Or do they mean that if you tally up the total calories produced each year by companies, that it's grown by 1000/per day/per capita since the 1970s?
I believe it's this. The figures come from the USDA.
Some follow-up on his blog (which is awesome, by the way).
I still think there's some infectious component to the epidemic.
"more food available' makes it sound like people were perpetually hungry, pre-1980. but that's clearly not true.
so, i assume the real problem here is that people will eat as much as they can afford to eat, hungry or not. and if food becomes cheaper, they'll buy more and eat more.
so: make food more expensive!
so: make food more expensive!
Or just make the people poorer.
Are we sure about the direction of causality here?
You mean, first people got hungrier and Pepsi-Cola was just meeting increased demand?
I remember the great corn syrup riots of '79.
I suppose if there is a "recreational" component to eating, you could raise the cost of food without increasing actual hunger.
Sounds about right to me. Food is too cheap, and the obesity epidemic is a product of diet, not exercise. Also, what are those farmers growing -- it's not kale or grassfed bison.
9: I don't enjoy eating. I only eat to live. Swedish Fish are necessary for life.
so: make food corn syrup more expensive!
The types of calories, the sources are important.
Alternative idea:increase population to match food supply!
Another idea: make them work off the calories, in other words:Jobs! Physical energetic manual labor jobs!
It's not exactly that food is too cheap, but that restaurants and processed food is too cheap, right? In terms of the effect on people's habits.
They should have a restaurant where you have a treadmill instead of a chair so to keep eating you need to keep walking, and the more food you order the higher they turn up the treadmill.
13 -- I haven't read enough from this guy to know if he's saying that, but it makes sense.
I believe the per capita consumption of the fatty animal meats (beef, pork, and lamb) actually declined significantly in the relative period, so the too much food problem isn't really a problem with fatty meat consumption.
Having sat through many physiology talks in the general area of inflammation/diabetes/obesity (despite the fact that I'm not actually a physiologist), I'm inclined to ascribe a pretty big role to the ubiquity of high fructose corn syrup that grew rapidly from the late 70s onward.
I know that HFCS complaints sometimes sound like conspiracy theories, but the folks who study this stuff for a living seem pretty sure that there's something there.
I'm a bit skeptical. Back in the sixties and seventies crap processed food was already very cheap for people in the middle class and up.
Having this string of vice posts means that urple's grand revelation will arrive soon, right?
16: Weren't people consuming lots of sucrose before then? Aren't they basically equivalent?
Everybody quit smoking and got fat.
If 1 is right, then this is a completely worthless approach to answering the obesity question. Let's say people decided to eat more or higher-calorie for some other reason. What would you see in the data? The amount of calories made available for human consumption would go up.
@19
I think the main difference is that HFCS is just in a lot more things than sucrose used to be. You can get plenty of HFCS in your diet even if you avoid obviously sugary foods.
There are also some metabolic differences even though sucrose is fructose and glucose linked together and HFCS contains fructose and glucose. My memory about the specifics is too vague however.
I think the most effective way to combat obesity would be to legalize meth.
22: To add onto this, in the book "Mindless Eating" the author argues that the problem isn't the type of sugar as much as how we consume the sugar. We used to eat a lot more fruit, which was fine even though fruit has a lot of sugar because the fruit contains fiber, which fills you up. Now we consume sugar in ways that allow you to consume the sugar without ever getting full, particularly in the form of sugary drinks.
13: No, corn especially but also I believe grains in general are too cheap, and that is part of the reason processed foods (including corn syrup) are cheap; isn't that pretty well established?
particularly in the form of sugary drinks.
When people who did any sort of clinical/translational work on diabetes would come to our department and give talks, it didn't take much to get them to go off on full blown fire-and-brimstone tirades about soft drinks.
For a very long time, I managed to drink nothing but water and coffee (and beer and wine and liquor without mixers). I lost more weight than with the whole half-marathoning thing.
Which is easy because I didn't lose any weight at all by running. I did have to move my belt in a notch.
My theory is that part of the cause is that eating fills an emotional void created in part by ubiquitous advertising telling us our lives are inadequate because we do not own $product or utilize $service. We may not be able to afford those things but we can at least gain some simple visceral comfort from consumption of cheap and readily available food.
I thought everybody filled emotional voids by making puns on the internet.
Seems like the whole sugary soft drink problem was solved by diet sodas.
Diet sodas just make you want more sugar, they say.
It's also about the fastest and most convenient physical pleasure there is. During the work day, I can't really take a nice walk in the sun, or get a massage, or have sex (barring unusual circumstances). But I can eat a cookie at my desk. Same for commuting time, and so on. I think modern life is fairly low on bodily pleasures for a lot of people, and that need gets directed toward food.
I think modern life is fairly low on bodily pleasures for a lot of people
Maybe compared against a utopian ideal, but compared against a historical baseline I highly doubt this is true.
If we could wank at work we'd all be skinnier and have lower health care costs. Mandatory wank breaks should be part of the next round of health care reform.
For me at least, weight gain or loss is volitional. When I eat less sugar and exercise more, I'm trim. Sedentary months punctuated with doughnuts or junk food, weight gain and associated mental sloth. So one counterexample to the last sentences.
Factory farming in the US is terrible, a political and lifestyle problem. Gentle nagging from advertisements about healthy food and physical health IMO worthwhile, possible. Cutting corn subsidies and ideally steep soda taxes would be great, but they'd be one more assault against the honest heartland by city elites, so will never happen.
37: What do you mean "if"? Does your workplace not have restrooms?
If God didn't want every square inch of Iowa to be devoted to growing corn he would have put mountains there.
36: It's also probably a lot lower on physical discomfort -- lower on bodily sensation all around -- if that makes more sense to you. But I don't think pleasure nets out against discomfort.
Could the obesity epidemic be related to an increase in the percentage of people that sit all day at their jobs?
That wouldn't explain the increase in childhood obesity though.
I guess we could blame sitting jobs for adults, and video games for kids.
On sodas - what changed there? Did they just get a lot cheaper? Did the marketing change a lot? Is it the upsize in servings per container? Soda certainly existed before the 1970s.
43: I'd blame sitting jobs for adults, and increased supervision for kids.
29: Which is easy because I didn't lose any weight at all by running. I did have to move my belt in a notch.
This has sort of been me recently, but not really so much with the belt. I've been a pretty good roll with exercise since about February (increased lifting and intense fartleks on the elliptical) resulting in noticeably better conditioning on the racquetball court (playing more as well). However, I have not been managing the increased appetite well at all. I would never have thought that I could be as "fit" as this yet be so heavy. I have extremely mixed feelings about discovering this. It has also re-emphasized that I suffer from "central obesity". I do not have fat arms; I have a gut (my legs are fairly stocky, but they need to be to carry that gut around). Spent a bit of morning reading up on it and "metabolic syndrome" so will see how intellectual scare stories work in terms of behavioral modification. Ha!
Is any of the increase in obesity caused by the decrease in cigarette smoking? Or is the timing off?
44: I really do think it is the volumes. The classic soda bottles were 7 or 8 oz. 12 oz. seems small now; the vending machine 30 feet from my desk has only 20 oz. in it. Medium drinks at fast food places are 21 or 22 oz.--they do have ice, but also refills.
I also think it is cheaper ( which is of course correlated with the larger size offerings).
I do wonder to the extent it really is a milieu thing (something like the Flynn effect) with all of the interrelated things folks have mentioned contributing (and per the OP, all made possible by the surplus of foods in the US , particularly grain). Whatever, it certainly is a thing (dare I say "societal") in the US per the stunning map here from the CDC which steps through % obese by state for the last 25 years. There are geographical variations, of course, but they are swamped by the temporal changes. 2010 Colorado was the skinniest, yet would be the fattest by far in the mid-80s.
Supersizing of everything, not just soda, where what used to be the large is now the small. Fuddruckers used to have 1/4, 1/3, and OMG GIANT 1/2 lb burgers. Now I think their standard are 1/2, 3/4, and 1lb burgers (haven't gone in ~10 yrs), and I think at most sit down restaurants 1/2 lb is standard. Remember that the quarter pounder used to be a big fucking deal/meal.
2 to 51. The spread on that map looks like a slow motion version of what you see in a scifi movie like Outbreak. Some infection started in Appalachia and spread to the rest of the US.
From the OP:
I like reframing the obesity issue away from willpower and discipline (which I don't actually believe exist)
What does this mean, that willpower and discipline don't exist?
Otherwise, it's surely the type of food that's become cheaper that's at issue.
Is any of the increase in obesity caused by the decrease in cigarette smoking? Or is the timing off?
Either way, it can't explain the epidemic of childhood obesity.
I'm just a lurker now, but if you want to bring me back, the way to do it would be to post an example of mathematicians screwing up when they applied their skills to topics they know nothing about.
At the time, I knew almost nothing of obesity. I didn't even know what a calorie was. I quickly read every scientific paper I could get my hands on.... Because to do this experimentally would take years. You could find out much more quickly if you did the math.
Yeah, spherical cows. It's like the author is trying to get the world to award him a prize for the most splended mathematical dumbassery.
47: I'm probably deluding myself out the belt. I probably am just squishing my guts more.
Hey, somebody brought twizzlers to the office kitchen. I don't know if that kind of thing happened in the 70s or not.
55: Depends on how old the kids we're talking about are.
Not if secondhand smoke suppresses appetite too.
I'm fat because I like to eat brownies. Which are bigger and better than they were when I was a kid. Bread and beer are also much better.
I'd like to see that map correlated with age.
Or smoking depressed food preparation activities which is not out of the question if it depresses appetite.
61.2: I have a similar suspicion that part (certainly not all) of the reason for the rapid increase is the shifting demographic patterns.
Or if people were smoking while preparing food and the ash made all the food taste like crap.
61.2: Yeah, an age-adjusted one would be nice.
that willpower and discipline don't exist?
Suppose you really want to do X. If you can set up your life so that it takes very little mental struggle to make progress towards X, then you will probably accomplish X. Not that the daily progress isn't real work; just that you're not battling yourself to even engage in the first place. If your life is set up so that you have a vast mental struggle, daily, in order to engage in making progress towards X, then you won't accomplish it.
61, 63: Also, I think the 1998-1999 marked jump is when they lowered the BMI cut-off for obesity, and it's slightly annoying that they're not using a consistent definition throughout the whole thing.
64 was our working theory about the school lunch program.
It's hard to breathe through a twizzler.
61,65: Ah, but the county-level maps specifically say "age-adjusted" so the state one might be as well.
67: They say they use the same standard throughout. BMI >=30.
I caught a bit of the HBO documentarians on NPR the other day, and I thought they made a good point--if we stopped subsidizing grain, and instead subsidized vegetables, that would make a big difference. Vegetables are expensive! But they're a much healthier source of calories and fullness.
My home town now has a greenhouse growing vegetables with hydroponics. Maybe their just ahead of the game, but I doubt the vegetable acres in the county are even 1% of the corn/soybean acres.
This issue with grain, of course, is that most of it goes to feed animals. Long before you raise the price of any grain for human consumption, you'll have really boosted the price of meat.
Also, diet sodas ming.
God is that ever true!
66 is like gobbledygook to me.
If I decide that I need to lose 30 pounds, certainly I'm going to do my best to set up my life in such a way that I stand a fighting chance of doing that. If I decide that I want to excel at mathematics, and earn a Ph.D. in it, and become tenured, I'm going to set up my life, to the best of my ability. If I decide that I want to win the world memory championship, per what's-his-name whom we all admire, and who spent hours wearing blindfolds in order to facilitate his level of concentration, yes, I'm going to take those steps.
I don't see how that doesn't involve willpower and discipline. I don't understand what you're talking about.
God damn it SP what are your kids names.
Long before you raise the price of any grain for human consumption, you'll have really boosted the price of meat.
Sounds like a good plan to me.
You try to get bacon from a grass fed pig.
Who do I need to sell out to so that I can afford $11 bacon?
If I decide that I need to lose 30 pounds, certainly I'm going to do my best to set up my life in such a way that I stand a fighting chance of doing that. If I decide that I want to excel at mathematics, and earn a Ph.D. in it, and become tenured, I'm going to set up my life, to the best of my ability. If I decide that I want to win the world memory championship, per what's-his-name whom we all admire, and who spent hours wearing blindfolds in order to facilitate his level of concentration, yes, I'm going to take those steps.
But lots of people don't do this. Many many people say "I'm going to lose 30 pounds", and then feel horribly guilty about all the situations that they aren't able to navigate: mother-in-law's cooking, colleague birthday party, going out to eat, etc. House still filled with processed food, because other people in their family like to eat it, and they feel bad imposing their diet on the rest of the family. Therefore the diet rigged to be heavy on the willpower, and it ends up just being emotionally destructive and unsuccessful.
