healthy to deal with it in reasonable amounts.)
| The US simply has such a mind boggling reliance on empty
| calories and overall low-quality food, with brothless soups,
| iceberg lettuce salads, and frying everything in cheapo oils
| like sunflower, canola or similar. If I do not cook at home, or
| choose very carefully, or as you say spend the big bucks at a
| fine restaurant, I simply cannot find nutritious good quality
| food. I now realized I was spoiled growing up by having two
| parents who love to cook good stuff and find good eats.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| > I think sugar is the main problem (not fat)
|
| Most of the research is that it's both. (Tt's the worst when
| fat and sugar are together) Specifically food is more
| rewarding, denser, cheaper, and easier to find than it used to
| be, so we overeat it. Same thing happens with almost any animal
| that's given ad libitum access to the american diet.
|
| It seems there are two societal solutions, extremely heavy
| handed government interventions to ban tasty food or we invent
| a weight loss pill.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| I can't find the study, so take this with a grain of salt:
|
| There was a study that determined that the reason for the
| sugar+fat combo was that sugar "scratched" arteries and made
| them easier for fat to stick to.
|
| Just plain fat is OK, because it doesn't stick to healthy
| arteries. But combine (highly processed) sugar and fat, then
| you get an insulin spike AND the fat clogs your arteries more
| easily.
| nxc18 wrote:
| It doesn't need to be extreme, taxes are proven to be
| effective and are quite simple. They solve the problem of
| unhealthy food being too easily available by raising the
| price to reflect the true cost to society (the externalities,
| like obesity). Junk food is only cheaper than healthy food
| because our society has made that choice, and it can just as
| easily choose to change that.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| That's great news though I'm a little suspicious, where
| have taxes caused a significant change in body weight?
|
| > Junk food is only cheaper than healthy food because our
| society has made that choice, and it can just as easily
| choose to change that.
|
| Junk food is cheaper because it's easier to make junk food.
| If you want to make food more palatable cheaply, make it
| denser, fattier, and sweeter. i.e. turn it into junk food.
| take_a_breath wrote:
| Look into the government's subsidies of corn. We have
| decided, as a country, to incentivize growing corn. From
| here, it's not hard to understand why high fructose corn
| syrup is in almost everything packaged in the US.
| thebean11 wrote:
| 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.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| 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 due to
| the way mass production and transportation of food goes in to
| the US. It wasn't like that. There is nothing wrong with our
| soil. I spent some time in India, Thailand, Vietnam, Japan
| and Korea and the veggies are almost like they grow in your
| home garden. Go to a store and pick out a tomato and it is
| impossibly good. America has farmers markets in every city,
| even in some of the most impoverished cities. But that's not
| where the majority of the middle class goes to shop for their
| vegetables.
|
| Try growing veggies in your own garden on American soil and
| its gonna taste amazing.
|
| Don't worry, Asian population wants malls, walmarts, and
| giant grocery stores with similar tasteless food. It is
| happening at a massive unprecedented scale.
| gdebel wrote:
| 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.
| dorian-graph wrote:
| This may sound dumb, but any suggestions on how to eat (i.e. a
| recipe book) in what you describe as "normal"?
| txcwpalpha wrote:
| The US has its issues with food (in particular, lower class
| individuals have trouble finding cheap food that isn't junk
| food), but I'm surprised to read the rest of your comments.
|
| I travel all around the US a lot for work (or did, pre-covid)
| and all the way down to your fast food restaurants all the way
| up to fancy $500/plate places, I've never once found it
| difficult to eat a "standard meat-with-vegetable-without-sugar-
| added". I would say that 80% of my meals are exactly that. I've
| never once been to a single non-fast-food restaurant where they
| didn't have multiple different kinds of vegetables on the menu.
|
| There's certainly an issue with portion size at most US
| restaurants, but I've never found it difficult to get a plate
| of plain roasted vegetables with lightly seasoned fish, for
| example.
|
| >It looks like this is hard to do in the USA: you don't easily
| find, for example, yogurt without sugar added.
|
| Yogurt in particular is not really popular in the US, so you
| will not find it in many restaurants. You can, however, find
| packaged sugarfree yogurt in most convenience stores and
| certainly every grocery store if that's your thing. Other than
| yogurt, there are plenty of sugarfree snacks widely available.
| Starbucks is on every corner and sells plain vegetables, plain
| fruit, plain eggs, etc, for example.
|
| I suspect your complaints are mostly rooted in simply not being
| aware of certain brand names or which stores are known for what
| type of food, because all of the things you mentioned
| definitely are available as long as you aren't going to
| McDonald's or Five Guys for every meal.
| groby_b wrote:
| I would really like to know which fast food restaurant allows
| "normal" eating. They all use sugar, they are all way too
| fatty and salty. And vegetables are _hard_. (No, fried
| potatoes do not count)
|
| > "You can, however, find packaged sugarfree yogurt" That
| stuff is a miracle of modern chemistry. It has, however, only
| a passing resemblance to actual yoghurt. Nobody who grew up
| in Europe really wants sugar-free. It's "no sugar added" that
| matters. Nobody wants fat-free, either. And there are quite a
| few studies making the point that these "healthy" food
| actually contribute to weight gain.
|
| "Starbucks is on every corner and sells plain vegetables,
| plain fruit, plain eggs"... if you're lucky. Usually, it's
| sold out fairly quickly.
|
| In general, yes, getting healthy food in the US is much
| harder than it is in Europe. The vast majority of food here
| is processed to within an inch of its life, and the remainder
| is _incredibly_ expensive, because it 's treated as a luxury
| good.
|
| I've spent a few decades in Europe, as well as a few in the
| US. I'm fairly confident I know which food I can get where in
| either place - and the US is severely broken. Trust me, I
| wish it weren't. But healthy food is difficult, and becomes
| extra-hard as you leave bigger cities with specialty stores
| behind.
| txcwpalpha wrote:
| Name literally _any_ fast food place and you can get a
| plain salad with tomatoes, lettuce, sometimes spinach,
| carrots, broccoli, etc, as well as various types of plain
| grilled meat if you want protein. It won 't be delicious,
| but vegetables certainly are _not_ hard to get, even at
| fast food places. And that 's _before_ considering places
| that actually make a concerted effort to provide healthier
| options like Panera Bread, which has an even higher variety
| of different vegetables you can order.
|
| >"Starbucks is on every corner and sells plain vegetables,
| plain fruit, plain eggs"... if you're lucky. Usually, it's
| sold out fairly quickly.
|
| I've been throughout the US, both urban and rural, and
| never noticed a particular issue with it being sold out.
| And Starbucks was just one example; there are plenty of
| convenience stores that sell the same. I can't remember the
| last time I was in a gas station or 7-Eleven that didn't
| have plain fruit or plain nuts available.
|
| I've been abroad as well (mostly in Asia, though some
| months in Europe) and I really do not at all have the same
| experience as you. Eating healthily is trivial in the US. I
| will acknowledge that it is not actively shoved in your
| face (sometimes you have to specifically ask that a dish be
| made without sauce, for example) but I have never, _ever_
| had a problem with the availability of healthy food.
