If you look at a modern home you can see that the surface area of heating equipment is important for a warm home. You could run and tell people who want warmer homes to increase that surface area.
In reality a much better advice is to turn the thermostat. You can be right about some parts but still miss the point.
There are multiple ways you can theoretically approach weight loss.
I think that calorie control is a center piece of the mainstream view.
As far as I can see preaching calorie control is not effective.
Gary Taubes focuses on reducing eating carbohydrates that raise insulin.
Another approach would be Seth Roberts set point frame. If you follow it than you give people nose clips and let them drink a bit of oil.
There are people who practice hypnosis who also operate on the set point model.
There are people who tell you that the key is about starting to listen to your body and perceive signals from it that most people ignore.
There seems to be an anti-pattern for certain kinds of problems that involve one’s habits, lifestyle, or emotions. The anti-pattern is that many people who do not experience the problem claim that the problem is easily solvable; whereas many people who do experience the problem claim that it is not easily solved.
People who have previously experienced the problem may fall into either category; whether they do seems to have something to do with how much continuity (or compassion?) they feel between their current self and their problem-having past self; or whether they have retained awareness of the specific transitions involved in solving the problem. (Kinda like some of the difficulties moridinamael recently pointed out regarding programming tutorials. Just because you’ve achieved X does not automatically make you a good guide for others who want to achieve X.)
This seems related to one of the things that folks who use the word “privilege” mean by it sometimes. We can probably come up with some less politically charged word for this specific anti-pattern, though.
Good point. It seems pretty common for people who study social phenomena — even heavily moralized ones, like crime — to have more compassion for the people involved in them than the “conventional wisdom” does.
Dunno if it’s not mainstream enough for you, but FWIW as of now the average rating of The Hacker’s Diet on Goodreads is 3.85 out of 5.
I don’t think that the Hacker”s diet is a mainstream work. It”s not written by a nutrition professor or by a government health agency but by a tech CEO.
the average rating of The Hacker’s Diet on Goodreads is 3.85 out of 5.
I don’t think that says much. The number also happens to be lower than Gary Taubnes Good Calories, Bad Calories.
As far as the Hackers diet itself goes, it preaches to measure weight with moving averages and make decisions based on that measurement.
As far as I know you can’t even buy a scale that does moving averages automatically that’s how non-mainstream the recommendations of the hackers diet happens to be.
I think if you ask most mainstream health folks what they think about moving averages for weight measurements they have no idea what you are talking about.
In a world where studies indicate that people who weight themselves daily lose more weight, a lot of mainstream health advice recommends against daily weighting to avoid negative emotions associated with seeing your weight.
I see nobody funding a study to see whether a scale that measures someone weight and then gives them the moving average performs against a scale that just tells people their weight directly.
Mainstream nutrition researchers focus to much on food to investigate theories like that.
However I don’t see in the page that you linked that Withings can be setup in a way that it never tells you your weight at a particular point in time but only displays the moving average when you step on it.
I would add that once you get rid of the idea that the body scale should display directly what it measures, you can also do things like menstrual cycle controlled weight for woman.
You could also think about simply display the difference between your weight and preset target wait for a particular day. There are plenty of different possibilities to display that information and in a sane world we would compare those difference and run studies to see which way of displaying the information actually encourages humans to make decisions that move them towards their target weight.
That’s an awfully specific use mode you ask for. A common mode of use of these scales, which I think is a better choice, is not to look at the display at all, perhaps even covering it. Collecting data should be a habit separate from analyzing data. And when you do analyze data, you don’t just want the current point estimate, but the graph of history.
Collecting data should be a habit separate from analyzing data.
You might be right or you might be wrong. In a sane world someone would run a study to give us data to answer that question.
But we don’t live in a sane world. Our mainstream nutrition researchers are not interested in answering that question. They rather fund huge studies that gather self reported eating reports and try to interpret those self reported eating reports to tell us that we should eat certain food over other food.
That’s an awfully specific use mode you ask for.
I’m asking a companies who are in the business of scale production to think about optimal data presentation.
I would want a company like Withings to either make the display fully programmable. Furthermore I would want them to run a study about which way of displaying data is best.
Scientific trial setup:
2000 trial Withings. They get sold with a rabate. Each user who gets them agrees to the trial and that the weight data of the trial is allowed to be published afterwards anonymously.
There are 10 different scales modes. In the first two years of using the scale the user will be logged into the scale mode that supposed to be tested.
After a year is up you go and analyse the data. Which information display was best suited for helping people lose weight? You go and publish that information in a good journal.
Then you go and tell newspaper journalists about your new study which shows that measuring weight in a certain way helps people lose weight. Coincidentally the way to have a scale that displays weight that way you have to go out and by a Withings.
That story is good in the sense that newspaper journalists would probably be happy to write about it.
I would even do a bit of the PR work myself when I do the next QS media interview (I have done >10 in the past).
I would add that once you get rid of the idea that the body scale should display directly what it measures, you can also do things like menstrual cycle controlled weight for woman.
(Another idea along those lines I once had was controlling for days of the week, as many people eat more on weekends than on weekdays. But the more parameters the model has the more likely overfitting becomes.)
Another idea along those lines I once had was controlling for days of the week, as many people eat more on weekends than on weekdays.
If you make 7 day rolling averages you already remove that effect. In any case from the weight charts that I personally looked at that effect doesn’t seem that big. Day to day changes in water content seem to produce more noise.
If one wants to get simplistic, saying “calorie control” is horribly wrong as a first approximation.
It’s calories versus metabolism. That at least recognizes a trade off, instead of picturing calorie control as a single unopposed knob to tune your weight.
Oh my god.
As I’ve said, losing weight is much more complex than just eating less… but the center of the issue is calorie control.
