aleksiL comments on Open Thread, June 16-30, 2013 - Less Wrong

3 Post author: Dorikka 16 June 2013 04:45AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (313)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: aleksiL 27 June 2013 10:54:53AM -2 points [-]

I'm pretty sure "trying to eat less" is exactly the wrong thing to do. Calorie restriction just triggers the starvation response which makes things worse in the long run.

Change what you eat, not how much.

Comment author: wedrifid 27 June 2013 04:38:41PM -2 points [-]

I'm pretty sure "trying to eat less" is exactly the wrong thing to do.

I'm pretty sure "Force feeding yourself as much fat as you can keep down with the aid of anti-emetics, taking glucose intravenously while injecting insulin, estrogen and testosterone and taking a β2 antagonist" is closer to "exactly the wrong thing to do".

Comment author: Lumifer 27 June 2013 05:35:31PM 0 points [-]

Physics is still relevant. The only way to lose weight (outside of surgery) is to spend more energy than you take in. The problem, of course, is that your energy intake and your energy output are functions of each other plus a lot of other things besides (including what's on your mind).

I still think that for most people (aka with an uninformative prior) the advice of "Eat less, move more" is a good starting point. Given more data, adjust as needed.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 29 June 2013 06:17:07PM 1 point [-]

It's not that unusual for people to regain what they lost plus more after a failed diet.

Comment author: [deleted] 13 July 2013 06:16:00PM -1 points [-]

I've replaced “eat less” with “lose weight” because I don't want to go into this, but see Lumifer's reply.