If you’ve already tried things like low-carb diets and Shangri La, losing weight is probably impossible for you short of Adipotide or liposuction, so ignore all the well-meaning advice from the metabolically privileged about how easy this would be if you just ate less and exercised.
Exercise can still be beneficial even if an individual isn’t metabolically lucky (I wouldn’t say privileged—if we still lived in a world of scarcity rather than abundance it wouldn’t be much of a privilege). Some heavy people carry their weight well, because they’ve exercised, practiced good posture, etc.
Especially given that High Intensity Interval Training (30 second intervals of intense work a few times a week) seems to produce similar results to traditional exercise (video is very interesting).
That video is actually a great big deal if it’s sound, and I hope some other LWers will take a look at it.
It’s an examination of the actual health effects of exercise, and as might be expected in this complicated world, “exercise is good for people’s health” is excessive simplification. Different kinds of exercise have different effects on various problems, and there’s a lot of evidence that exercise is deleterious or useless for a good many people.
Also, while people who say they exercise also say they feel better, this is not the same thing as a proof that exercise will be good for people who aren’t exercising.
Exercise at levels which are too low to show up in a lot of surveys (like one minute per day of running for the bus) might actually get a lot of the good effects for people who are benefited by exercise.
Eliezer, I’m trying to lose fat to increase my attractiveness, but I’ve read on this site that you already have four girlfriends in a polyamorous relationship. Is that true? If it is, how did you achieve that without losing weight? I’m assuming of course that you are overweight given your interest in diets, I’ve not seen a picture of you.
If I already had 4 girlfriends, to hell with fat. I would just concentrate on staying healthy.
Anyway, if after careful and extended research it would come out that liposuction is the only way to lose fat, and losing fat is a prerequisite for attracting girls, then I would do that, if there were no unreasonable risks.
High status, enough fame to broadcast across many possibilities, and sufficiently good Harry Potter fanfiction to convey a sense of my personality. (If you like HJPEV’s personality you will probably like mine, though we are not the same person.) Currently down to 2 local and 1 East Coast girlfriend, btw. This pathway is not tremendously duplicable, but it was easier for me than learning to dress well or studying light-side pickup because I needed to do the work for other reasons anyway.
Fat is a problem for me because of how it affects things like sleep, and energy during daily work—having your fat cells suck out all the glucose you need is not helpful. If you can lose weight, you should obviously do so. If you haven’t yet tried low-carb and Shangri-La, both seem relatively obvious things to attempt; the first seems to have a high success rate and the second is very easy. It’s the people telling you to buckle down and use willpower who should be ignored—I know of exactly one case of that working, all other cases of weight loss in my personal experience did not involve what I would consider to be significant willpower.
Some years back, I believe you said that working on FAI was too important to leave time for a girlfriend. How has that worked out? Have you found that romantic entanglements detract from your work, or enhance it?
“I ran out of ability to not have a girlfriend” would be the real answer. Some labor complementarity, some time costs, doesn’t matter much from my perspective because I ran out of ability not to have a girlfriend. I don’t regret the dedicated labor I put in up until that point, back when being alone didn’t seem like much of a problem.
High status, enough fame to broadcast across many possibilities, and sufficiently good Harry Potter fanfiction to convey a sense of my personality.
Huh, I see. May I ask you if those girls just proposed them to you, or did you actively searched and seduced them? I understand that’s a fairly personal question, I’m just trying to understand if I can copy a portion of your behaviour.
Currently down to 2 local and 1 East Coast girlfriend, btw.
Poor Eliezer :p
This pathway is not tremendously duplicable, but it was easier for me than learning to dress well or studying light-side pickup because I needed to do the work for other reasons anyway.
Yes, I’ve read HPMOR up to chapter eighty-something and I really liked it, maybe one day you should tell other people who want to start writing how to do it correctly.
f you can lose weight, you should obviously do so. If you haven’t yet tried low-carb and Shangri-La, both seem relatively obvious things to attempt
I will certainly try, with even more focus. But I doubt Shangri-la can work for people who have been overweight for a long time, their leptin loop is far too off-track to be changed by such weak stimuli. I don’t remember where but I’ve read that hypothalamus can develop leptin resistance.
I brute-forced the other side of the problem (status/fame/impression) hard enough that I never learned to search and seduce. Sometimes contemplating this makes me feel very lazy, but heck, brute-forcing the other side of that took a lot of work. It was not the minimum-effort pathway if that had actually been the primary goal.
I was overweight for a long time before I lost 20 pounds on Shangri-la, after which it never worked again, but they were a nice 20 pounds to lose.
I’ve read on this site that you already have four girlfriend in a polyamorous relationship. Is that true? If it is, how did you achieve that without losing weight?
Some women prefer overweight men, and some don’t mind dating overweight men. If I’m honest I’m more likely to be attracted to slimmer men (certainly most of the men I’ve dated are slimmer), however I have been attracted to fat guys in the past, if they have other attractive qualities (being smart, amusing, relaxed about sex, for instance).
You are one of the few commenters who indeed didn’t suggest to lose weight. Based on your experience, what would you suggest a fat guy should concentrate on if he wanted to result attractive?
I think concentrating on improving social skills and learning to dress better are important. Regarding social skills, if you suffer from social anxiety, CBT, mindfulness and antidepressants work well. Apart from that, I don’t really know, as my social skills improved without a great deal of effort, but good self help advice is probably the way to go. I also don’t know a great deal about men’s fashion, but googling “how to dress for overweight men” brings up lots of results. A word of caution though—after getting internet fashion advice check how things look with a friend!
I think losing weight is also good idea, but you may not be able to lose it sustainably, so doing other things as well is important. Recently, I’ve wanted to look better. I am going to try to lose weight (I don’t have a great deal to lose, but I’d look better if I dropped a few kilos), but the first thing I did was buy some new clothes and get a new haircut.
At the moment I cannot really assess my social skills, but I don’t think I’m terribly anxious. If my plans come to fruition, I’ll have a good environment where to practice socializing. Although I suspect that amiably chatting with girls won’t bring me the results I’m searching for :)
I find this claim surprising. It is not obvious what evidence or line of reasoning would lead to this conclusion.