This is an issue where I think LW has collectively lost its mind.
Mainstream health advice with is centered around that maxim has failed to provide people who want to lose weight with a way that performs well.
What kind of evidence makes you think that a nutrition strategy should be centered around that maxim?
You’ll have to restate this.
If you look at a modern home you can see that the surface area of heating equipment is important for a warm home. You could run and tell people who want warmer homes to increase that surface area.
In reality a much better advice is to turn the thermostat. You can be right about some parts but still miss the point.
There are multiple ways you can theoretically approach weight loss.
I think that calorie control is a center piece of the mainstream view.
As far as I can see preaching calorie control is not effective.
Gary Taubes focuses on reducing eating carbohydrates that raise insulin.
Another approach would be Seth Roberts set point frame. If you follow it than you give people nose clips and let them drink a bit of oil.
There are people who practice hypnosis who also operate on the set point model.
There are people who tell you that the key is about starting to listen to your body and perceive signals from it that most people ignore.
There seems to be an anti-pattern for certain kinds of problems that involve one’s habits, lifestyle, or emotions. The anti-pattern is that many people who do not experience the problem claim that the problem is easily solvable; whereas many people who do experience the problem claim that it is not easily solved.
People who have previously experienced the problem may fall into either category; whether they do seems to have something to do with how much continuity (or compassion?) they feel between their current self and their problem-having past self; or whether they have retained awareness of the specific transitions involved in solving the problem. (Kinda like some of the difficulties moridinamael recently pointed out regarding programming tutorials. Just because you’ve achieved X does not automatically make you a good guide for others who want to achieve X.)
This seems related to one of the things that folks who use the word “privilege” mean by it sometimes. We can probably come up with some less politically charged word for this specific anti-pattern, though.
I don’t think that personal experience with the problem of wanting to lose weight is the only factor.
This is also a tribal conflict of academia vs. internet wisdom.
Stop eating so much carbohydrates isn’t much more complex than, saying eat less calories.
Good point. It seems pretty common for people who study social phenomena — even heavily moralized ones, like crime — to have more compassion for the people involved in them than the “conventional wisdom” does.
Dunno if it’s not mainstream enough for you, but FWIW as of now the average rating of The Hacker’s Diet on Goodreads is 3.85 out of 5.
I don’t think that the Hacker”s diet is a mainstream work. It”s not written by a nutrition professor or by a government health agency but by a tech CEO.
I don’t think that says much. The number also happens to be lower than Gary Taubnes Good Calories, Bad Calories.
As far as the Hackers diet itself goes, it preaches to measure weight with moving averages and make decisions based on that measurement.
As far as I know you can’t even buy a scale that does moving averages automatically that’s how non-mainstream the recommendations of the hackers diet happens to be.
I think if you ask most mainstream health folks what they think about moving averages for weight measurements they have no idea what you are talking about.
In a world where studies indicate that people who weight themselves daily lose more weight, a lot of mainstream health advice recommends against daily weighting to avoid negative emotions associated with seeing your weight.
I see nobody funding a study to see whether a scale that measures someone weight and then gives them the moving average performs against a scale that just tells people their weight directly.
Mainstream nutrition researchers focus to much on food to investigate theories like that.
I don’t own one, so I can’t be certain.
However I don’t see in the page that you linked that Withings can be setup in a way that it never tells you your weight at a particular point in time but only displays the moving average when you step on it.
I would add that once you get rid of the idea that the body scale should display directly what it measures, you can also do things like menstrual cycle controlled weight for woman.
You could also think about simply display the difference between your weight and preset target wait for a particular day. There are plenty of different possibilities to display that information and in a sane world we would compare those difference and run studies to see which way of displaying the information actually encourages humans to make decisions that move them towards their target weight.
That’s an awfully specific use mode you ask for. A common mode of use of these scales, which I think is a better choice, is not to look at the display at all, perhaps even covering it. Collecting data should be a habit separate from analyzing data. And when you do analyze data, you don’t just want the current point estimate, but the graph of history.
You might be right or you might be wrong. In a sane world someone would run a study to give us data to answer that question.
But we don’t live in a sane world. Our mainstream nutrition researchers are not interested in answering that question. They rather fund huge studies that gather self reported eating reports and try to interpret those self reported eating reports to tell us that we should eat certain food over other food.
I’m asking a companies who are in the business of scale production to think about optimal data presentation.
I would want a company like Withings to either make the display fully programmable. Furthermore I would want them to run a study about which way of displaying data is best.
Scientific trial setup:
2000 trial Withings. They get sold with a rabate. Each user who gets them agrees to the trial and that the weight data of the trial is allowed to be published afterwards anonymously.
There are 10 different scales modes. In the first two years of using the scale the user will be logged into the scale mode that supposed to be tested.
After a year is up you go and analyse the data. Which information display was best suited for helping people lose weight? You go and publish that information in a good journal.
Then you go and tell newspaper journalists about your new study which shows that measuring weight in a certain way helps people lose weight. Coincidentally the way to have a scale that displays weight that way you have to go out and by a Withings.
That story is good in the sense that newspaper journalists would probably be happy to write about it.
I would even do a bit of the PR work myself when I do the next QS media interview (I have done >10 in the past).
(Another idea along those lines I once had was controlling for days of the week, as many people eat more on weekends than on weekdays. But the more parameters the model has the more likely overfitting becomes.)
If you make 7 day rolling averages you already remove that effect. In any case from the weight charts that I personally looked at that effect doesn’t seem that big. Day to day changes in water content seem to produce more noise.
If one wants to get simplistic, saying “calorie control” is horribly wrong as a first approximation.
It’s calories versus metabolism. That at least recognizes a trade off, instead of picturing calorie control as a single unopposed knob to tune your weight.