As always, some people need practical advice, and we can’t agree on how any of this works and we are all different and our motivations are different, so figuring out the best things to do is difficult.
It’s because he hasn’t eaten fruit or vegetables in 30 years and “I don’t get any dietary fiber” doesn’t sound like something that could qualify one to be in the X-Men
There's a device that you can wear like a mask and you breathe into it for a set period and it measures oxygen consumption and carbon dioxide production and calculates resting metabolic rate.
Obviously Not Zvi: Additional This Was (Probably) Not Healthy:
There was a while end 2019/2020 where I was consistently struggling to lose additional weight despite exercising and consistently eating 1.5k calories of clean eating per day with fiber. I was stalled at ~183
When I stay stalled I mean multiple 6 week periods of 0 weight loss. I was calorie counting, protein maxxing, getting fiber, weighing myself morning, noon and night. Insanely detail oriented. My lifting was on point and consistent (I took a bar and weights camping) and I was getting modest cardio in. I was then a 33YO adult male, good general health, bloodwork solid. Lifts decent. Sleep (in 2019 (pre first kid)) was near perfect.
And yet... as far as numbers could show I was essentially in equilibrium at ~15 body fat and 1.5k calories of clean eating per day while still getting enough fiber to poop on schedule.
Ok, so my experience aside, how would you determine this? The easy way is it's 2025, get the MacroFactor app and run it for a while. They'll do the math based on what you weight vs weight changes and figure out your caloric burn. But, you can do this by hand with a spreadsheet. Weight yourself morning/evenings, track every calorie you consume. Avoid eating calories in the 4 hours before bed (makes the data MUCH cleaner when you do this). Either carefully track your activity or (ideally) just keep the same weekly activity pattern so any changes in your caloric burn are only limited to your body.
Get 6 weeks of data and regress it to find your daily/weekly caloric burn. It will be a lot easier if you set your M-F food schedule to be the exact same, with some flexibility on Sat/Sun to allow joy b/c this really cleans the data up.
For exercise what finally made it become an habit for me was trying to look better to a girl (not girls in general, a specific girl). Maybe a dumb reason but it worked.
The fun part is seeing you lift heavier and heavier weights, seeing your weight increase and so on (or decrease if you're cutting). Putting your daily weight on a spreadsheet and seeing the progress is also fun.
Can't speak for diet though, I just forced my way through counting calories. For bulking I didn't, I just ate until I felt I had eaten slightly more than I should, which isn't optimal (definitely gained fat I didn't need), but was a good rule of thumb overall...
i've lost 22% body weight in a year or two and kept it off for the last three.
supposedly this Does Not Happen. of course, the reality is that normal people, i.e. people with no mechanical model of physical reality, just do a diet as a medical treatment; then when it ends, they immediately get back to their weight-gaining habits and gain the weight back. sometimes they go back to dieting, and then stop again upon reaching their goal or giving up.
i kept counting for over two years after reaching, not exactly my goal, but close enough. my weight is now stabilized: i have stopped counting for about six months and regained no weight. my set weight, insofar as the set weight model is worth anything, is now such that my bmi stays around 20.3, down from 26.8, i.e. from "overweight, just under obese" to "skinny". (inb4 "bmi is a shit measure" yes, i know, but it's valid for me because i have the sort of body shape for which it does actually work.)
it cost me: building the habit of weighing everything i eat to the gram, counting calories, targeting 1200kcal/d and achieving an average of 1485. doesn't matter much that the labels are inaccurate: cutting to that low (which is, like, less than half what i was eating, probably one third) made me lose weight because fucking physics.
i tried going to the gym and doing some exercises i didn't find torturously boring. zero results in four months of 12-16hrs/week, figured the average of one hour of walking a day that i was doing anyway was Enough, and stopped going to the gym.
this worked for me. it won't work for Everyone. the days eating 1200kcal or less, i spent in bed, too lethargic to get up for more than bathroom things and eating what little food i allowed myself. it was only sustainable because i had naught else to do. it's not a lifestyle change, it's a life overhaul. i basically had given myself artificial anorexia.
