I would guess that you know how tall you are. That means you should be able to calculate BMI.
Basically you had a significant injury and then lost weight but you think that the fact that your body reacts to being seriously injured has nothing directly to do with your body physiology changing.
But even if that’s not the casual mechanism seriously insuring oneself that one feels enough pain and inconvenience to reduce the amount of food that one eats is not a viable strategy for other people to copy.
BMI was 28.4 October 1, 2013 & 24.1 today. (Sorry, never really use BMI. I’d be more interested to know my bodyfat %, etc.)
As for the rest of your comment, you’re actually further driving home the point I’m trying to make about LW.
I just said this:
I very intentionally started focusing on losing “junk” weight as of Jan 1, so it might just be easier to say I lost ~15-18 lbs in ~6 weeks doing nothing more than (a) limiting calories & (b) adding consistent exercise.
The simplest answer is that I ate less and exercised more. I created a calorie deficit. Period.
It is, of course, possible that there are other causal mechanisms at play. But I don’t think the evidence supports that. If I eat more this week, I’ll gain weight. If I do 25% more treadmill work over the next two weeks, I’ll lose weight.
Sometimes there are deep, complicated, casual mechanisms at play. LW is full of minds that can imagine and decribe those in detail at a level that is amazing to me.
The simplest answer is that I ate less and exercised more. I created a calorie deficit. Period.
As noted elsewhere, this is a bit of an oversimplification.
It’s like saying “If you want to build a nuclear bomb, use high explosives to compress a core of plutonium into a critical volume. Period.” or “If you want to fix your alcoholism problem, just stop drinking alcohol. Period.”
In other words, you are glossing over the very difficult and complex problems involved in successful weight loss.
I daresay the flaw in your thinking is the assumption that there is unitary control in your brain, i.e. that you can control yourself just like you can control your character in a video game and simply enter the command for “consume fewer calories.”
Based on my informal investigation into the matter, I am convinced that there are competing aspects to the brain which share control over the body. And that it’s impossible for one part to be in control all of the time. This is a big problem for dieting because if you are fat, you probably have an inner fattie who doesn’t care one whit about fitness or counting calories, he just wants to consume potato chips without regards to future consequences. And if he takes control for just a few minutes here and there, it can easily ruin your diet.
To my mind, this is the essential problem of dieting—how to organize the competing factions within your brain so that your body receives instructions consistent with healthy eating nearly 100% of the time.
1 - Finding instrumentally rational ways to execute a successful diet according to the causal mechanisms that lead to weight loss.
2 - The causal mechanisms that lead to weight loss.
It isn’t my argument that #1 is easy. I’m only saying #2 is simple.
From my recall, the discussion I originally linked was making #2 very complicated. This was, I think, to the detriment of anyone interested in actually losing weight.
Gamify it, meditate, medicate, operate—whatever works for you to do #1, ’cuz it is SO OBVIOUSLY HARD. But obfuscating the simplicity of #2 in the process is not helpful, which is my view of what was happenning in the discussion I linked.
I do agree that the distinction you draw can get muddied. But look at it this way: Suppose there is a problem which consists of two sub-parts—one of which is simple and one of which is complicated. If there is an in-depth discussion of the problem, it is reasonable to expect that discussion to focus on the more complicated sub-problem. If someone wanders in and says that people are missing the point, then he himself is kind of missing the point.
The other thing to consider is that there does exist some evidence relating (1) to (2). For example, some people claim to have an easier time restricting their eating if they shift their diet away from carbohydrates. One could call this the Weak Carbs Hypothesis. Some people claim that if you simply eliminate refined carbohydrates (whatever that means) from your diet, you will naturally restrict your calories enough to become and stay thin. One might call this the Strong Carbs Hypothesis. I personally believe in what might be called the Junk Food Hypothesis.
If there is an in-depth discussion of the problem, it is reasonable to expect that discussion to focus on the more complicated sub-problem.
If this is what happened, I’d have said nothing.
What I observed was a discussion of 2 as if it were not really simple.
