3 ms·

Given the number of variables that can be adjusted, the extent to which they can be adjusted, and the time it takes to see results, self-experimentation is bare

Given the number of variables that can be adjusted, the extent to which they can be adjusted, and the time it takes to see results, self-experimentation is barely viable for even trivial short-term goals. How many chances does one have to try a different set of inputs for 3 months apiece? Even for short-term goals anything non-measurable is highly prone to confirmation bias - e.g.: "I feel more energetic on this keto diet!" because I expected to feel more energetic on this keto diet and these Instagram accounts I follow keep reinforcing that this is what I should expect. Additionally there is the issue that the human body is a complex system where things that seem good in the short term can be quite bad in the long term - e.g.: "These 6 cigarettes a day are really helping with the over-eating I'd been struggling with!". For many of us who care to research nutrition more than superficially the goals tend to be more long-term ones like not developing Alzheimer's, cancers, atherosclerosis, organ failures, etc., all in support of staying healthy & active for as long as possible. Those goals don't lend themselves to a hill-climbing optimization via self-experimentation.

narag 8y ago
How many chances does one have to try a different set of inputs for 3 months apiece? No need to spend three months. The body raise all kind of signals in reaction to food, almost instantly. Even for short-term goals anything non-measurable is highly prone to confirmation bias Are bathroom scales also affected? Are keto test sticks too? For many of us who care to research nutrition more than superficially the goals tend to be more long-term ones like not developing Alzheimer's, cancers, atherosclerosis, organ failures, etc. Don't worry. Considering the level of aggressiveness industry has shown against low carbs diets, if any of those scares had any minimum basis, we would know by now. Look, this post is no longer in front page, so it's doubtful anyone except us is reading it. I take for granted that you genuinely think what you say and hope you give me the same benefit of doubt. I haven't done keto in like twenty years? (not sure) but I can't tell you this: it works. Last time I did it, I spent two years in low carb with no adverse effects whatsoever. I ran every other day, was in a very good shape. I can't help chuckling when I read hit pieces like what Wikipedia has to say: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atkins_diet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atkins_diet If you read carefully you'll see that they suggest that it doesn't work at all and that it's just placebo, "nutritional nonsense", water losing or simply caloric reduction due to unpalatable plan. That's idiotic, as you can see if you go to other more technical article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketosis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketosis Surprise! It seems that there is actually a non-contentious, perfectly known mechanism to burn fatty acids induced by fasting or reducing carbs intake. Try to reconcile that with: The Atkins diet is promoted with questionable claims that carbohydrate restriction is the "key" to weight loss. Questionable my ass. That's what the diet is and it works. If you don't like the kind or food you need to eat to follow the diet, it's OK and it's really the reason most people quit. If you're worried about unknown long term risks, choose your poison: do you think it's safer to be fat? can you achieve the same results as easily with other diets? Power to you. But don't believe the army of liars that's been spreading FUD consistently over the years.
- skookum 8y ago
  You seem quite defensive about keto and missed most of the point of my post. I wasn't writing about keto specifically, I just needed a few examples and that was one that came to mind at the time. You can sub in "eating nothing but sauerkraut and grapefruit" or anything else that springs to kind. My post was about self-experimentation in general. The "scares" you refer to, I did not claim were a result of a low carb diet - they were examples of the types of long-term issues that some of us would like to avoid. Unfortunately the impact of diet & lifestyle on those can be decades in the making - not to mention that some, like Alzheimer's, don't allow for do-overs - which makes it rather hard for an individual to employ self-experimentation to avoid them. The fact is that an individual won't be able to determine if consuming more or less of vitamin X or mineral Y will increase or decrease their probability of developing condition Z via self-experimentation for most of the scary conditions, let alone if vitamin X needs to be present in combination with compound Z, etc. > choose your poison: do you think it's safer to be fat? This is a false dichotomy. The choice is not keto or obesity. And losing/maintaining weight is one of the short-term & measurable goals I was alluding to. It's trivially achievable in a fairly short time with various approaches and keto is certainly one of them. Many of the others require less self-discipline than keto however, and a number of those have orders of magnitude more man-years of aggregated long-duration testing behind them. > But don't believe the army of liars that's been spreading FUD consistently over the years. That's good advice, but how do I identify which one is the army of liars and which one is the army of truth? :)
  - narag 8y ago
    How body work is a complex subject indeed. But if you remember, this all began as a response to joshgel complaining that it's impossible to tell good advice from bad one. I'm not proposing that every person invents own diet, just to use common sense if a diet works for you and another doesn't. As to how to identify who's lying, how about people telling lies? When Atkins wrote the book in the seventies, his critics told that his diet didn't work and provoked a series of terrible side effects, none of what was true. The fact was that thousands of people were trying the diet and it worked and it didn't make them sick. So where did the criticism come from? You can tell me that there are unknown risks and ask for caution. But if someone is saying in no uncertain terms what they said in the face of evidence, that's a strong indication that they have no interest in truth. Of course, diet is not the only matter in what some powerful entities try to manipulate the public, it happens in a variety of matters where science, politics and private interests meet. The first principle here is follow the money.