"ozempic does Something to the reward mechanisms of the brain" predicts all the results on food and drugs. good. willpower against bad habits in a pill. perfect. this is transhumanist tech and we need a lot more of it in the world. and the traddy daddies whining about the weak who Should Just can go to the hell where they belong.
as for novartis, their drug development costs, and the patent: yeah, give them half a trillion and make glp1s a generic to buy otc, to sell at walmart just besides the paracetamol, methylphenidate, and estradiol.
> it cost me: building the habit of weighing everything i eat to the gram, counting calories, targeting 1200kcal/d and achieving an average of 1485. doesn't matter much that the labels are inaccurate: cutting to that low (which is, like, less than half what i was eating, probably one third) made me lose weight because fucking physics.
Yup.
Weight loss fails for ~98% of people, precisely because this is the level of dedication and execution it requires. Of the people that actually keep it off (National Weight Loss Registry folk), here's what they have to do:
1. Average 1hr / day of physical activity
2. Eat a low calorie, low fat diet - so you are counting both calories and macros
3. Eat breakfast
4. Self-monitor weight regularly
5. Maintain a consistent eating pattern across weekdays and weekends
I talk about obesity being a one-way ratchet and the rest of this in my post here, including comparing willpower methods, GLP-1's, and bariatric surgery:
I really recommend removing the Eliezer section here-- his claims are not cited and incorrect. Could swap this for a table from one of the studies showing the actual side effects like nausea. Or one of the analyses on body composition.
> If I had to choose between ‘food is permanently joyless and actively sad, although not torture or anything, but you’re fit and healthy’ and ‘food is a source of joy, comfort and love, but you don’t feel so good about yourself physically and it’s not your imagination’ then I’d want to choose the first one… but I don’t think the answer is as obvious as some people think, and I’m fortunate I didn’t have to fully make that choice.
I definitely pick the second choice.
There’s already plenty of things that are joyless but necessary in life. Chores. Brushing teeth. Having to go to the toilet multiple times a day. Dreamless sleep. Adding a "ingest tasteless and joyless calories twice a day to continue being functional" is a ritual of the same kind and magnitude, and we have learned to live with that kind of joyless rituals.
Being unhealthy tarnishes or closes may sources of joy — I went to a concert the other day, I had a bout of gingivitis, it certainly lessened the value I extracted from it. Being healthy opens many sources of joy — hiking for example, if you enjoy it.
I don’t find that even close to be honest.
> Psyop. You do need fiber one way or another
Fibers are a psyop too. Why would you need that ? It’s literally defined as "food that is hard to digest".
> Diane Yap: I know this guy, SWE manager at a big tech company, Princeton grad. Recently broke up with a long term gf. His idea on how to get back in the dating market? Go to the gym and build more muscles. Sigh. I gave him a pep talk and convinced him that the girls for which that would make a difference aren't worth his time anyway.
Reminder that if you are a man, never take dating advice from a woman.
"Reminder that if you are a man, never take dating advice from a woman."
I've read that as the feminine psyche will sometimes fall into "extreme cattiness," women will sometimes tell another woman--for example--they look good with short hair, when they don't, in order to remove that women from the competition for attractive men.
In a twisted way, I think the woman's advice to the man "don't workout" could be similar. She's decided she's not interested in that man. She doesn't want him building muscle and getting more attractive, and causing her cognitive dissonance. She's decided he's a "5" and she wants him to stay that way. She only dates "7" and above. . . She may not want her friends surpassing her by getting a "7" when she's not there yet.
causing fat cells to proliferate could actually be a good thing:
insulin resistance is mostly caused by having ectopic fat in your muscles and liver due to your fat cells being too full. Preventing insulin resistance is great because high levels of insulin makes the brain insensitive to leptin, which makes you eat more in a vicious cycle. You break out of the cycle by fasting and by avoiding any carb that isn't high in fiber.
Anyone can trivially get thin by throwing out every caloric liquid and every solid whose manufacturing process involved a grinder or juicer. Just eat intact solid biomass like your ancestors who had an obesity rate of ~0.
>1. The more you use willpower, the more you build up your willpower.
2. The more you use willpower, the more you run out of willpower.
Have either of these been shown to be true, or is it mostly an intuition that we all have? On 2, I thought that studies showing decision fatigue or claiming "willpower is like a muscle" didn't replicate. On 1, assuming that you can "build up" your willpower, is there any evidence that building willpower in one area translates to willpower in another area? And is there any evidence that willpower is trainable rather than (at least mostly) something we're born with (or without)?
