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Mycroft65536 comments on How I Lost 100 Pounds Using TDT - Less Wrong
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I have had significant weight loss without reducing fried things and still having bi-weekly cheesecake. I had MORE weight loss after getting rid of the cheesecake, but I did go from 220 to about 190 with the cheesecake in my diet. (5'10", male)
The traditional American diet is so bad that most people can likely have significant weight loss with trivial loss of pleasure. This is especially true when combined with a human's natural scope insensitivity.
My diet isn't a lot like a traditional American one. I'm a pescetarian, I cook nearly everything I make from scratch or close to it, and while I sometimes eat junky snackfood, I don't do it that often. I also don't consume soda or alcohol. There might be some obvious trivial-loss-of-pleasure alteration to make (and if you think of one, please tell me) but it's not jumping out at me.
You mentioned before that you don't drink tea... but fruit teas are actually quite juice-like. Lemon tea or ginger work that way too. Might be worth a shot?
Well, I hate ginger, but I suppose I could afford to look around a little more thoroughly in teaspace to see if there's one I like without massive amounts of sugar dumped in.
Teaspace is huge.
I don't know if this will be relevant for you, but white teas don't get bitter.
We may try that. My wife has the problem that she was given sugared tea when she was a baby and now she simply cannot drink water: soda, syrup, or the best she can manage is making 5 liter tea ($deity bless whichever company still makes huge steel kettles, 4l and 5l ones) with 5 tablespoons of sugar. While 48 kcal per liter is not too bad, about 150-200 kcal drunk a day, I am afraid for her insulin and try to find alternatives. White tea may be one, thanks.
Next step would be coffe without sugar.
Or finding an artificial sweetener that does not taste as bad as sacharine or aspartame.
Personally, I adore fruity teas like cranberry. They manage to taste juice like without actually being sweet. Do you like green tea, chai tea or ginseng? You could also try rooibos; it's an African tea that doesn't have caffeine and tastes a lot milder than black tea without being exactly herbal.
I suspect that I won't find any teas I like that aren't sweet. I prefer my comestibles & potables to be either definitively sweet or definitively not-sweet, and items that have features of one (e.g. a fruit flavor) without being sweet (or while being sweet, in the opposite case) are not pleasant to me.
Maybe you should try some not-supposed-to-be-sweet herbal teas, e.g. rooibos, if you haven't already.
Or some real black, white, green, or oolong tea. For real teas, though, you should look up brewing instructions. Most people overcook their tea, oversteeping black tea and using boiling water for green, and it comes out bitter and disgusting. It was a revelation for me when I tried properly prepared tea.
Interesting. Both my brother and sister have the same phenomenon: they love candy and desserts, but dinner foods that have any element of sweetness (like beets, sweet potatoes, or even sweet-and-sour sauces) gross them out.
You can sweeten most of those teas a little...of course, that means adding calories to something that's essentially calorie-free.
Even if you put a teaspoon or a pack of sugar in your tea or coffee, it's still 6-7 times less sugar than in a can of soda (and most fruit juices are not much better). The amount of sugar in juices and sodas is insane.
In my experience, Splenda (brand name of sucralose) tastes identical to sugar, and every study I've read has failed to find any associated health risks in quantities humans can eat. Some studies suggest that people who drink diet drinks tend not to lose weight due to giving themselves "credit" for drinking them and then letting go on something else for a net increase in calories, but if you commit to treating artificially sweetened drinks as a replacement for normally sweetened ones, I don't think it's likely to do any harm.
Personally, I like to use it to sweeten decaff black tea mixed with lots of vanilla.
Also, you can use Splenda, for no calories at all, and it tastes just fine. I know some people can get downright militant about how awful the stuff is, but they are the same people who buy organic when the term is essentially meaningless, and they seem to hate the thought that you are "cheating" to get deliciousness. I simply say to them "Er, human technology has progressed to the point where I can have, say, a sweet breakfast without consuming any sugar, and I'm going to do so. Cheating has nothing to do with it." I drink tea with it alllll the time, too. :)
Does it taste the same as sugar? I've found that diet Coke doesn't taste the same to me as regular Coke, and I would prefer non-sweet tea to sweet but weird-tasting tea. Then again, I like unsweetened tea and coffee. To someone who found them really unpalatable, artificial sweeteners would definitely be worth it.
