mattnewport comments on The Unfinished Mystery of the Shangri-La Diet - Less Wrong

22 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 10 April 2009 08:30PM

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Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 10 April 2009 09:37:50PM 12 points [-]

No... it... DOESN'T. I tried that. I ate a simple Paleo diet which consists of nothing except healthy foods; my staples were home-cooked turkey and bananas. I did it for months. I lost not a single pound.

You CANNOT BEGIN TO IMAGINE how much stuff that really truly seems like it ought to work simply DOES NOT WORK when you are metabolically disprivileged.

Comment author: mattnewport 10 April 2009 09:50:22PM 3 points [-]

Bananas are flagged as a risky item by a number of paleo-type diet authors, though not by 'The Paleo Diet'. They have a fairly high glycemic index. Not that it invalidates your point.

I lost 45lbs on the Paleo Diet and have kept most of it off 2 years later (I've crept up by about 8-10lbs and I'm trying to be a bit stricter to bring that back down). I didn't avoid bananas completely but I'd read enough to be wary of them. I'm sure it doesn't work for everybody but I find it persuasive and effective.

IF the theory that sugar and refined carbohydrates are the biggest risk factors for weight gain is true THEN learning enough to become convinced of just how bad they are, to the point that you develop a strong negative emotional response to foods containing them, is an effective technique of applying initially conscious rationality to create new habits. Of course it may not work for everybody. Variations in individual metabolism seem to be an understudied aspect of diet research.