Has anyone tried to disentangle the long term negative effects of moderate amounts of alcohol consumption due to the alcohol from the long term negative effects of moderate alcohol consumption due to its effects on sleep? If you look at someone who has a glass or two of wine at dinner or an after dinner drink most nights does their risk profile look the same as someone who has a couple glasses of wine or a martini at lunch most days? Anecdotally, if I have any alcohol after about 5 or 6 pm, my sleep suffers terribly.
Re eating before bed/ food as a source of joy I have been backloading my calorie intake for years while eating my favourite foods with massive success. What that looks like for anyone interested-
This is probably an elementary 101 suggestion but ... are you focusing on building strength in exercise? Muscle mass is a surefire way of changing your rate of metabolism. Also, hacking your liver size directly impacts your metabolism: https://sarahconstantin.substack.com/p/bigger-livers
Have you looked into Starting Strength novice linear progression? For novices (nb: time lifting does not define novice) I think it’s (generally) best program to build strength effectively and quickly (I ran it after starting on another program, was way more effective, happy to answer any questions)
This one is really close to my heart. My issue is the good old yo-yo. I can occasionally "Lock in" and get serious about weight loss, Huel shakes for nearly every meal. spend 6+ months on a rock solid weight loss trend, loosing tens of kilograms. but as soon as I am not in "Wight loss mode" my standard habits come unstoppably back and I just balloon again.
Anyway, here is the podcast conversion for this post:
Regarding the vegetables thing, I do blame Anglos' retarded food culture for the fact that you + Aella etc. don't like veg. In countries with a healthy food culture, vegetables are just an integral part of nice food - curries, spicy hot pots, tasty soups etc. In Anglo food culture, it's mostly if you want a "healthy option", more commonly eaten as salads or joyless boiled green things on the side.
So I think you're missing out if you can't appreciate veg. Even if you think there's something superficially unpleasant about eating veg, to misquote Zvi from two weeks ago, "the failure to experience the sublime in things that people traditionally think are not [delicious] is a Skill Issue",
But, as a big veg lover myself, I'm not actually sure whether it's healthier or not to eat loads of veg. I like liking vegetables, because I like eating (both the social and hedonic aspect), and veg bulks up a meal and extends eating time by 2x or 3x. This probably means I eat slightly less healthily for some meals, because add more fatty/salty sauce to cover the veg appropriately etc. But I'm reasonably effortlessly slim and fit, so take as you will.
Satiation is an often overlooked reason for eating more veg. As you say extends eating time with a low calorie cost. Some of those point based diets don't count points for vegetables for this reason if I recall correctly
tl;dr Pre-GLP-1 agonists we had (colloquially) obese people, skinny people and skinny-fat people (thin people with high visceral fat levels that despite looking skinny are about as unhealthy internally as an obese person). I think we're in the process of creating a 4th group: GLP-1 skinny people that are differently unhealthy than skinny-fat people but won't see the health outcomes of skinny through diet/exercise people.
The muscle wasting stuff, when I looked at the available data ~10 months ago, is fairly worrying. It was pretty noisy and I couldn't exactly parse out if it was worse-end-of-normal-range weight loss or more, but I'm sure someone will determine this sooner or later. More worrying was that it seemed like at least some of the people seeing the LBM drops were engaging in appropriate training and still lost LBM as if they had only adjusted diet and sat on the couch.
I think (following on the recent discussions around https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/early/2024/11/07/bjsports-2024-108748) plus age related muscle wasting/bone health concerns people should be personally pretty cautious about GLP-1 use. Maybe the way forward is (working close with a doctor) you cycle them off/on as minimally needed (with exercise/strength training) to avoid being too obese, but also to mitigate/prevent the muscle loss.
My concern in 2025 is that you're gonna end up with a bunch of relatively thin people, with crap muscles/bones that all break at the drop of a hat when they hit 68 and don't have the frames to support active living or training to prevent osteoporosis. Or, at (say) 40 they look around and realize they're thin and weak and the answer (since one injection worked) is "Sports TRT" and we we're now confounding the GLP-1 data with people cruising on a 20 year test cycle backstopped by the internet crazies that'll tell you to up your test dose till you see side effects then just back off enough till the side effects disappear.