|
| If anything, I found that eating healthily in Asia was
| actually more difficult because in many situations it
| actually is not possible to get a dish that isn't based on
| some type of high-sodium/sugar sauce, white rice, or
| noodles. (The nice thing about Asia though is that even if
| their dishes are full of sugar and sodium, the portion
| sizes are relatively small, so it isn't as big of a deal.)
| groby_b wrote:
| This is really interesting - I'd love to sit down and
| compare notes how we arrived at two completely different
| views of the food world. (It even holds for the "plain
| nuts" comment - I find it incredibly hard to get nuts
| that aren't roasted and/or salted)
| david_shaw wrote:
| _> I find it incredibly hard to get nuts that aren 't
| roasted and/or salted_
|
| I don't see plain nuts as often as I'd like in stores,
| but they are super easy to find online:
| https://www.amazon.com/s?k=raw+almonds
| gdebel wrote:
| You are right you can find vegetables. But they will have
| a weird taste and/or have a sweetened sauce (or, you just
| have to sweeten it in order to eat it). This is the same
| in fast-food restaurants in France thought, Not a critic
| toward the US
| atopia wrote:
| I absolutely agree - sugar is definitely the issue. Most
| individuals don't get enough healthy fats due to marketing
| tactics. Stuff like Omega 3s and general unsaturated fats are
| incredibly important for brain function, reparation of tissue,
| etc.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| I am totally not convinced by this argument against sugar. Yes,
| sugar is calorie dense. Yes, it's easy to eat a lot of calories
| from sugar. But in the end, even eating NO sugar, if you eat a
| ton of things, you'll get fat. An then you go on to recommend
| honey as though there is something magic about it and not
| pretty much the same thing with sugar.
| chubot wrote:
| 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
| when people reach their 30 's (although there are signs
| earlier)
|
| I read Michael Pollan's books (Omnivore's Dilemma, etc.) 10-15
| years ago and they opened my eyes to how broken this country is
| in terms of food.
|
| https://michaelpollan.com/books/
|
| It's funny he is considered "liberal" here but it's just common
| sense in the rest of the world. The thesis is actually
| "conservative": eat things that your grandmother would consider
| food. If your grandmother wouldn't recognize it, don't eat it.
| Did your grandmother (or great grandmother) cook with high-
| fructose corn syrup? Or processed oils / margarine?
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| I live near a college town, with food from dozens of nations. I
| can have crepes for breakfast, Vietnamese for lunch, good
| Italian for dinner. Tomorrow: steak and eggs at a diner for
| breakfast, sushi for lunch then dinner at a nice Czech place
| with cabbage and sausage. All cooked by immigrants or
| descendants of those heritages.
|
| But no, not typical. Most Americans buy all their food at the
| Dollar Store, and its everything you say.
| metrokoi wrote:
| 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.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| I imagine eating a spoonful of pure steviol would be
| unpleasant, the acceptable daily intake is at most 12mg per kg
| of body weight. It's fine for you otherwise, and at a
| reasonable dose makes a great sugar substitute.
| mettamage wrote:
| Ah, the Americans... ;-)
|
| As a Dutch person living in Amsterdam, I completely agree. I
| noticed when I visited SF a few times (and California in
| general) that:
|
| - Vegetables are more expensive
|
| - Bread is sweetened (there goes my breakdfast)
|
| - Bread sucks (yep, I said it, basic bread should be thrown
| into the thrash can)
|
| - Basic cheese in the US is a new species, and I am afraid of
| it
|
| I went around these 2 issues by buying the highest quality
| French bread and imported cheese (how I missed _actual_ France
| with their _actual_ French bread... : '( ). While it was
| expensive, I could at least make a breakfast that I eat in
| Amsterdam (bread with cheese with butter, unsweetened).
|
| The butter was normal. I have to give the US that.
|
| Though, I do like what you guys can do with oatmeal. It taught
| me that the normal Dutch breakfast is uninspiring as hell,
| haha. So all in all, it was reall a positive experience, but
| it's so much nicer when you meet American people showing how
| they eat breakfast rather than traveling around in the country
| and simply guessing how to eat normal (normal being unsweetened
| / healthy -- I find that normal...).
|
| Also, I found the US amazing with certain dinner options (e.g.
| sushi burito's).
| ricardobeat wrote:
| It is also becoming increasingly difficult to find "plain
| bread" in Dutch supermarkets. The majority of them now have
| additives like soy lethicin, 15 kinds of leftover
| flours/powders from some other industrial process, even the
| 'artisan' labeled ones.
| mettamage wrote:
| That saddens me. I must confess that I'm used to my brands,
| so I don't look around that much at the Albert Heijn (the
| supermarket I go to, for reference: an upscale-ish
| supermarket that tries to be normal and sort of is?
| _Looking at fellow Dutchies here to see what they think_ ).
| timvdalen wrote:
| Seconded!
| metrokoi wrote:
| The additives are there for a reason. More bread with more
| additives is sold because people prefer that type of bread,
| whether for convenience, price, or they simply prefer the
| flavor and texture.
| GuiA wrote:
| San Francisco is an anomaly as far as food in the US is
| concerned. I'm French and have been living in SF for close to
| a decade (and Louisiana before that, so I've been spoiled
| when it comes to "american food" that doesn't suck), and
| there are very few things I cannot find here - people are
| into food, and if you take the time to look for specialty
| stores you will find them.
|
| Of course there's the cost difference, but then again that
| goes both ways - I can find avocados, strawberries, etc. here
| of a quality and at a price you'd be hard pressed to find in
| France. Tbh, I'd argue that as far as meat/seafood/etc. is
| concerned, you can get better quality in SF than you can in
| 90% of France, where your main option will be an Intermarche
| or a Carrefour.
|
| I'd also argue that the pastries you find at Tartine/Four
| Barrel/etc. (they typically source from a variety of bakeries
| from around the bay) are way beyond, in quality, what you'd
| find in 90% of French bakeries (the glory days of master
| bakers are long gone, and a lot of it is frozen crap these
| days, although it's been getting better in the last few
| years). I suspect that by this point there are more world
| class bakers by square kilometer in the Bay Area than there
| are in France, perhaps with the exception of Paris/Lyon
| (quite a few that I've met went to France to study baking
| though, so our national pride isn't completely destroyed). I
| bake my own bread and can buy freshly milled flour from the
| The Mill, which would also be hard to find in France unless
| you had personal connections.
|
| But of course, I haven't gotten to the main part - which is
| the insane diversity of food stores and restaurants here. No
| matter what kind of south american, african, middle eastern,
| asian cuisine you want to make/eat, you'll be able to find
| it. That is not the case at all in France.
| [deleted]
| GordonS wrote:
| > Bread is sweetened > Bread sucks
|
| I spent some months working in Houston a while back, and this
| drove me crazy! I mean, why on earth would you sweeten
| bread?!
|
| Another thing that struck me was how many ingredients
| everything seemed to have - you could pick up just about any
| item in a grocery store, and it was pretty much guaranteed to
| contain 10-30 ingredients. Even the bread.
|
| > Basic cheese in the US
|
| This too - most cheese was of the horrible processed variety,
| with little flavour and an odd texture. And of course, dozens
| of ingredients. And of course, there was sugar in it.
|
| Another thing - corn syrup. Not content with putting sugar in
| _everything_ , corn syrup was added too.
