One of the primary arguments of a keto/paleo diet is that the different diets affect how many calories your body thinks it needs, how it uses them, and how it influences behavior as a result. (Disclaimer: using imaginary numbers below to illustrate the theory.)
Let's say your body typically wants 1000 calories at breakfast, and you eat 1000 calories with a heavy load of carbs. Carbohydrates with a high glycemic index cause your insulin to spike. That signals fat cells that they should start storing energy, and they do so, tucking away 300 of the 1000 calories you ate.
This means your body only gets to spend 700 of the 1000 calories you ate, and as such, it says "hey, I'm still hungry". You eat 300 calories worth of food. But your fat cells are still sucking up (X%) of what you eat into storage, due to the insulin reaction. So, your body gets 200 of those 300 it wants, and it stays a little bit hungry. (Or, more likely, your body wants 300, but you eat 500 to make it shut up.)
Carbs have the unfortunate habit of converting useful calories into fat storage prior to processing them for the purposes of nutrition. This means carb-heavy diets tend to cause unconscious overeating, and also constant feelings of hunger/cravings/etc.
One of the advantages of a paleo/keto diet is that they often avoid the type of carbohydrates that cause this problem, namely ones with a high glycemic index. This means when you eat 1000 calories, your fat cells don't skim any off the top before your metabolism gets to them, and you get the full 1000; this means you don't end up hungry after a meal, and don't suffer from the urge to snack/eat more. Because your body got all the energy it wanted, it doesn't start saying it's hungry again until it actually does need the nutrition, and you're more likely to eat closer to the correct amount for your body's needs.
The difference between the examples you give, 4500 of Paleo and 1200 of junk food, is primarily how they'd make your body react. 1200 of junk food would certainly be a caloric deficit, but you'd be ravenously hungry at that level. (I've done 1000 calories a day for 6 months straight - it's pretty awful for the first few months.) But with keto, you could eat 4500 calories in a day, but you won't want to. When I'm done eating a keto-style meal, I am completely uninterested in food until the next. Those meals, for me, are typically 1-2 small/medium brats with no bun. But if I go out and cheat, and grab a burger and fries, I've got to fight the urge to follow it up with some ice cream, even though the fries and burger combined are drastically more calories than the brats I was satisfied with the meal before.
It's really interesting stuff. The "calories-in, calories-out" model is completely right from a completely energy-based perspective, but it doesn't account for the side effects produced by the energy source, and how people react to them.
Frequently the addiction is not the brain trying to avoid pain. Sometimes it is a socially acceptable substance with addictive chemical properties.
A friend of mine is an alcoholic who, after a DUI, went on a massive downward spiral. He didn't start drinking because of pain, he started drinking because this is Nebraska, and drinking is a gigantic part of social interaction in Nebraska. All the things that are wrong with his life are directly caused by his addiction, and so he drinks because of the pain/depression, and the problems keep coming.
So, in his case, the only way to take care of the real cause of the addiction is to stop the addiction. This game may be something that can help with it.
Being addicted to a substance isn't something you can just wish away, or meditate away. Acting like it's just a matter of self control is borderline disrespectful of the effect a substance dependency can have on a person.
In my case personally, I've been on prescription Adderall for years. I went cold-turkey once to reset my tolerance and drop from 25mg to 5mg; I can assure you that the physical and mental withdrawal symptoms are NOT something you can just meditate away. Amphetamine withdrawal was a goddamn nightmare made flesh, and I was on a relatively small pharmaceutical dose. Alcohol withdrawal is apparently less immediately bad, but drastically more insidious, and there are so many social structures in the world that encourage drinking that quitting completely is astoundingly hard.
I'm not saying meditation can't help, or that it didn't work for you, but I am saying it's not a magic bullet, and definitely won't work for everyone. This game is just a tool that some people can use to help themselves.
Oh, I agree - one of the root causes was the belief in homeopathic philosophy. My main point is that this case is a lousy talking point when campaigning against homeopathy. It's not like there's a lack of real, tangible evidence against homeopathy - people should use that to argue against it instead.