So tying this all together somewhat I think we might have created a new proxy/gamification issue. We view being skinny/not obese as a proxy for health. Get skinny = be healthy. But, are people running GLP-1s actually healthy, or did we just find a way to make them skinny and unhealthy? We've seen this in the cholesterol data/heart health data, that we find some # that correlates with good outcomes and then chase the #. We get the # without getting the outcomes or barely getting the outcomes, but at high financial/side effect costs.
tl;dr: Reading the recent FDA guidance it's better, but still nonsense. Certainty: I was really certain about this when I read the guidance and the CFR, but it seems like almost no one is complaining about this right now so I'm wondering if I missed something or people are just distracted.
Claims like “healthy” on food labels can help consumers identify healthier food choices at a quick glance. Foods must meet specific criteria to use the “healthy” nutrient content claim. The updated criteria for the claim replace outdated criteria for “healthy” with criteria that are consistent with current nutrition science and Federal dietary guidance. For example, current U.S. dietary guidelines include a focus on the importance of healthy dietary patterns and the food groups that comprise them, the type of fat in the diet rather than the total amount of fat consumed, and the amount of sodium and added sugars in the diet. The updated criteria identify foods that help consumers build a healthy eating pattern.
To meet the updated criteria for the claim, a food product needs to
contain a certain amount of food from at least one of the food groups or subgroups (such as fruit, vegetables, grains, fat-free and low-fat dairy and protein foods) recommended by the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, and meet specific limits for added sugars, saturated fat and sodium. The criteria for how much food from a particular food group is required (called food group equivalents) and the specific limits for the three individual nutrients vary for individual food products, mixed products (which contain certain amounts of more than one food group), main dishes and meals, and are based on a Reference Amount Customarily Consumed, which is the basis for determining a serving size.
The guidelines are better, but are still incredibly stupid and driven by lobbying/other concerns around food. I read most of the protein discussion, and as near as I can tell they are doing a standard bullshit bait and switch. What they want it to look like is that they went "Here are the requirements for being healthy, these foods meet the requirements".
But... that's not actually how it works (read the comments/responses). Certain foods were deemed potentially healthy and then standards were set for when those foods are healthy. This is why eggs/salmon/game meat are healthy, but chicken and other fish are not.
The only kinds of proteins that ever CAN be healthy under these guidelines are seafood, game meats, egg, beans/peas/lentils/nuts/seeds/soy. No chicken, no very lean beef that is identical to game meat. This, to be explicit, is silly bullshit. Something is healthy because it has the appropriate macro and micronutrients. Excluding beef/chicken/pork that is identical to game meat on those sections is insane.
Look, I've got an entire freezer of venison right now, I'm not against game meat, but this is merely continued bizarro world emoting about magically healthy/not healthy food groups instead of focusing on what you actually put in your damn body.
Marion Nestle goes into this in her classic text "Food Politics", but the bottom line is that government agencies like the FDA or USDA would not be allowed to offer actually good nutritional advice.
> Something is healthy because it has the appropriate macro and micronutrients
That is an appealing simplification, but it still might be an oversimplification. For example pureeing food probably changes its nutritional characteristics, even though the composition of nutrients is unchanged.
We think that eating mammal meat probably causes cancer, and we know that eating cured meats causes cancer, but that doesn't necessarily mean that we know /why/ these things might be true, or that we can reduce this knowledge to the level of micronutrients.
I don't disagree, but we're doing something way dumber. Declaring "something is healthy because it has the appropriate macro and micronutrients" would be a massive improvement over our current situation where certain foods (that meet the requirements) are healthy, but any other food outside a certain food group can never use the healthy labeling.
We're still in a situation where free range chicken thighs or breast meat can't be healthy, but eggs can be. It's just dumb. It's better than it was, but still very dumb and it means we're probably not seeing an improved system for at least a decade.
No discussion on the the nasty side effects of GLP-1 drugs?
> My issue is a stupidly slow metabolism
How did you determine you have a slow metabolism? Is this something you can arrive at empirically?
It’s because he hasn’t eaten fruit or vegetables in 30 years and “I don’t get any dietary fiber” doesn’t sound like something that could qualify one to be in the X-Men
There's a device that you can wear like a mask and you breathe into it for a set period and it measures oxygen consumption and carbon dioxide production and calculates resting metabolic rate.
You can also do doubly labeled water and measure your pee.