The male children of white mailmen in Des Moines.
I think a simple example of Heebie's distinction might be that using willpower would mean having a plate of brownies on your table and going "must not eat that brownie must not eat that brownie" every time you walk by. Most likely this force of will will fail you before long (especially (I think there are studies about this?) if you like resisted taking a bribe that morning and have now used up your willpower reserves.
Whereas setting up your life to avoid indulging in brownies might mean not buying brownies and only going to the store when you're not hungry so it's easier not to buy them.
I think willpower is something that exists but an individual is unlikely to get very far on willpower alone, compared to the, I dunno what to call them, structural changes that help you avoid needing willpower.
The cool thing about the structural changes is they can help form habits. Brownies? I never eat brownies!
Pwned by Heebie! Why did I try to answer??? Because I lack the willpower to CODE.
Crap, better close that paren before everything else downthread becomes MY ASIDE.
)
having a plate of brownies on your table and going "must not eat that brownie must not eat that brownie" every time you walk by.
Ghandi did that but with naked women.
I'm with Heebie. Willpower is a name successful, hard-working people have settled on because it describes their habitual behavior as a virtue. It used to feel like it took an immense amount of willpower for me to, say, do the dishes. Since I started B12, I barely notice doing them. I still have a lot of bad habits, though.
84: Sure, that happens; I was just completely puzzled about the statement that willpower and discipline don't exist. The latter annoyed me (clearly) because it's utter hogwash.
I'm on board with the notion that we as a society need to look at structural barriers to health rather than placing the bulk of responsibility on individual discipline.
I stopped checking the other thread because it died.
-Recalled CA gov
-Screaming VT gov
-Wonky brother of Obama's former chief of staff
-Senate majority leader (this name not actually a kid)
Not releasing the girl's name until she's born. Although there are websites that will predict what you'll name your other kids based on what you used previously.
Vegetables are expensive!
They aren't generally that bad here, when I stick to Farmers' Market. But how did I miss the cause for the huge jump in walnut prices? I read the NASS crop reports every week! Of course I saw that the 2011 California Walnut Objective Measurement Report said that production was down 4% last year, but I didn't expect that to mean that walnuts would be $8/bag at Trader Joe's this year. What the hell happened?
Ah yes, "B12" is great for teh energy boost.
Whereas setting up your life to avoid indulging in brownies might mean not buying brownies and only going to the store when you're not hungry so it's easier not to buy them.
Isn't this still willpower, though?
I'm with Heebie on this, and disagree with 92.1.
I read the NASS crop reports every week!
You must have gotten the fake copy intended for Mortimer and Randolph.
Parsimon! thank you. I guess I'm doing okay? I've been working at home, in bed, but I am very slowly working. Right now I'm on a boring ass conference call with the horribly boring committee that I was traveling to see and who I somewhat unreasonably blame for not seeing my mother for two weeks before she died. (B/c I had to work so much to get stuff done before that meeting, and then b/c my flight home from the meeting was cancelled, so I didn't get to have dinner with her on her last night.) They're all going off about how awesome the meeting is and I kind of want to stab them. I've told the key members about my loss, so they're at least not asking me for my action items, but this committee is always going to taste bitter to me.
Looks like Chinese demand is the reason behind expensive walnuts.
Willpower and discipline govern the lives of people who get up at 2 a.m. to man the garbage trucks that drive around before dawn to pick up the trash. And if they have a bad back or an incipient hernia of some sort, they might wear a supporting belt around their waists.
Honestly: willpower and discipline are very real things, on a daily basis, for very many people. I don't see what's at stake in dismissing it or, even worse, claiming it doesn't exist (which is just completely nonsensical).
Is that like Randy Jackson from the Jackson Five?
93 -- thanks. Even after all of that I'm still not sure about #3 -- Zeke? If you named your kid after Ari Emmanuel, I am proud of you.
Megan: I think we live in one of the better areas for that, and farmer's markets def. have bargains, but whenever I go to a regular grocery store with someone who is trying to transition away from a fast food diet, I realize the sticker shock that my idea of dinner can have for them.
Working hard in horrible situations is being trapped, not willpower. They wouldn't do it, if there were any alternative.
104: Right, but rationalization is much more comfortable.
Correct, Zeke. I favored using Reed to keep the theme going but I got final say on #2 so she got final say on #3 (#1 and #4 were consensus)
I'd believe that for sure. I think of veggies as cheap, since I compare them to meat, but I'm sure they're more than fast or processed meals. Especially for people who don't want to do prep or cook the veggies that could be bargains.
I think the quality and availability of frozen fruits and vegetables has gone way up in the last 5-10 years. Used to be frozen fruit was essentially sugary fruity syrup, but now you can buy all sorts of generally recognizable discrete frozen fruit products.
104: Right, but rationalization is much more comfortable.
Bullshit. "Willpower" is used to blame people when they were set up to fail.
If the owrd "willpower" is objectionable, what's a less loaded one?
I'm not especially virtuous, but I walk by candy that I don't eat all the time; I have chocolate in my desk that I eat one or two days in a week. Maybe there's something I'm not understanding.
I'm not at all interested in guilt, my own or other peoples', and find it pretty easy to ignore things I dislike. Maybe this is unusual? I know I'm not the only one tuned this way.
99: so I didn't get to have dinner with her on her last night
That sucks, a lot. It sounds like you're doing okay for the moment, with the wanting to stab people. Strength! (this is forward, but you can email me any time if you want or need a not-personally-involved but sympathetic person to hear things)
I'm not especially virtuous, but I walk by candy that I don't eat all the time; I have chocolate in my desk that I eat one or two days in a week. Maybe there's something I'm not understanding.
That you don't find candy and chocolate as irresistible as someone else might?
If the owrd "willpower" is objectionable, what's a less loaded one?
Employing well-planned strategies that work for you, personally. It's a bit clunky.
117: Can't you be more like Parsimon?
I've thought for a while that there seems to be a pretty big difference between the type of willpower/self-control/self-discipline/whatever involved in not doing something and the kind involved in doing something. Personally, at least, I find it almost trivially easy to not do something, regardless of whether I want to do it or not, and very difficult to make myself do something I don't want to do (and, indeed, often pretty difficult even to make myself do something I do want to do). Some sort of general tendency toward inertia may be behind this, though I'm sure people differ in this respect. (I'm not sure this is all that relevant to what heebie's talking about.)
119 is correct. I would add that sometimes I find it difficult to stop doing something that is no longer enjoyable because it's now habit.
I don't even understand the distinction. People who have great "willpower" don't do things like put twizzlers on their desk and not eat them; they have strategies for getting through the day. Same with guys with bad backs who get up and go to work; they develop strategies that allow them to get through the day. If "setting up your life to avoid indulging in brownies might mean not buying brownies and only going to the store when you're not hungry so it's easier not to buy them" then I'm not sure what willpower is -- mental endurance contests?
I'm not especially virtuous, but I walk by candy that I don't eat all the time; I have chocolate in my desk that I eat one or two days in a week. Maybe there's something I'm not understanding.
That you don't find candy and chocolate as irresistible as someone else might?
Heebie, what if this were instead: "I'm not especially virtuous, but I turn down attractive women who hit on me, because I'm married. Maybe there's something I'm not understanding."
Would you still feel comfortable asserting that there's nothing more going on than: "That you don't find sex with attractive women as irresistible as someone else might?"
blame
I don't understand this one either. I basically don't care what other people think unless I need to cooperate with them or like them.
115. Unfalsifiable or tautological, I think. I used to snack more and exercise less, decided this was a problem, changed behavior. Again, maybe this is a word usage question-- people make decisions, we are not passive. I am not planning on deciding to levitate, or planning to change what other people think. That's because these are unrealizable goals.
I doubt that there are a few sentences that will lead to an agreement here-- if 115 is a response, then is it right to say say Barbara McClintock (to name someone who made difficult decisions and acted on them) did not differ from others who took no for an answer, she just had different preferences?
What would you say that the marshmallow test measures?
120: I think that's how necrophilia starts.
116. well-planned strategies
I'm honestly not trying to be disagreeable or solipsistic, but for example, I hate planning and this sounds like a living hell to me.
People have different styles of living, and these differences run pretty deeply, I think.
I haven't followed closely enough to know if this supports what Heebie is trying to say, but I use various things I know about myself to control behaviors. I have this bad hangup about wasting food that I blame on my parents (clean your plate!) so when there is food in the house or at restaurants I'm more likely to eat it than let it go bad or throw it out. But I'm also cheap so I control my eating by using that predisposition to avoid buying stuff even though I could afford buy a half gallon of ice cream a week and end up eating it. Once I've bought it I'm likely to eat it, so I just tell myself that it's too expensive and in the end I get the behavior I want (eating less).
then I'm not sure what willpower is -- mental endurance contests?
Yes. I think generally people use "willpower" to mean sheer mental struggle. And it's seen on the virtuous/character flaw spectrum - you're virtuous if you succeed, and it's a personal failure otherwise, as Eggplant noted above.
Thoughtfully planning out strategies isn't subject to the same character valorization as willpower is.
I'm honestly not trying to be disagreeable or solipsistic, but for example, I hate planning and this sounds like a living hell to me.
Then that wouldn't work for you. Call it problem-solving instead. There are things that work with your personality and things that work against them, and it's not obvious to many people that they should rig the former and avoid the latter.
People who have great "willpower" don't do things like put twizzlers on their desk and not eat them
No, because that would be stupid. But they do do things like pass by a chocolate shop and think 'wow, those look delicious, but I'd better not', instead of 'wow, yum, I've got to get one'. It's not all about planning your life in such a manner so as never to encounter temptation.
That you don't find candy and chocolate as irresistible as someone else might?
As 124 says, this is tautological. Yes, by definition the person who resists eating candy and chocolates doesn't find them as irresistible as someone else might. But choosing to structure your life (and keeping up the effort to structure your life) so that it's easier to not have chocolate around is a matter of willpower too.
126: The thing is, the kids who are good at the marshmallow test tend to distract themselves by doing things like looking at other stuff in the room or finding ways to play with the marshmallow. IOW they are doing what Heebie suggests in reducing temptation.
I think willpower has a real and useful meaning, but Heebie is right that it's more often than not invoked to blame people.
Willpower is resisting temptation - the temptation to eat candy or have casual extramarital sex or sleep in when you're late for work, for example. It's a meaningful concept, and important for lots of things.
However, Heebie seems to be saying that resisting temptation isn't as important to losing weight than avoiding temptation in the first place, like by not keeping candy around the house or not going to a singles bar when your spouse is out of town. I'd agree with that.
hg, Maybe you've found a way to think about this that fits for some people, including you, but it doesn't fit everyone.
I don't like having a lot of details and plans to keep track of, and am indifferent to the inner lives of other people-- I don't care whether strangers are virtuous or what they think of me. I suspect that differing degrees of conscientiousness and empathy towards strangers matter for personal style on this one.
I'd agree with 136.2, but that's not what heebie said.
I don't think there's a whole lot of disagreement here over the underlying issue (that "willpower" is often invoked in certain specific situations to blame people's failings on an alleged lack of personal virtue, and that this is bad), but I don't find heebie's framing of this as "willpower doesn't exist" particularly clear or useful.
I have the impression that heebie isn't actually claiming that willpower and discipline don't exist, but is just saying that the terms have been used in a sometimes unfortunate manner, in which case I have no argument.
Just to prove that willpower doesn't exist, I'm getting more twizzlers.
137: I seriously think you're misreading me here. I'm not saying anyone should do things my way. I'm not saying anything close to that.
Willpower exists in one-off situations. It's worthless as the tool for achieving something that requires a vast mental struggle. It's a fantasy that anyone's achievement sprang from willpower.
You're claiming nonexistence of a useful if often misapplied abstraction in the original post.
This is a tangent to the main point of the original post, whose basic substance I agree with (government policy matters more than individual choice for aggregate US obesity). As others have said, along with food economics, I think that the time budget of physical activity matters also. Cities planned for a sedentary consumer lifestyle are IMO a factor too, but I don't have survey data. Looking at other countries, maybe Brazil or France would be useful, I think.
143: Free will is a fantasy, but it's a fantasy we cling to.
Oh. 140 is what 139 said.
119: I've thought for a while that there seems to be a pretty big difference between the type of willpower/self-control/self-discipline/whatever involved in not doing something and the kind involved in doing something.
This is interesting, but I'm not sure there's as much of difference as there might appear to be at first. In order to get yourself to do something like get up at 2 a.m. to man the garbage truck, you have *not* stay up late, not drink much in the evening (or, I guess, afternoon, timing-wise), and any number of other things. You have not get fat and lazy.