| metrokoi wrote:
| It's expensive to make good bread. Not in terms of raw
| materials, but in terms of labor. A machine cannot make a
| quality loaf of bread, you must gently knead it and let it
| ride with human hands. There is also a large cost in the
| right-on-time delivery of "good" bread. There is still
| quality bread sold at my grocery store, but that kind of
| bread isn't a staple because people don't want to go to the
| grocery store every other day when their non-stabilized
| bread gets eaten, goes stale, or goes moldy.
|
| I am defending "bad" bread because no one ever does, and
| it's really not comparable to "real" bread because the uses
| are different. It's cheaper, last much longer, and is
| better suited for sandwiches and toast because of the
| square shape.
| GordonS wrote:
| I'm not hating on cheap bread. You can find cheap, basic
| batch loaves anywhere in the western world - but the crap
| I found in the US was the worst.
|
| It doesn't have to be _that_ bad, it doesn 't have to
| have lot's of sugar and corn syrup in it, and it doesn't
| have to have 20+ ingredients.
| mettamage wrote:
| > It doesn't have to be that bad, it doesn't have to have
| lot's of sugar and corn syrup in it
|
| This is my experience as well.
| shawxe wrote:
| In general, I agree with a lot of what you're saying here about
| eating more vegetables and way less sugar being the way to go
| health-wise, but I do want to respond to some specific things
| you've said.
|
| > 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-added, except in Asian restaurants
|
| Restaurants are typically not where I go to eat healthy food
| anywhere in the world, although I do think you have a pointed
| that American restaurants are often relatively junk food
| oriented.
|
| > ban every processed food, sauce, appetizer....
|
| There is nothing inherently wrong with "processed" food; it is
| entirely possible to use industrial processes to make a
| perfectly healthy and wholesome food product. Take for example,
| (this is by no means an endorsement) Larabar [1]. They make
| snack bars that typically contain 2-3 ingredients that are all
| just dried fruit. Should they be banned as "processed" food
| because of how they are made?
|
| > If you would not eat a spoon of every single ingredient of
| some food, don't eat it
|
| This is a ridiculous statement and is one of the main reasons
| why I'm commenting. I wouldn't eat a spoonful of yeast, should
| I not eat bread? I wouldn't eat a spoonful of salt, should I
| not eat... anything?
|
| > It looks like this is hard to do in the USA: you don't easily
| find, for example, yogurt without sugar added.
|
| I've never lived in an area in the United States where I've
| ever had any problem finding anything like this.
|
| [1] https://www.larabar.com/
| jfim wrote:
| > There is nothing inherently wrong with "processed" food
|
| 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).
|
| Processed food is fine assuming you're aware of what's in it,
| how it's processed, and make sure you're not overeating any
| of it.
| shawxe wrote:
| > 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 to be troubling. Just
| because something is a frozen dinner doesn't necessarily
| mean that it's bad for you. Whether or not something is
| good or bad for you is based entirely on its chemical
| composition; it has absolutely nothing to do with how it
| has been put together or what form factor its being
| distributed in.
|
| It may sound like I'm being pedantic, but I think these
| kinds of short cuts are actually genuinely harmful. I've
| known many people who have thought "cheeseburgers from
| McDonald's are unhealthy not because cheeseburgers are
| unhealthy but because they are processed" and then gone
| right ahead and made themselves cheeseburgers that have
| three to four times the calories, fat, and salt of the
| McDonald's counterpart.
|
| Does that make McDonald's a healthy option? Absolutely not.
| But why is McDonald's unhealthy? It's because the food they
| serve is unhealthy. It's not that the food that is served
| at McDonald's is unhealthy because McDonald's is unhealthy.
|
| > Processed food is fine assuming you're aware of what's in
| it, how it's processed, and make sure you're not overeating
| any of it.
|
| s/Processed//
|
| If people want to eat healthier, they need to pay attention
| to the ingredients in the things they're eating. If we're
| going to regulate something, we need to regulate the
| ingredients that go into things people eat. Using buzz
| words like "processed" and "ultra-processed" with
| definitions that are, at best, not well understood by the
| general population just leads to people working around
| personal/social rules/regulations.
|
| Just because your t-bone steak is local organic grass-fed
| whatever does not make it good for you. That food is just
| not healthy, even if it is the only ingredient. We did not
| evolve eating food like that with any kind of regularity.
| If you want to be healthy, you need to just not eat it.
| andai wrote:
| So, this mean that McDonalds is as healthy as the burgers
| I make at home? I was under the impression that their
| food is loaded with sugar and strange additives.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| > So, this mean that McDonalds is as healthy as the
| burgers I make at home?
|
| Sure, as long as you use similar ingredients.
|
| > I was under the impression that their food is loaded
| with sugar and strange additives.
|
| It's not. The beef patty really is just beef. The bun is
| white bread, just like you can buy at the grocery store.
| And the condiments are self-evident. It's just that that
| they've nailed the production process so precisely that
| what you get tastes almost exactly the same, every time.
|
| A lot of people have this warped, black and white view of
| "healthy" and "unhealthy", but the reality is that it's a
| spectrum, and you can get reasonably healthy food at
| McDonalds but eat like crap at home.
| antepodius wrote:
| And that's what makes them bad. I've always thought
| 'processed' was a pretty vague marketing term. A lot like
| people talking about 'chemicals'.
| antepodius wrote:
| And that's what makes them bad. I've always thought
| 'processed' was a pretty vague marketing term. A lot like
| people talking about 'chemicals'.
|
| Yeah, modern food is terrible.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I resonate with the way you think.
|
| A lot of non-technical people get hung up on the
| marketing terms than actually thinking through the
| fundamentals.
|
| For e.g. "Handspun ice-cream! OMG!". Uhh..what difference
| does it make if it is hand-spun or machine-spun? It is
| not tool of spinning ice-cream, but what the _process_
| is. To majority of non-techy people, processed or
| machined or anything to do with automating a _method_ is
| highly repulsive - thanks to the hipster marketing.
|
| The general take away is - "Automated machines will never
| replace the touch of the hand"... oh really? then how
| come we can make insanely precise things called
| semiconductors in almost a completely automated fashion.
| Some fabs don't even have operators inside, just
| technicians or engineers. This is an extreme example just
| to make a point.
| dpoochieni wrote:
| But then there are things that do make a difference. Take
| for instance homogenized vs non-homogenized milk. This
| processing destroys lactoferrin which is a molecule that
| strongly binds iron and reduces its absorption. Before
| someone argues this is actually bad, understand first why
| milk has lactoferrin and how this apparently only
| cosmetic process of homogenization has nutritional and
| health consequences.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Definitely, if you want imperfections, artisan value and
| appreciate craftsmanship, there is nothing wrong with
| handmade goods.
|
| Just don't tell me that your Japanese knife when hand
| sharpened cannot be as good as something done by a
| robotic arm. Otherwise, I have some news - your Japanese
| knife's edge sharpness(not durability) is no match for a
| surgical scalpel which is made by millions in quantities
| in fully automated fashion for less than $20. Or even a
| razor blade that costs $0.10.