Obviously Not Zvi: Additional This Was (Probably) Not Healthy:
There was a while end 2019/2020 where I was consistently struggling to lose additional weight despite exercising and consistently eating 1.5k calories of clean eating per day with fiber. I was stalled at ~183
When I stay stalled I mean multiple 6 week periods of 0 weight loss. I was calorie counting, protein maxxing, getting fiber, weighing myself morning, noon and night. Insanely detail oriented. My lifting was on point and consistent (I took a bar and weights camping) and I was getting modest cardio in. I was then a 33YO adult male, good general health, bloodwork solid. Lifts decent. Sleep (in 2019 (pre first kid)) was near perfect.
And yet... as far as numbers could show I was essentially in equilibrium at ~15 body fat and 1.5k calories of clean eating per day while still getting enough fiber to poop on schedule.
Ok, so my experience aside, how would you determine this? The easy way is it's 2025, get the MacroFactor app and run it for a while. They'll do the math based on what you weight vs weight changes and figure out your caloric burn. But, you can do this by hand with a spreadsheet. Weight yourself morning/evenings, track every calorie you consume. Avoid eating calories in the 4 hours before bed (makes the data MUCH cleaner when you do this). Either carefully track your activity or (ideally) just keep the same weekly activity pattern so any changes in your caloric burn are only limited to your body.
Get 6 weeks of data and regress it to find your daily/weekly caloric burn. It will be a lot easier if you set your M-F food schedule to be the exact same, with some flexibility on Sat/Sun to allow joy b/c this really cleans the data up.
God I had so much free time then.
For exercise what finally made it become an habit for me was trying to look better to a girl (not girls in general, a specific girl). Maybe a dumb reason but it worked.
The fun part is seeing you lift heavier and heavier weights, seeing your weight increase and so on (or decrease if you're cutting). Putting your daily weight on a spreadsheet and seeing the progress is also fun.
Can't speak for diet though, I just forced my way through counting calories. For bulking I didn't, I just ate until I felt I had eaten slightly more than I should, which isn't optimal (definitely gained fat I didn't need), but was a good rule of thumb overall...
i've lost 22% body weight in a year or two and kept it off for the last three.
supposedly this Does Not Happen. of course, the reality is that normal people, i.e. people with no mechanical model of physical reality, just do a diet as a medical treatment; then when it ends, they immediately get back to their weight-gaining habits and gain the weight back. sometimes they go back to dieting, and then stop again upon reaching their goal or giving up.
i kept counting for over two years after reaching, not exactly my goal, but close enough. my weight is now stabilized: i have stopped counting for about six months and regained no weight. my set weight, insofar as the set weight model is worth anything, is now such that my bmi stays around 20.3, down from 26.8, i.e. from "overweight, just under obese" to "skinny". (inb4 "bmi is a shit measure" yes, i know, but it's valid for me because i have the sort of body shape for which it does actually work.)
it cost me: building the habit of weighing everything i eat to the gram, counting calories, targeting 1200kcal/d and achieving an average of 1485. doesn't matter much that the labels are inaccurate: cutting to that low (which is, like, less than half what i was eating, probably one third) made me lose weight because fucking physics.
i tried going to the gym and doing some exercises i didn't find torturously boring. zero results in four months of 12-16hrs/week, figured the average of one hour of walking a day that i was doing anyway was Enough, and stopped going to the gym.
this worked for me. it won't work for Everyone. the days eating 1200kcal or less, i spent in bed, too lethargic to get up for more than bathroom things and eating what little food i allowed myself. it was only sustainable because i had naught else to do. it's not a lifestyle change, it's a life overhaul. i basically had given myself artificial anorexia.
"ozempic does Something to the reward mechanisms of the brain" predicts all the results on food and drugs. good. willpower against bad habits in a pill. perfect. this is transhumanist tech and we need a lot more of it in the world. and the traddy daddies whining about the weak who Should Just can go to the hell where they belong.
as for novartis, their drug development costs, and the patent: yeah, give them half a trillion and make glp1s a generic to buy otc, to sell at walmart just besides the paracetamol, methylphenidate, and estradiol.
> it cost me: building the habit of weighing everything i eat to the gram, counting calories, targeting 1200kcal/d and achieving an average of 1485. doesn't matter much that the labels are inaccurate: cutting to that low (which is, like, less than half what i was eating, probably one third) made me lose weight because fucking physics.