Thanks, Parsimon, that's really kind of you.
Megan, I am reminded of an email thread I had with some friends about five years ago, and someone who was part of a triathlete team wrote this about a nutritional biologist who gave them a talk:
"If you're not eating 1/3 of the volume of your lunch and dinner as vegetables, you're either overeating or starving yourself. The idea is that the veggies (again a third of the total volume of your meal) provide low-calorie bulk to make you feel full, while also providing fiber that regulates the uptake of the calories you're consuming. This means that your blood sugar doesn't spike, so your body doesn't respond by putting that extra sugar into fat cells. So you continue to burn the calories you ate, rather than storing them and suddenly being hungry for more. Without the veggies, you either eat more than you need, and build fat, or you feel hungry."
This basically reflects the diet I grew up with, which is a plate with rice, dahl, and two sabjis---what you might call vegetable curries. The rice and dahl part is dirt cheap, but the vegetables can drive up the price considerably.
It's a fantasy that anyone's achievement sprang from willpower.
I wouldn't even think to disagree with this statement in some other context, where, I would normally understand "achievement" to be referring to something more grandiose than resisting the urge to eat another cookie. But you're specifically using it in that way, where I think it's completely wrong. People sometimes really do resist eating cookies out of sheer willpower.
Cities planned for a sedentary consumer lifestyle are IMO a factor too, but I don't have survey data. Looking at other countries, maybe Brazil or France would be useful, I think.
I believe there has been some research on this, and that the results are about what you would expect. I don't have any specific citations to hand, though.
In order to get yourself to do something like get up at 2 a.m. to man the garbage truck, you have *not* stay up late, not drink much in the evening (or, I guess, afternoon, timing-wise), and any number of other things.
Right, but what I'm saying is that these are independent things. Even if it's easy for someone to not do all that stuff beforehand, it might still be hard for them to get up that early. (Or vice versa I guess, but I suspect people like that are pretty uncommon.)
To use a personal example -- I eat more, and less healthily, than I should. A big part of the reason is living with Buck; he likes having the house full of snacky things but doesn't actually eat them, so he buys them and I eat them. I don't have any problem not buying ice cream, but I find not eating ice cream that's in the house already impossible. Back when I lived alone (many, many, many years ago. I am aged.) I ate more healthily because I shopped more healthily.
But of course, he's not tying my hands and shoving ice cream down my throat; I'm choosing to operate the spoon. Someone with the sort of 'willpower' Heebie is denying would simply not eat the ice cream regardless of its presence in the refrigerator. I don't have that kind of willpower, although I have plenty of whatever it is you need to avoid buying ice cream and bringing it home.
While "there's no such thing as willpower" may not be the right way to put it, I do think that moving decisions away from the moment when desire is most intense is much, much easier for most people than just bulling through on sheer force of character.
It also depends how you think of specific activities, of course. Not staying up late is the same as going to bed early, but how a given person conceptualizes may make a big difference in how easy they find it to do.
I wouldn't even think to disagree with this statement in some other context, where, I would normally understand "achievement" to be referring to something more grandiose than resisting the urge to eat another cookie. But you're specifically using it in that way, where I think it's completely wrong. People sometimes really do resist eating cookies out of sheer willpower.
I'm using "achievement" to mean "permanently shed those 30 lbs". When I said that will-power exists in one-off situations, I meant resisting a cookie.
153: If you add together a bunch of one-off cookie-resisting situations, you've just permanently shed those 30 lbs. They're parts of a continuum.
151 doesn't seem inconsistent with 136.
Willpower exists in one-off situations. It's worthless as the tool for achieving something that requires a vast mental struggle. It's a fantasy that anyone's achievement sprang from willpower.
143 is, like, built to piss me off. Heebie, have you heard about people in Somalia who travel hundreds of miles on foot, toting their children, in order to escape famine? Have you heard about people who struggle with extraordinary chronic pain?
I get that you're restricting your view to the relatively upper middle class United States, but it would be good to acknowledge that beyond that relatively restricted class, nothing you say is (I hope) meant to apply.
If you add together a bunch of one-off cookie-resisting situations, you've just permanently shed those 30 lbs. They're parts of a continuum.
Right. I don't think people can keep it up - through sheer willpower - long enough to permanently shed those 30 lbs.
People die in famines because they didn't want to walk?
143 is, like, built to piss me off. Heebie, have you heard about people in Somalia who travel hundreds of miles on foot, toting their children, in order to escape famine? Have you heard about people who struggle with extraordinary chronic pain?
Have you met comment 107?
Who the fuck is choosing either of those situations? That's not willpower, that's horrible circumstances and exploitation and survival drive.
I think you're accusing me of lacking compassion for people who are hugely suffering. Which is a cheap shot, the kind that only arises from a true lack of willpower.
I get that you're restricting your view to the relatively upper middle class United States, but it would be good to acknowledge that beyond that relatively restricted class, nothing you say is (I hope) meant to apply.
I lack the willpower not to roll my eyes at this.
It's worthless as the tool for achieving something that requires a vast mental struggle. It's a fantasy that anyone's achievement sprang from willpower.
I have 60 lbs. of lost weight and 8 inches off my waist that say otherwise.
(That said, I was incredibly fortunate in a whole host of ways and my experience is completely non-representative.)
162: Tell us how you achieved that.
I think I grew up with hearing this called "avoiding the occasion of sin." (We might think that it takes discipline to do this, and that it's somewhat easier to accomplish -- easier not to buy the ice cream than not to eat it, for example.)
Willpower exists at least to the extent that we can test how well someone can resist temptation when they're faced with other irritating tasks which have already required their attention and energy.
Berating people into being thin doesn't work, but that's a pretty narrow reading of willpower and discipline.
People in the US consume about 250 calories of soda per person per day. This is triple what it was in the late 70's, so it's an increase of 180 calories per day. Assuming these calories are not replacing calories from solid food (and there's evidence to suggest that they're not), this is an increase in calorie consumption of 5-10% from soda alone.
160: Who the fuck is choosing either of those situations? That's not willpower, that's horrible circumstances and exploitation and survival drive
We're apparently talking past each other, since I'd call heroic survival in those circumstances a matter of willpower. I also didn't realize that you're viewing willpower as something that is or isn't in effect just in case one has chosen the situation.
Roll your eyes all you like - I should be done with this anyway.
166
It's actually much more likely to be a matter of luck. Willpower is a nice story we tell ourselves about how great we (or a few other people) are.
I would say that willpower, by definition, is only applicable at moments of choice. And you're using it to mean suffering through shitty circumstances. So we're probably talking past each other. Under my definition, this conversation hasn't required any willpower from me.
Willpower and discipline govern the lives of people who get up at 2 a.m. to man the garbage trucks that drive around before dawn to pick up the trash.
Actually, studies show that someone working that kind of a shift is much more likely to be overweight.
It's actually much more likely to be a matter of luck. Willpower is a nice story we tell ourselves about how great we (or a few other people) are.
No, no. The dead Somalis lacked willpower.
And it James' stat from the previous thread is correct, 180 extra calories per day is an extra 15 pounds at steady state.
And according to the CDC, the average American has gained 18 pounds in that time period.
I went through aviation training the other day. One of the things they taught us was that the most important thing you need to survive a plane crash is a positive mental attitude. I suppose the heebie approach would imply that not getting on the plane in the first place works better, which is of course true.
172: Did they also try to convince you that your attitude determines your altitude? Airplane science may have disproven that one.
"I get that you're restricting your view to the relatively upper middle class United States, but it would be good to acknowledge that beyond that relatively restricted class, nothing you say is (I hope) meant to apply."
upper middle class people are not , in general, as fat as lower middle class people. upper middle class people don't get lectures about willpower.
Pretty sure that the obesity epidemic is not about a decline in will power. Discussing willpower in the context of the obesity epidemic is a bad idea. Something has changed in people's lived environments, and it can change back.
173: They didn't. I suppose there may be some circumstances in which it happens to be true, but it doesn't seem useful as a general rule.
171: "I recently went to my 30th class reunion from nursery school, I didn't want to go because I've put on like 100 pounds since then."
- Wendy Liebman
One of the things they taught us was that the most important thing you need to survive a plane crash is a positive mental attitude. I suppose the heebie approach would imply that not getting on the plane in the first place works better, which is of course true.
I believe - loosely - in character traits like resilience and resourcefulness, and on the flip side despondence and despair. I read your teachers as saying "Resilient, resourceful people have better odds than sad sacks, so be them if you're trapped in the woods."
I read your teachers as saying "Resilient, resourceful people have better odds than sad sacks, so be them if you're trapped in the woods."
That would be a reasonable interpretation, yes.
151
To use a personal example -- I eat more, and less healthily, than I should. A big part of the reason is living with Buck; he likes having the house full of snacky things but doesn't actually eat them, so he buys them and I eat them. I don't have any problem not buying ice cream, but I find not eating ice cream that's in the house already impossible. Back when I lived alone (many, many, many years ago. I am aged.) I ate more healthily because I shopped more healthily.
That sounds exactly like me and my girlfriend T. She really doesn't need any willpower to avoid eating junk food. She buys it chocolate bars and squirrels them away for a rainy day or when she wants a snack or something, and then rarely eats it. Easter candy lasts more than a year. She'd buy stuff faster than she eats it up - or she would if I wasn't in the house.
I, on the other hand, do need willpower to avoid eating junk food. Just relying on willpower doesn't work, asking her not to buy stuff doesn't work, and throttling her when she buys stuff doesn't work. What does work: a cookie jar with a padlock on it. The key to the lock is on her keychain. So I can't get in there at all when she's not home, and when she is I'd have to ask her. She always says yes, of course, but at least I have to think about it first, and dealing with her laughing at me is a deterrent. You and Buck might try that. Can't put ice cream in it, but it would help with other kinds of junk food, at least.
I don't disagree with 174, in the aggregate. In mine own case, though, I think willpower/discipline is really nearly the whole of it. I absolutely could lose 30 lbs if I wanted it badly enough.
John Tierney is a dink, but I'm pretty sure that he's correct in reporting that studies show that Heebie-sense willpower is a resource than one depletes.
One of the things they taught us was that the most important thing you need to survive a plane crash is a positive mental attitude.
I would assume that mental attitude only matters for those who hit the ground alive and relatively intact. Or are the pilots.
I absolutely could [do X] if I wanted it badly enough.
Except that somehow, despite knowing that I totally could do X, I never really seem to get around to doing X.
And this is the essence of willpower, and it's why it's pretty much useless as advice (e.g. you should have more willpower).
177: I read your teachers as saying "Resilient, resourceful people have better odds than sad sacks, so be them if you're trapped in the woods."
Oh, I read it as along the lines of "People with positive mental attitude will have their wits about them enough to grab a sluggard and use them as a cushion between themselves and any sharp metal parts."
A positive mental attitude, resiliency, resourcefulness, and a suit made out of bubble wrap. And the willpower to resist popping it.
I would assume that mental attitude only matters for those who hit the ground alive and relatively intact.
Right, this advice was given in the context of already having survived the initial impact.
I tried to read ahead to see if I was pwned but I got tired.
This is shaping up to be one of the dumber threads! Sorry for my part in it.
I would say that willpower, by definition, is only applicable at moments of choice.
How rare exactly do you think "moments of choice" are?
180.last: In mine own case, though, I think willpower/discipline is really nearly the whole of it. I absolutely could lose 30 lbs if I wanted it badly enough.
I believe you believe that and the last sentence is true at some level, but I do not think it is necessarily "nearly the whole of it". I suspect a CC born 30 years earlier with the same measure of willpower/discipline would likely be 10, 20, maybe 30 pounds lighter.
169 made me laugh.
It is hilarious that shift work is correlated with higher rates of obesity!
173: No, it's true. If the nose of the plane is pointing down, the plane is getting closer to the ground. Attitude is crucial.
191: Depends on how high the airplane was when the engines died.
How rare exactly do you think "moments of choice" are?
During a Somali death march? Rare.
During a Somali death march? Rare.
What, really? I don't think that's true at all.
151, 179: A less involved solution would be for LB to just recategorize the ice cream &c. as belonging to Buck. Presumably under ordinary circumstances it doesn't take much willpower to refrain from eating someone else's food from a common fridge without permission.
There's something unseemly about speculating about what it's really like to be walking thousands of miles to avoid starvation. But if I can speak for Heebie, it does sound like a situation where there aren't a lot of choices of the form "Am I going to do the meritorious but difficult thing, or am I going to take the easy way out?" If you're in a situation that dire, there's no easy way out.