(Not like it's likely to do any good. Homeopathic believers are pretty hard to sway.)
He's saying that homeopathy is not directly lethal when applied by someone who knows what they're doing.
There was a case recently where a woman was doing unlicensed "plastic surgery" by pumping rubber cement into incisions in people's butts. Her absolute incompetence can't be reasonably used as a critique against the plastic surgery industry.
There are plenty of perfectly good data points to use against homeopathy practitioners. This case is definitely not one of them.
Homeopathy is a gigantic scam that depends solely upon the placebo effect. But this specific case is a really stupid one to use as an indictment. It's like railing against the liquor industry because someone was beaten/stabbed to death with a liquor bottle.
I think it's more appropriate to say that the improper application of homeopathy killed him - so, not unlike the improper application of any number of legitimate medical techniques. The difference here is that the proper application of medical techniques might have helped, whereas the proper application of homeopathic techniques would have done nothing.
I've never worn a 10 year old piece of clothing outside of my house, because none of the clothing I've bought has been durable enough to survive even 5 years.
Based on the article (which does seem biased), these sweatshirts are a throwback to the days when you would buy things and expect them to last. The fancy Kitchenaid standing blenders used to be durable as hell and just keep working. The newer ones are made a lot more cheaply, and while they last longer than some other kitchen appliances, they're a far cry from their original model... without any significant improvement in features.
Our manufacturing mindset was originally about durability and quality. Cheap labor and cheap materials led to a shift into replaceable, cheaper goods. But as materials/labor get more expensive, hopefully we'll see more of a shift to making quality, lasting goods again.
Let's look at two scenarios: They both involve a show that 100k people want to watch, but 20k of those people can't/won't watch it using the methods legally provided. (Fuzzy/simple math to illustrate the point.)
In scenario one, those 20k pirate the show instead. This means that the known demand for the show is 100k viewers, 80k using legal distribution, 20k using illegal distribution.
In scenario two (what Marco proposes), the 20k simply don't watch it at all. In that case, the known demand for the show is 80k viewers total, all of which obtained the show legally.
In scenario one, the content providers know there are 100k units of demand, 80k of which they are receiving revenue for - which implies 20% of the viewers want the show, but not for its current price/availability. Thus, they have a semi-accurate view of demand.
In scenario two, the content providers only know there are 80k units of demand. They don't know that the other 20k users even exist, or are at all interested in the product. They have less usable information, and no change is enacted - if they don't know those 20k exist, their absence can't be noted.
In this case, piracy provides an indicator of unfulfilled demand, whereas abstaining from piracy provides no feedback whatsoever. I think the concept of "protest via absence" in this situation isn't going to do anything useful.
I am still on keto, and it's continuing to come off. I'm not insanely strict with myself, so I'm not losing weight as fast as I could be, but I've found a good balance based on my personal activity level and quality of life considerations.
Once I've lost the weight I want to lose, I'll keep on with keto, and just gradually increase+track my carb consumption, until I find the a point where I start to gain weight... then I'll set that as my limit.
I actually did the 1250kcal method for a full year when I was 10 years younger, and it worked like a charm. It required a LOT of discipline and extremely careful calorie counting, but it definitely worked.
Being in my late 20s now, 1250kcal is just not sustainable, but going with keto is working great and is likely to remain so for a long time. It helps that all I ever drink are water, tea, black coffee, and milk. (That's been the case my entire life, so that part isn't unusual.)
I eat eggs/sausage/bacon for breakfast (one of the three), then I eat an earlyish dinner of steak or bratwurst. Since I'm on Adderall XR, lunch never happens. On days I feel like carbs, I go out to Ivanna Cone (amazing local gourmet ice cream) for half a scoop. That consistently puts me at less than 30g of non-fiber carbs per day, with a fairly steady decline in overall weight. I'm never hungry outside of meal time, and I don't have problems saying no to carbs, aside from when I'm eating out with friends.
Once I've lost the weight I want to lose (another 20 pounds or so) I'll be able to figure out what level of carbs I can have without gaining on a daily basis, and live with that.
I have to eat carefully, but not eating carefully is what got me fat in the first place, so that's just what I'll have to deal with.
