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Why does it seem to be such a challenge for people to eat & drink whatever they did before - including beer, fast-food and what not - but just less? Too often i

by jahaja 9y ago

Why does it seem to be such a challenge for people to eat & drink whatever they did before - including beer, fast-food and what not - but just less? Too often it's the extreme changes that's being touted about together with some self-punishing training regime that does little good for the goal.

jerrycruncher 9y ago
I think that if one's goal is to disrupt harmful addictive habits, such an effort can do a fair bit of good.
- jahaja 9y ago
  Yup, in that case, definitely.
jdietrich 9y ago
Moderation is psychologically more difficult to adhere to than explicit prohibition. Most drivers routinely exceed the speed limit, but they rarely jump red lights. Religious laws have lots of "thou shalt not", but rarely any "thou shalt only in moderation". The laws of kashrut are incredibly inconvenient, but they're remarkably easy to follow in practice because they're absolute - either a food is kosher or treif, with no middle ground. You don't have to exercise judgement or restraint, you just have to blindly obey a set of well-documented rules. Fad diets like paleo are ostensibly irrational, but they're a good fit for human psychology. Counting calories is a minefield - it's too easy to slip up, too easy to deceive yourself about the size of a portion, too easy to nibble at something while you're cooking and forget to count it. A diet that says "don't eat grains" might be theoretically sub-optimal, but it's easy to stick to and much more resistant to self-deception. Exclusion diets also front-load the burden of self control. If you don't buy any cookies, you have to get into your car and drive to the store if you get a craving for them. If you've got a jar full of cookies, you're relying on pure self control to eat only one rather than scarfing the whole lot. They're always sitting there on the counter, tempting you to break your diet.
- jahaja 9y ago
  Plausible I guess. However, the charade of an extreme regime seems to me to be much easier to fall off and stop caring once the "cheating" begins. Also, I would speculate that an eat-less (calorie-counting if you will) regime prepares one better for the long-term once the goal is reached. Maybe to just internalize the basic idea that it's not what kind of food you eat or how many times per week you're at the gym that matters in the long-run.
pascalxus 9y ago
This will seem really controversial, but it's the truth, hear me out for a second: You don't get to decide how MUCH you eat! I know this sounds crazy, but it's absolutely true. Every living being whether it's a human or animal takes in precisely the amount of calories that the body says it needs. here's the mathematical evidence: Over a 30 year period, this intake has to be incredibly precise. In 30 years, you take in about 22 million calories (assuming 2k per day). Now, if you're off by even 5%, say 1m calories then you would gain or loose 300 pounds!! (at the well known 3400 calories per pound) The vast majority of humans and even animals, don't count their calories, so how can they eat exactly the precise amount of calories to be able to sustain roughly the same weight. The reason of course, is because while you may not be counting your calories, your body certainly is, and counting them much more precisely than you or I can. IT adjusts the amount of calories you consume to reach the target weight. Now that target weight is decided by your body's set point - YOU can not change it. If you're body tells you to eat, you must eat. And you can't just trick it by eating a ton of super low calorie spinach. Now, you may be able to reduce your caloric intake with sheer willpower, for a day or a week, or a month or even a year. But, the body will always be trying to compensate for this. And unlike you, who will grow weary of fighting this war, biological processes don't get tired. They fight and fight just as effectively 1 year later, 5 years later or even 20 years later. Try this experiment: just once, try to eat half the lunch you ordinarily would eat. I bet you can't do it. Just try it. And if you could do it, you would quickly realize how miserable the rest of your afternoon would be. Everything we've done: trying to reduce our caloric intake to excessive exercising as far as loosing weight is concerned is sort of a hack. What you really want is to reduce the set point. Once you reduce your set point, loosing weight will be completely effortless. If you look at all the normal sized people, all the epdimelogical studies show: they don't excercise more and they don't eat better, their bodies simply have the correct set point.
- nkozyra 9y ago
  > Try this experiment: just once, try to eat half the lunch you ordinarily would eat. I bet you can't do it. Just try it. And if you could do it, you would quickly realize how miserable the rest of your afternoon would be. I'm sorry but people regularly skip meals and move on with their lives. Am I missing a parody here?