Diet Coke has a long history of not tasting the same as regular Coke. They even made an ad campaign about it (YouTube) in the late '80s. Only Coke Zero is supposed to taste the same.
No, Diet Coke doesn't taste the same as regular coke; but why would you want it to? As best I can tell, a preference for the flavor of sugared Coke over unsugared Coke is simply a learned preference like preferring Catsup over Brown Sauce or vice versa. I switched to Diet Coke many years ago, and these days regular Coke tastes wrong and not as refreshingly delicious to me. Stick with it for a while, and you not only get used to it. You come to prefer it.
In less sweet drinks like coffee, I'm not sure I could tell the difference between sugar and other sweeteners. FWIW, I do find that aspartame (Equal) works better in coffee than sucralose (Splenda).
Fair enough - I don't like the syrupyness of regular coke, but I drink diet, although it certainly doesn't taste like real sugar. Although I'd ask if you've used other artificial sweeteners than Splenda, because most taste terrible, but it's an entirely different chemical preparation - sucralose which comes from actual sugar, not dextrose or aspartame which come from tar.
Typical mind fallacy, revved up with a claim that people who say they don't resemble you have something wrong with them-- the latter probably needs its own name, probably something to do with preventing feedback.
As it happens, I think Splenda tastes inedibly vile, unlike other artificial sweeteners I've tried, which merely taste somewhat off.
I do eat some organic food, in the hopes that it will taste better, but there's also some conventional food (including highly processes stuff) that I like and eat.
Here'a an idea that I've been thinking about for a while, any thoughts? Epistemic status is uncertain:
Producers are using the buzz-word "organic" as a form of market segmentation for price discrimination. Since organic food is more expensive and marketed at richer consumers, it is not surprising that producers make an extra effort to improve the quality, even if this quality improvement has nothing to do with the agricultural practices. Consumers are rightly noticing that food marketed as organic tastes better, and are demanding more of it. This leads to a vicious cycle that reduces the efficiency of agriculture, which obviously has implications for global warming, deforestation etc. Everyone are following their incentives correctly, but we end up in an inferior equilibrium because of a self-fulfilling prophecy which forces everyone to use the signal "organic" when they mean "good quality".
There's a study that suggests that Splenda causes a change in blood glucose levels: http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/early/2013/04/30/dc12-2221
Not consuming sugar isn't the end goal.
It's true that artificial sweeteners mean you can get a sweet taste without consuming calories. Beware the conclusion that they therefore don't cause you to gain weight or have other negative health effects though. There's plenty of evidence to the contrary.
I agree that eating healthily doesn't mean having to deprive yourself of all delicious foods. Sadly artificial sweeteners seem to be quite problematic, though some types may be less bad than others.
SIgh......I've certainly seen all the 'evidence to the contrary', or at least a significantly representative amount.
This is the long and short of it: artificial sweeteners give taste, not satiety, so you won't be as full as you would if you ate sugar, hence may eat more. Also, if you overestimate the number of calories you're 'saving' using sweeteners, you'll undoubtedly end up eating more, and potentially gaining weight. It's the stereotypical "Ooh, I drank a diet coke instead of a real one, saved 200 calories, so I can have a donut!"
Conclusion: pay attention to EVERYTHING you're eating, keeping in mind that you DO have a precondition of 'how much food you need', and do so in a manner that consciously minimizes your biases. It's not that hard, but most people don't take such a holistic approach, and I've not ever seen it specified as a factor in the 'studies' on artificial sweeteners. So, the studies are correct, per se, but you and I can hopefully be a little smarter than that....it's pretty much a problem of overcoming internal bias by acting on as complete info as possible.
Don't like beets, don't like sweet-and-sour sauces. Do like sweet potatoes, but only by themselves with butter... if I put them with non-sweets (like other potatoes, or savory spices) then they will be too sweet to go with, and if I put them with sweets (pineapple, marshmallows) then they will be too savory to go with. Contrary things, sweet potatoes.
If I'm going to wind up drinking liquid sugar anyway, I may as well go on drinking juice, I think.