| nordsieck wrote:
| > Does that make McDonald's a healthy option? Absolutely
| not. But why is McDonald's unhealthy? It's because the
| food they serve is unhealthy. It's not that the food that
| is served at McDonald's is unhealthy because McDonald's
| is unhealthy.
|
| It sounds to me like this is the crux of your argument.
|
| I think I'd agree and hopefully add some clarifying
| points.
|
| 1. Processing
|
| Processing doesn't necessarily make things less healthy.
| It depends on the type of processing and what is being
| processed.
|
| If you blend a steak, it isn't less good for you
| (although it is more susceptible to food poisoning).
| Adding heat to things like meat can actually make them
| more bio-available since they're easier to digest. Adding
| heat to vegetables can break down certain vitamins and
| make the result less healthy.
|
| Additionally, heating food in certain ways can make it
| less healthy because of the cooking process. Anything
| that chars the food or introduces partially combusted
| hydrocarbons (burned cooking oil, grilling/smoking, etc.)
| adds carcinogens to the food.
|
| 2. Macro-nutrient profile
|
| Food satiety is relatively well understood: protein,
| water and fiber are all appetite suppressants. People
| need a certain amount of fat and probably desire at least
| a small amount of carbs (although the last part can be
| overcome in some people).
|
| For a sedentary person, a diet high in carbs and fat is
| probably not good, as it will result in weight gain.
|
| For someone with higher energy needs - say someone
| building a trail through the woods with a mattock - they
| may need to eat 6000 Calories per day just to maintain
| their body weight.
|
| For a sedentary person, a diet high in protein will be
| distasteful and probably wasteful.
|
| For professional athletes competing in strength sports,
| they may eat over 2g / kg of body mass of protein as part
| of a diet tailored to their goals.
|
| Broadly speaking, in order to promote the health of a
| person, the macro-nutrient profile of their food should
| match their body and their activity levels.
|
| 3. Micro-nutrients
|
| Eating vegetables are good for you. The more raw the
| vegetables are, the better they are for you (probably).
| There is often a trade-off that needs to be struck
| between palatability and optimum health benefit.
|
| There is also a wide array of micro-nutrients that can
| come from eating meat of various sorts.
|
| There are many conflicting opinions here, without a broad
| consensus, so I'll leave it at that.
|
| 4. Weird stuff
|
| Often times people will bring up ingredients in processed
| food that they don't know what it is, or even how to
| pronounce it.
|
| I don't think people are bad to want to avoid stuff like
| that.
|
| But for the most part, I have real doubts that this is
| the cause an health problems in even a small fraction of
| consumers.
| gdebel wrote:
| I can eat a spoon of salt, or yeast. It is not particularly
| good but I know what it is, and I know the toxic dose. I
| won't eat a spoon of sodium benzoate or E324 or I don't know
| which food additive, I can't buy it in a food store, it is
| not "food" by itself. So I don't eat it :-)
| shawxe wrote:
| I'm not sure a big spoon of salt will make you any less
| sick than a big spoon of sodium benzoate, but that's fair.
| I definitely agree that people should avoid eating things
| they do not understand; I think most of my disagreement
| with your original post is semantic, but I do still
| appreciate it. :-)
| saagarjha wrote:
| Sodium benzoate is limited in concentration by the FDA to
| about 0.1% (by weight), so there is certainly not a spoon
| of sodium benzoate in your food.
| dahfizz wrote:
| You can get a burger, or salad (usually with an option to add
| chicken) at any "American" restaurant. Does that fulfill your
| standard meal?
| ve55 wrote:
| >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.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| What were the changes you made that had biggest impacts?
| dmix wrote:
| Unrelated but I just noticed `hydroxy-` (for ex: beta-
| hydroxybutyrate) means hydrogen + oxygen, whereas something like
| `hydro-` (for ex: hydrochloride) is just hydrogen. One of those
| obvious things you read all the time and not notice but obvious
| in retrospect.
| k__ wrote:
| Isn't the problem of many weight lifters that "lean body mass"
| isn't consumed before the fat, but at the same time?
| meisterbrendan wrote:
| I'd love someone qualified to answer this... feel like this
| happens to me all the time
| RoidzForeva5p wrote:
| 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.
| tvanantwerp wrote:
| I've had a similar DEXA experience. My last scan put me at 30%
| fat, whereas my scale estimate 16% and a 3D external scan
| estimated 18%. My appearance does not match typical pictures of
| someone at 30% body fat. In fact, at 30% I would be in the 99th
| percentile of % fat mass for my height and weight--something I
| think unlikely. Like the author, I was in a fasted state of
| ketosis at the time.
| nexuist wrote:
| I must say I find it funny that the head of AI at Tesla used 1)
| computer memory 2) internal combustion engines as examples to
| relate to human biology :P
| julianeon wrote:
| 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.
| fudged71 wrote:
| Yes, I would have liked to hear more about his experiences with
| the other types of biohacking he mentioned!
| tonystubblebine wrote:
| 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.
| tvanantwerp wrote:
| I recently found this fairly thorough article on measuring
| blood glucose for self-experimentation:
| https://quantifiedself.com/blog/qs-guide-testing-food-with-b...
| gandreani wrote:
| > As a result I've improved a number of biomarkers (e.g. resting
| heart rate, resting blood glucose, strength, endurance,
| nutritional deficiencies, etc). I wish I could say I feel
| significantly better or sharper, but honestly I feel about the
| same. But the numbers tell me I'm supposed to be on a better path
| and I think I am content with that .
|
| I appreciate this honesty
| fudged71 wrote:
| What I notice personally is that whenever my health improves, I
| only feel it a small amount incrementally.
|
| When I stop training, I quickly feel sluggish, with brain fog,
| muscle knots, difficulty sleeping, etc.
|
| This is mostly a reminder to myself that my body wants movement
| and good nutrition, and that lapses are not worth it.
| byproxy wrote:
| I think a lot of that last point can be attributed to gradual
| improvement and acclimation to that improvement. If you were
| able to snapshot mood and mental health like you could a
| picture of your body, you might see a marked improvement over
| pre-healthy-lifestyle vs., say, post-1-year-healthy-lifestyle.
|
| For example, I've been losing weight and doing body-weight
| training the last month-and-a-half and a picture of my body now
| vs. then shows a fairly drastic change. But I can' say that I
| feel like I weigh less or feel that I'm stronger. Though, the
| scale and reps of exercise that I can do say otherwise. Every
| day starts a "new normal."
| gandreani wrote:
| I don't doubt the author gained benefits from the lifestyle
| change. I just appreciate the lack of hyperbole when
| describing how they feel. It's hard to get nutrition and
| health advice without a product/service incentive attached to
| it nowadays. The excerpt I highlighted matched the
| qualitative and candid style of the rest of the post.
|
| It's refreshing
| byproxy wrote:
| Oh, yea. I agree. I suffer from panic attacks and general
| anxiety and when I picked up lifting/running a while back
| one of my friends asked if it helped and I gave him the
| same, honest "uh..not really.", which he was kinda bummed
| for me about. But I learned to enjoy those things on their
| own. Or, at least, I enjoyed being able to pat myself on
| the back after running for 4 miles straight.