You probably have lots of choices on a Somali death march, but most of them have to be made with next to no information and the odds of any of them resulting in 'win' are very low.
If you're in a situation that dire, there's no easy way out.
Sure there is. The easy way out is to lie down and die.
198: They make combination locks that hold the lid on pints of ice cream. You could still cut the container, but that's a higher barrier.
169: That's evidence for, not against, the hypothesis that those activities deplete willpower.
There's something unseemly about speculating about what it's really like to be walking thousands of miles to avoid starvation
In a thread about the overabundance of food in America? Pshaw. It's even on topic.
198: Actually, one of the life experiences I'm most ashamed about is putting glue on a caterpillar living with a roommate in college who liked keeping a bowl of chocolate candy out on her desk. She didn't mind sharing some, but I (embarrassingly) ate the damn bowl empty over and over again, and had to keep on buying more candy to refill it. I found this really humiliating (and I'm sure she found it annoying as all get out), but living in a room with an always full bowl of chocolate isn't something I can do comfortably.
201 is also the case in the plane crash situation, which was the point of the advice about a positive mental attitude. If that's more seemly than Somali death marches we can use it as an example instead.
199: The "easy" way out is to lie down and take a break - and die.
What, really? I don't think that's true at all.
Surviving slavery, exploitation, abuse, death marches, etc is not a choice. You don't have freedom to choose freely. If your other "choice" is death/pain/family starving, you're not freely choosing.
Is this a big psych experiment where the commenters are gradually being replaced by Folger's Crystals to see if I'll notice that you're all fucking bonkers?
173, 194: I was really just joking about ugly motivational posters because "Positive Mental Attitude" is something I associate with the walls of my seventh-grade classroom, not something like flight training.
201, 207: Benquo is better at marketing.
207: That's a different enough category of 'easy' than 'breaking down and eating the cookie' that it makes sense to describe the personal qualities needed to resist making the easy choice in different terms.
That's evidence for, not against, the hypothesis that those activities deplete willpower.
Right. And therefore makes one a giant ass to pair the words 'fat' and 'lazy'.
Surviving slavery, exploitation, abuse, death marches, etc is not a choice. You don't have freedom to choose freely. If your other "choice" is death/pain/family starving, you're not freely choosing.
Free or not, it's still a choice, and a real one.
213: You added "take a break" which really helps sell it.
That's a different enough category of 'easy' than 'breaking down and eating the cookie' that it makes sense to describe the personal qualities needed to resist making the easy choice in different terms.
In psychological terms I'm not sure this is true, but it would probably take actual research to find out. And that would be some seriously hard research to do.
What we need is controlled experiments. Are kids who resist eating the marshmallow more likely to survive a death march?
212: I'd bet the brain chemistry involved is the same, though.
Also, according to the article from the OP, 1 pound of body weight requires 10 calories per day at steady state (close to James' number of 12). But there are now 1000 extra calories per person per day available to people. If we ate all of them, we'd be 100 pounds heavier, but the real number is only 18 pounds, implying an elasticity of 0.18. This is presumably what he means by "that increase in food more than explains the increase in weight".
217: I need a rat, a cage that fits over a head and has a removable partition to hold a rat away from the head, and a very drunk IRB.
I think the consensus around making your environment and habits conducive to healthy eating and exercise is correct (at least for individual efforts) but very much a product of the past couple of decades, possibly aided by research findings. Before, there was a lot more "it's a matter of how seriously you want to lose weight" floating around.
I think it should be obvious that prices are the aggregate determinant, and evaluation of the personal effectiveness of determination/planning/etc. is plagued with post-hoc-ergo-propter hoc. Combining threads, people somehow get amazingly better at figuring out how to quit smoking as taxes increase.
Also, I thought there was research in the direction of discrediting the idea that if you are overweight, you must be eating too many calories constantly. Rather, I think, the body manages nutrients to keep weight at its present level, so one-time gains get locked in, so to lose (holding physical activity constant), you need to eat less than what would maintain someone at normal weight.
living in a room with an always full bowl of chocolate isn't something I can do comfortably.
Yep.
Free or not, it's still a choice, and a real one.
No, it's not. You do not have a choice if there is a gun to your head. Or any other version that threatens the safety or survival of yourself or your family.
No one can force another person to do something against their will? The victim is always choosing to comply, rather than choosing to die?
And, teofilo pwns me again.
You were pithier again, though.
217, 219: We're in dueling-intuition land here, but my intuition seriously fails to accord with this -- I'd expect them to be psychologically very distinct.
Hmmm, this is one of the dumber threads. If you define willpower as "playing a mental stress game in which you're resisting, while suffering great mental anguish, something that is immediately available, nearly cost free, and difficult to resist" then of course willpower won't work, most of the time (but it will still work some of the time!).
That's not at all what "willpower" mostly means, however -- people who seem great at resisting temptation usually do so by creating strategies to avoid the mental anguish.
No one can force another person to do something against their will? The victim is always choosing to comply, rather than choosing to die?
Yes and yes.
You're all Folger's Crystals to me now.
231: Just me an Benquo, I think, at least so far, though I'm hoping there's more support for my view out there. It seems so obvious to me that I'm actually surprised that it's so controversial.
Like, the tone of the plane crash training was very much "you have to choose to live, because you will be tempted to choose to die," and this wasn't treated as a controversial idea by either the instructor or any of the students.
193: It is hilarious that shift work is correlated with higher rates of obesity!
No, I meant that working as a sanitation worker on a garbage truck, which seems pretty physically active, might not be the same as every other kind of shift work; and I don't know of other shifts for sanitation workers on the trucks besides that early morning shift; so I'm not sure the studies for shift work in general would go toward the specifics of sanitation workers on the trucks.
234: There's a bit of biased sample, though.
234: Is this after the crash or during? The latter is dumb as shit, but the former has some evidence behind it. People in survival situations do sometimes make choices that suggest they have given up and just want it over with.
237: After. We didn't really talk about what happens during the crash, I guess because any decision at that point are basically up to the pilot.
226: We need an Unfogged-specific word for the act of making a comment that is not as witty as it could have been because you wanted to get something down before you were pwned.
Like, the tone of the plane crash training was very much "you have to choose to live, because you will be tempted to choose to die," and this wasn't treated as a controversial idea by either the instructor or any of the students.
I'm agreeable that this is how survivors describe their experience, even those that gave up and were still rescued.
I'm disagreeable that this is in any way relevant when people are talking about ordinary uses of "willpower".
For the record, when I talk about willpower, I'm being a regular person about it - no fear of death, fear of your family being evicted if you don't go to your job, fear of being beaten up, etc. Willpower is a battle where both sides of the issue are within your brain. Little angels and devils on your shoulders.
[There would also be a Crooked Timber-specific word, but it would be more boring and with lots of trollery.]
As Martin Luther said about sexual temptation, you can't keep the birds from flying over your head, but you can keep them from building nests in your hair.
He meant birds in the British slang sense, of course.
I can accept that, depending on the circumstances, it can be tempting to give up and die. It just seems like an utterly different temptation than the temptation of a harmful/immoral pleasure -- so different that I'd almost expect them to be negatively correlated. Scarlett O'Hara's the one out there gloating over her turnips because they mean survival, not Melanie.
I'm disagreeable that this is in any way relevant when people are talking about ordinary uses of "willpower".
I wouldn't necessarily argue that it's relevant in practice, but I don't think the two are different things. I think they're the same thing in different situations.
For the record, when I talk about willpower, I'm being a regular person about it - no fear of death, fear of your family being evicted if you don't go to your job, fear of being beaten up, etc. Willpower is a battle where both sides of the issue are within your brain. Little angels and devils on your shoulders.
And your argument is that this type of willpower doesn't exist?
243: Was there some kind of unspeakably obscene hair fetish back then or did he just mean you didn't have to keep thinking about women you saw?
I'm qualifying it as irrelevant at this moment in time: when I say that willpower doesn't exist, the following are not part of a free choice - fear of death, fear of your family being evicted if you don't go to your job, fear of being beaten up, fear of grizzly bears eating your face, fear of Somali warlords, fear of being sold as a mail-order bride...I think that's a comprehensive list.
247: Doesn't exist is probably an overstatement. How would you feel about a phrasing like "Most people who are successful in making the choices they want to in that kind of situation do it by arranging their lives to minimize temptation. You can't pick out people who successfully make desirable choices consistently as people who have more 'willpower' in the sense of 'psychological ability to make unattractive choices when squarely confronted with them'."
And your argument is that this type of willpower doesn't exist?
That it will not fund a longterm goal, ie keeping 30 lbs off or finishing that dissertation. There need to be structures in place to keep you engaged with the task.
There's probably something better but I rushed.
250: I'd be fine with that phrasing, but I think we cleared that one up about 200 comments ago.
You can't pick out people who successfully make desirable choices consistently as people who have more 'willpower' in the sense of 'psychological ability to make unattractive choices when squarely confronted with them'
I don't believe anyone could possibly measure this. This is like arguing that some people withstand the same amounts of pain better, or see blue more beautifully than I see blue. Sure, we're being exposed to the same environment, but there's no comparing anyone's subjective experience.
It's just tautological: if it was really hard for you to withstand, it took a lot of willpower. Every single person can create a one-off choice that would require a lot of willpower for them. None of those people would be able to make that same choice for the next 15 years without some superstructure.
245: In both cases it's a tradeoff between the immediate reward of giving your body what it's asking for (Rest my exhausted body! Satisfy my craving for yummy chocolate!) and long-term goals (Get out of this alive. Get to my target weight.)
Presumably on the Veldt people with unusually good willpower were more likely to starve themselves to death, die of exhaustion, untreated wounds, etc.
There need to be structures Somali warloards in place to keep you engaged with the task.
Was there some actual Somali death march that I'm unaware of? When did this become a thing?
|| I thought this was pretty neat. http://whatismissing.net/#/home |>
I don't keep brownies in stock. I can walk to several places that sell pretty good ones though, and on a nice day, it's nice to get out and experience temptation in the form of attractive young women walk about. I have time, it's a nice excuse to be out, and I can afford a brownie every day. I have to decide, every day, not to go get one. I do not always so decide, but probably often enough to be 5 lbs (at least) short of worst case scenario, all other lifestyle choices even.
Anyway, I think this all stems from heebie arguing against a common rhetorical trope that no one here has actually expressed (at least in this thread), so there's not really much at issue for us and we're mostly just talking past each other and quibbling over terminology. As usual.
Wait, maybe Charley's comments do count as expressions of that trope. Still, it seems like we're mostly on the same side here.
heebie arguing against a common rhetorical trope that no one here has actually expressed
True - people here do not tend to blame the victim, when they fail to achieve something. But seriously, people here never talk about willpower as being a meaningful tool in one's drawer, either. People here generally dismiss willpower as being self-help jargon.
The dumb thread thought longingly about simply stopping and lying down but she knew she would never start up again.
None of those people would be able to make that same choice for the next 15 years without some superstructure.
E.g., I can barely go a month without wasting a day commenting on this cursed blog. Whereas, if I only had internet access at the local public library, I'm sure I'd spend less time here. That's your entire point?
Do you actually disagree with anything in 136?
264: If it'd help, we could ban you until you agree to tell us about your new sex act that's sucked all the fun out of your life.
I think the focus on environmental factors rather than "willpower", "character" & etc. makes sense in the context of the OP because the increase in obesity & diabetes happened across the entire country* over a relatively short span of time. Either human nature in the USA changed en mass between 1985 and 1995 or else changes in the types and availability of foods across the country changed. Since we know that things like the huge increase in the ubiquity of HFCS (just an example, not claiming it's the only factor) did in fact occur during this period, it makes sense to pay attention to that.
In this particular context, pep talks about willpower are mostly a distraction. Save those for the Somali death marchers in crashing planes with guns to their heads.
We could mail you however many puppets you need to show us, if you just don't have the words.
I basically agree with 136. I'd replace "isn't as important" with "is virtually worthless, compared with..." in this sentence:
However, Heebie seems to be saying that resisting temptation isn't as important to losing weight than avoiding temptation in the first place, like by not keeping candy around the house or not going to a singles bar when your spouse is out of town. I'd agree with that.
||Extinct bird skeleton for sale! He looks a little underfed, though. |>
My struggle with those brownies up the street is a decidedly first world privileged problem, which I can only wage, as a matter of serious concern, because I'm not dealing with Somali warlords, grizzly bears, rapists, and the like.
Goodbye, my pretty crystals. It's time for me to drive home.
269: I agree with that but it still think that avoiding temptation takes willpower the same as resisting it.
265: we could ban you
And should as has admitted to being in violation of the Unfogged Terms and Conditions.