On the population level, it is my understanding that people today (in industrialized western nations) have much higher likelihood of being overweight or obese at a given age than their very recent ancestors from 2-3 generations ago. Given the short time frame, this is likely due to changes in diet or activity level rather than inescapable genetic destiny.
Individual metabolisms will certainly differ. However, I believe that having a body composition at least as good as one’s great-grandparents should be possible for most people. Is there evidence against this?
Given the short time frame, this is likely due to changes in diet or activity level rather than inescapable genetic destiny.
Those are not the only possibilities. For example, it’s been hypothesized that obesity might be linked to some now-ubiquitous chemical exposure that messes with human hormone balances. If it’s a novel environmental factor, some people might be especially genetically susceptible or resistant to the effect.
Losing weight and keeping it off is really difficult. It’s pretty rare for people to maintain a weight loss over a number of years. I can’t find reliable stats right now, but I believe the numbers are 10% regain within 1 year, and after 5 years only a very small number remain at a lower weight. I’m not , however, sure if metabolism is the reason or not.
Lots of people have system 1 processes governing calorie intake and expenditure that are maladaptive within their current environment. It’s possible to overrule these maladaptive impulses with system 2, but that imposes lots of cognitive load so most people are only able to sustain such efforts for a short time before reverting.
The article describes the common experience of people who temporarily go on medically supervised diets. Once they are left to their own devices, bereft of the external support and close supervision, they rely entirely on ongoing effort from system 2 to regulate their intake and expenditure. This eventually fails when limited system 2 resources get allocated to other tasks leaving system 1 to prevail.
Wealthy people can reliably obtain good long-term outcomes by hiring a nutritionally savvy chef and a good personal trainer, thereby creating an durable external regulatory system that doesn’t require ongoing conscious supervisory effort from their system 2.
Of course it is unfair that some people’s system 1 drives are wildly maladaptive, while others’ require only minor correction. File a support ticket to the Blind Idiot God. If you choose not to wait for the bug to be patched, however, then you must spend your system 2 effort wisely. Spend it upfront to impose prudent structure and routine around diet and exercise with the goal of minimizing the day-to-day, minute-to-minute supervisory effort required.
I’ve been into fat acceptance for quite some years, and more than a little irritated at the idea that emotional problems are a major cause of people being fat.
I knew I ate somewhat more than I was hungry for, but it wasn’t a lot and didn’t seem like it was worth the trouble to fight.
I read some Eric Franklin—probably in his Relax Your Neck, Liberate Your Shoulders: The Ultimate Exercise Program for Tension Relief, but possibly his Dynamic Alignment through Imagery—about how the ribs connect to the breastbone, and I realized that I was holding my shoulders up all the time. I was able to lower my shoulders and found an immediate drop in my anxiety level. I was also doing heartbeat meditation (focus on heartbeat as well as breath) which was probably also helping with anxiety.
In any case, I found to my surprise that my previous usual “I’m fed, but food is still interesting” had changed to “if I’m comfortably fed (in some cases, if I’m mildly hungry), food isn’t interesting”. I’ve lost seven pounds with very little effort, and I’m expecting that I’ll be able to lose more weight stably.
None of this is relevant to Eliezer’s situation with losing weight, but might be of general interest.
… losing weight is probably impossible for you short of Adipotide
Is Adipotide something you are considering using yourself? I recall you mentioning it previously and from what I can tell the research so far is promising, albeit scant.
It’s currently in a Phase 1 trial, see here. Prohibitin Targeting Peptide 1 = Adipotide.
Phase 1 trial means that “researchers test an experimental drug or treatment in a small group of people (20-80) for the first time to evaluate its safety, determine a safe dosage range, and identify side effects”, so it’s designed for establishing safety only (although secondary data may be gathered).
Here’s the press release from the substance’s owner, Arrowhead. Excerpt:
Multiple independent [animal!] studies with Adipotide have demonstrated that obese rodents lose up to 30% of their body weight after only 28 days of treatment while lean animals show no weight loss. Studies have also shown that obese animals undergo rapid improvement in pro-diabetic metabolic markers, including significantly improved insulin sensitivity, improved glucose tolerance, and a reduction in serum triglycerides after only 2-3 days of treatment. Adipotide has been further studied in non-human primates, and it has been reported that after 28 days of treatment obese rhesus monkeys lost an average of 11% of their body weight, experienced a reduction in body mass index and abdominal circumference, and showed marked improvements in insulin resistance, a marker for type II diabetes. These data were published in the peer-reviewed journal Science Translational Medicine in November 2011 (Sci Trans Med 3, 108-112 (2011) DOI: 10.1126/scitraslmed.3002621).
However, that phase 1 trial is the only study using the substance with humans. Just that study will run until May 2016, and it’s using prostate cancer patients. It’ll be a while …
Edit: An excerpt from a critical comment about the cited paper, published by the same journal:
The authors of the study conclude that their findings in primates establish adipotide as a prototype for a new class
of candidate drugs that may be useful for treating obesity in humans. The data presented in their paper (Fig. 5C and fig. S3), however, could instead reflect a reduction in food intake induced directly by adipotide that resulted in body weight reduction. (...) This strong reduction in food intake in the absence of an increase in energy expenditure is more than sufficient to explain the reduction in white adipose tissue and body weight reported in this
study. The fact that the reduction in food intake lasted at least 1 week after cessation of adipotide treatment suggests that there may be a toxic effect of adipotide.
… and the response by the authors of the original paper:
(...) an independent report that carefully assessed the effects of adipotide on obese rodents unequivocally concluded that the observed decrease in food intake was not the result of nonspecific visceral illness. (...) The primary event appears to be ligand-directed vascular targeting with subsequent peripheral remodeling of white adipose tissue and an increase in peripheral metabolism. Another potential mechanism, a hypothalamic feedback loop, has been (...) empirically demonstrated, but the central molecular signal remains to be identified. Several recent reports indicate that mechanisms of satiety and satiation are influenced by many factors. Some of these factors could be initiated by the targeted destruction of white adipose tissue followed by a consequent increase in peripheral metabolism and a decrease in food intake. Most recently, a study has established that adipotide improves glucose tolerance independent of body weight and food consumption in obese mice, further supporting our proposed mechanism for the observed effects of adipotide.