| theontheone wrote:
| Your comment seems to imply that it didn't help. Would
| you recommend picking lifting/running up? I went on meds
| recently for the same issues but had a bad (lasting)
| experience, so I'm looking towards therapy and healthy
| eating / exercising for the future now.
| byproxy wrote:
| Here's what I have to say, with the disclaimer that
| everyone's experience is different and your results may
| vary:
|
| > Your comment seems to imply that it didn't help.
|
| Not that, so much. More that it'd be disingenuous for me
| to say that I noticed that exercise had a direct impact
| on my mental health. Cutting down on my consumption of
| alcohol (a lot) has probably had the most direct link to
| increased mental health, for what it's worth.
|
| > Would you recommend picking lifting/running up?
|
| Yes, indeed. It's undeniably good for your body. Just...
| don't go in with the expectation that it's gonna be an
| immediate mood-booster, though. If that does happen,
| great! But expect the actual (and measurable) rewards to
| be increased strength and endurance. Be happy with that.
| :)
|
| I've been prescribed medication, but never got it filled
| (didn't like that prescribing meds was the default
| "fix"). Been close to going to therapy, but haven't (I'm
| skeptical of certain therapist's qualifications and I
| don't think I can really afford it long-term). So far,
| I've been able to live with my malady's. Just...REALLY
| uncomfortably on occasion. But if you can afford it and
| have the time, then you should definitely make use of
| those resources!
| akiselev wrote:
| A lot of people also aren't "in tune" with their bodies,
| especially those with weaker autobiographical memories. Many
| just don't internalize or remember how they feel over
| different time periods except for extreme events (emotional,
| strong smells, etc.). Unless they have a hangover, they don't
| much consider how they feel on a relative scale, let alone
| try to tie it back to their past diet or lifestyle. Throw in
| a lot of drugs like caffeine, antidepressants, pain killers,
| depressants like alcohol, stimulants like ADHD meds and it
| results in a perfect storm where subtle signals that many
| people are naturally mindful of just get drowned out. Even
| becoming aware that you can differentiate signals takes
| practice just like any other muscle.
|
| This has been my biggest struggle with health. I've always
| had troubles with autobiographical memory and without it, I
| can't stay motivated because I quickly forget how good
| exercise felt or how junk food made me feel a few hours
| later. I started going to the gym to dogfood when I joined a
| fitness company and within a few months I was looking a lot
| better but not feeling it. It wasn't until I started to
| really push my limit with rowing workouts that I felt the
| "runner's high" athletes talk about. From that point on, it
| was felt like I was discovering a new muscle group every few
| weeks and correlating how far I rowed in a 60 minute rowing
| session with my diet and lifestyle. Junk food that I would
| scarf down because unappetizing. Drinking alcohol went from a
| no-brainer to "how will I feel tomorrow?" Morning stretches
| and exercise became mandatory just to feel "normal."
|
| Even now, with the gyms closed for months, I can feel that
| newly acquired skill slipping and predictably, my self
| discipline slides too. I've almost forgotten how good it
| feels after a nice workout.
| derg wrote:
| >Even now, with the gyms closed for months, I can feel that
| newly acquired skill slipping and predictably, my self
| discipline slides too. I've almost forgotten how good it
| feels after a nice workout.
|
| Right? I've noticed my own mental health is slipping and
| I'm certain I can track it to things closing, me working
| from home more often, and my eating worse.
|
| The unknown and anxiety around the start of the lockdowns
| and pandemic made me gravitate towards the 'comfort' foods
| and it's been a slow decline in mood and physical health
| since. Thankfully I've started to recognize this and
| remember how I felt _before_ the start of all this so now I
| 'm slowly working towards that point again.
| thechao wrote:
| 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 loss (I've lost about
| 50kg, and have kept it off for several years):
|
| 1. You must have a diet to _weigh less_ ;
|
| 2. You must have a distinct diet to _lose weight_ ;
|
| 3. You must do low impact cardio -- I walk 3-5 miles a day; and,
|
| 4. You must do resistance training.
|
| Those four things have the following purpose:
|
| 1. Keep you at a stable weight;
|
| 2. Take off weight;
|
| 3. Increase background caloric burn from "super sedentary"; and,
|
| 4. Encourage _fat loss_ over _lean body mass loss_.
|
| All of this is requires _routine_. You must develop a _routine_
| for the rest of your life, and not vary from it. It also requires
| _honesty_ : you need to be _honest_ with yourself about what you
| 're eating, when; what exercise you're really doing; when. And,
| finally, if you're overweight you're at the mercy of millions of
| years of evolution, but you're the _victim_ of our modern diet.
| It 's not your fault, but there is something you can do about it.
| andrewzah wrote:
| Intermittent fasting also helps. Many people do 16:8 (16 hours
| of fasting) and only eat from 12-8 or 10-6.
|
| With IF, I lost about ~5 lbs doing nothing besides being more
| mindful. Once I added in daily runs / walks of ~4-5 miles, I
| lost another ~10 lbs easily.
|
| I think the biggest challenge for people looking to lose weight
| is mindless eating / snacking. Initially I kept a diet journal
| and wrote down _everything_ I ate or drank, and realized I
| would get more snacks throughout the day than I thought. I also
| drank a lot less water than I thought.
|
| The other thing is portions. When I was at my largest, the
| portions I would set for myself were larger, and I would more
| often get a second round. All without really thinking about it,
| of course. Now I deliberately think about how big of a portion
| is appropriate and I never go for seconds except on some cheat
| days.
| shoes_for_thee wrote:
| The idea of intermittent fasting from 12-8pm is kind of
| amusing to me because that's just when I tend to eat anyway.
| I guess I've been intermittent fasting my whole life!
| nwienert wrote:
| IF only achieves point 1 of the four points above, I've done
| it for years but if I _only_ do IF I'll still carry usually a
| small belly. Also if you don't do minimal exercise it does
| feel _harder_ - your calorie budget goes down super low when
| you're really sedentary. No room for snacks or any
| indulgence.
|
| Whereas if you workout daily even in a minimal form, suddenly
| you have a much easier budget.
| karpathy wrote:
| Agree, I didn't mention this in the post but I've become a
| big fan of intermittent fasting, which is a fancy way of
| saying "skip breakfast". I only eat from 12-8pm and most days
| from 12-6pm. I also found that even if I wake up a bit hungry
| my morning coffee suppresses my appetite and I rarely
| struggle to get to lunch. A hard threshold on 8pm also avoids
| most of the unhealthy snacking that tends to happen in late
| hours. I find that as the body winds down for the day and is
| a bit more tired my defenses and motivation are down a bit
| and I feel tempted by snacks. With IF it's easy to blanket
| reject such ideas from my brain because I'm outside of my
| window. There is also a slight element to which the body
| "gets used to" the feeding schedule, and doesn't bother you
| as much outside of it with snacking ideas.
| joshvm wrote:
| I'm with you on the appetite suppression. I got into making
| decent coffee recently, probably from being stuck at home,
| and it's interesting how strong the effect is. Especially
| when coupled with a walk round the local park (e.g. 5k) I
| often don't feel hungry until mid afternoon. There is also
| the other reliable effect that I won't mention here!
|
| One other thing I realised post-lockdown is just how much I
| relied on exercise to keep my back/posture in check. I used
| to climb regularly, though I slacked off on the cardio.