During the work day, I can't really take a nice walk in the sun, or get a massage, or have sex (barring unusual circumstances). But I can eat a cookie at my desk.
Exactly! Yes! This is a big part of why I eat such a bunch of crap and am back to the weight at which, a few years ago, I got pissed off at myself and went on a probably not all that healthy diet.
Once in a while I'll find some sort of substitute pleasure. Like I'll buy a shirt at Century 21! But that 1) costs many times more than the most extravagant cookie and 2) involves crowds of infuriating tourists who don't know to look both ways in a crowd. So it's a great deal more likely I will buy the worst kind of processed awfulness. About half the time I don't find I really enjoy it, but the drudgery of working for a living produces a lot of want.
I mean, people can bring you temptation (like roommates bringing candy) and sometimes you may need to bring yourself into temptation to meet other goals (like you have to buy candy because guests who you know like candy are coming) but in general, not deciding not to buy candy is using the same mental-whatever as deciding not to eat it.
a positive mental attitude
I don't know about a positive mental attitude, but I've read that surviving disasters depends very heavily on the role you choose to have. People who view themselves as survivors do much better, possibly because they think of more things to do to survive. ("I wouldn't normally eat my downed colleague, but a survivor would.")
Like I'll buy a shirt at Century 21!
Cheaper than the houses, I suppose, but I hope the color isn't the same as the signs.
267 to Urple re: the genuinely novel human sex act.
deciding not to buy candy is using the same mental-whatever as deciding not to eat it
Not for me. I only have to decide to not-buy candy once, as I pass the aisle in the store. Once it is in my house, I have to decide to not-eat candy all day long.
277: This suggests that the ghastly trash I read could actually save my life if I ever find myself in physical danger. ("Travis McGee would remember that you always stab underhand, rather than overhand, because of the angle of the rib bones!")
(And since it keeps coming up in this thread, am I the only person who finds the word "veggies" creepy?* I don't want a diminutive for my plant-based food! It makes me picture carrots and cabbages with big cartoon googly eyes!)
*A: Yes, obviously.
How can you describe Travis as "ghastly trash"?
280: I'm saying that if you decided to buy the candy and bring it home, you decided to eat it. Whether or not you want to admit that to yourself is another question.
Imagine that my reading in the relevant genre goes way, way down from MacDonald. Referencing Trav indicates what I'm talking about without requiring me to own up to anything specific.
This is not really meant to be directed at the main dispute in the thread, but there are definitely individual differences in the degree to which chocolate/sex/etc. are attractive to people. Psychologists call the broad trait "reward sensitivity," although of course there is also variation in people's attraction to specific kind of rewards. One of the reasons I, like LB, can't live in a house with freely available chocolate is that I am ridiculously sensitive to food stimuli (and also pretty sensitive to all stimuli across the spectrum of reward -- sex, affection, novelty, pretty things, dancing and other non-sexual physical stimulation, etc.). Some people are just less motivated by some or all of these things than I am. And of course, some people are more planful/intelligent about how to control their own motivations. When you have a single output -- Is Tia eating too many m&m's? -- It's hard to dissociate the relative contributions of sensitivity and regulation, but it doesn't mean they aren't different things.
This is related to Teo's observation that it requires different kind of force of will to do something versus not do something, and there is variation among people in what kinds of challenges will be harder. Related to the concept of reward sensitivity is "approach motivation" -- in fact, I'd be hard pressed to say there is a difference between them; they're just different names that come from different traditions. Approach motivation is the desire to seek reward. The complementary motivation is "avoidance motivation." Avoidance motivation is the desire to escape punishment. I'm the opposite of Teo. There are a ton of things I find it very hard to get myself not to do -- don't eat the m&m's, don't sleep with him, he's no good, etc. That's because I'm an approach motivated/reward sensitive person. Teo probably has higher avoidance motivation.
I think psychology has rarely actually discovered something, but it does have some useful, clarifying concepts.
(Oh, but I meant to add that I'm pretty good at talking myself into doing something scary when it's important.)
285: But you could, say, think it was reasonable to have one piece of chocolate every couple of days. And you could buy it one piece at a time, walking to the store for it every couple of days. Or, if you were being practical and economical, just buy a large amount in bulk and store it at home, planning to ration it out.
If I tried the latter, I'd find myself dazed, bloated, and covered in chocolate (pro tip: not Urple's sex act) about an hour and a half after I got the bulk purchase home.
Gah, I can't wade through the last ~100 comments to see if someone's said this:
isn't it well-established that we basically have set reserves of "willpower"*, and so you can resist mild temptation several times, or resist a big temptation once or twice, but if you encounter temptation after temptation, you'll eventually give in?
This is why the "set things up for success" model works - if you're not tempted most of the time, then you'll be able to resist temptation when it arises (plus, of course, the bad effects of giving in are lessened).
* however you want to define it
isn't it well-established that we basically have set reserves of "willpower"*
Something that there's been one or two (or even ten) psych papers on is not well-established, no.
Also, I thought the claim was that willpower was literally like muscle strength -- it could be increased over time by exercising it, but on any given day overuse would tire it out.
289: If you know what you would do if you buy in bulk, you can't really say you will do something else and expect yourself to believe yourself.
Tell us how you achieved that.
It was a combination of two things, really:
- going to the gym 5/6 times a week (the same gym, mind, that I'd already belonged to before deciding to lose the weight), for a minimum of 45 minutes but often up to 2 hours
- dramatically cutting down on my carbohydrate intake (while eating at the same places as I'd been eating before)
Both of those required willpower. I had to decide to go to the gym rather than go home and crash on the couch. When faced with free sodas and candy in the office every day, and carb-heavy options at lunch, I had to decide to drink diet soda or water or unsweetened iced tea, and to pass up on bread/rice/dessert.
I don't hold myself up as any kind of paragon; I'm very fortunate that a) I had the free time, energy, and money to devote myself to the gym and b) I have a metabolism and personality type that responds very well to exercise. But the dramatic changes I've made very much do boil down to willpower.
293: Sure. All I'm saying is that if my goal is to eat a piece of chocolate every couple of days, I can successfully do it one way but not the other. Resisting buying in bulk is easier than resisting shoving my head into the bad and inhaling deeply.
Into the bag, not bad. Also not Urple's sex act.
People talk a lot about willpower, attitude and the choice to survive, but what they really mean is the same old saws about "If you give up, you'll die; if you panic, you'll die; if you run around panicking about giving up, you'll die; if you waste energy fighting with other survivors about which way to go, you'll all die, etc., etc., etc." (That Liam Neeson movie, Wolfpuncher: The Wolfpunching The Grey was a pretty good little Canterbury Tales of disaster-survival object lessons. E.g., "Put on a hat.")
You can use your willpower in more efficient ways, maybe is what I'm trying to say. But both ways are using willpower.
Because the positive attitude created by looking sharp is all about survival. (Spats are left for the advanced student.)
"If this were a movie, what would the character played by Arnold Schwarzenegger do?"
FWIW, my experience is that HG is overstating things (it takes willpower to make changes and set up better circumstances, and then to make the changes worthwhile; I've been implementing this wrt eating specifically for years now, small changes at a time) but not all wrong (with HS GF and AB, I've had virtually no temptation to stray, and never have, without requiring much willpower at all; with BOGF, I strayed several times with several women. There was no absolute ability to withstand the temptation to stray; there was more or less temptation).
LB seems to know a lot about Urple's sex act. Just saying.
Something that there's been one or two (or even ten) psych papers on is not well-established, no.
Don't make me talk about slugs and salt.
303: Some of us haven't been slacking off on reading all the threads.
Cannibalism is a tricky call in survival situations. You don't want to look too eager but you also don't want to let it get to the point where your reticence to raise the subject makes you look like the easy lunch.
There was that crappy movie with Anthony Hopkins, a terribly miscast Alec Baldwin, and a terribly well cast Bart the Bear, in which the Hopkins character tells us that people lost in the wilderness die, most often, of shame.
Yeah, see, they die of shame. "What did I do wrong? How could I have gotten myself into this?" And so they sit there and they... die. Because they didn't do the one thing that would save their lives.
Avoid brownies.
308: I always wanted to see a buddy movie with Bart the Bear and Twister, the horse who could do somersaults, playing rogue cops. Loose cannons!
Francis the Talking Mule could be the stern but paternal commissioner.
Although I worry that it would be about as sophisticated as Beavis's exegesis of the Beastie Boys' "Sabotage" video: "Bobby's a rookie, so he's got a really short temper and Cochise has to cool him down, you know? Cochise rules."
Looked at the other thread. Holy Crap!
Holy Crap!
Another possible name. (Or does this go on Standpipe's?)
people lost in the wilderness die, most often, of shame.
I always loved the Onion headline awhile back that was "Terry Schiavo Dies of Embarrassment".
Ah, I gave up 30 comments too soon before writing 290. 181-pwned.
Oh, and teo and Benquo were/are 100% right, and Heebie is off her rocker. Hundreds of millions of humans have effectively chosen to die in dire circumstances. We don't even have to rely on survivors' testimonies; we have many stories from people who have given up and accepted death, but then get rescued independent of any action of their own. And what they describe is precisely making a choice.
There's nothing magical about life-and-death choices that takes them out of the realm of all the other choices we make in our lives. I'm sure there are people who can't resist chocolate who do resist giving up and dying, but that doesn't mean that everyone who gives up in dire circumstances does so because there's no possible application of will that would let them persevere. The dude who sawed off his own arm so he could survive being trapped in the mountains didn't simply do "what anyone would do"; he did something that is, literally, extraordinary. And it was an act of will.
None of this means that we should react to refugee situations by dropping pamphlets that say "TRY HARDER".
During the work day, I can't really take a nice walk in the sun, or get a massage, or have sex (barring unusual circumstances). But I can eat a cookie at my desk.
What gets a lot of guys at my job is 1. Free beverages at 7-11's and 2. loads of restaurants give like half off to guys in uniform. Bringing my own food and sticking to only drinking coffee and water is the only way I haven't gained a bunch of weight like a lot of guys do. I'm also fortunate to have the option to get in three or four days a week of lifting on the clock.
Oh, and now I'm glad I read the other thread.
You know, kind of.
320: Interesting. I knew cops often got that kind of deal, but never thought of it as systematic.
Free drinks is a nice perk but the real win is the "it used to be evidence but free to all now" box.
I mostly agree with heebie, except the part where she mocked the Somali refugees.
319:I would make an exception for medical contexts where I do think that the idea of an exogenous "will to live" extending life is bullshit and gets the causation exactly backwards.
276: There's some evidence that, for the median person, it's easier to avoid temptation than to actively resist it. I'm usually skeptical of psych findings, because labs are different than normal life, but it's been validated in various contexts using observational data.
283: Yes, obviously.
No! I was expressing this very sentiment just last night, as we were preparing some broccoli. (The girlfriend quite understandably reacted as though I was the only person on earth who could possibly find the word objectionable.) I don't picture the googly eyes, but I have a very strong word aversion to it.
327: Wouldn't that follow from either a) hyperbolic discounting or b) it's harder to resist temptation many times than once?
'b' is certainly applicable for things like eating chocolate, but the effect holds even for one-shot problems in a lab setting with mostly white upper-middle class college students.
'a' is a plausible explanation when cash is involved. My intuition is that you can generalize that, but, due to a failure of my imagination, I don't see how it explains every case.
For example, before streaming, someone noted that people with netflix subscriptions are more likely to put 'great' movies on their queue, but they watched 'trashy' movies more quickly and returned them more quickly. There's a similar effect for library books, too. After streaming, someone noticed that the same divide happens with streaming vs. DVDs. For any one paper, you can point out something like, even adjusting for book length and flesch-kincaid readability, of course Proust will take longer to read than Gaiman, but there are enough disparate results that it seems like there's something to it.
Anyway, I think 'a' may explain everything, even though I don't see how at the moment.
326: Agree. I don't think the will to live is magical, I just think that people can use a will to live to e.g. choose to keep walking rather than sitting down for a (fatal) rest.
Tia basically nailed the factors: some people feel temptation more strongly, and some people have more "willpower" (or whatever you want to call that skill/ability). Combine those factors, and you get a broad spectrum of ability to handle temptation.
If I understood "hyperbolic discounting", maybe I would agree with 329 and 330.
and Heebie is off her rocker. Hundreds of millions of humans have effectively chosen to die in dire circumstances....There's nothing magical about life-and-death choices that takes them out of the realm of all the other choices we make in our lives.
I said upthread that fine, you can call that a choice. I just said that's irrelevant to what I mean by "willpower doesn't exist". I have zero insight into life and death situations, and I'm not claiming jack about them.