I've personally lost 35 pounds in 5 months on keto, and I've had all my cholesterol levels drop, along with my blood pressure. (Which probably has more to do with my weight loss than the meat-based diet.) I literally can't lose weight while eating any amount of carbs; I ate 1250 calories a day for 2 months, lost 5 pounds, and was miserable. (Yes, 1250. I was super anal about calorie counting, and only drank water + black coffee. It sucked.)
The long and short of it is that every person has a slightly different combination of body chemistry quirks, so there's never really a one-size-fits-all method for losing weight. You've got to find something that works for you, considering both weight reduction and quality of life. If I didn't love meat so much, I'd probably be in a tough situation.
True, n-backs don't necessarily represent cognitive improvements, but they are a method to identify changes in some kinds of mental processes.
For instance, if you do Dual 3-Back for 3 weeks with an identical supplement regimen, you can graph the progressive improvement over time. That'll give you a semi-baseline, and if all you change (in your life) is a supplement from that point, you can attribute the alterations in your typical N-Back to something supplement related.
I know, placebo effect, etc. It's not causation, just correlation. Just because correlation gets pimped out on the street corner by people with agendas doesn't mean we should ignore him. We should just be careful when we utilize his services.
Have you looked at gwern's nootropic page? I've seen articles from it posted on HN on occasion. He seems to be doing a pretty solid job of testing the potential effects of various nootropics on himself.
His efforts to double-blind himself and using Dual N-Back for testing effectiveness indicate he takes this topic seriously, and is trying to be very scientific about it. (I say "trying to" because I'm absolutely clueless in this area; it looks to me like he's being pretty rigorous, but I'm not knowledgeable enough to make that claim confidently.)
In particular I liked reading about his experiments with Adderall (which I am using currently), modafinil, and especially the choline/racetam combinations.
Part of the problem may be the pitching of certain drugs as "smart drugs" when instead they are "effectiveness drugs". Adderall doesn't make me any smarter; it corrects a chemical imbalance in my brain, and in doing so makes me more effective.
(Well, honestly, it doesn't "correct" anything; it's like putting your thumb over the end of a garden hose and spraying water at a guy who's thirsty. Solves the problem, just not without a lot of mess. And with dopamine instead of water.)
All it takes is for one person getting burned to affect their entire social circle. Every person who's been shouted at for trying to help a kid has probably told everyone they know about the event; at that point, none of them are likely to help.
This is especially notable in the social media heavy environment we're in now. I personally know someone who got shouted at because he led a kid to customer service so their parent could be found; posted the event to Facebook, and now everyone he knows (who read the article) is going to be a little less likely to help.
There's a reason Good Samaritan laws had to be put in place; people have been prosecuted for attempting to help others in good faith, and that led to others not trying. Shitty situation, but that's how it goes.
I think one advantage of his test is that it's (apparently) independent of an entity with a stake in the outcome.
Based on everything I've seen about OkCupid, there's no shortage of integrity, but independent verification is still valuable.
Also, I'm curious: I've read a couple of articles online proposing different methods for OkCupid handling Mandatory answers to questions. One in particular involves treating Mandatory answers as only negative, so that agreeing with someone about the size of the sun (for example) doesn't mean you're a better match, it just means you're a worse match if you disagree. What are your thoughts on that? (Not the company's thoughts, of course.)
faevor.com/net/org. A site for establishing and trading promises and favors between friends. (Inspired by the whole "favor trading" schtick the fae tend to have in mythology.)
What I'm wondering about is how that Retina screen handles in Boot Camp Windows. I haven't seen any reviews that discuss that, and that's going to make or break things for me.
Two of my friends run a wedding planning business. They gave up on targeted Facebook ads because they got MUCH better results using Adwords.
The ads were targeted to a nice big radius that included Lincoln, NE (a college town) and Omaha, NE (a big city, for NE). They targeted women in a specific age range, and if I remember correctly only women with a status of Engaged or In A Relationship. I think they may have aimed for relevant keywords as well. (I personally don't know the exact details of their ads, so I'm sticking to what I know for sure.)
