A couple of questions about your individual situation—just curious:
1.) What are your morning and night routines like?
2.) Do you think it’s valuable to break your don’t eat up by food, or just have one junk food category?
3.) Why not sleep during the day? I had previously been in a habit of napping and found it useful, and it’s generally regarded as healthy. The only reason I don’t nap now is because I have a standard 9-to-5 (well, more like 10-to-7) job.
4.) Why so much caffeine in the coffee and tea? It seems like this would just promote tolerance, which seems bad.
5.) What are the benefits of eating dark chocolate? Olive oil?
Here are my morning and night routines. I try to be quite detailed; don’t underestimate the value of checklists.
I originally had a single generic junk food category, but the problem was that when I ate one type of junk food on a given day, I had no extra incentive to abstain from eating other types of junk food for the rest of the day. Individuating dailies with a more fine-grained criterion provides an effective way of dealing with this problem.
I have sleep problems and wanted to see whether sleeping only at night would help. In addition, I read studies suggesting that people who sleep during the day, esp. those who take long naps, tend to die earlier, though these are correlational studies and it’s unclear what causal inferences we can draw from them.
I once estimated that my total caffeine intake from drinking two cups of coffee and six cups of green tea was about 300 mg, which I believe is within safe and normal levels. I drink green tea primarily for its health benefits, though, so perhaps I should switch to decaf. As for coffee, there are studies suggesting that low to medium doses have neuroprotective properties, though I’m not sure this is due to the caffeine itself or other properties of coffee.
Olive oil is a very good source of monounsaturated fatty acids. The benefits of dark chocolate are, I think, modest and not that well documented; see here. I eat it primarily because I find it delicious.
I originally had a single generic junk food category, but the problem was that when I ate one type of junk food on a given day, I had no extra incentive to abstain from eating other types of junk food for the rest of the day.
I solved that problem by tracking how many pieces of junk food I ate rather than a binary of whether or not I ate junk food on that particular day.
Yes, I considered that approach. But the vagueness involved in the notion of a “piece of junk food” was such that I found I had considerable latitude in determining how many pieces of junk food I ate on a particular day. By contrast, deciding whether I ate a certain type of junk food at all is usually quite straightforward, and not subject to rationalization. As Jon Elster wrote:
Kant’s rule of smoking only one pipe after breakfast was not unambiguous enough to give him full protection, since as time passed he bought himself bigger and bigger pipes. When feasible, the rule ‘‘Never do it’’ may be the only one that can be stably upheld.
(Of course, you may not have a problem if you are sufficiently self-disciplined, as you seem to be.)
(Of course, you may not be a problem if you are sufficiently self-disciplined, as you seem to be.)
Yeah, that seems right.
But the vagueness involved in the notion of a “piece of junk food” was such that I found I had considerable latitude in determining how many pieces of junk food I ate on a particular day.
I tend to define it roughly as “250 calories of something that is devoid of nutritional value and consumed primarily for taste”.
A couple of questions about your individual situation—just curious:
1.) What are your morning and night routines like?
2.) Do you think it’s valuable to break your don’t eat up by food, or just have one junk food category?
3.) Why not sleep during the day? I had previously been in a habit of napping and found it useful, and it’s generally regarded as healthy. The only reason I don’t nap now is because I have a standard 9-to-5 (well, more like 10-to-7) job.
4.) Why so much caffeine in the coffee and tea? It seems like this would just promote tolerance, which seems bad.
5.) What are the benefits of eating dark chocolate? Olive oil?
Hi Peter,
Here are my morning and night routines. I try to be quite detailed; don’t underestimate the value of checklists.
I originally had a single generic junk food category, but the problem was that when I ate one type of junk food on a given day, I had no extra incentive to abstain from eating other types of junk food for the rest of the day. Individuating dailies with a more fine-grained criterion provides an effective way of dealing with this problem.
I have sleep problems and wanted to see whether sleeping only at night would help. In addition, I read studies suggesting that people who sleep during the day, esp. those who take long naps, tend to die earlier, though these are correlational studies and it’s unclear what causal inferences we can draw from them.
I once estimated that my total caffeine intake from drinking two cups of coffee and six cups of green tea was about 300 mg, which I believe is within safe and normal levels. I drink green tea primarily for its health benefits, though, so perhaps I should switch to decaf. As for coffee, there are studies suggesting that low to medium doses have neuroprotective properties, though I’m not sure this is due to the caffeine itself or other properties of coffee.
Olive oil is a very good source of monounsaturated fatty acids. The benefits of dark chocolate are, I think, modest and not that well documented; see here. I eat it primarily because I find it delicious.
I solved that problem by tracking how many pieces of junk food I ate rather than a binary of whether or not I ate junk food on that particular day.
Yes, I considered that approach. But the vagueness involved in the notion of a “piece of junk food” was such that I found I had considerable latitude in determining how many pieces of junk food I ate on a particular day. By contrast, deciding whether I ate a certain type of junk food at all is usually quite straightforward, and not subject to rationalization. As Jon Elster wrote:
(Of course, you may not have a problem if you are sufficiently self-disciplined, as you seem to be.)
Yeah, that seems right.
I tend to define it roughly as “250 calories of something that is devoid of nutritional value and consumed primarily for taste”.
I actually find a slight caffeine dependency useful in reminding me to put the kettle on and make a proper breakfast in the morning.