However, that phase 1 trial is the only study using the substance with humans. Just that study will run until May 2016, and it’s using prostate cancer patients. It’ll be a while …
It’ll be a while before it is first prescribed by a doctor. Acquiring and consuming it is a whole different question. In fact, promising outcomes from the human trial could lead to the substance itself becoming more difficult to acquire and consume. Or at least less legal. Thankyou FDA (and equivalents). That said, current methods of acquiring the substance make cost a significant factor, as well as lacking the benefits of regulatory oversight.
Past comments by Eliezer lead me to model him as someone who would be averse to taking this kind of risk. He (not unjustifiably) considers his current state to be highly valuable and so has a lot to lose relative to the potential gain. Someone with less to lose but using the same decision algorithm may be more likely to take such risks.
Acquiring the substance may be simpler than I thought. This thread contains an interesting discussion with an apparent chemist about how to have the polypeptide custom-made, in some countries (e.g. Norway) it’s not even patented (yet?). Apparently you can order at some of the same places the researchers order their stuff from, complete with mass spec data as verification, at comparatively low prices—certainly lower than what the official drug will sell for.
at comparatively low prices—certainly lower than what the official drug will sell for.
Lower? Really? That’s surprising. All the previous discussions of custom synthesis sources I had encountered had prohibitive pricing due to lack of economics of scale. ie $6,000 for a cycle.
I’d be very surprised if the patent holder sold a full cycle for $6k or less. Antibodies (think cancer drugs) aren’t on the order of magnitude as expensive to produce as they’re sold for, either. Patients will pay whatever they can if the non-human primate results transfer to humans.
Trouble with this is that, while there may be people who genuinely ‘can’t lose weight’ there are definitely loads of people who would describe themselves as having tried all sorts of diets, haven’t lost weight, but do lose weight when they take up the right diet/exercise. Which often means ACTUALLY FOLLOWING pretty much any diet/exercise regime.
Unless you have solid reasons to believe that most people who claim to be ‘unable to lose weight’ or that ‘diets don’t work’ actually have this particular metabolic issues, telling them that they should go to medical approaches or give up entirely is pretty terrible advice: you’re encouraging people to give up on something that could improve their quality of life.
If you think it’s a common problem, the advice should be to have a period of very focused and well-observed efforts (drawing on all the productivity/motivation hacks on this site amongst others) to at least see whether there’s something that works for you: if there is, it’s good to know!
On a sidenote: while it might work in specific scientifically/evidentially led communities who already respect you, I suspect very strongly that a random very overweight person going around telling everyone thinner they are ‘metabolically privileged’ would not increase their attractiveness...
In my experience, any diet or exercise comes with an unlimited number of excuses from various different people for how you might not be doing it exactly right. Oddly enough, when the diet (temporarily) works on somebody, they don’t bother to check whether every tiny thing was done according to their own playbook. Thus the hypothesis “this diet doesn’t actually work for everyone” is prohbited.
I’m not arguing that every (or any) particular diet is perfect for everyone. I’m objecting to your claim that ‘if you’ve tried a couple of diets and failed then you probably can’t lose weight’. That’s a hell of a strong factual claim, and if it’s wrong then it’s incredibly unhelpful. So what’s the evidence? From what I can make out the case is
1) you believe there’s strong evidence that it’s nigh-impossible for a few people (mostly yourself?)
2) lots of people try fail
3) lots of different methods are put forward and lots of crap is talked about it.
I imagine that the same points are true for plenty of things that lots of people set out to do but which are difficult: learning a language, becoming a good cook, proficiency at an instrument, stopping procrastinating, getting a well-paying job… The last place I’d expect to see a counsel of despair would be here, tbh.
If there is stronger evidence that I’m missing, I’d be massively interested… and obviously you can ignore all the above!
I realize it would be insufficient compensation, but has bumping up against the religion of weight loss led you to find out anything new about biases, or was it all covered by trying to convince people of the dangers of UFAI?
googles Shangri La Man,I’ll definitely try that before I try intermittent fasting. The only low carb diet I’ve looked at is Atkins, and it just sounds really unpleasant, but I’ll look at paleo.
Weight loss is not easy. It’s ridiculously hard for many people, and that’s awful. I know this from personal experience too, but I’m sure anyone would agree. However, it is impossible to not lose weight if a person eats below his total daily energy expenditure. Not losing weight in this scenario is comparable to taking your car on a drive and finding out it doesn’t consume fuel.
Coming to the conclusion that weight loss is impossible requires extraordinary proof. Attempted scientifically dubious diets are weak evidence. Two months of eating below one’s TDEE while tracking everything with a digital scale is a minimum.
Do you mean “impossible” in the psychological sense? In that case medical interventions to remove fat directly are inadvisable as the fat will simply be regained, psychological treatment is required instead.
There is no thermodynamic law stating that fat cells must release fat just because your body needs it. If you’re built so that weight loss is impossible and you try eating less, your metabolism slows down—possibly in much the same way it would as if you tried eating less and you had no fat cells whatsoever. I can’t cite studies but wouldn’t be particularly surprised to see that muscle gets cannibalized instead of fat being lost, if you try to eat less than the most slowed metabolism needs. And if most metabolically disprivileged people stop trying to eat below their minimal metabolic rate before doing significant damage to themselves, that’s just the survival instinct kicking in. I would seriously not be surprised to find that fat people have starved to death without their fat cells releasing fat, and blinded by preconceptions, nobody managed to notice or note down when this occurred. But I would expect that to be rare—most people, if their body tells them they’re starving to death, will eat. This gets cited as weakness of will.