Huh, me three with certain types of sweet foods. (For example, I generally really really don't like sweet salads. I prefer non-sweet vinegars, etc... But I'll happily om nom nom on, say, chocolate. (though I do favor dark chocolate))
Do you drink juice? Maybe try watering it down. Generalising from the one example of me, watered juice tastes just as good as straight juice, as long as you're not drinking them in the same meal. At the level of macronutrients (that is, ignoring vitamins and HFCS), juice really isn't any healthier than soda. (And regarding a later comment, oil isn't unhealthy either; even the USDA admits this now if you look at the fine print instead of the food groups.)
I do drink juice. I add a little water to it, but find that any more than a little (about one part water to five or six parts juice) drops it below a relevant threshold of pleasantness. I realize it is not a health drink, but I really hate water, and I do need some liquid intake. (With meals, it's (skim) milk.)
Have you ever tried adding a drop or two of lemon juice to water? Or (and this might sound weird) plain hot water? It depends on how hot it is where you live, of course, but my ex-boyfriend's entire family used to drink plain hot water, and after thinking they were very odd, I tried it and found it quite soothing.
I don't like it when they give me lemon slices in my water at restaurants. Plain hot water sounds fantastically unappealing.
You should try the hot water thing if you haven't actually done so. The cost is pretty much zero.
Have you tried filtering your water, or drinking it very cold? Water tastes like what's in it, and the taste varies depending on the source. Most city water tastes like the chemicals they use to clean it, while water from a cheap filter tastes like nothing. Cold water also seems to have less taste, or at least I've found I can't detect the taste of cold water (as in, with ice in it, not just cold from the tap).
Seltzer (Or whatever they called carbonated water in your part of the world) is another "almost-water" drink, much like tea. No calories, enough taste to notice, feels like soda.
I like filtered water less than regular tap water from most taps. (I have blind-taste-tested my ability to distinguish them.) Cold water is better. I can't bear to drink anything carbonated; it makes my mouth hurt.
You know what "Low Fat" is? a warning label. Saturated fat is not bad for you. Switch to whole milk. Water is probably best, but if that just doesn't work for you, try seltzer or calorie free flavored waters.
I can't stand whole milk. Even drinking semiskimmed is unpleasant. Seltzer is not an option because I can't drink anything carbonated; it makes my mouth hurt.
Interesting. I started disliking whole milk soon after I switched to soy milk. Some report the same reaction after switching to rice milk. There are "lite" versions which, while not a substitute for water, could be an alternative to juice.
Similar to your comment about diet coke, having drunk reduced fat milk for about fifteen years, whole milk now tastes nasty to me.
Why switch to whole milk when it's not inherently preferable?
Taste preferences are malleable, though. I grew up drinking skim milk, and switched over to whole milk when I left for college. I grew a love for the taste of delicious, delicious fats in my drinks.
The first step was switching to higher-fat milk in eating bowls of cereal. It's a good way to get used to the taste while tricking your brain into not noticing the 'weird' texture.
Switching to a high-fat diet helped too. Whole milk really isn't all that fatty - half and half is better, and heavy cream is a bit much straight (I can drink it straight, but it is way too easy to give my digestive system too much to handle).
There's nothing inherent about preferences. If you want to include milk as party of a healthy diet, you may as well prefer healthier milk.
In what way is higher fat milk healthier?
Saturated fat may not be more unhealthy than unsaturated fat (although I'm not sure how conclusive the evidence on this is,) but that doesn't mean that adding calories from fat, without subtracting something else, will make your diet healthier.
Sorry, I kind of assumed you were struggling with "I want to improve my diet by replacing carbohydrate calories from skim milk with fat calories from whole milk". The point I was trying to make is that preferences are malleable things, and when you don't care as much about the cost of changing them as compared to the benefits of having 'better' preferences, you can go ahead and change them.
If you're not trying to lose weight, then no reason at all. If you prefer skim milk, then by all means drink it. However, assuming
Then you're better off switching to products like whole milk or, better yet, heavy cream, that provide a higher proportion of calories from fat (trans fats excepted, but those aren't typically present in milk) and less to none from carbohydrates and protein.
