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

Discussions of metabolism adjustments are almost never quantitative, for some frustrating reason.

The reason is that directly measuring your metabolism is highly inconvenient (you basically spend time in a gas mask) and requires specialized and expensive equipment.

750 cal/day is well beyond a realistic adjustment

No, I don't think so.

For a frame-of-reference adjustment consider reports that the Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps consumed 8-10,000 calories per day while training. He didn't get fat :-)

attempting a steeper deficit of 1000 cal/day has proven deeply unpleasant before

You don't need a steep deficit, you just need some deficit which is visible as weight loss.

Given that you don't know the output side of the calorie balance, I am not a big fan of counting calories to start with. I would suggest setting a reasonable rate of weigh loss (say, 1-2 lbs/week -- if you can measure body fat % it would be even better) and eating at the level which sustains this weight loss regardless of how many calories it takes. If the weight loss stalls, eat a bit less. If it accelerates, eat a bit more. That, of course, does not exclude using whatever "tricks" you find to be helpful like load-up days or intermittent fasting or whatever.

For a frame-of-reference adjustment consider reports that the Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps consumed 8-10,000 calories per day while training. He didn't get fat :-)

Is that a result of his metabolism adjusting upward, as opposed to simply burning lots of energy on activity and maybe having an unusually high metabolism in general?

Given that you don't know the output side of the calorie balance, I am not a big fan of counting calories to start with. I would suggest setting a reasonable rate of weigh loss (say, 1-2 lbs/week -- if you can measure body fat

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