Metabolically privileged people assume that if you eat less, your fat cells will release fat. (Bitter laughter.) No. We don’t have energy storage units like you do, we have energy retention units. Calories go in, they don’t come out. Or if they do, it’s on special occasions we don’t understand how to predict or trigger, and which don’t have any obvious relation to attempts to eat less or exercise more. The laws of thermodynamics do not require that a physical fat cell physically release stored lipids when you eat less or exercise more—and if your fat cells are malfunctioning, they just won’t.
In that case medical interventions to remove fat directly are inadvisable as the fat will simply be regained, psychological treatment is required instead.
This is simply wrong. If you start out metabolically disprivileged, medical interventions to directly remove fat result in reduced appetite as your fat cells no longer suck glucose and fatty acids out of your bloodstream.
I would seriously not be surprised to find that fat people have starved to death without their fat cells releasing fat, and blinded by preconceptions, nobody managed to notice or note down when this occurred. But I would expect that to be rare—most people, if their body tells them they’re starving to death, will eat. This gets cited as weakness of will.
What outcomes would this metabolic hypothesis predict for obese people who undergo gastric bypass surgeries which render them physically incapable of eating much? What percentage of these patients would be expected to die of malnutrition? What effect on their body composition would be expected?
After working out the predictions of this hypothesis, are they consistent with what actually happens?
One of my friends who’d had weight loss surgery found that her treatment for pneumonia didn’t work until they figured out that she wasn’t absorbing as much of her oral antibiotics as people without the surgery would. I expect that sort of error is fairly common.
I’ve heard that there’s a 30% risk of alcoholism after WLS, and this is backed up by what I’ve heard anecdotally.
The usual theory is “trading one addiction for another”, but it isn’t proven that people who are get WLS are that likely to be addicted to food. I’ve heard that the surgery makes alcohol hit faster, and that makes it a more interesting drug. I’ve wondered whether alcohol is simply a very compact way of getting calories. Some people find they have less appetite after WLS, but some don’t.
I would seriously not be surprised to find that fat people have starved to death without their fat cells releasing fat, and blinded by preconceptions, nobody managed to notice or note down when this occurred.
A lot of diets only focus on what you eat, and not your general lifestyle when your general lifestyle is the determining factor. If you eat healthy and exercise correctly, but only get 4-5 hours of sleep every night, you will not lose weight. And without the exercise part, you will probably gain weight even if you are eating “healthy”. There’s also the risk of sleeping too much also being linked to weight gain. Burning the midnight oil every now and then is ok, but making a habit of it definitely is not.
I used to stay up late coding all the time, because laying in bed about to go to sleep for some reason makes my brain think of solutions, and then I would only get about 4 hours of sleep pretty consistently. That scumbag brain meme comes to mind.
IIRC there are some other lifestyle choices that are linked to being overweight, like having a long commute. A long commute is probably putting yourself under a lot of stress hormones like cortisol for extended periods of time, and cortisol levels are linked to unhealthy weight gain.
It’d be nice to have a standard collection of reading. What came to mind offhand on the specific topic of metabolism slowdown / fat cell energy vampirism is this:
Although when I actually talk to others who are trying to lose weight, a very common comment is, “I’m eating much less on but my weight isn’t going down at all!” Which is worse than what this article reports on—everyone who stayed in the study lost weight on 550 calories/day, but “Some people dropped out of the study” which you would kinda expect if those were the obese people whose fat cells weren’t releasing fat at all.
Any links to data and/or evidence of not burning any fat when in energy deficit? Normally humans burn both fat and muscle when energy from food is insufficient (the ratio depends on a bunch of factors) -- I would be very surprised to see people not lose (some) fat when in prolonged caloric deficit.
If you undergo ketosis your humoural triglycerides will be lysed.
Other people have written much on undergoing ketosis for weight loss, if you’re interested; beware though that much of their weight loss comes from loss of glycogen and water stores. Keeping yourself hydrated mitigates the latter, but liver glycogen stores will be depleted. Absent readily available glycogen, your body will break down humoural trigylcerides as it is your only remaining source of energy; glycogen stored in your muscles is left untouched lest you exercise extreme physical exertion. I now speculate, but at this point your body has become accustomed to using fats as its main energy source. If you enter into any sort of fasted state, be it through a caloric deficit, intermittent fasting, sleeping, etcetera, your body will lipolyse adipose cells for energy; this must happen or you will die—whatever prevented this previously will have been circumvented. Actually, if verily your body is so stubborn it won’t touch your adipose tissue, first you’d lose your skeletal muscle—then you’d die.
These are the physiological properties—if they don’t apply to you, then whatever genetic mutation causes your body’s nonconformity is unknown and I’d venture to guess has other effects as well.
If anyone tries this, pay attention to how fruity your urine/breath smells. If it becomes an overpowering scent, your blood pH may be too high. Either stop or take measures to rebalance your pH.
A zero-carb diet for a couple of weeks did not produce any ketosis as measured by a ketosis stick.
The most likely explanation is that you were eating a large amount of excess protein, most of which turns into glucose before it turns into ATP, and this was supplying (or nearly supplying) your nerve cells’ energy needs and inhibiting ketosis.
Lack of ketosis supplies at least part of an explanation of what’s going on with your metabolism. A fast google doesn’t supply any information about why ketosis might not happen, but it seems like a topic worth researching.
If you have too many amino acids in your blood your body doesn’t need to undergo ketosis. The generally recommended ratio is 65% fat or higher, %30 protein or less, and %5 carbohydrates or less.
Of course.
Sorry, I just realized we had a point of confusion due to a lack of clarity in my expression. I hope my edits are clearer.
If you undergo ketosis your fat cells will be lysed. Anecdotal reports aside, physiologically that must happen unless you are incapable of it (a genetic mutation which would—speculatively—have far-ranging effects).
Why must that happen? Ketosis means that lipolysis is occuring. Lipolysis does not inherently require that fat cells must be lysed as a physiological inevitability. ie. The fat that is to be broken down can itself come from diet instead of the lysing of fat cells.