by jahaja 9y ago

jerrycruncher 9y ago

I think that if one's goal is to disrupt harmful addictive habits, such an effort can do a fair bit of good.

jahaja 9y ago
Yup, in that case, definitely.

jdietrich 9y ago

Moderation is psychologically more difficult to adhere to than explicit prohibition. Most drivers routinely exceed the speed limit, but they rarely jump red lights. Religious laws have lots of "thou shalt not", but rarely any "thou shalt only in moderation". The laws of kashrut are incredibly inconvenient, but they're remarkably easy to follow in practice because they're absolute - either a food is kosher or treif, with no middle ground. You don't have to exercise judgement or restraint, you just have to blindly obey a set of well-documented rules. Fad diets like paleo are ostensibly irrational, but they're a good fit for human psychology. Counting calories is a minefield - it's too easy to slip up, too easy to deceive yourself about the size of a portion, too easy to nibble at something while you're cooking and forget to count it. A diet that says "don't eat grains" might be theoretically sub-optimal, but it's easy to stick to and much more resistant to self-deception. Exclusion diets also front-load the burden of self control. If you don't buy any cookies, you have to get into your car and drive to the store if you get a craving for them. If you've got a jar full of cookies, you're relying on pure self control to eat only one rather than scarfing the whole lot. They're always sitting there on the counter, tempting you to break your diet.

jahaja 9y ago
Plausible I guess. However, the charade of an extreme regime seems to me to be much easier to fall off and stop caring once the "cheating" begins. Also, I would speculate that an eat-less (calorie-counting if you will) regime prepares one better for the long-term once the goal is reached. Maybe to just internalize the basic idea that it's not what kind of food you eat or how many times per week you're at the gym that matters in the long-run.

pascalxus 9y ago

This will seem really controversial, but it's the truth, hear me out for a second: You don't get to decide how MUCH you eat! I know this sounds crazy, but it's absolutely true. Every living being whether it's a human or animal takes in precisely the amount of calories that the body says it needs. here's the mathematical evidence: Over a 30 year period, this intake has to be incredibly precise. In 30 years, you take in about 22 million calories (assuming 2k per day). Now, if you're off by even 5%, say 1m calories then you would gain or loose 300 pounds!! (at the well known 3400 calories per pound) The vast majority of humans and even animals, don't count their calories, so how can they eat exactly the precise amount of calories to be able to sustain roughly the same weight. The reason of course, is because while you may not be counting your calories, your body certainly is, and counting them much more precisely than you or I can. IT adjusts the amount of calories you consume to reach the target weight. Now that target weight is decided by your body's set point - YOU can not change it. If you're body tells you to eat, you must eat. And you can't just trick it by eating a ton of super low calorie spinach. Now, you may be able to reduce your caloric intake with sheer willpower, for a day or a week, or a month or even a year. But, the body will always be trying to compensate for this. And unlike you, who will grow weary of fighting this war, biological processes don't get tired. They fight and fight just as effectively 1 year later, 5 years later or even 20 years later. Try this experiment: just once, try to eat half the lunch you ordinarily would eat. I bet you can't do it. Just try it. And if you could do it, you would quickly realize how miserable the rest of your afternoon would be. Everything we've done: trying to reduce our caloric intake to excessive exercising as far as loosing weight is concerned is sort of a hack. What you really want is to reduce the set point. Once you reduce your set point, loosing weight will be completely effortless. If you look at all the normal sized people, all the epdimelogical studies show: they don't excercise more and they don't eat better, their bodies simply have the correct set point.

nkozyra 9y ago
> Try this experiment: just once, try to eat half the lunch you ordinarily would eat. I bet you can't do it. Just try it. And if you could do it, you would quickly realize how miserable the rest of your afternoon would be. I'm sorry but people regularly skip meals and move on with their lives. Am I missing a parody here?