I just said that's irrelevant to what I mean by "willpower doesn't exist".
But what about meeeeeeee? My situation is totally relevant!
333: You're the exception that proves the rule.
What changed? What made it newly worthwhile, when you'd previously been resigned?
What made it newly worthwhile...
Having survived a plane crash?
334: I wish I knew. The specific trigger was getting diagnosed with yet *another* chronic, life-altering condition, but I can't come up with a good reason why that particular diagnosis tipped me over the edge when the previous ones hadn't.
I knew a guy who lost so much weight that I didn't recognize him. It was a very awkward conversation because I couldn't figure out who this guy, who clearly knew me, was. I guess I'm saying maybe you lost weight to fuck with peoples' heads.
I just said that's irrelevant to what I mean by "willpower doesn't exist".
And I'm saying that's a copout. I agree with whoever has said it that it's on a continuum with the same willpower that's in the marshmallow experiment and that Josh has exercised. As I said, there's nothing magical about it. Hell, Josh says that he'd had at least one previous potential trigger that was a lot closer to life-and-death than it was to "I'd like to look better in this shirt", but this diagnosis somehow acted as a an effective trigger. So it wasn't ask if, the first time he ever encountered his own mortality (or whatever), he effected this change. Incentive built up, and he finally applied his willpower.
I agree, as does everyone else, that "willpower" is used as a cudgel the same way "self-improvement" is, but in some sense that's political correctness: we don't speak that way in front of others, because it feeds into pernicious narratives, but we're amongst friends here. No reason to bullshit each other.
Having not read the thread, "willpower" is actually pretty well defined, if you define it as "executive control mediated by the lateral prefrontal cortex and modulated by dopamine". It is also pretty well known that "willpower" (probably in the form of that modulatory dopamine) is capable of being depleted (the term of art is ego depletion). This has all kinds of implications for addiction (some drugs, notably cocaine, act specifically on the dopamine system) and may be (probably is) tied to one of the two main reward systems (the one that controls whether you want things, as opposed to the one -- linked to the opiate receptors -- that controls whether you enjoy them). That said, it's all very contextual -- all else being equal ego depletion seems to happen -- and hard to say what role exactly it plays in real-world scenarios like the decision to eat or not eat while under affective load. And of course one of the stronger claims of ev-psych types is that we really aren't (with all the usual caveats about group vs. individual inference and whatever) build to manage food overabundance well.
Possibly pwned.
"executive control mediated by the lateral prefrontal cortex and as modulated by dopamine"
I'm still not happy with "mediated". Oh well. I'm sure it's perfectly clear what I mean.
That also happened to me, except it was my cousin.
with the same willpower that's in the marshmallow experiment and that Josh has exercised.
Frankly, I bet Josh started seeing promising results pretty damn quickly, and that provided a motivating feedback loop. I bet it wasn't sheer willpower, every single time.
Or if it was, I bet he puts the weight back on. Sorry, Josh!
And the marshmellow test doesn't really measure willpower, as noted above. It mostly measures kids' creative strategies for distracting themselves, which is precisely what I'm claiming stands in for willpower.
And I've said that there can be willpower in one-off situations. Just that it doesn't add up to anything over the long haul.
"Executive control" is not well-defined. It's an incredibly problematic concept. Who/what is the executive? Does it make sense to speak of it as a unitary phenomenon? What are the subcapacities that contribute to it?
How does it make the concept of "executive control" or "willpower" better or worse defined to say they are mediated by the lateral PFC (or modulated by dopamine)?
And in what sense can it said to be well-defined or established that dopamine modulates executive control (particularly keeping in mind that neurotransmitters that modulate arousal -- which admittedly is another poorly defined construct! -- have broad, non-specific effects)? If you're speaking of the effect of psychostimulant drugs on performance in, say, a working memory task (which is, it must always be remembered, *performance* on a particular task which always draws on a broad range of capacities, not just working memory), not only is that not executive control, it's probably not exclusively, is perhaps mainly, and may not be at all modulated by dopamine, since those drugs obviously have major noradrenergic effects as well.
Oh wow. I just found this "other thread" that people were talking about.
349.1: well, sure. But there is lots of converging evidence that activity in the lateral PFC is correlated with people making decisions that go contrary to their immediate appetites (you know, broadly defined), most powerfully that lesions to that area (or frontotemporal dementia) are associated with failure to modulate self-destructive or socially harmful behaviors. That's all I meant, particularly. I agree that on a functional level it's not terribly well-specified.
349.2: well, it gives you some theoretical basis for talking about the phenomenon of ego depletion. The Churchlands would probably say that it gives you a better way to talk about your own psychological processes, but I'm happy to acknowledge that the science isn't really there as far as that goes.
349.3: I'm not, really. I'm starting from the animal evidence for dopamine as a reward prediction signal (the shultz and dayan paper and the work that's followed) and thinking about the work that's been done in social neuroscience a/f/a neural correlates of reinforcement learning processes in the SN and so on and how those areas are connected to the LPFC. I'm willing to concede that "well-established" in this case is probably better defined as "better established than almost anything else in social neuroscience", and that standard in turn is a pretty lax one, but hey, that's the state of the art.
Frankly, I bet Josh started seeing promising results pretty damn quickly, and that provided a motivating feedback loop. I bet it wasn't sheer willpower, every single time.
Both options (going to the gym vs. not) gave me potential rewards. I felt a sense of accomplishment going to the gym, but that didn't mean that there weren't a lot of times where it felt like a slog and it would have been much easier to just sit on the couch instead. It took an act of willpower, every single goddamn time that happened, to say "No, I'm going to the gym, and I'll feel better if I do."
Or if it was, I bet he puts the weight back on. Sorry, Josh!
Eh, it's been long enough at this point that I'm not terribly concerned about it in the short- or medium-term. We'll see where I am in 10 years, though.
I'm sorry I missed this thread, I have opinions about it, but I'm not sure anybody cares.
One quick response, why has nobody tried to distinguish between "willpower" and "discipline"? H-G lumped them together, but I tend to think of "discipline" as describing a larger set of choices than "willpower" and, as such, close to H-G's, "setting up ones life to support the desired outcome.
Okay, to say a little bit more:
I've spent almost my entire working career at extremely small companies where I've had a lot of freedom to structure my own work -- deciding what to take on, how to do it, how to allocate my time, how many hours to work, etc. . . (within constraints, of course). That's a really good fit for me, I suspect it would not be good for many people, and it means that I've spent a lot of time developing and analyzing the strategies that I use to motivate myself and, as a result, am much better at motivating myself to work intelligently and with purpose when I'm under pressure than I was when I started out.
That feels like actively training myself towards a sort of willpower. I'd be happy to call it a skill, rather than "willpower" but there's definitely a skill of motivation that's separate from the skill of programming.
On the other hand, it isn't particularly a transferable skill. There are lots of areas in my life where I'm not all that great at motivating myself (I tend towards clutter, for example). So that would be an argument for, "finding techniques that fit ones personality" being a more accurate description than, "force of will."
On the third hand, the biggest thing that I know about motivating myself is that I have to care about the results. I care a lot about work, I don't care that much about a clean house. My day to day experience is that when I have a bunch of work that I have do and don't want to do, it feels like willpower to do it*. The structure that I've put in place to support hard work isn't doing things to distract myself from the work, it's two things (1) really caring about what I do and (2) being committed to pushing for time and opportunity to recover after periods of overwork. It really can feel like there are stretches of weeks when it takes an act of will, every morning to force myself to go into work -- and I like my job. I know that I have done a lot to set up my life to make that possible but it still feels wrong to say that the "setting up of my life" is somehow in contrast to willpower, because that feels like two halves of the equation.
* Can I gripe? A couple weeks ago I requested today and tomorrow off, and got sign-off from my boss. I ended up spending almost all day at work, working really hard. It wasn't my bosses fault, it just happened that it was better for me to be working today than not, and I could see that as clearly as anybody. But it wasn't how I was hoping to spend the day.
Now I'm worried that comes across as too self-congratulatory (but, darn it, I was at work all day, I should be able to take some credit for that). I don't know that I have particular grounds to talk about self-motivation in a room full of academics.
But I stand by my claim that the skill of motivating myself doesn't just feel like creating a system of internal rewards and punishments it also feels like getting comfortable with the experience of, "I know I can do this, I know it's going to hurt, but I'm going to do it anyway."
Shoulda read the thread. This:
Something that there's been one or two (or even ten) psych papers on is not well-established, no.
Is of course completely true.
Now I'm worried that comes across as too self-congratulatory
It was too long to read, so no worries.
It was too long to read, so no worries.
I'd just read the entire thread at once, I think I can claim temporary insanity (or would be able to, if you all weren't already familiar with my writing style, such as it is).
I'd just read the entire thread at once
Talk about willpower!
I read and write much longer comments when I'm at the office. I have a better focus when at my desk.
I wish Tia would show back up because I don't think I particularly disagree with her (or, really, heebie).
331: Basically, "hyperbolic discounting" is a quasi-technical term for the fact that we massively discount future gains relative to ones in the extremely near future.
Ordinary discounting explains why you'd rather have that piece of cake today than tomorrow, why people are willing to pay interest to finance current consumption. Under ordinary discounting, if you'd rather have A today than B tomorrow, then you'd rather have A tomorrow than B the day after. This is because your discount rate - the proportion by which you care less about tomorrow - compounds constantly over time.
What about people who would always like to start their diet tomorrow, but today have a burger and a shake? This violates the consistency assumption of ordinary discounting. But you can model it by assuming that the first few minutes/seconds/days diminish your interest much faster, but eventually converges toward a constant discount rate.. That explains why someone will want to be on a diet in the future, but eat junk now.
The silver lining is that since your discounting slows down as you look farther in the future, you can make more forward-looking decisions by precommitting in advance, when both the earlier and later time are comparatively distant.
Heebie is wrong to say willpower (and related traits like self-discipline and conscientiousness) don't exist since there clearly do and people have them in varying amounts. She does have a bit of a point about obesity in that most people have a weight their body wants to be at which is quite difficult to override. So weight is not a very reliable measure of willpower.
An interesting question is to what extent these traits (will power, self control etc.) can be taught or learned. If they can be learned heebie is doing people with damagingly low willpower no favors by telling them otherwise.
I've always thought of willpower meaning resisting temptation, and willpower meaning surviving against odds so low that no moral condemnation would have been assigned to someone who went faced the same conditions but did not survive were different concepts referred to by the same general wording - "force of will" or "willed themself" sound more likely to me to be used to refer to the latter concept. But I guess I'm wrong.
I have no opinion on whether the temptation-resisting sort of willpower exists in any rigorous way.
On the OP, there's an important transmission mechanism, which is that for a lot of foods, the consumer is acting at one remove. Somebody decided how to formulate them, and it may not be at all obvious to the consumer if something has changed and if so, what.
Sorry, I'm here. To 351.3, oh -- that's definitely work I like. I mean, to the extent I have/had a research program, it's on prediction error as a modulator of the magnitude of emotion. I just wouldn't have used the words "[executive control is] modulated by dopamine" (but maybe there's some specific paper you're thinking of). That there's a dopaminergic signal that's amplified when a reward signal is unexpected, and parts of the brain that generate it project to a part of the brain differentially more involved in deciding among competing goals than other parts of the brain wouldn't get me to mentioning dopamine specifically when discussing executive control. But it certainly makes sense that parts of the brain that generate signals about new information relevant to goals would communicate something to parts of the brain more involved in deciding among competing ones. Kent Berridge would say -- and who knows if he's right about anything -- that what dopamine is modulating is the drive toward desired things. I don't know how doing something to increase phasic dopamine signalling would affect decisions among competing goals -- every goal is desired, just in different amounts and at different times. Sorry, everyone else, for geeking out about the social neuroscience.
Anyway, I think people are certainly more likely to be successful in goal pursuit if they remove tempting things from their immediate sphere of attention; why that means it makes sense to say "there's no such thing as willpower" I don't know. Using a strategy to distract yourself in the marshmallow task is itself both a decision and an act of will to the extent that "decisions" and "will" exist at all.
And I don't mean to sound totally jaundiced about psychology. Ego depletion theory has on its side a lot of replications, which is good, but of course there's dispute about how to interpret the data, and ultimately psych experiments take place in a weird context, removed from people'snormal ecological surroundings, on a very highly selected population, and are always actually measuring proxies for abstract concepts (like willpower) that can't be measured (some sensory psychophysics excepted, maybe). So it's really rare that you can export an interesting idea from psych and say, oh yeah, this is established.
372.1: comity, more or less. I almost wrote a giant paragraph but unfortunately can't really spend the time this morning. I might have been talking about my own personal extensions of the somatic marker hypothesis that are, uh, lacking in evidential justification. I don't think I was but I can't come up with a cite.