narag 8y ago

How many chances does one have to try a different set of inputs for 3 months apiece? No need to spend three months. The body raise all kind of signals in reaction to food, almost instantly. Even for short-term goals anything non-measurable is highly prone to confirmation bias Are bathroom scales also affected? Are keto test sticks too? For many of us who care to research nutrition more than superficially the goals tend to be more long-term ones like not developing Alzheimer's, cancers, atherosclerosis, organ failures, etc. Don't worry. Considering the level of aggressiveness industry has shown against low carbs diets, if any of those scares had any minimum basis, we would know by now. Look, this post is no longer in front page, so it's doubtful anyone except us is reading it. I take for granted that you genuinely think what you say and hope you give me the same benefit of doubt. I haven't done keto in like twenty years? (not sure) but I can't tell you this: it works. Last time I did it, I spent two years in low carb with no adverse effects whatsoever. I ran every other day, was in a very good shape. I can't help chuckling when I read hit pieces like what Wikipedia has to say: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atkins_diet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atkins_diet If you read carefully you'll see that they suggest that it doesn't work at all and that it's just placebo, "nutritional nonsense", water losing or simply caloric reduction due to unpalatable plan. That's idiotic, as you can see if you go to other more technical article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketosis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketosis Surprise! It seems that there is actually a non-contentious, perfectly known mechanism to burn fatty acids induced by fasting or reducing carbs intake. Try to reconcile that with: The Atkins diet is promoted with questionable claims that carbohydrate restriction is the "key" to weight loss. Questionable my ass. That's what the diet is and it works. If you don't like the kind or food you need to eat to follow the diet, it's OK and it's really the reason most people quit. If you're worried about unknown long term risks, choose your poison: do you think it's safer to be fat? can you achieve the same results as easily with other diets? Power to you. But don't believe the army of liars that's been spreading FUD consistently over the years.

skookum 8y ago
You seem quite defensive about keto and missed most of the point of my post. I wasn't writing about keto specifically, I just needed a few examples and that was one that came to mind at the time. You can sub in "eating nothing but sauerkraut and grapefruit" or anything else that springs to kind. My post was about self-experimentation in general. The "scares" you refer to, I did not claim were a result of a low carb diet - they were examples of the types of long-term issues that some of us would like to avoid. Unfortunately the impact of diet & lifestyle on those can be decades in the making - not to mention that some, like Alzheimer's, don't allow for do-overs - which makes it rather hard for an individual to employ self-experimentation to avoid them. The fact is that an individual won't be able to determine if consuming more or less of vitamin X or mineral Y will increase or decrease their probability of developing condition Z via self-experimentation for most of the scary conditions, let alone if vitamin X needs to be present in combination with compound Z, etc. > choose your poison: do you think it's safer to be fat? This is a false dichotomy. The choice is not keto or obesity. And losing/maintaining weight is one of the short-term & measurable goals I was alluding to. It's trivially achievable in a fairly short time with various approaches and keto is certainly one of them. Many of the others require less self-discipline than keto however, and a number of those have orders of magnitude more man-years of aggregated long-duration testing behind them. > But don't believe the army of liars that's been spreading FUD consistently over the years. That's good advice, but how do I identify which one is the army of liars and which one is the army of truth? :)
- narag 8y ago
  How body work is a complex subject indeed. But if you remember, this all began as a response to joshgel complaining that it's impossible to tell good advice from bad one. I'm not proposing that every person invents own diet, just to use common sense if a diet works for you and another doesn't. As to how to identify who's lying, how about people telling lies? When Atkins wrote the book in the seventies, his critics told that his diet didn't work and provoked a series of terrible side effects, none of what was true. The fact was that thousands of people were trying the diet and it worked and it didn't make them sick. So where did the criticism come from? You can tell me that there are unknown risks and ask for caution. But if someone is saying in no uncertain terms what they said in the face of evidence, that's a strong indication that they have no interest in truth. Of course, diet is not the only matter in what some powerful entities try to manipulate the public, it happens in a variety of matters where science, politics and private interests meet. The first principle here is follow the money.