Thank you for responding . . . I wish I could up-vote your post by about 50 points.
My impression is that when people kvell about their diet success, they tend to be reluctant to update down the road if things don’t work out. Leading to a survivorship bias problem. And making it difficult to get a better understanding of how diets run off the rails.
From a meta point of view, there is arguably only one real way to diet successfully, which is to think about all the ways that diets fail and then plan and adopt strategies to deal with those problems.
The essential problem remains: humanity’s basically solved the food problem, but our genes don’t understand this so pack on the fat in preparation for a famine that will never arrive. So all diets are unnatural. Too much food for our health is a great problem to have, though, much better than the previous problem.
The essential problem remains: humanity’s basically solved the food problem, but our genes don’t understand this so pack on the fat in preparation for a famine that will never arrive. So all diets are unnatural
Well that’s one essential aspect of the problem. There are other issues too. But I think this point is important in at least one respect: There is an idea out there that there is something wrong with obsessing over one’s food intake and weight. Another poster asserted that dieting is a mental disorder.
But given that for a lot of people, System 1 (non-conscious thought) is unable to navigate today’s environment successfully, it’s not unreasonable to use System 2 (conscious thought) as a substitute. Or even what one might call “System 3” -- conscious thought plus brain extensions such as calendars, food and weight logs, written meal plans, etc.
Got thoroughly sick of it by last year, largely gave up. Now I eat it some days, ignore it others. Haven’t checked weight lately :-)
Thank you for responding . . . I wish I could up-vote your post by about 50 points.
My impression is that when people kvell about their diet success, they tend to be reluctant to update down the road if things don’t work out. Leading to a survivorship bias problem. And making it difficult to get a better understanding of how diets run off the rails.
From a meta point of view, there is arguably only one real way to diet successfully, which is to think about all the ways that diets fail and then plan and adopt strategies to deal with those problems.
The essential problem remains: humanity’s basically solved the food problem, but our genes don’t understand this so pack on the fat in preparation for a famine that will never arrive. So all diets are unnatural. Too much food for our health is a great problem to have, though, much better than the previous problem.
I thought the entire point of the paleo diet is that it is natural, er, consonant with the ancestral evolutionary environment?
So it claims. I believe this is more than slightly disputed.
Well that’s one essential aspect of the problem. There are other issues too. But I think this point is important in at least one respect: There is an idea out there that there is something wrong with obsessing over one’s food intake and weight. Another poster asserted that dieting is a mental disorder.
But given that for a lot of people, System 1 (non-conscious thought) is unable to navigate today’s environment successfully, it’s not unreasonable to use System 2 (conscious thought) as a substitute. Or even what one might call “System 3” -- conscious thought plus brain extensions such as calendars, food and weight logs, written meal plans, etc.