372.2: again, comity.
372.3: yeah that's undeniably true about the lab environment, and really the lab environment was all I was speaking to; I meant to be clear in expressing that I was defining those things pretty tightly, in terms of the neuroscience. The way that they play out in real contexts -- and the relation they have to the broader social/cultural concept of "willpower" -- is vastly more complicated. The way they play out in a specific context (obesity) is far more complicated yet, and confounded by uncountable other factors. By not reading the thread I think I managed to wade into a debate where those considerations were not being widely observed.
370
... and willpower meaning surviving against odds so low that no moral condemnation would have been assigned to someone who went faced the same conditions but did not survive ...
I don't see why low odds are required. Some people will give up earlier (perhaps when 90% would have pressed on and possibly survived) and some people will give up later (perhaps when only 10% would have pressed on). The later can be said to have more willpower but it is the same trait pushing you on at the beginning when only a few would give up.
and really the lab environment was all I was speaking to
You need to connect this to the literature. Neil Diamond tried speaking to his chair and reported those results previously(Diamond, 1971).
If he'd put his chair in an fMRI scan while speaking to it, he'd probably have got some meaningful brain patterns in response as well. (Bennett, 2009) http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/fmrisalmon/
You'd want to watch out for any metal in the chair.
I've only been to the big MRI room once. It was six kinds scary how far away you could feel that magnet from.
Of course, two of those kinds of scary were basically fears for my phone being scrambled or sucked to the wall and smashed.
I was hearing a story about a (now very broken) MRI unexpectedly venting a large quantity of liquid helium. Those things are pretty intense pieces of machinery.
If the liquid helium system breaks, you'll have to keep running back and forth to the gas station for ice to keep the magnet cool.
Anyway, the government is dumping all its helium on the market at "Yes, I do want the bounce house filled with it for my party" prices for reasons having to do with stupidly applied economic theory and not giving a shit. After the switch to liquid hydrogen, it will be even more dangerous.
If liquid hydrogen is cold enough. I really have no idea.
So, should I assign parts of this book to my ethics class for the unit on autonomy and free will? Or does it make wrong claims about the existence of willpower?
I try to give the course a very practical focus, and we already talk about strategies for removing temptation, distracting yourself, etc.
382: in fact, the punchline of this story is that the MRI has remained broken longer than necessary because there's now a shortage of liquid helium on the market.
I should have tried to warn Congress earlier. Anyway, in honor of today being Bike to Work Day, I'm taking the bus.
366: Thanks. I'm sure I've read the term (and an explanation) before, but not in a way that made it stick.
Louis CK has found the perfect diet.
If I'm not mistaken liquid hydrogen, unlike liquid helium, doesn't exist at atmospheric pressure. So you'd need not only low temperatures but lots of pressure to keep it from boiling.
Worries about the hospital going Hindenburg on you don't count as pressure?
to the extent that "decisions" and "will" exist at all.
This formulation and hg's claim for universal scope drive me crazy; both of these definitely appear to be present in my life, useful abstractions for me.
Experiments and physiology aside, there are individuals who made choices and lived with them for many years despite temptations to act otherwise. Ignoring these counterexamples seems wrong to me. For example, there were people who chose not to inform on their families or friends under communism, even chose not to join the party, although this choice meant sustained privation, and this privation was at least partially reversible by selling out, every day. To me, this is not a remote example, because that's the environment my family fled. Less remote examples are people who persevered against social pressures-- Barbara McClintock or Emmy Noether, say.
391: Is social pressure really in the same category as temptation? Social pressure might involve denying you rewards and pleasures, but it seems to be more fundamentally about stigmatization.
I know this is somewhat tangential to your point. I agree that there are fairly straightforward everyday examples of willpower and that talking about will power can help you generate effective strategies for self control. (Don't make decisions when you are hungry, etc.)
don't make important decisions when you are hungry.
don't make important decisions when you are hungry
What am I going to eat?
393: That would pretty much mean you could never turn to cannibalism. If you are hungry enough to need cannibalism, every decision is important.
Anyway, a rule that effectively prohibits cannibalism isn't something that I could use as a general strategy for self control.
I only got to 50, but JP, I think that there are some tricks that can revv up your metabolism and make you feel full. I gained some weight when I ate a bagel with cream cheese for breakfast every day and am trying to stop it and maybe lose 5-10 pounds.
(I am so tempted to try green coffee extract which I heard about on Dr. Oz. I don't watch that show, but it was on in the background somewhere. Tiny little trials, but people lost 10% of their bodyweight. Sure they were way more overweight, but even if it helped me with 5 pounds, I'd be excited.)
1. Eat an apple mid-morning so that you don't overeat later at lunch.
2. Add more protein to your diet, since it makes you feel full longer. I've been eating hard-boiled egg whites with maybe 1/3 of a yolk on some days (remember that I'm petite) and non-fat plain greek yogurt either plain or with frozen berries and splenda (the splenda is probably bad) or walnuts and a drizzle of honey.
3. 3 servings of dairy a day
4. Eat lots of fiber
5. Limit simple carbohydrates.
6. When you get home, if you're hungry, eat vegetables (even a pickle or some chopped up green pepper) to fill you up before you eat dinner.
7. Eat broth-based soups to fill you up.
8. Add cayenne pepper to thinks like chicken soup. It boosts your metabolism for a bit.
9. Consider drinking some green tea.
Those might help you get up to a 100-150 calorie deficit which would be around a pound a month.
What am I going to eat?
You should have thought of that before you got hungry.
4. Eat lots of fiber
Some people won't try that because of their sex life.
Oh, and as far as candy goes, I can break off a small piece of a bar of Trader Joe's extra dark chocolate and feel like my chocolate craving is satisfied instead of eating a bunch of crappy quality Twix or Snickers or Hershey's.
391: This formulation and hg's claim for universal scope drive me crazy
What? Read my comment again. I didn't say they didn't exist. I said that if they do, then choosing to self-distract is an example of them.
Also, I don't understand being read as if I'm privileging the kind of knowledge that comes from doing experiments and studying physiology (which is what I take, perhaps incorrectly, as the implication of "Experiments and physiology aside"). That's the opposite of anything I've said.
400: I find I have a tolerance problem with this. The good stuff is now the standard and I could eat plenty of it.
I've found cultivating a snobbish attitude towards junk food is helpful, keeping in mind that the ingredients are shit and they're trying to manipulate you through fat, salt, and sugar content. It's sort of a SWPL defense mechanism.
My toddler can resist Jet-Puffed marshmallows, no problem, but you place an artisanally-crafted one in front of him...
Those hand-made marshmallows cost more than the grass-fed pig bacon.
Plush Puffs. We're devoted to the artisan marshmallow product.
I shop at Whole Foods. I know things.
397: Hey, thanks. I know and have tried some of those, but not all. What has "worked" for me in recent years (but non-sustainably so far) has been Atkins-type low carb diets* (which are basically 2 & 5 taken to an extreme). I can break though my normal eating habits in a "big way" like that, but have trouble with the incremental stuff even though it is clearly preferred. The funny thing is that I know exactly what is going on, know exactly what it is like when my body sends** urgent must eat signals late at night when I'm actually in danger of losing a few pounds. And on and on. And yet. Not that discipline/willpower/internal governance characterizes anything else I do ...
*During one a few years back I managed to permanently break out of the sugar-drink habit. Was part of a 40 lb. loss which I kept off for a while, but am now cruising along at a relatively high weight without the benefit of sugar drinks. I am clearly at some equilibrium weight (I do not have too much trouble not gaining more), would like to identify another lower one.
**Metaphoric language being used here purposefully, o neuroscience ones.
Have you tried eating larger, more protein filled breakfasts?*
*I kind of want to shoot myself for asking this kind of thing, but that's one thing that really works IME and from what I've read.
I ate potatoes for breakfast and lunch today.
At least it isn't grain (except for maybe the jelly donut).
And that's why your shirt gets wrinkles when you spill soda on it.
The Louis CK video in 388 really hits home. Ugh.
Although, woo, it's been almost 72 hours since I ate a whole pint of ice cream in the middle of the day when I wasn't even hungry, so hooray.
I definitely need to work on getting more vegetables into my diet, and doing the fruits-as-snacks thing. At the moment I'm using TJ's single-serving almond packets for that purpose, which isn't terrible, but eh.
I know I've mentioned this before, but I swear to god that eating breakfast - whether early or late, protein or fiber, heavy or light - never has a substantial salutary effect on my hunger/diet the rest of the day. It's possible that, if I really carefully tracked everything, I would find effects, but, basically, days when I skip breakfast don't, AFAICT, feature me eating more calories than I otherwise would. Heavy, early breakfasts are usually gross to me, and don't lead to smaller lunches. Light, early breakfasts just make me want to eat a second breakfast or a big, early lunch. I prefer a late, light breakfast (e.g., banana & muffin), but it's not really what is typically advised.
Presumably there's some sort of ideal pattern that would be better for me*, but this ubiquitous advice about breakfast just doesn't work with my metabolism.
Related, friends of ours were raving about the Green Machine (blendered fruit and greens) for breakfast, talking about how it gave them energy and took care of their appetite into the afternoon and all this shit. AB (who has a similar morning appetite to mine) started it doing it, and she likes it, but it doesn't fill her with energy or sate her hunger.
*it doesn't help that I get bored of fruit quickly. I can imagine lots of benefits from starting the day with fruit and protein, then mid-morning fruit, and yet another fruit at mid afternoon, but the thought of it fills me with ennui.
I have the exact same experience as JRoth around breakfast.
And I have carefully tracked my food before. I hate to swap weight-loss tips, but I did in fact find that to be the only thing that dependably helped me lose the pregnancy weight each time. Track, track, weight gradually inches down. Stop tracking, plateau. Etc.
Tried tracking food for a while and lost track. Exercise and bringing in frozen lunches to work instead of going to the cafeteria made a much bigger difference. I was starting from a fairly healthy baseline, though.
If I don't eat breakfast, I get so hungry I have trouble thinking. Then, when I do eat lunch, I get such a rush of energy that I can't focus. Then, I eat a dinner double the usual size because lunch hasn't made me stop being hungry. So JRoth and heebie-geebie are obviously wrong and I'd assume that eating a balanced breakfast would give them the time to be right.
Tracking works. Tracking (at least semi-)publicly works even better. Shame at confronting the crap you ingest is powerful. For values of "you" approaching "I" it is, at least.
Tracking is basically the food version of the "regular examination of conscience" thing except that the it makes for a better-selling app.
So we should send in pictures of our meals rather than our cocks?
422
So we should send in pictures of our meals rather than our cocks?
If I eat a solid breakfast, I'm still hungry at lunch, but I eat less at dinner. Weird.
422 -- If your meal is a German Black Forest Cake, you can send in both.
God I just sickened myself. What has Urple done?
What has Urple done?
Succeeded, and spectacularly.
427: Yes. Has he created a new verb, as in "Mitt is so full of bullshit he must have been urpled by a moose!"?
The guy at Whole Health Source (highly rec'd) says eat less tasty food. Slim rats eat rat chow, fat rats eat man chow. They will suffer any hardship, climb any mountain for a Reese's PB cup. I have tried this. It works. Don't think about food. Nice feeling.
How do the PB cups get at the top of the mountain?
http://boingboing.net/2012/03/09/seduced-by-food-obesity-and-t.html
First described in 1976 by Anthony Sclafani, the cafeteria diet is basically a rat-sized buffet of human junk food, in addition to regular rat chow (9). The menu for a recent cafeteria diet study included such delectable items as Froot Loops, mini hot dogs, peanut butter cookies, Cheez-its, Cocoa Puffs, nacho cheese Doritos, cake, and BBQ pork rinds (10). These are what's known in the business as 'palatable', or pleasurable to the taste. On this regimen, rats ignored their regular chow, ate junk food to excess and gained fat at an extraordinary rate, far outpacing two comparison groups fed high-fat or high-sugar pelleted diets. Yes, human junk food happens to be the most effective way to overwhelm the body fat homeostasis system in rats, and neither fat nor sugar alone is able to fully explain why it's so fattening. Importantly, over time, rats become highly motivated to obtain this diet--so motivated they'll voluntarily endure extreme cold temperatures and electric shocks to obtain it, even when regular bland rodent pellets are freely available (11, 12).
Maybe this explains why people weren't as likely to be obese back in the day. When I was growing up, old people had candy that sucked as far as candy goes.
I still remember the guy passing out Salted Nut Rolls at Halloween. Those weren't even food.
I've been posting all this nutrition stuff in the wrong thread, obviously, but this shit is fascinating.