| Since quarantining, I've done a lot less resistance
| exercise and it really shows. One day of poor posture -
| e.g. hunching over a workbench, or working from a non-
| optimal place like bed or the couch - is enough to cause
| quite a lot of backache and it only really goes away after
| doing some exercise (far more effective in my experience
| than icing/heating/NSAIDs). My plan is to get back into
| bodyweight/calisthenics ASAP.
|
| (Very interesting article by the way, the subway map would
| make a great poster)
| smichel17 wrote:
| > _I also drank a lot less water than I thought._
|
| For me, the key to staying hydrated is _large containers._
|
| When there is a glass of water on my desk in front of me, I
| sip it as I get thirsty. When it runs dry, I don't interrupt
| my current task to refill it, so it might sit empty for
| _hours_ , and I won't drink enough later to make up for it.
| So, the fewer times I have to refill, the more water I drink.
|
| In college, when I moved between many locations, I used a
| 1-quart canning jar in a knitted sleeve (classier and a
| little fall protection -- just remember you still have to
| wash it). These days, it's a 1-liter jug (err, may
| technically be a vase) that sits on my desk. I refill it in
| the morning (or night before) and once in the middle of the
| day, after it runs out.
| jackschultz wrote:
| 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 Magazine. There's more to the story on this,
| like his background and mentality on Navy Seal training, with
| his body type and high impact running it caused huge problems
| he's still dealing with.
|
| As for funning form types, check out the video of Cliff Young
| and his running style[1] for the Sydney to Melbourne race at 61
| but shuffling.
|
| What I'm saying, and what I'm glad you included, is the
| importance of cardio being low impacts, and to also not feel
| bad if you're not a running. Biking, and especially swimming
| are great alternatives and so much better on your body long
| term.
|
| [0] https://runningmagazine.ca/the-scene/tiger-woods-regrets-
| run... [1] https://vimeo.com/258718906
| jaypeg25 wrote:
| I have a long history of back pain going back to college (32
| now). As I've gotten older (and a bit bigger) I've started to
| get knee pain in addition if I run a lot. So I recently
| switched to biking which has honestly been way more fun,
| opened me up to exploring more parts of my city and the
| surrounding area than running did, and I haven't really had
| any associated pains since starting roughly a year ago.
|
| I still drink way too much so losing weight is an issue, but
| I do feel healthier at least.
| thechao wrote:
| Back pain is _almost always_ an indicator of posterior
| chain weakness. Do daily squats (just up & down), and do
| toe-touch-stretches (legs about 2x shoulder width, right-
| hand-to-left-toe, stand up with arms in the air, left-hand-
| to-right-toe).
|
| Personally, I just do weighted squats & heavy deadlift, but
| if your knees are bad, that's a _bad_ idea. You can chat
| with a PT for 50-80$ and they can tell you _exactly_ what
| 's wrong & how to fix it in less than an hour.
| jaypeg25 wrote:
| It's been an ongoing, years-long effort to find the root
| cause and alleviate the pain. I was finally diagnosed
| with degenerative disc disease (aka shitty spinal discs).
| One particularly pessimistic doctor said I was "an
| otherwise healthy thirty year old with the back of a 70
| year old" after looking at my MRI, though others I have
| seen said it's not THAT bad. I was a fairly accomplished
| High School Cross Country runner and ran for years after
| graduating, so I have to imagine that was cause for some
| of the issues I have today but the doctors have all said
| it could have been any number of things.
|
| I did recently have two radiofrequency ablations done,
| which burned the nerves that were giving me considerable
| pain. So far it's been successful and my
| biking/walking/lightweight lifting routine has probably
| helped too.
| throw1234651234 wrote:
| I know 3 people diagnosed with DDD and recommended
| surgery who got a second opinion who told them they are
| fine and just to take it easy for a while. Just something
| to keep in mind.
| throw1234651234 wrote:
| "You can chat with a PT for 50-80$ and they can tell you
| exactly what's wrong & how to fix it in less than an
| hour."
|
| That's a complete lie. Most PTs don't know anything about
| anything and will try to milk you for "motivating" you in
| your workout and keeping a notebook for you on a regular
| basis. Usually for at least $300-500 a month, even at
| horrible gyms. By no means will they be able to tell you
| remotely, let alone, exactly "what's wrong".
|
| "Personally, I just do weighted squats & heavy deadlift,
| but if your knees are bad, that's a bad idea."
|
| Yea, and guess what? There is no easy solution for this,
| let alone one provided by a random PT. It's a cascading
| effect - you have one injury, you can't address the
| muscle imbalances causing it.
|
| As far as posterior chain weakness, there is also the
| issue of lordosis, which results in horrible squat form.
| Deadlifts do help, but again, there is the risk of hyper-
| extension.
|
| In short, solutions to this are far, far more complicated
| than your post implies.
| thereticent wrote:
| I'm guess you're reading PT as personal trainer and it
| was intended as physical therapist.
| thechao wrote:
| Someone replied to you, already; I meant "physical
| therapist", not "personal trainer". I don't have any
| experience with personal trainers. Sorry for the
| confusion.
| throw1234651234 wrote:
| Running is also by far the most efficient form of cardio in
| terms of calories burned / time.
| fudged71 wrote:
| The problem with daily measurements is it can lead to
| frustration. The daily number may change constantly but it's
| the moving average that matters. Few people can track a number
| without asking themselves what that number means for them.
|
| I want a scale without a screen and a measuring tape without
| numbers. Track often but only see the trend when you ask for
| it.
| underdeserver wrote:
| This is more evidence that weight loss happens in the kitchen,
| not the gym.
| fudged71 wrote:
| This is not the proper conclusion. He also started regular
| resistance training.
|
| I would say one of the biggest problems is seeing weight loss
| as either being nutrition or fitness, when it should ALWAYS be
| seen as a combination.
|
| Why? Because the goal is usually to lose fat. Without muscle
| stimulus, the body will include muscle in the weight loss.
| Muscle tissue is important long term for metabolism and other
| health aspects.
| asdff wrote:
| 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 use the 5lb dumbbells for 30 minutes that go for $12
| online).
| bserge wrote:
| 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.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| I recommend the National Institutes of Health Body Weight
| Planner, which uses formulas that take into account lower
| metabolism with weight loss in its predictions and plans, the
| issue discussed in the excellent article.
| https://www.niddk.nih.gov/bwp
| rland wrote:
| I really liked the "subway map" in this article, it reminded me
| of the Roche Biochemical Pathways chart:
|
| http://biochemical-pathways.com/#/map/1
| drewg123 wrote:
| I've lost about 60lbs over the last few years in 2 stages.
| (210lbs->150lbs)
|
| In the first stage, I lost about 30lbs. I did not modify my
| terrible diet, and mostly did cardio (running ~4-5 miles every
| other day). My health markers (heart rate, blood sugar, blood
| pressure, cholesterol) improved, but not a lot. I plateaued at
| 180 for a few years.
