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drethelin comments on Open Thread for February 18-24 2014 - Less Wrong
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I've lost 30 pounds since September 17th, 2013*. Interestingly, I've noticed doing so caused me to lose a lot of faith in LW.
In the midst of my diet, discussion in the comments on this series of posts confounded me. I'm no expert on nutrition or dieting(I do know perhaps more than the average person), but my sense is that I encountered a higher noise-to-signal ratio on the subject here at LW than anywhere else I've looked. There seemed to be all sorts of discussion about everything other than the simple math behind weight loss. Lots of super fascinating stuff—but much of it missing the point, I thought.
I learned a few interesting things during the discussion—which I always seem to do here. But in terms of providing a boost to my instrumental rationality, it didn't help at all. In fact, it's possible LW had a negative impact on my ability to win at dieting and weight management.
I notice this got me wondering about LW's views and discussions about many other things that I know very little about. I feel myself asking "How could I rationally believe LW knows what they are talking about in regard to the Singularity, UFAI, etc. if they seem to spin their wheels so badly on a discussion about something as simple as weight loss?"
I'm interested to hear others' thoughts on this.
Have you ever lost confidence in LW after a similar experience? Maybe something where it seemed to you people were "talking a big game" but failing to apply any of that to actually win in real life?
(*Note: To be clear, I've lost 30 pounds since Sept 17th, but only ~15-18 lbs since my "diet" began on Jan 1, 2014. I'm not really bragging about losing weight—I wish it weren't the case. I injured my neck and could no longer use my primary method of exercise (weightlifting) to stay in shape. After eating poorly and lying around for a couple months, I started—on Jan 1—to do consistent, light treadmill work & light core work, as well as cutting my calorie consumption pretty dramatically.)
I lost around 40 pounds using low carb methods. Should this make me less confident in anything you say when you promote other ways to lose weight?
Low carb method = less calories.
That was the point that strangely failed to prevail in the discussion of the post series I linked.
Avoid fatty foods diet, avoid carbs diet, don't snack diet, etc. all = less calories "method".
That explains why when I tried cutting calories I had headaches and tiredness constantly and no weight loss but somehow magically was able to cut calories once I decided to cut carbs
OH WAIT NO IT DOESN'T. Even if you're correct that the way the diet works is by functionally cutting calories, SOMETHING is needed to explain why it works better for people than trying to cut calories. don't pretend it's the same thing.
Wait, does the opposite of an "avoid fatty foods diet" also = a less calories "method"?
I think the argument is that avoid anything ends up being less calories.
Congratulations.
I think there's some support for the idea of trying to lose weight slowly, without cutting caloric intake too much more than it takes to see some progress (tricky when to see it you have to average over several days, or, for women, a month)