You’re right—I wasn’t expressing myself thoroughly. I had the latent assumption of a caloric deficit, which as Eliezer has stated might not be enough to trigger breakdown of fat cells in some people. If the default fasted state of those people does not effect adequate catabolisation of their fat stores, then perhaps altering their body’s typical means of energy production would trigger lipolysis not just of humoural triglycerides but adipose cells as well when in a fasted state—exempli gratia through a caloric deficit, intermittent fasting, etcetera.
I would seriously not be surprised to find that fat people have starved to death without their fat cells releasing fat, and blinded by preconceptions, nobody managed to notice or note down when this occurred.
This happens all the time. We give it a different name depending which cell type starts dying first. Usually it’s heart muscle, in which case we call it heart disease, but sometimes it’s nerve cells (alzheimers) or the immune system (cancer). General death of a cell type can have many different causes, so it’s easy to avoid acknowledging this one in particular.
However, it is impossible to not lose weight if a person eats below his total daily energy expenditure.
This is true if you either:
Define “losing weight” such that it includes weight loss due to the decay or cremation of your corpse after death by starvation. Or,
Observe that if if a body dies rather than burn fat to live then “technically it hasn’t expended more energy than was eaten has it? Therefore it doesn’t qualify as a counter-example!”
Without such stretching of interpretation, however, it is false, misleading and all too common advice.
If you’ve already tried things like low-carb diets and Shangri La, losing weight is probably impossible for you short of Adipotide or liposuction, so ignore all the well-meaning advice from the metabolically privileged about how easy this would be if you just ate less and exercised.
Exercise can still be beneficial even if an individual isn’t metabolically lucky (I wouldn’t say privileged—if we still lived in a world of scarcity rather than abundance it wouldn’t be much of a privilege). Some heavy people carry their weight well, because they’ve exercised, practiced good posture, etc.
Especially given that High Intensity Interval Training (30 second intervals of intense work a few times a week) seems to produce similar results to traditional exercise (video is very interesting).
That video is actually a great big deal if it’s sound, and I hope some other LWers will take a look at it.
It’s an examination of the actual health effects of exercise, and as might be expected in this complicated world, “exercise is good for people’s health” is excessive simplification. Different kinds of exercise have different effects on various problems, and there’s a lot of evidence that exercise is deleterious or useless for a good many people.
Also, while people who say they exercise also say they feel better, this is not the same thing as a proof that exercise will be good for people who aren’t exercising.
Exercise at levels which are too low to show up in a lot of surveys (like one minute per day of running for the bus) might actually get a lot of the good effects for people who are benefited by exercise.
Eliezer, I’m trying to lose fat to increase my attractiveness, but I’ve read on this site that you already have four girlfriends in a polyamorous relationship. Is that true? If it is, how did you achieve that without losing weight? I’m assuming of course that you are overweight given your interest in diets, I’ve not seen a picture of you.
If I already had 4 girlfriends, to hell with fat. I would just concentrate on staying healthy.
Anyway, if after careful and extended research it would come out that liposuction is the only way to lose fat, and losing fat is a prerequisite for attracting girls, then I would do that, if there were no unreasonable risks.
High status, enough fame to broadcast across many possibilities, and sufficiently good Harry Potter fanfiction to convey a sense of my personality. (If you like HJPEV’s personality you will probably like mine, though we are not the same person.) Currently down to 2 local and 1 East Coast girlfriend, btw. This pathway is not tremendously duplicable, but it was easier for me than learning to dress well or studying light-side pickup because I needed to do the work for other reasons anyway.
Fat is a problem for me because of how it affects things like sleep, and energy during daily work—having your fat cells suck out all the glucose you need is not helpful. If you can lose weight, you should obviously do so. If you haven’t yet tried low-carb and Shangri-La, both seem relatively obvious things to attempt; the first seems to have a high success rate and the second is very easy. It’s the people telling you to buckle down and use willpower who should be ignored—I know of exactly one case of that working, all other cases of weight loss in my personal experience did not involve what I would consider to be significant willpower.
Some years back, I believe you said that working on FAI was too important to leave time for a girlfriend. How has that worked out? Have you found that romantic entanglements detract from your work, or enhance it?
“I ran out of ability to not have a girlfriend” would be the real answer. Some labor complementarity, some time costs, doesn’t matter much from my perspective because I ran out of ability not to have a girlfriend. I don’t regret the dedicated labor I put in up until that point, back when being alone didn’t seem like much of a problem.
No time for hedonism except exactly enough to maintain the meat.
Oh no! Eliezer no longer has one girlfriend for each of the Harry Potter houses. I wonder which one he is missing.
Huh, I see. May I ask you if those girls just proposed them to you, or did you actively searched and seduced them? I understand that’s a fairly personal question, I’m just trying to understand if I can copy a portion of your behaviour.
Poor Eliezer :p
Yes, I’ve read HPMOR up to chapter eighty-something and I really liked it, maybe one day you should tell other people who want to start writing how to do it correctly.
I will certainly try, with even more focus. But I doubt Shangri-la can work for people who have been overweight for a long time, their leptin loop is far too off-track to be changed by such weak stimuli. I don’t remember where but I’ve read that hypothalamus can develop leptin resistance.
I brute-forced the other side of the problem (status/fame/impression) hard enough that I never learned to search and seduce. Sometimes contemplating this makes me feel very lazy, but heck, brute-forcing the other side of that took a lot of work. It was not the minimum-effort pathway if that had actually been the primary goal.
I was overweight for a long time before I lost 20 pounds on Shangri-la, after which it never worked again, but they were a nice 20 pounds to lose.
Some women prefer overweight men, and some don’t mind dating overweight men. If I’m honest I’m more likely to be attracted to slimmer men (certainly most of the men I’ve dated are slimmer), however I have been attracted to fat guys in the past, if they have other attractive qualities (being smart, amusing, relaxed about sex, for instance).
You are one of the few commenters who indeed didn’t suggest to lose weight. Based on your experience, what would you suggest a fat guy should concentrate on if he wanted to result attractive?