|
| Last year, I made some changes and cleaned up my diet. I avoided
| deserts and all "accidental" carbs (switched away from sandwiches
| for lunch, etc) and tried to run a bigger calorie deficit. I
| bought a rowing machine (waterrower like from House of Cards,
| highly recommend) and replaced running every other day with an
| hour of rowing, since its a full body workout. I started lifting
| weights on the alternate days when I was not rowing. I lost 30lbs
| over the course of about 5 months. After this, all my health
| markers improved markedly and my doctor stopped wanting to put me
| on a statin.
|
| In the 9 months since I reached my target weight, I've increased
| my carbs to make my diet more long-term sustainable, but
| maintained my activity. My weight has remained steady. Since
| COVID and the closure of gyms, I've replaced lifting weights with
| lots of pushups, situps, planks, etc, but I'm worried that is not
| quite as effective, and i'm looking forward returning to my gym.
| praveen9920 wrote:
| As someone who is trying to lose weight and gone through similar
| phases, I can't stress enough on diet. In the world of cheap and
| yummy calories available in each and every thing we eat, it is
| hard maintain the low carb diet.
|
| Interestingly, my observation is that increased water consumption
| impacts metabolism a lot
|
| Note: I lost 4 kgs in 2 months
| voisin wrote:
| How much have you increased your water consumption and what was
| your baseline?
| tw600040 wrote:
| // increased water consumption impacts metabolism a lot
|
| impacts as in it helps lose weight?
| [deleted]
| adaisadais wrote:
| Time-restricted eating has worked wonders for me. I typically eat
| between 11a-7p and I track it all through the Zero App. It can be
| very difficult to start initially but when you power through the
| first week you truly start to see some results.
|
| I stopped doing it and started eating later and later in mid-
| march. I weighed 153.2 (the heaviest) on May 31. I resumed time
| restricted eating on June 1 and have consistently done it. I
| currently weight 147.6 and I feel much better. Less cravings and
| my pants fit quite nicely again.
| karpathy wrote:
| 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.
| yutopia wrote:
| 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_ balanced without
| the need for conscious efforts like counting calories (which I 'm
| too lazy to continue long-term).
|
| [1] https://elemental.medium.com/ichiju-sansai-how-to-
| construct-...
|
| I think in modern cities we have too much freedom with regard to
| what we eat, which is great of course but the downside is that
| we've lost a great deal of local culinary tradition, and along
| with it intuitive understandings of what is and what isn't
| healthy eating.
| dnhz wrote:
| 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 population only from the
| seventeenth century onwards, not becoming the basis of Japanese
| food until the early twentieth century
|
| https://www.japan-experience.com/to-know/chopsticks-at-the-r...
|
| > A disproportionate share of the rice crop was therefore
| consumed in the cities and by the political and economic elite,
| while the diet of much of the rural population continued to
| depend on the availability of a range of other grains - wheat,
| millet, barley, etc. - together with vegetables, fruit, pulses
| and occasional fish or game, grown at home or collected in the
| locality.
|
| https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0955580070133003...
| yutopia wrote:
| That's a good point, I cook my rice with all kinds of millet,
| barley, and seeds mixed in. My grandparents would probably
| think that's backwards, why would I eat barley when I could
| afford white rice.
|
| But it's supposedly healthier (there's a famous story about
| how eating too much white rice crippled the Japanese navy
| [1]), and personally I think it tastes better too.
|
| [1] https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/rice-disease-
| mystery-e...
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| 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.
| fudged71 wrote:
| Genetic nutrition optimization is a really interesting
| topic related to this. There are many other differences
| related to our genetics that impact how we process food.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| As a practical matter, does 4 bowls and 2 plates per person,
| and preparing 4-5 different dishes, every day have a huge
| overhead in preparation, cooking and washing up?
| yutopia wrote:
| Not really, I'm not cooking anything remotely fancy and we
| have all sorts of technology to help us nowadays.
|
| For example, cooking rice is simply a matter of putting rice
| and water into the cooker and pressing a button [1]. In the
| past we needed to first rinse the rice by hand.
|
| [1]
| https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2009/04/16/reference/no-
| wa...
| derefr wrote:
| > 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.
| voisin wrote:
| Not sure where you live but I have never lived in a city with
| a dozen restaurants with an 80+ year history with the same
| way of traditional food prep/ingredients. Restaurants have
| exceptionally short lives as it is a brutal industry, and
| supply chains have absolutely changed over 80 years.
| tvanantwerp wrote:
| I honestly don't know how my grandparents ate. Between their
| generation and my parents', a lot of traditional food knowledge
| was lost. My maternal grandmother made all sorts of things from
| scratch--but I can't recall my mom making anything that didn't
| come in a box or a can.
|
| I've had great success losing weight and keeping it off with
| food logging (shout out to Cronometer, the best food logging
| app I've used), trying to adhere to a keto diet, and time-
| restricted feeding (18 hours fasted, 6 eating). If I tried to
| do an ancestral diet instead, I'd fail primarily from ignorance
| of just what that might be. (Also, I'm from the southern US, so
| it's not like that ancestral diet is necessarily good for me
| anyway.)
| ijustwanttovote wrote:
| This is very informative.
| curiousgal wrote:
| As someone struggling to _gain_ weight it always bugs me how
| "being healthy" is only associated with weight loss.
| Swizec wrote:
| My biggest concern about focus on weight loss as the metric
| instead of "healthy lifestyle" is that losing weight is easiest
| when you do it in an unhealthy way. Crash diets are a good
| example of unhealthy weight loss.
|
| Another funfact is that you can literally go to bed for a few
| weeks, let muscle atrophy kick in, and lose more weight than
| any diet+exercise regime. Won't make you healthier, but you'll
| lose the weight. Yay metrics!
| tupac_speedrap wrote:
| It doesn't help that BMI is still used even though it is such
| a crude measure as to be useless. Stuff like body fat%
| measurements and waist measurements are more direct
| indicators of losing fat.
| asdff wrote:
| Contestants on _Alone_ loose like a lb a day. Loosing weight
| is so easy if you get used to feeling hungry and eat like a
| bird. Throw in cardio and you will end up looking cut.
| Gaining a pound a day of muscle, on the other hand, is
| probably impossible, even gaining a pound of any kind of mass
| a day is dubious and will lead to very unpleasant bowel
| movements at the very least.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| Despite all the lecturing, the research doesn't really agree.
| Crash(extreme) diets work just as well as slower diets and
| the people gain back weight at roughly the same rate.
| filoleg wrote:
| I think it is simply because a large number of adults in the US
| (as well as a lot of other countries) is struggling with this,
| at about 39% obesity rate and 71% overweight rate [0]. For
| comparison, only 1.5% of adults in the US are underweight [1].
|
| While I agree that there is way more to "being healthy" than
| just not being overweight/underweight, I think it isn't a bad
| idea to approach this in the priority order. Solving the issue
| of being overweight is much simpler and much more impactful to
| the overall public health than trying to go after more rare and
| difficult problems.
|
| 0. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/obesity-overweight.htm
|
| 1.
| https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/underweight_adult_15_16...
| asdff wrote:
| 1.5% of the U.S. population is still over 4 million people,
| that's a huge market.