Yup.
Weight loss fails for ~98% of people, precisely because this is the level of dedication and execution it requires. Of the people that actually keep it off (National Weight Loss Registry folk), here's what they have to do:
1. Average 1hr / day of physical activity
2. Eat a low calorie, low fat diet - so you are counting both calories and macros
3. Eat breakfast
4. Self-monitor weight regularly
5. Maintain a consistent eating pattern across weekdays and weekends
I talk about obesity being a one-way ratchet and the rest of this in my post here, including comparing willpower methods, GLP-1's, and bariatric surgery:
https://performativebafflement.substack.com/p/the-maximally-pessimistic-obesity?r=17hw9h
I really recommend removing the Eliezer section here-- his claims are not cited and incorrect. Could swap this for a table from one of the studies showing the actual side effects like nausea. Or one of the analyses on body composition.
> If I had to choose between ‘food is permanently joyless and actively sad, although not torture or anything, but you’re fit and healthy’ and ‘food is a source of joy, comfort and love, but you don’t feel so good about yourself physically and it’s not your imagination’ then I’d want to choose the first one… but I don’t think the answer is as obvious as some people think, and I’m fortunate I didn’t have to fully make that choice.
I definitely pick the second choice.
There’s already plenty of things that are joyless but necessary in life. Chores. Brushing teeth. Having to go to the toilet multiple times a day. Dreamless sleep. Adding a "ingest tasteless and joyless calories twice a day to continue being functional" is a ritual of the same kind and magnitude, and we have learned to live with that kind of joyless rituals.
Being unhealthy tarnishes or closes may sources of joy — I went to a concert the other day, I had a bout of gingivitis, it certainly lessened the value I extracted from it. Being healthy opens many sources of joy — hiking for example, if you enjoy it.
I don’t find that even close to be honest.
> Psyop. You do need fiber one way or another
Fibers are a psyop too. Why would you need that ? It’s literally defined as "food that is hard to digest".
> Diane Yap: I know this guy, SWE manager at a big tech company, Princeton grad. Recently broke up with a long term gf. His idea on how to get back in the dating market? Go to the gym and build more muscles. Sigh. I gave him a pep talk and convinced him that the girls for which that would make a difference aren't worth his time anyway.
Reminder that if you are a man, never take dating advice from a woman.
"Reminder that if you are a man, never take dating advice from a woman."
I've read that as the feminine psyche will sometimes fall into "extreme cattiness," women will sometimes tell another woman--for example--they look good with short hair, when they don't, in order to remove that women from the competition for attractive men.
In a twisted way, I think the woman's advice to the man "don't workout" could be similar. She's decided she's not interested in that man. She doesn't want him building muscle and getting more attractive, and causing her cognitive dissonance. She's decided he's a "5" and she wants him to stay that way. She only dates "7" and above. . . She may not want her friends surpassing her by getting a "7" when she's not there yet.
causing fat cells to proliferate could actually be a good thing:
insulin resistance is mostly caused by having ectopic fat in your muscles and liver due to your fat cells being too full. Preventing insulin resistance is great because high levels of insulin makes the brain insensitive to leptin, which makes you eat more in a vicious cycle. You break out of the cycle by fasting and by avoiding any carb that isn't high in fiber.
Anyone can trivially get thin by throwing out every caloric liquid and every solid whose manufacturing process involved a grinder or juicer. Just eat intact solid biomass like your ancestors who had an obesity rate of ~0.
>1. The more you use willpower, the more you build up your willpower.
2. The more you use willpower, the more you run out of willpower.
Have either of these been shown to be true, or is it mostly an intuition that we all have? On 2, I thought that studies showing decision fatigue or claiming "willpower is like a muscle" didn't replicate. On 1, assuming that you can "build up" your willpower, is there any evidence that building willpower in one area translates to willpower in another area? And is there any evidence that willpower is trainable rather than (at least mostly) something we're born with (or without)?
Has anyone tried to disentangle the long term negative effects of moderate amounts of alcohol consumption due to the alcohol from the long term negative effects of moderate alcohol consumption due to its effects on sleep? If you look at someone who has a glass or two of wine at dinner or an after dinner drink most nights does their risk profile look the same as someone who has a couple glasses of wine or a martini at lunch most days? Anecdotally, if I have any alcohol after about 5 or 6 pm, my sleep suffers terribly.