1 is a very useful conversation. My guess is that, generally, people want to talk about 2 because 1 is the hard part of dieting. If there is someway to hack 2, then you don’t need to worry about 1.
In my understanding, there isn’t a way to hack 2. But the discussion swirling around the articles on Taubes seemed to be advocating some ideas that seemed bogus and pseudo-scientifc to me, but I trusted LWers on account of the fact they tend to be smarter than I. Since losing weight (rather simply, and by ignoring all the noice I heard here) I’ve noticed my confidence in LW is lower.
The other thing to consider is that there does exist some evidence relating (1) to (2). For example, some people claim to have an easier time restricting their eating if they shift their diet away from carbohydrates.
This still is a 1 issue to me. I have dieting tricks I use too. But they aren’t somehow negating the simple calorie math that determines weight loss.
As far as carbs, my assumption (that I now feel stronger than ever about) is that carb-restriction diets “work” because Western diets tend to have lots of carbs in them and people are so accustomed. If you make a rule saying you’ll not eat carbs, you’d be hard-pressed to come up with enough calories eating non-carb stuff to not lose weight.
I mean, if someone is eating 60-65% of their caloric intake in carbs and then they quit carbs, they’ll lose weight.
If someone drinks a 6-back of beer a day and then quits, they’ll lose weight on account of consuming fewer calories. But we don’t call this the No Beer Diet and pretend something magical is occuring like we do with Atkins and other low carb diets.
What I observed was a discussion of 2 as if it were not really simple.
Would you mind linking to an example so I can understand what you are talking about?
If you make a rule saying you’ll not eat carbs, you’d be hard-pressed to come up with enough calories eating non-carb stuff to not lose weight.
That may very well be the case. I myself am pretty skeptical of low carb dieting. At a minimum, it does not appear to be the “silver bullet” which some people have claimed it to be.
It is, of course, possible that there are other causal mechanisms at play. But I don’t think the evidence supports that.
Do you understand why people in science like placebo controlled trials? It’s because understanding causal mechanisms is hard.
There are a lot of people who try really hard to develop programs that are effective at inducing weightloss in a broad public and they fail. If weightloss is really simple then why don’t we have programs that show effective results in clinical trials?
I would guess that you know how tall you are. That means you should be able to calculate BMI.
Basically you had a significant injury and then lost weight but you think that the fact that your body reacts to being seriously injured has nothing directly to do with your body physiology changing.
But even if that’s not the casual mechanism seriously insuring oneself that one feels enough pain and inconvenience to reduce the amount of food that one eats is not a viable strategy for other people to copy.
BMI was 28.4 October 1, 2013 & 24.1 today. (Sorry, never really use BMI. I’d be more interested to know my bodyfat %, etc.)
As for the rest of your comment, you’re actually further driving home the point I’m trying to make about LW.
I just said this:
The simplest answer is that I ate less and exercised more. I created a calorie deficit. Period.
It is, of course, possible that there are other causal mechanisms at play. But I don’t think the evidence supports that. If I eat more this week, I’ll gain weight. If I do 25% more treadmill work over the next two weeks, I’ll lose weight.
Sometimes there are deep, complicated, casual mechanisms at play. LW is full of minds that can imagine and decribe those in detail at a level that is amazing to me.
But some stuff is simple.
As noted elsewhere, this is a bit of an oversimplification.
It’s like saying “If you want to build a nuclear bomb, use high explosives to compress a core of plutonium into a critical volume. Period.” or “If you want to fix your alcoholism problem, just stop drinking alcohol. Period.”
In other words, you are glossing over the very difficult and complex problems involved in successful weight loss.
I daresay the flaw in your thinking is the assumption that there is unitary control in your brain, i.e. that you can control yourself just like you can control your character in a video game and simply enter the command for “consume fewer calories.”
Based on my informal investigation into the matter, I am convinced that there are competing aspects to the brain which share control over the body. And that it’s impossible for one part to be in control all of the time. This is a big problem for dieting because if you are fat, you probably have an inner fattie who doesn’t care one whit about fitness or counting calories, he just wants to consume potato chips without regards to future consequences. And if he takes control for just a few minutes here and there, it can easily ruin your diet.