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| Market for...
| filoleg wrote:
| I mean, you have two markets and one is about 47 times the
| size of the other.
|
| If your goal is to minimize the total number of health
| problems in your country, it would make sense to throw more
| efforts at a problem that affects 47 times more people,
| given that everything else about the problems is about
| equal. We are not comparing cancer to heart disease here.
| We are comparing two problems that are two sides of the
| same coin.
| paulsutter wrote:
| It's all in the terminology. You both say "weight", but they
| want to lose fat and you're looking to gain lean body mass.
| Many folks would like to do both, there's no contradiction.
| fizixer wrote:
| Do a Mark Rippetoe program for 1 year. Thank me later.
|
| __edit __: Caution: don 't start on squats without coaching.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| Seconded almost as strongly as I possibly can, but with added
| caveats! I was a bean pole for my entire life, struggling to
| gain weight. The answer was simple: I wasn't giving my body
| the signal to gain muscle by lifting some HEAVY weights. I
| read Starting Strength and followed the program. I put on
| ~30lbs over 3-4 months, and got WAY strong. That's after
| having done crossfit for at least 5-6 years. I took my squat
| from 185lbs to 300lbs.
|
| It took 2 months of rereading the squat chapter, filming
| myself, correcting myself, etc, before I finally got that one
| down. Now that I understand it, I can spot faults in others,
| but it took a while for it to click. Rereading the dbook
| helps, though a couple of Rippetoe's coaching cues set me on
| the wrong path. A starting strength specific coach can
| straighten you out in just a couple of sessions. DON'T think
| any other certification, personal trainer, or coach is a
| substitute, they are NOT.
|
| Don't do starting strength for a year. (If it takes you that
| long to do the novice linear progression, you are definitely
| doing something wrong.) Rippetoe's advice for intermediates
| is pretty marginal IMO and you can't possibly stay a novice
| for a year doing the program.
|
| Switch to Barbell Medicine's "the bridge" instead of
| resetting the weights a second time.
| fizixer wrote:
| Sorry you're right. I remember doing a 1 year program, only
| the first 7 months were Starting Strength. Remaining 5
| months were a weight loss program.
| fudged71 wrote:
| As a trainer, squats can be self-learned fairly easily, it's
| a pretty natural movement. Some guidance will help of course,
| but the general movement is usually there.
|
| That said, I recommend against people teaching themselves
| deadlift, because it's not nearly as intuitive, has more
| potential for injury, etc.
| cambalache wrote:
| Gaining weight is easier. Drink your calories and you will
| balloon in no time.
| hinkley wrote:
| 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 5 sets spread
| out over the entire day, I could lift more and saw results
| pretty much right away, and really for the first time. I 'd
| exercise while waiting for things like the drier to ding or
| toast to pop up, a file to download, a commercial break or a
| cut scene to finish. But, I had to have exercises I could do at
| home, which takes some creativity (or a lot of money).
|
| Your body is conserving resources. The whole point of
| 'exercise' is to trick your body into thinking that you are an
| active person who needs to spend the extra resources to build
| and maintain large muscles, cardiac or lung capacity, or all
| three. If you are actually active you don't have to 'work out'.
| Your life is work, and your body adapts.
|
| Once I got past that initial roadblock, I got results even from
| the gym, but I was able to be more consistent doing it at home.
|
| The trouble with putting on a lot of bulk though, is if you
| stop. Exercise burns a lot of calories. Persistent exercise
| therefore changes your notion of what a 'normal' amount of food
| is. If you stop, it probably due to some major life event, and
| adjusting your notion of 'normal eating' might get lost in the
| mix. Which is probably why a lot of pro athletes chunk up when
| they retire (or get retired). Going from 3-4000 calories a day
| to under 2500 is quite a lifestyle change.
| mettamage wrote:
| I just started my exercise journey a few weeks ago, but I'm
| leaning towards this style of exercise as well.
| kleinsch wrote:
| 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.
| dpcx wrote:
| That's because, at least anecdotally, many more people are
| overweight than underweight, so "being healthy" involves weight
| loss more than weight gain.
| kekebo wrote:
| Not only anecdotally, according to the CDC "prevalence of
| obesity was 42.4% in 2017~2018" in the US[1].
|
| [1] https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html
| tkzed49 wrote:
| This may be true in a statistical sense, but I think it's
| important to not "explain it away" and instead realize that
| it is an important societal issue. This doesn't really apply
| to the original post, but it's important for us as a society
| to support _both_ health conditions, and not just the more
| common one.
| zan2434 wrote:
| I think the most sustainable way to lose fat (not weight ofc) is
| to gain lean muscle mass. You can substantially increase your
| basal metabolic rate and induce a calorie deficit to incur fat
| loss without actually eating any less. The problem of course is
| that your body does automatically increase your appetite
| commensurately as your BMR goes up, but calorie counting +
| discipline can help you stay lean as you gain muscle mass, and
| then lose the fat over time.
| SupriseAnxiety wrote:
| This is such beautiful work I'm speechless.
| barbegal wrote:
| If you want to lose weight you need to change the energy balance.
| Less energy in and more out. For most people it is difficult to
| meaningfully affect energy out. Unless you go from being really
| sedentary to running for an hour a day (~500 kcal) then energy
| out will remain roughly the same. Eating less is much simpler but
| not necessarily easier, most people need help suppressing their
| appetite. Probably the best way to do this is by doing high
| intensity exercise (HIIT). Studies consistently show this affects
| weight loss more than longer periods of moderate exercise [1]. In
| addition, exercise can improve depression [2] which may also lead
| to less over-eating.
|
| [1] https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/53/10/655
|
| [2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29800984/
| bserge wrote:
| That looks like a really good chart I'd like to view, but can't
| (I've disabled uBlock and NoScript, no change). It's too small,
| please link the original! Thank you!
| an_opabinia wrote:
| > Clearly, my actual weight loss (red) turned out to be slower
| than expected one based on our simple deficit math (blue). So
| this is where things get interesting... so we don't get to fully
| resolve the mystery of the slower-than-expected weight loss.
|
| Weight loss is difficult and I think everyone, no matter how
| smart, dumb, famous or obscure they are, has trouble with it.
| It's always a surprise how difficult it is.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| The body basically has a bunch of tricks for tricking you into
| not losing weight. It starts making you subtly lazier, reduces
| random energy expenditures, slows down basal metabolic rate, it
| makes you hungrier, it makes you crave more calorie dense food,
| and it even starts to reduce willpower related to food.
| fudged71 wrote:
| Absolutely this. Our body is constantly trying to maintain
| homeostasis, so when you make a big lifestyle change your
| body tries to react in the opposite direction.
|
| Most people don't understand that when you start a new habit
| it often replaces another. When you start going to the gym
| you might walk less. When you eat smaller meals you might
| snack more. etc. I'd love to see a list of all the
| unconscious decisions your body makes in response to
| fitness/nutrition interventions.
| jwilliams wrote:
| I read "Molecular Biology of the Cell" when dabbling in
| bioinformatics (one of the books mentioned in the article).
|
| It's an excellent textbook. You'll need a base level of chemistry
| and biology - not two of my best subjects, But despite that I
| still got a lot of it.
| davesque wrote:
| > 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.
| timy2shoes wrote:
| Seems pretty straight forward. 162,000 kcal / 239 kcal = 677.8
| davesque wrote:
| Ahh, yep. I dropped the ",000" :/.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2020-06-12 23:00 UTC)