Re eating before bed/ food as a source of joy I have been backloading my calorie intake for years while eating my favourite foods with massive success. What that looks like for anyone interested-
https://geoffcooper1981.substack.com/p/daily-routinediet
> My issue is a stupidly slow metabolism
This is probably an elementary 101 suggestion but ... are you focusing on building strength in exercise? Muscle mass is a surefire way of changing your rate of metabolism. Also, hacking your liver size directly impacts your metabolism: https://sarahconstantin.substack.com/p/bigger-livers
I was for a while recently, although right now it's stalled out due to a back issue that won't go away. It helped... a little. But not that much.
(Also, Sarah's husband Andrew is the one advising me)
Have you looked into Starting Strength novice linear progression? For novices (nb: time lifting does not define novice) I think it’s (generally) best program to build strength effectively and quickly (I ran it after starting on another program, was way more effective, happy to answer any questions)
This one is really close to my heart. My issue is the good old yo-yo. I can occasionally "Lock in" and get serious about weight loss, Huel shakes for nearly every meal. spend 6+ months on a rock solid weight loss trend, loosing tens of kilograms. but as soon as I am not in "Wight loss mode" my standard habits come unstoppably back and I just balloon again.
Anyway, here is the podcast conversion for this post:
https://open.substack.com/pub/dwatvpodcast/p/sleep-diet-exercise-and-glp-1-drugs
Yeah, that's simply not sustainable - you need to find a better mode.
Also, Huel does not seem nutritionally great to me, in terms of what you get vs. the calories it costs.
Regarding the vegetables thing, I do blame Anglos' retarded food culture for the fact that you + Aella etc. don't like veg. In countries with a healthy food culture, vegetables are just an integral part of nice food - curries, spicy hot pots, tasty soups etc. In Anglo food culture, it's mostly if you want a "healthy option", more commonly eaten as salads or joyless boiled green things on the side.
So I think you're missing out if you can't appreciate veg. Even if you think there's something superficially unpleasant about eating veg, to misquote Zvi from two weeks ago, "the failure to experience the sublime in things that people traditionally think are not [delicious] is a Skill Issue",
But, as a big veg lover myself, I'm not actually sure whether it's healthier or not to eat loads of veg. I like liking vegetables, because I like eating (both the social and hedonic aspect), and veg bulks up a meal and extends eating time by 2x or 3x. This probably means I eat slightly less healthily for some meals, because add more fatty/salty sauce to cover the veg appropriately etc. But I'm reasonably effortlessly slim and fit, so take as you will.
Satiation is an often overlooked reason for eating more veg. As you say extends eating time with a low calorie cost. Some of those point based diets don't count points for vegetables for this reason if I recall correctly
tl;dr Pre-GLP-1 agonists we had (colloquially) obese people, skinny people and skinny-fat people (thin people with high visceral fat levels that despite looking skinny are about as unhealthy internally as an obese person). I think we're in the process of creating a 4th group: GLP-1 skinny people that are differently unhealthy than skinny-fat people but won't see the health outcomes of skinny through diet/exercise people.
The muscle wasting stuff, when I looked at the available data ~10 months ago, is fairly worrying. It was pretty noisy and I couldn't exactly parse out if it was worse-end-of-normal-range weight loss or more, but I'm sure someone will determine this sooner or later. More worrying was that it seemed like at least some of the people seeing the LBM drops were engaging in appropriate training and still lost LBM as if they had only adjusted diet and sat on the couch.
I think (following on the recent discussions around https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/early/2024/11/07/bjsports-2024-108748) plus age related muscle wasting/bone health concerns people should be personally pretty cautious about GLP-1 use. Maybe the way forward is (working close with a doctor) you cycle them off/on as minimally needed (with exercise/strength training) to avoid being too obese, but also to mitigate/prevent the muscle loss.
My concern in 2025 is that you're gonna end up with a bunch of relatively thin people, with crap muscles/bones that all break at the drop of a hat when they hit 68 and don't have the frames to support active living or training to prevent osteoporosis. Or, at (say) 40 they look around and realize they're thin and weak and the answer (since one injection worked) is "Sports TRT" and we we're now confounding the GLP-1 data with people cruising on a 20 year test cycle backstopped by the internet crazies that'll tell you to up your test dose till you see side effects then just back off enough till the side effects disappear.