To my mind, this is the essential problem of dieting—how to organize the competing factions within your brain so that your body receives instructions consistent with healthy eating nearly 100% of the time.
I understand.
There seem to be two issues.
1 - Finding instrumentally rational ways to execute a successful diet according to the causal mechanisms that lead to weight loss.
2 - The causal mechanisms that lead to weight loss.
It isn’t my argument that #1 is easy. I’m only saying #2 is simple.
From my recall, the discussion I originally linked was making #2 very complicated. This was, I think, to the detriment of anyone interested in actually losing weight.
Gamify it, meditate, medicate, operate—whatever works for you to do #1, ’cuz it is SO OBVIOUSLY HARD. But obfuscating the simplicity of #2 in the process is not helpful, which is my view of what was happenning in the discussion I linked.
I do agree that the distinction you draw can get muddied. But look at it this way: Suppose there is a problem which consists of two sub-parts—one of which is simple and one of which is complicated. If there is an in-depth discussion of the problem, it is reasonable to expect that discussion to focus on the more complicated sub-problem. If someone wanders in and says that people are missing the point, then he himself is kind of missing the point.
The other thing to consider is that there does exist some evidence relating (1) to (2). For example, some people claim to have an easier time restricting their eating if they shift their diet away from carbohydrates. One could call this the Weak Carbs Hypothesis. Some people claim that if you simply eliminate refined carbohydrates (whatever that means) from your diet, you will naturally restrict your calories enough to become and stay thin. One might call this the Strong Carbs Hypothesis. I personally believe in what might be called the Junk Food Hypothesis.
If this is what happened, I’d have said nothing.
What I observed was a discussion of 2 as if it were not really simple.
1 is a very useful conversation. My guess is that, generally, people want to talk about 2 because 1 is the hard part of dieting. If there is someway to hack 2, then you don’t need to worry about 1.
In my understanding, there isn’t a way to hack 2. But the discussion swirling around the articles on Taubes seemed to be advocating some ideas that seemed bogus and pseudo-scientifc to me, but I trusted LWers on account of the fact they tend to be smarter than I. Since losing weight (rather simply, and by ignoring all the noice I heard here) I’ve noticed my confidence in LW is lower.
This still is a 1 issue to me. I have dieting tricks I use too. But they aren’t somehow negating the simple calorie math that determines weight loss.
As far as carbs, my assumption (that I now feel stronger than ever about) is that carb-restriction diets “work” because Western diets tend to have lots of carbs in them and people are so accustomed. If you make a rule saying you’ll not eat carbs, you’d be hard-pressed to come up with enough calories eating non-carb stuff to not lose weight.
I mean, if someone is eating 60-65% of their caloric intake in carbs and then they quit carbs, they’ll lose weight.
If someone drinks a 6-back of beer a day and then quits, they’ll lose weight on account of consuming fewer calories. But we don’t call this the No Beer Diet and pretend something magical is occuring like we do with Atkins and other low carb diets.
Would you mind linking to an example so I can understand what you are talking about?
That may very well be the case. I myself am pretty skeptical of low carb dieting. At a minimum, it does not appear to be the “silver bullet” which some people have claimed it to be.
You’re right to have low confidence in our winning-ness. If we were winning so hard, why would we be so often theorizing about what it takes to win?
Reading and writing well means never having to admit that you didn’t do any research before weighing in.
Do you understand why people in science like placebo controlled trials? It’s because understanding causal mechanisms is hard.
There are a lot of people who try really hard to develop programs that are effective at inducing weightloss in a broad public and they fail. If weightloss is really simple then why don’t we have programs that show effective results in clinical trials?
Because it is hard to actually execute diets. You’re conflating two issues now.
There are exceptions, but people will lose weight very predictably if food intake and exercise is 100% controlled.
Dieting “theory” is all about helping people stick to the plans that engage the causal mechanisms that science already has informed us will work.