Also, after a little googling, I so see that some people have raised concerns about possible health effects arising from the industrial production of skim milk. It seems farmers don't just skim the cream off like I thought, but add various other things like milk solids and Vitamin A and D back in. At first glance, the evidence of harmful effects from this doesn't seem compelling--mostly extrapolations from animal studies and hypothesized biochemical causal chains that aren't actually tied to overall mortality rates, quality of life, or anything else we care about. However, it is suggestive that this subject might be worthy of further research.
I don't generally drink juice at all. I don't find it all that satisfying, and it often gives me heartburn... I drink multiple pots of tea per day, though.
Heartburn is acid-reflux... there are fruit juices that are less acidic if you want that.
Juice selection may make a difference to the desirable dilution ratio. A little lemon or lime goes a long way!
I'm out of ideas then. (^_^)
Another healthy eater! I also cook nearly everything I eat from scratch (mainly beans, rice, and lentil stews). My guilty pleasures are a) baking, which I find very therapeutic (although I bring most of what I bake to share at work or choir practice, or else leave it for my roommates) and b) eating whatever junk food I can when it's free.
I don't think I'd call myself a healthy eater. I eat a lot of chocolate, put plenty of sweetness into my desserts, and am not shy about the use of butter and oil. "Scratch" doesn't mean "healthy", although it does tend to minimize certain types of unhealthy.
Why do you think adding butter to your cooking makes it unhealthy?
It's in my mental reference class of unhealthful things. Probably because it is pure saturated fat. (mmmmm.)
Okay then... I call myself a healthy eater, but that's mainly because I do cook from scratch, because I happen to like things like lentil stew, and because I adore fruits and raw carrots and that kind of thing. But I probably bake cookies twice a week, and while I don't eat all of them, one of the main reasons I like making them is getting to snack on cookie dough...mmm...
Aside from health reasons, cooking your own food saves a lot of money. I could keep my grocery bill to $25/week if I were willing to give up a few luxuries like, well, chocolate.
I like lentils and fruits and (cooked) veggies and whatnot too. I don't do it to save money - I don't even pay for my own groceries now, and haven't for about a year.
Nice!
I'm pretty pleased with myself about it, yeah :)
I'm sorry if this is a personal question, but how did you manage that? I'm under the impression that you're fairly close to my age (which is 19).
I'm 22. I live with a friend who is willing to cover our joint grocery bill and not charge me rent in exchange for my charming company and a handful of domestic tasks (I cook, pick up around the place a bit, make some of our grocery trips on my own, do the dishes, stuff like that). Before I lived here I lived with different friends; there was a similar deal in place but there were some unresolved issues about how big a handful of domestic tasks I needed to be doing, so I left. Before I lived with those friends, I lived in Benton House working for SIAI, and got my nibbles out of their budget. Before that I was in grad school, lived off campus with a roommate, and did pay for groceries (splitting the bill for both the apartment and the food with my roommate-at-the-time).
I should note that if my current roommate says "begone", I don't have any clever ideas lined up for carrying on this enviable situation - I might be able to move in with my best friend, depending on the timing, but I suspect she would charge me rent and that I'd wind up buying my own food. (I have lived with my best friend before, during two summers before my first and second years of grad school; first time around I had a job and paid rent but not for food, second time around I did not pay her anything; but now her living situation is different and I would be less enthusiastically welcomed and would probably have to make up the difference with money.)
Keeping with the theme of "possible trivial-loss-of-pleasure alteration", don't skimp on the butter. Use oil as needed, but substitute olive oil, especially extra virgin, for other vegetable oils, especially corn, canola, and soy.
I deep-fry in canola sometimes, and use it when I need a flavorless oil for cooking, but otherwise I use olive oil, and I use lots of butter when that would be nice.
Given your expressed eating preferences, one possible trivial-loss-of-pleasure alteration to make is to switch to sugar free chocolate such as Chocoperfection or Atkins Hazelnut bars. In general, take any opportunity you have to replace sugar with sugar substitutes such as Splenda or Stevia; e.g. in your morning coffee.
Splenda I've never had any complaints about, but in everything I've tried it in, I've found stevia to taste vile, to the point that I was confused that it saw any use as a sugar replacement at all.
My mother had the same reaction to it. Maybe a genetically determined taste sensitivity?