So tying this all together somewhat I think we might have created a new proxy/gamification issue. We view being skinny/not obese as a proxy for health. Get skinny = be healthy. But, are people running GLP-1s actually healthy, or did we just find a way to make them skinny and unhealthy? We've seen this in the cholesterol data/heart health data, that we find some # that correlates with good outcomes and then chase the #. We get the # without getting the outcomes or barely getting the outcomes, but at high financial/side effect costs.
tl;dr: Reading the recent FDA guidance it's better, but still nonsense. Certainty: I was really certain about this when I read the guidance and the CFR, but it seems like almost no one is complaining about this right now so I'm wondering if I missed something or people are just distracted.
https://www.fda.gov/food/nutrition-food-labeling-and-critical-foods/use-term-healthy-food-labeling#Products
Claims like “healthy” on food labels can help consumers identify healthier food choices at a quick glance. Foods must meet specific criteria to use the “healthy” nutrient content claim. The updated criteria for the claim replace outdated criteria for “healthy” with criteria that are consistent with current nutrition science and Federal dietary guidance. For example, current U.S. dietary guidelines include a focus on the importance of healthy dietary patterns and the food groups that comprise them, the type of fat in the diet rather than the total amount of fat consumed, and the amount of sodium and added sugars in the diet. The updated criteria identify foods that help consumers build a healthy eating pattern.
To meet the updated criteria for the claim, a food product needs to
contain a certain amount of food from at least one of the food groups or subgroups (such as fruit, vegetables, grains, fat-free and low-fat dairy and protein foods) recommended by the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, and meet specific limits for added sugars, saturated fat and sodium. The criteria for how much food from a particular food group is required (called food group equivalents) and the specific limits for the three individual nutrients vary for individual food products, mixed products (which contain certain amounts of more than one food group), main dishes and meals, and are based on a Reference Amount Customarily Consumed, which is the basis for determining a serving size.
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/12/27/2024-29957/food-labeling-nutrient-content-claims-definition-of-term-healthy
The guidelines are better, but are still incredibly stupid and driven by lobbying/other concerns around food. I read most of the protein discussion, and as near as I can tell they are doing a standard bullshit bait and switch. What they want it to look like is that they went "Here are the requirements for being healthy, these foods meet the requirements".
But... that's not actually how it works (read the comments/responses). Certain foods were deemed potentially healthy and then standards were set for when those foods are healthy. This is why eggs/salmon/game meat are healthy, but chicken and other fish are not.
Specific Example: https://imgur.com/a/hXMV5uQ Image
The only kinds of proteins that ever CAN be healthy under these guidelines are seafood, game meats, egg, beans/peas/lentils/nuts/seeds/soy. No chicken, no very lean beef that is identical to game meat. This, to be explicit, is silly bullshit. Something is healthy because it has the appropriate macro and micronutrients. Excluding beef/chicken/pork that is identical to game meat on those sections is insane.
Look, I've got an entire freezer of venison right now, I'm not against game meat, but this is merely continued bizarro world emoting about magically healthy/not healthy food groups instead of focusing on what you actually put in your damn body.
Marion Nestle goes into this in her classic text "Food Politics", but the bottom line is that government agencies like the FDA or USDA would not be allowed to offer actually good nutritional advice.
> Something is healthy because it has the appropriate macro and micronutrients
That is an appealing simplification, but it still might be an oversimplification. For example pureeing food probably changes its nutritional characteristics, even though the composition of nutrients is unchanged.
We think that eating mammal meat probably causes cancer, and we know that eating cured meats causes cancer, but that doesn't necessarily mean that we know /why/ these things might be true, or that we can reduce this knowledge to the level of micronutrients.
I don't disagree, but we're doing something way dumber. Declaring "something is healthy because it has the appropriate macro and micronutrients" would be a massive improvement over our current situation where certain foods (that meet the requirements) are healthy, but any other food outside a certain food group can never use the healthy labeling.
We're still in a situation where free range chicken thighs or breast meat can't be healthy, but eggs can be. It's just dumb. It's better than it was, but still very dumb and it means we're probably not seeing an improved system for at least a decade.