I think concentrating on improving social skills and learning to dress better are important. Regarding social skills, if you suffer from social anxiety, CBT, mindfulness and antidepressants work well. Apart from that, I don’t really know, as my social skills improved without a great deal of effort, but good self help advice is probably the way to go. I also don’t know a great deal about men’s fashion, but googling “how to dress for overweight men” brings up lots of results. A word of caution though—after getting internet fashion advice check how things look with a friend!
I think losing weight is also good idea, but you may not be able to lose it sustainably, so doing other things as well is important. Recently, I’ve wanted to look better. I am going to try to lose weight (I don’t have a great deal to lose, but I’d look better if I dropped a few kilos), but the first thing I did was buy some new clothes and get a new haircut.
At the moment I cannot really assess my social skills, but I don’t think I’m terribly anxious. If my plans come to fruition, I’ll have a good environment where to practice socializing. Although I suspect that amiably chatting with girls won’t bring me the results I’m searching for :)
I’m a really great guy! Didn’t I tell ya baby? I am Zaphod Beeblebrox Eliezer Yudkowsky!
I find this claim surprising. It is not obvious what evidence or line of reasoning would lead to this conclusion.
On the population level, it is my understanding that people today (in industrialized western nations) have much higher likelihood of being overweight or obese at a given age than their very recent ancestors from 2-3 generations ago. Given the short time frame, this is likely due to changes in diet or activity level rather than inescapable genetic destiny.
Individual metabolisms will certainly differ. However, I believe that having a body composition at least as good as one’s great-grandparents should be possible for most people. Is there evidence against this?
Those are not the only possibilities. For example, it’s been hypothesized that obesity might be linked to some now-ubiquitous chemical exposure that messes with human hormone balances. If it’s a novel environmental factor, some people might be especially genetically susceptible or resistant to the effect.
The most known ubiquitous chemical that messes with human metabolism is sugar.
Losing weight and keeping it off is really difficult. It’s pretty rare for people to maintain a weight loss over a number of years. I can’t find reliable stats right now, but I believe the numbers are 10% regain within 1 year, and after 5 years only a very small number remain at a lower weight. I’m not , however, sure if metabolism is the reason or not.
This article is interesting.
Lots of people have system 1 processes governing calorie intake and expenditure that are maladaptive within their current environment. It’s possible to overrule these maladaptive impulses with system 2, but that imposes lots of cognitive load so most people are only able to sustain such efforts for a short time before reverting.
The article describes the common experience of people who temporarily go on medically supervised diets. Once they are left to their own devices, bereft of the external support and close supervision, they rely entirely on ongoing effort from system 2 to regulate their intake and expenditure. This eventually fails when limited system 2 resources get allocated to other tasks leaving system 1 to prevail.
Wealthy people can reliably obtain good long-term outcomes by hiring a nutritionally savvy chef and a good personal trainer, thereby creating an durable external regulatory system that doesn’t require ongoing conscious supervisory effort from their system 2.
Of course it is unfair that some people’s system 1 drives are wildly maladaptive, while others’ require only minor correction. File a support ticket to the Blind Idiot God. If you choose not to wait for the bug to be patched, however, then you must spend your system 2 effort wisely. Spend it upfront to impose prudent structure and routine around diet and exercise with the goal of minimizing the day-to-day, minute-to-minute supervisory effort required.
I’ve been into fat acceptance for quite some years, and more than a little irritated at the idea that emotional problems are a major cause of people being fat.
I knew I ate somewhat more than I was hungry for, but it wasn’t a lot and didn’t seem like it was worth the trouble to fight.
I read some Eric Franklin—probably in his Relax Your Neck, Liberate Your Shoulders: The Ultimate Exercise Program for Tension Relief, but possibly his Dynamic Alignment through Imagery—about how the ribs connect to the breastbone, and I realized that I was holding my shoulders up all the time. I was able to lower my shoulders and found an immediate drop in my anxiety level. I was also doing heartbeat meditation (focus on heartbeat as well as breath) which was probably also helping with anxiety.
In any case, I found to my surprise that my previous usual “I’m fed, but food is still interesting” had changed to “if I’m comfortably fed (in some cases, if I’m mildly hungry), food isn’t interesting”. I’ve lost seven pounds with very little effort, and I’m expecting that I’ll be able to lose more weight stably.
None of this is relevant to Eliezer’s situation with losing weight, but might be of general interest.
Is Adipotide something you are considering using yourself? I recall you mentioning it previously and from what I can tell the research so far is promising, albeit scant.
It’s currently in a Phase 1 trial, see here. Prohibitin Targeting Peptide 1 = Adipotide.
Phase 1 trial means that “researchers test an experimental drug or treatment in a small group of people (20-80) for the first time to evaluate its safety, determine a safe dosage range, and identify side effects”, so it’s designed for establishing safety only (although secondary data may be gathered).
Here’s the press release from the substance’s owner, Arrowhead. Excerpt:
However, that phase 1 trial is the only study using the substance with humans. Just that study will run until May 2016, and it’s using prostate cancer patients. It’ll be a while …
Edit: An excerpt from a critical comment about the cited paper, published by the same journal:
… and the response by the authors of the original paper:
It’ll be a while before it is first prescribed by a doctor. Acquiring and consuming it is a whole different question. In fact, promising outcomes from the human trial could lead to the substance itself becoming more difficult to acquire and consume. Or at least less legal. Thankyou FDA (and equivalents). That said, current methods of acquiring the substance make cost a significant factor, as well as lacking the benefits of regulatory oversight.
Past comments by Eliezer lead me to model him as someone who would be averse to taking this kind of risk. He (not unjustifiably) considers his current state to be highly valuable and so has a lot to lose relative to the potential gain. Someone with less to lose but using the same decision algorithm may be more likely to take such risks.
Acquiring the substance may be simpler than I thought. This thread contains an interesting discussion with an apparent chemist about how to have the polypeptide custom-made, in some countries (e.g. Norway) it’s not even patented (yet?). Apparently you can order at some of the same places the researchers order their stuff from, complete with mass spec data as verification, at comparatively low prices—certainly lower than what the official drug will sell for.