I can't think of a more ideal targeted advertising scenario, and they got less traction on Facebook than they did via AdWords. That's either a REALLY bad reflection on Facebook's ad platform, or a really good one for AdWords, or both.
(Their business is doing really well, for the record.)
As an Adderall user, I can back this up. The symptoms of use are very similar to meth. Ever seen that "meth jingle" ad? The whole "pulling hairs out of your face, cleaning everything, etc" pitch is spot on to Adderall side effects. The difference is that Adderall side effects are dramatically more mild due to (as betterth said) a properly calibrated and reliable dose.
Also, with Adderall, you can't afford to just take more to offset withdrawal symptoms, because you only have so much. The temptation to take another as it wears off is pretty substantial, especially for long-time users.
I'm somewhat surprised there aren't any dating sites that have set up a built-in "brown M&Ms" system to help with the shotgun strategy problem.
By "brown M&Ms", I mean something like Van Halen's Brown M&Ms rider condition; some key piece of text that requires an actual profile read to answer. Almost like a captcha but based on certain pieces of the profile.
The profile owner writes "List 5 of my interests, and my dog's name" and provides a list of acceptable keyword responses. Only messages where the not-captcha is properly filled out get through. (Or, alternatively, they get downgraded in priority.)
This would require people to actually read and parse the profiles, and put some minimum degree of effort into contacting someone.
I can think of several dozen problems with this approach, but I suspect they're surmountable with sufficient cleverness.
(In case the reader hasn't heard about this: Van Halen's extensive rider required a bowl of M&Ms to be provided, with all the brown M&Ms removed by hand, on penalty of show cancellation. The entire purpose of this clause was as an easy way to see if the venue had read the damn contract, and took it seriously. Any time they saw brown M&Ms, they knew something else would be wrong, (probably something dangerous and technical) and started a full re-check of the venue from scratch.)
Let's say your body typically wants 1000 calories at breakfast, and you eat 1000 calories with a heavy load of carbs. Carbohydrates with a high glycemic index cause your insulin to spike. That signals fat cells that they should start storing energy, and they do so, tucking away 300 of the 1000 calories you ate.
This means your body only gets to spend 700 of the 1000 calories you ate, and as such, it says "hey, I'm still hungry". You eat 300 calories worth of food. But your fat cells are still sucking up (X%) of what you eat into storage, due to the insulin reaction. So, your body gets 200 of those 300 it wants, and it stays a little bit hungry. (Or, more likely, your body wants 300, but you eat 500 to make it shut up.)
Carbs have the unfortunate habit of converting useful calories into fat storage prior to processing them for the purposes of nutrition. This means carb-heavy diets tend to cause unconscious overeating, and also constant feelings of hunger/cravings/etc.
One of the advantages of a paleo/keto diet is that they often avoid the type of carbohydrates that cause this problem, namely ones with a high glycemic index. This means when you eat 1000 calories, your fat cells don't skim any off the top before your metabolism gets to them, and you get the full 1000; this means you don't end up hungry after a meal, and don't suffer from the urge to snack/eat more. Because your body got all the energy it wanted, it doesn't start saying it's hungry again until it actually does need the nutrition, and you're more likely to eat closer to the correct amount for your body's needs.
The difference between the examples you give, 4500 of Paleo and 1200 of junk food, is primarily how they'd make your body react. 1200 of junk food would certainly be a caloric deficit, but you'd be ravenously hungry at that level. (I've done 1000 calories a day for 6 months straight - it's pretty awful for the first few months.) But with keto, you could eat 4500 calories in a day, but you won't want to. When I'm done eating a keto-style meal, I am completely uninterested in food until the next. Those meals, for me, are typically 1-2 small/medium brats with no bun. But if I go out and cheat, and grab a burger and fries, I've got to fight the urge to follow it up with some ice cream, even though the fries and burger combined are drastically more calories than the brats I was satisfied with the meal before.
It's really interesting stuff. The "calories-in, calories-out" model is completely right from a completely energy-based perspective, but it doesn't account for the side effects produced by the energy source, and how people react to them.