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brazil84 comments on Critiquing Gary Taubes, Final: The Truth About Diets and Weight Loss - Less Wrong
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Agreed, although that sort of subsumes the problem of difficult-to-resist urges. A few decades ago, there were not jumbo slices of pizza available for a dollar on every street corner; there were not hot dogs for a dollar at gas stations and movie theaters; and so on.
It's probably also worth noting that a few decades ago, cigarette smoking was a much more acceptable diet strategy.
I agree, except that I might quibble with your definition of "normal diet."
Yes, and then the next questions are (1) what foods or types of foods are, if treated as "poison," likely to lead to an effective diet; and (2) what is the health cost to eliminating such foods.
In my non-professional opinion, the answer to the first question is the foods which are normally referred to as "junk food" or "comfort food." The answer to the second question is (again in my non-professional opinion) that there is no health cost at all and in fact you are better off without such food in your life.
A lot of people didn't smoke but didn't get overweight either. And today people routinely consume far more potent stimulants (ADHD medications).
Yeah, agreed. Ethics also works - e.g. there's hardly any overweight vegetarians. (At least none that I know)
I agree, I'm not saying that smoking is the main reason people were thinner a few decades ago but surely it played a roll. It was very common back in the 70s and 80s for people to take up smoking as a weight control measure, either intentionally or unintentionally -- it was inexpensive and no prescription was necessary. It was really common to see thin guys walking around with a pack of cigarettes tucked into their shirt sleeve.
Assuming that's the case, one can ask why such an approach might be effective. Is it because meat makes you fat? Is it because eliminating meat and meat derived food from one's diet is a good way to cut out junk food? (I wouldn't think so; how hard is it to make vegetarian french fries and donuts?)
I'm inclined to believe that identity is a good way to motivate oneself. If you think to yourself "I'm a vegetarian and vegetarians don't eat that kind of food" or "I'm a foodie and foodies don't eat processed crap" or "I'm a fitness buff and fitness buffs don't pig out on nachos" it seems pretty effective.
It reminds me of the story of the Jewish girl who had a hard time resisting milk chocolate treats in the evening; so what she would do is eat a small piece of meat every night after dinner so that it would be non-kosher to eat the chocolate.
It's plain difficult to consume a lot of calories if you cut out meat and dairy products, I think (I tried to go vegetarian but couldn't manage to get enough calories, it's just too much work to eat enough not to go underweight. I don't eat junk food). Plus if you are changing your habits for some ethical reasons, you are not a hedonist to begin with.
It seems to me that huge majority of people who are successful at maintaining their weight never subscribe to any defined diets or calorie counting. I think that works like this - as you eat, you feel more and more full. You can just stop eating at an earlier point (when you don't feel entirely full) or at a later point. Also, for the dieters slowly gaining back everything - they still succeed to maintain the weight below the level that makes them take a drastic measure. It's just that this level is quite high, probably because only a level that high can justify a measure so drastic.
Is that so? What about french fries, donuts, and soda? Those things can be made without animal products, no?
Well that may be part of it. Perhaps part of it is that vegetarians spend a lot of mental energy thinking about what they are eating. My impression is that fat people tend to consume a lot of food without being fully consciously aware of it.
Are you talking about former fat people or never fat people?
Haven't got a deep frier, not a fan of french fries anyhow (not to the point of eating, what, 600 grams of them a day plus other stuff), prefer to eat at home. Also, sweets are a dessert. edit: and correct me if i'm wrong but with french fries something like half the calories come from fat, which is too much fat. Then, there's silicone oil, trans fats, a wide variety of carcinogenic chemicals produced at high temperatures....
Apparently, it is a common experience
Though I do cook baked potatoes quite often.
Never fat or only ever fat due to a depression or the like.
edit: with the presently obese, if they are to lose weight and keep it low, that would imply future behaviour inconsistent with past behaviour under same conditions, i.e. simply is not going to happen without significant psychological changes or the like.
That suggests to me that convenience and identity are playing important roles. One of the things which has changed over the last 20 or 30 years is that it's become a lot more convenient to eat junk food. At least that's my impression. As to the latter, it's hard to imagine a vegetarian walking into a typical fast food joint and ordering french fries -- even if the fries are cooked in vegetable oil.
Then I agree with you. Having studied this stuff pretty carefully, I've come to the conclusion that everyone has an internal system which regulates his urges to eat or not eat. For people who are naturally thin, the system works well even in the modern obesogenic environment. If that system does not work well, then conscious effort must be applied to override that system. Which is very difficult to do day after day after day. Which is why most weight loss attempts ultimately fail.
Yes, I agree with this. The fantasy is that one can make a few simple changes like reducing carbohydrate intake or eating oil every morning and thinness will naturally and easily follow. The reality is that one's psychology -- broadly defined -- must change.
I think you're looking wrong at it. Say, someone reaches the weight of X and then diets down to Y<X . At X they self regulated (consciously), at Y they didn't before, and won't in the future. There wasn't a complete failure to self regulate at all, the set point was set very high though.
edit: that is to say, it is when at the weight X that they want to be at the weight Y. At the weight Y, from prior history, they don't care to be at the weight Y . I'm looking at it from the point of trying to deduce control system's properties, and it seems we can explain it by modelling the control as stateless (except for the controlled variable) over long periods of time. edit2: i.e. I see the dieting behaviour as caused by weight; the weight drops, after some time the habits are lost and the behaviour ceases.
Want is a quite tricky word.
A week ago I exposed my body to physical stress. Then I ate a fat meal and didn't drink anything. When I layed down to sleep.
I felt a lot of movement around my intestines and I noticed my swollen belly. It wasn't like me belly hurt but it wasn't a state in which I could sleep. After a while I went to the toilet and had diarrhea.
That went for around half an hour and I was thinking about what has to happen to come to a state where I could sleep reasonably well. The idea that there was still foot in my stomach and that would probably be part of the problem popped into my mind.
Shortly after that idea popped into my mind I got nauseous. Even through my reaction was "No, I don't want to throw up", my body didn't care at the point. The process was set in motion and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
I did make a conscious judgement that my stomach should be empty, but I can't say that I wanted to throw up.
Well then why do a lot of diets fail after only a few weeks when the person has lost just a couple pounds? It's hard to believe that a small change in weight would have a big impact on preferences.
Indeed, but that also applies to starting on the diet as a response to increased weight in the first place. Some combination of the last few pounds and environmental change makes people decide on a diet, then the pounds are lost plus the environment restores (e.g. it was newyear and there was a newyear resolution, cultural pressure, which ceased).
OTOH a sizeable fraction of the ones I've met are visibly underweight.
Which fraction of the population takes such medications?