Lower? Really? That’s surprising. All the previous discussions of custom synthesis sources I had encountered had prohibitive pricing due to lack of economics of scale. ie $6,000 for a cycle.
I’d be very surprised if the patent holder sold a full cycle for $6k or less. Antibodies (think cancer drugs) aren’t on the order of magnitude as expensive to produce as they’re sold for, either. Patients will pay whatever they can if the non-human primate results transfer to humans.
Trouble with this is that, while there may be people who genuinely ‘can’t lose weight’ there are definitely loads of people who would describe themselves as having tried all sorts of diets, haven’t lost weight, but do lose weight when they take up the right diet/exercise. Which often means ACTUALLY FOLLOWING pretty much any diet/exercise regime.
Unless you have solid reasons to believe that most people who claim to be ‘unable to lose weight’ or that ‘diets don’t work’ actually have this particular metabolic issues, telling them that they should go to medical approaches or give up entirely is pretty terrible advice: you’re encouraging people to give up on something that could improve their quality of life.
If you think it’s a common problem, the advice should be to have a period of very focused and well-observed efforts (drawing on all the productivity/motivation hacks on this site amongst others) to at least see whether there’s something that works for you: if there is, it’s good to know!
On a sidenote: while it might work in specific scientifically/evidentially led communities who already respect you, I suspect very strongly that a random very overweight person going around telling everyone thinner they are ‘metabolically privileged’ would not increase their attractiveness...
In my experience, any diet or exercise comes with an unlimited number of excuses from various different people for how you might not be doing it exactly right. Oddly enough, when the diet (temporarily) works on somebody, they don’t bother to check whether every tiny thing was done according to their own playbook. Thus the hypothesis “this diet doesn’t actually work for everyone” is prohbited.
I’m not arguing that every (or any) particular diet is perfect for everyone. I’m objecting to your claim that ‘if you’ve tried a couple of diets and failed then you probably can’t lose weight’. That’s a hell of a strong factual claim, and if it’s wrong then it’s incredibly unhelpful. So what’s the evidence? From what I can make out the case is 1) you believe there’s strong evidence that it’s nigh-impossible for a few people (mostly yourself?) 2) lots of people try fail 3) lots of different methods are put forward and lots of crap is talked about it.
I imagine that the same points are true for plenty of things that lots of people set out to do but which are difficult: learning a language, becoming a good cook, proficiency at an instrument, stopping procrastinating, getting a well-paying job… The last place I’d expect to see a counsel of despair would be here, tbh.
If there is stronger evidence that I’m missing, I’d be massively interested… and obviously you can ignore all the above!
I realize it would be insufficient compensation, but has bumping up against the religion of weight loss led you to find out anything new about biases, or was it all covered by trying to convince people of the dangers of UFAI?
The latter.
Here’s four other “weight loss hacks” that are at least as worth trying as low carb or shangri-la.
Low food reward diets: Seduced by Food: Obesity and the Human Brain by Stephan J. Guyenet
carb back-loading + high intensity lifting: Extreme Diet Hacking With Tech: How Cheesecake Made Me Leaner And Stronger With Carb Backloading
Intermittent fasting + high intensity lifting: The Leangains Guide
higher carb paleo: The Perfect Health Diet
googles Shangri La Man,I’ll definitely try that before I try intermittent fasting. The only low carb diet I’ve looked at is Atkins, and it just sounds really unpleasant, but I’ll look at paleo.
Weight loss is not easy. It’s ridiculously hard for many people, and that’s awful. I know this from personal experience too, but I’m sure anyone would agree. However, it is impossible to not lose weight if a person eats below his total daily energy expenditure. Not losing weight in this scenario is comparable to taking your car on a drive and finding out it doesn’t consume fuel.
Coming to the conclusion that weight loss is impossible requires extraordinary proof. Attempted scientifically dubious diets are weak evidence. Two months of eating below one’s TDEE while tracking everything with a digital scale is a minimum.
Do you mean “impossible” in the psychological sense? In that case medical interventions to remove fat directly are inadvisable as the fat will simply be regained, psychological treatment is required instead.
There is no thermodynamic law stating that fat cells must release fat just because your body needs it. If you’re built so that weight loss is impossible and you try eating less, your metabolism slows down—possibly in much the same way it would as if you tried eating less and you had no fat cells whatsoever. I can’t cite studies but wouldn’t be particularly surprised to see that muscle gets cannibalized instead of fat being lost, if you try to eat less than the most slowed metabolism needs. And if most metabolically disprivileged people stop trying to eat below their minimal metabolic rate before doing significant damage to themselves, that’s just the survival instinct kicking in. I would seriously not be surprised to find that fat people have starved to death without their fat cells releasing fat, and blinded by preconceptions, nobody managed to notice or note down when this occurred. But I would expect that to be rare—most people, if their body tells them they’re starving to death, will eat. This gets cited as weakness of will.
Metabolically privileged people assume that if you eat less, your fat cells will release fat. (Bitter laughter.) No. We don’t have energy storage units like you do, we have energy retention units. Calories go in, they don’t come out. Or if they do, it’s on special occasions we don’t understand how to predict or trigger, and which don’t have any obvious relation to attempts to eat less or exercise more. The laws of thermodynamics do not require that a physical fat cell physically release stored lipids when you eat less or exercise more—and if your fat cells are malfunctioning, they just won’t.
This is simply wrong. If you start out metabolically disprivileged, medical interventions to directly remove fat result in reduced appetite as your fat cells no longer suck glucose and fatty acids out of your bloodstream.
What outcomes would this metabolic hypothesis predict for obese people who undergo gastric bypass surgeries which render them physically incapable of eating much? What percentage of these patients would be expected to die of malnutrition? What effect on their body composition would be expected?
After working out the predictions of this hypothesis, are they consistent with what actually happens?
