Group Rationality Diary, November 1-15

therufs

This is the public group rationality diary for November 1-15.

It's a place to record and chat about it if you have done, or are actively doing, things like:

Established a useful new habit

Obtained new evidence that made you change your mind about some belief

Decided to behave in a different way in some set of situations

Optimized some part of a common routine or cached behavior

Consciously changed your emotions or affect with respect to something

Consciously pursued new valuable information about something that could make a big difference in your life

Learned something new about your beliefs, behavior, or life that surprised you

Tried doing any of the above and failed

Or anything else interesting which you want to share, so that other people can think about it, and perhaps be inspired to take action themselves. Try to include enough details so that everyone can use each other's experiences to learn about what tends to work out, and what doesn't tend to work out.

Thanks to cata for starting the Group Rationality Diary posts, and to commenters for participating.

Previous diary: October 16-31

Next diary: November 16-30

Rationality diaries archive

This is the public group rationality diary for November 1-15.

It's a place to record and chat about it if you have done, or are actively doing, things like:

Established a useful new habit

Obtained new evidence that made you change your mind about some belief

Decided to behave in a different way in some set of situations

Optimized some part of a common routine or cached behavior

Consciously changed your emotions or affect with respect to something

Consciously pursued new valuable information about something that could make a big difference in your life

Learned something new about your beliefs, behavior, or life that surprised you

Tried doing any of the above and failed

Or anything else interesting which you want to share, so that other people can think about it, and perhaps be inspired to take action themselves. Try to include enough details so that everyone can use each other's experiences to learn about what tends to work out, and what doesn't tend to work out.

Thanks to cata for starting the Group Rationality Diary posts, and to commenters for participating.

Previous diary: October 16-31

Next diary: November 16-30

Rationality diaries archive

I am much less sure that calorie balance is the sole determinant of weight loss

Physics is pretty adamant it is.

a year of specifically focusing on calorie balance has fallen far short

You're measuring your input side, you don't have data for the output side. The calorie expenditure is not stable, besides it depending on the environment, your body will adjust your metabolic rate depending on the calorie availability.

In fact, if you know how many calories you consumed, you can calculate your average calorie spending rate from the changes in your weight. If your weight loss stalled (your weight stays the same), it means your calorie expenditure is equivalent to the calorie input.

Physics is pretty adamant it is.

Physics is even more adamant that mass-in-mass-out is the determinant of weight balance. Try drinking less water, which is very massy, and eating lighter foods. I hear fat has more calories per gram than protein or carbs, so if you take your calories by fat you can't help but lose weight! Right? If you were previously taking in most of your calories as protein and carbs, changing all your calories to fat can't help but nearly halve your mass-in. As long as you don't inhale more air to make up for it, and keep breathi... (read more)

3Wes_W11y

Yeah, that's why it confuses me. But after posting this and sleeping on it, I think I'm really experiencing one part epistemic confusion to two parts regular frustration. Discussions of metabolism adjustments are almost never quantitative, for some frustrating reason. My impression has been that 750 cal/day is well beyond a realistic adjustment, especially in the absence of obvious side effects (lethargy, severe hunger, chills, sexual dysfunction, etc). But it occurs to me that I've been too dismissive: supposing e.g. a 250 cal/day depression in metabolism, and that self-reporting inaccuracy has me really overeating by 250 cal/day compared to my target intake, that would leave me at a 250 cal/day deficit, which... would just about match the observed rate of progress. So okay, yes, those two things together would just about explain it. Then epistemically, I don't have much reason to dispute the model. Now there's just the instrumental problem of actually making progress: attempting a steeper deficit of 1000 cal/day has proven deeply unpleasant before, and rapidly produced the previously-mentioned side effects. Perhaps I need to plan more for hunger management, and/or get really obsessive about not eating things during a cut unless I can measure them exactly? At least this gives me some parameters to experiment with.