Gastric bypass surgery: Mortality and complication rates
Results and health benefits of gastric bypass
One of my friends who’d had weight loss surgery found that her treatment for pneumonia didn’t work until they figured out that she wasn’t absorbing as much of her oral antibiotics as people without the surgery would. I expect that sort of error is fairly common.
I’ve heard that there’s a 30% risk of alcoholism after WLS, and this is backed up by what I’ve heard anecdotally.
The usual theory is “trading one addiction for another”, but it isn’t proven that people who are get WLS are that likely to be addicted to food. I’ve heard that the surgery makes alcohol hit faster, and that makes it a more interesting drug. I’ve wondered whether alcohol is simply a very compact way of getting calories. Some people find they have less appetite after WLS, but some don’t.
Out of curiosity, I googled, and indeed it turns out that some of the heaviest people on record died of starvation.
A lot of diets only focus on what you eat, and not your general lifestyle when your general lifestyle is the determining factor. If you eat healthy and exercise correctly, but only get 4-5 hours of sleep every night, you will not lose weight. And without the exercise part, you will probably gain weight even if you are eating “healthy”. There’s also the risk of sleeping too much also being linked to weight gain. Burning the midnight oil every now and then is ok, but making a habit of it definitely is not.
I used to stay up late coding all the time, because laying in bed about to go to sleep for some reason makes my brain think of solutions, and then I would only get about 4 hours of sleep pretty consistently. That scumbag brain meme comes to mind.
IIRC there are some other lifestyle choices that are linked to being overweight, like having a long commute. A long commute is probably putting yourself under a lot of stress hormones like cortisol for extended periods of time, and cortisol levels are linked to unhealthy weight gain.
That does sound very sensible. I stand corrected.
Can anyone recommend any further reading on the subject?
It’d be nice to have a standard collection of reading. What came to mind offhand on the specific topic of metabolism slowdown / fat cell energy vampirism is this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/magazine/tara-parker-pope-fat-trap.html?pagewanted=all
Although when I actually talk to others who are trying to lose weight, a very common comment is, “I’m eating much less on but my weight isn’t going down at all!” Which is worse than what this article reports on—everyone who stayed in the study lost weight on 550 calories/day, but “Some people dropped out of the study” which you would kinda expect if those were the obese people whose fat cells weren’t releasing fat at all.
I’ve posted some exerpts from another possibly relevant article here:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/hpz/open_thread_june_1630_2013/96na
What you’re calling “metabolically privileged” is, for the most part, the ability to lose weight unsustainably.
Any links to data and/or evidence of not burning any fat when in energy deficit? Normally humans burn both fat and muscle when energy from food is insufficient (the ratio depends on a bunch of factors) -- I would be very surprised to see people not lose (some) fat when in prolonged caloric deficit.
If you undergo ketosis your humoural triglycerides will be lysed.
Other people have written much on undergoing ketosis for weight loss, if you’re interested; beware though that much of their weight loss comes from loss of glycogen and water stores. Keeping yourself hydrated mitigates the latter, but liver glycogen stores will be depleted. Absent readily available glycogen, your body will break down humoural trigylcerides as it is your only remaining source of energy; glycogen stored in your muscles is left untouched lest you exercise extreme physical exertion. I now speculate, but at this point your body has become accustomed to using fats as its main energy source. If you enter into any sort of fasted state, be it through a caloric deficit, intermittent fasting, sleeping, etcetera, your body will lipolyse adipose cells for energy; this must happen or you will die—whatever prevented this previously will have been circumvented. Actually, if verily your body is so stubborn it won’t touch your adipose tissue, first you’d lose your skeletal muscle—then you’d die.
These are the physiological properties—if they don’t apply to you, then whatever genetic mutation causes your body’s nonconformity is unknown and I’d venture to guess has other effects as well.
If anyone tries this, pay attention to how fruity your urine/breath smells. If it becomes an overpowering scent, your blood pH may be too high. Either stop or take measures to rebalance your pH.
A zero-carb diet for a couple of weeks did not produce any ketosis as measured by a ketosis stick. Also lipolysis != dead fat cells.
The most likely explanation is that you were eating a large amount of excess protein, most of which turns into glucose before it turns into ATP, and this was supplying (or nearly supplying) your nerve cells’ energy needs and inhibiting ketosis.
Lack of ketosis supplies at least part of an explanation of what’s going on with your metabolism. A fast google doesn’t supply any information about why ketosis might not happen, but it seems like a topic worth researching.
Of course.
If you have too many amino acids in your blood your body doesn’t need to undergo ketosis. The generally recommended ratio is 65% fat or higher, %30 protein or less, and %5 carbohydrates or less.
Sorry, I just realized we had a point of confusion due to a lack of clarity in my expression. I hope my edits are clearer.
Why must that happen? Ketosis means that lipolysis is occuring. Lipolysis does not inherently require that fat cells must be lysed as a physiological inevitability. ie. The fat that is to be broken down can itself come from diet instead of the lysing of fat cells.
You’re right—I wasn’t expressing myself thoroughly. I had the latent assumption of a caloric deficit, which as Eliezer has stated might not be enough to trigger breakdown of fat cells in some people. If the default fasted state of those people does not effect adequate catabolisation of their fat stores, then perhaps altering their body’s typical means of energy production would trigger lipolysis not just of humoural triglycerides but adipose cells as well when in a fasted state—exempli gratia through a caloric deficit, intermittent fasting, etcetera.
This happens all the time. We give it a different name depending which cell type starts dying first. Usually it’s heart muscle, in which case we call it heart disease, but sometimes it’s nerve cells (alzheimers) or the immune system (cancer). General death of a cell type can have many different causes, so it’s easy to avoid acknowledging this one in particular.
This is true if you either:
Define “losing weight” such that it includes weight loss due to the decay or cremation of your corpse after death by starvation. Or,
Observe that if if a body dies rather than burn fat to live then “technically it hasn’t expended more energy than was eaten has it? Therefore it doesn’t qualify as a counter-example!”
Without such stretching of interpretation, however, it is false, misleading and all too common advice.