Glancing at the table, it looks like the liver and kidneys burn a very large percentage of the calories your body burns while at rest. So, beer FTW.
When I was growing up, old people had candy that sucked as far as candy goes.
Fireballs? Bullseyes? At least some old people had it pretty good, candy-wise.
I'm totally in love with this guy's website. He has a really clear set of calculations for everything.
438: Can't eat those as fast as you can a trix value pack.
My grandparents always had a big jar of these.
My grandmother always brought us button candy. It's perfect if you're trying to sneak more paper wrapper into your child's diet.
But they didn't have these back in the day!
I'm glad someone wrote a refutation of Taubes' work. If you want to claim that the energy in-energy out balance is incorrect, the only reason that might be the case is if the efficiency of energy utilization varies substantially between people. This is actually a reasonable hypothesis, but there is zero evidence that it's true in the long term (I think in the short term, it actually is true, as it's fairly clear that the body resists short-term caloric restriction by some means.)
The body is Lehman Brothers, not Goldman Sachs.
In the short term, it makes sense, but in the long term people make some pretty extreme excuses for why their body won't lose weight. I think it is obvious that calorie restriction itself is much, much harder for some people than for others, and exercise is also obviously much, much harder for some than others. What I've been reading today at that other super-wonky site suggests that a lot of these hormonal oddities (leptin and insulin) that tend to plague obese people can be gamed, to some degree, and that bigger people have such a wider range to do calorie restriction that it should make up for the hormonal stuff. The problems are mostly educational (on the level of running some actual math) and psychological (in a very real and meaningful and not-at-all BS way).
The guy suggests, basically, that you should calculate your calorie maintenance at 14-16 kCal/lb (14 for most women and lower-activity men, 15 for most men and hyperactive women, 16 for hyperactive men). The range isn't very big per lb. because not even regular physical activity changes it that much. That's how many calories you spend per day. To lose weight, restrict yourself (15% lower for small impact dieting, 20% for moderate, 25% for high) according to how you see your needs, in terms of performance, motivation, etc. Then do that. It seems basically quite simple and I wonder why I hadn't seen it laid out like that before.
He discusses some of the weird things about leptin and insulin throughout that site. They're pretty complicated but extremely interesting w/r/t the super-lean and super-obese.
re: 448
That's interesting. Various calculators online put my BMR at about 2700-2800 kcal a day, his 14kcal/lb would put it slightly higher [approx 3000]. I found I had to restrict calories to around 2000 per day before I lost any weight at all, at about 2200 - 2300 I didn't lost any. However, I may be atypical as I only have a part of my thyroid and I suspect my thyroxine dose is too low.
Lose, _lose_ any. Anyway, I found that even at about 1900kcal a day my weight loss was still only moderate. 1lb a week or so, which suggests that my calorie maintenance level is only around 2300 which is fairly low for someone my weight.
1lb a week is a lot! That's a 3600 kCal deficit per week. That guy has a book available for the safest possible extreme crash dieting--limiting too 400-1200 kCal/day--but you can't expect to be able to exercise on it, and it's basically exclusively protein intake. If you want to be able to exercise, feel healthy, etc., you're only going to be able to cut about 20% of your maintenance, max, on the long-term, which, depending on your size, could be easier or harder.
As he suggests, the only reason you'd want to drop more than a pound a week, if you don't have a weight limit to make for a sport or something, is if it's just to frustrating to stay on a diet long-term, for which you need to set up refeeding and off-diet periods. (I did a LOT of reading yesterday and can't believe no one talks about this shit.)
Oh, also, as the guy says, losing weight does stimulate fat cells to hold water, so weight loss is often more than is obvious on the scale. In the long term, you'd see what he calls "stalls and whooshes"--periods of water retention and release, which, weirdly, can be stimulated by a night of drinking alcohol.
At any rate, and then I'll shut up about it, he also recommends weigh-ins only every few weeks for this reason, and to instead just keep track of your calorie deficits day-to-day. Only people who are very very lean already have little enough fat that they lose weight steadily enough for daily weigh-ins.
I've always thought it would be interesting to keep track of stuff like caloric intake (or how much money I spend) on a daily basis, but I can never be bothered. Maybe I could do it in the cute little notebook a friend brought me from Japan.
I started doing it out of profound boredom, and because the running app I use has a easy calculator/log thing. I lied about my activity level to get it to set the calorie levels at the deficit I want. All it keeps track of in foods are calories, fat, protein, and carbohydrates per serving, so I don't get any vitamin-type feedback or specifics about kinds of fat or carbs or whatever, but I have learned some really useful things just in the past week about how I feel if I eat this % of my calories in carbs or whatever. It turns out, high carbs makes me feel like I'm starving!
I'll lose track of it before long, but I do feel like I'm learning some useful information.
Writing down literally everything you spend does make for an interesting diary. I've only done it once or twice trying to keep spending under control while traveling with no money, but noting every cup of coffee/newspaper/bag of groceries/train ticket gives you a surprisingly complete record of the day.
OT: West-Coasters are all going to be watching this tonight, right?
457
I could never be organized enough to do it myself, but now that Mint exists, I can see in great detail what I actually spend money on. It is illuminating.
458
Sadly, though it will be 80% in Seattle, no one will see it through the clouds.
Nothing wrong with keeping track carefully of everything you eat, but I've never been able to do it myself. I'm also very sympathetic with the idea that there's substantial variation among individuals but some combination of lower sugar/lower carbs is pretty critical for most people faced with the current US diet, IMO.
It turns out, high carbs makes me feel like I'm starving
This is extremely common.
Yeah, apparently being insulin-resistant comes with the lifelong-overweight territory. I haven't been obese since I was little, and I've never had health problems, but figuring out the carb stuff will help me get my drinking under control.
Interesting to compare some of these suggestions with the Weightwatchers stuff. Tracking is really emphasised, eating lots of veg and a goodly amount of fresh fruit, 1lb a week as what you should aim for (but somewhat contradicted by he fuss made over people who lose more). Mostly their pre packaged foods are to be avoided (the ready meals are slop, the yogurts and desserts sickly sweet with too much aspartame) but if you want to have a small quantity of not too calorific snacky things around they are usually cleverly packaged in small serving sizes with the portions individually wrapped - definitely helps with not scoffing the lot.
Not that I am doing any of this at the moment. The back pain flare ups have cut down my activity to almost nothing so even just with my normal eating patterns I am putting on weight.
On weighing yourself for tracking purposes, I like to do before and after using the bathroom. It helps you to realize how much noise is in the measurement.
Plus, when everyone sees you on the scale and hears you saying "Personal Best" they assume you're talking about losing weight not the amount of weight lost in the past five minutes.
I always had a problem with tracking what I eat because many of the apps are designed to be easy to use with packaged food, which a) I by and large avoid anyway and b) I have about a hundred other things better to do with my time than type in the nutrition information from canned tomatoes and figure out how much ended up in the sauce I put on the fish I baked. That goes double for cooking oils.
But when I managed it for five whole days, I found that I seem to gravitate to a fairly high protein/fat diet but that I didn't eat enough greens, so I try to make sure I eat a salad once a day. I enjoy pasta now and then but I feel like I burn through that in about thirty minutes and feel like a lump afterward, and it's really only worth it for homemade pasta.
Here is another reason why you should focus on eating animal fat and avoid lean protein.
I want to count calories but I eat at restaurants pretty much constantly so there's really no way. Calorie counts are not listed at Pakistani Tea House and I don't know all the ingredients in chicken makhani.
I achieved 1lb/wk weight loss three or four years ago by eating whatever I would have eaten anyway for lunch then coming home, having a container of 2% Fage tossed in a blender with maybe a mango and some juice to make it drinkable, perhaps eating some sunflower seeds, and then not eating anything for the rest of the night. It was dependent on not having that much of a social life at the time, drinking a good deal less than I do now, and not willpower but, I swear, some kind of little experiment with unhealthy thinking/masochism, telling myself "you're hungry and that's how it's going to be," and (a response that would have been alarming if it hadn't been really easy to turn off) a sense of relishing that this was something I was in control of that I think was akin to what you read about anorexics saying.
So I've been experimenting with different kinds of calorie intake and then not eating for several hours after that to see how I feel. Carbs was obviously a failure--starving hunger and self-loathing. This morning it was fats (15g fat Greek yogurt, raw whole milk on granola and in my coffee), still well under my calorie limit, but a lot of them. Holy shit I feel weird! Not bad, really, or even sleepy, just loopy and slightly sweaty. I'm going back to egg breakfasts immediately. Like right now. Tomato omelet dinner.
re: 466
When I'm trying to lose weight -- rather than being in the phase where I want to lost weight but can't be arsed -- I've counted everything. Nutritional info for every packet, weighed most foods, etc. Turns out I don't eat enough protein, but I also don't eat a lot of saturated fat either (which is just personal taste rather than an attempt to avoid it).
470 -- eggs are good! Power through the metabolic shift. Ketosis -- learn it, live it, love it.
No, I won't go full ketogenic. I need carbs to stop being an alcoholic. Remember the point of this whole exercise. I'm not trying to lose weight; I'm trying to figure out when and where I start craving alcohol.
I mean, obviously, if I eat a bit of rice instead of drinking a six-pack of beer, I will lose weight as a matter of course, but that's not the goal. The goal is to figure out what to do with the overwhelming urge to drink that much by myself when obviously I don't get anything out of drinking that much. I honestly think I do it out of an urge for carbs.
473: I'll bet it's when your blood glucose falls to the point where the stress hormones kick in. And that happens rapidly after a spike in glucose from fast-acting carbs, and then the over-production of insulin. Alcohol would be a fast antidote to feeling crappy, as would a full sugar soft drink.
So. I'll guess you feel at your best for longest after a high protein + medium fat meal.
475: Exactly. Tomato omelet and a nonfat yogurt is a weird ecstasy at this moment.
The goal is to figure out what to do with the overwhelming urge to drink that much by myself when obviously I don't get anything out of drinking that much.
Hmmm -- diet would not be my go-to explanation here.
473.last: Other people, obviously.
477: I've tried figuring out what it could be. I'm not depressed, or even sad, really, and it seems to be a habit I picked up after teaching night classes in NYC--I'd get home at 11pm or so after teaching a 1.5-hour and a three-hour class, followed by a 1.5-hour commute and I'd grab a six-pack at the bodega and drink it. Stress, yes, but also I was fucking hungry. At the time I just thought it was stress. But my life here is completely 100% lacking in stress, and I still do it, compulsively, on a fairly regular basis. And if I start drinking more than a few nights in a row, I can't seem to stop; the next night I just really really want some booze. I don't drink all day, or because I need to cry or something. It's like having a sweet tooth.
No other way I've ever tried to think about my drinking makes much sense. Dietary experimentation is providing what looks like some fairly plausible answers.
If you're into experimentation, I suggest trying a can of full sugar Coke/Pepsi/whatever you like before or better yet instead of the beer. You should be able to quickly determine if it's the sugar or the alcohol itself that you're craving. A carbonated soft drink is a very rapid way to get blood glucose up.
The other thing I think you're doing is drinking the beer until you feel better instead of drinking enough beer to feel better and then stopping. There's a time lag you're waiting through with more beer than is necessary.
474
... I honestly think I do it out of an urge for carbs.
You could test this by substituting a small bag of potato chips (or whatever) that has the same carbs but no alcohol.
427: What has Urple done?
Succeeded, and spectacularly.
Since I sensed some queasiness with the other thread, I'll use this comment to point out that (indirectly) via an interesting John Emerson post on Mozart and Salieri I discovered that not only is the previously-discussed-here Mozart "shit in your mouth" comment covered in Wikipedia, but there is a relatively lengthy separate Mozart and scatology article replete with 37 footnotes. Surely some revelation is at hand, and urple is our Yeats.
Yeah, it's sort of like how other people talk about there being candy in the house and they have to eat it. I don't care about candy, but if there is booze in the house, I will drink all of it, or at least what I can ingest before passing out.
I don't think soda will work because I don't like sugar. Maybe it would be aversion therapy. Juice instead, perhaps.
The eventual goal of the summer, I think, before moving to yet another little town where I know no one, is to do some serious fasting and try to get my blood insulin levels down. I see how letting that stuff go really fucked my mom in her 30's--she's now 60, very obese, and having health problems, all because she has no idea how much she's eating, and how quickly she gets hungry. She talks about it all the time, how "good" she's going to be and "just" eat this little part of her meal, and then half an hour later she's "just" going to make a little plate (huge plate) of nachos. To hear her talk, she's on a strict 1200-kCal diet and aliens from outer space make her weigh 270. That lack of self-awareness scares the shit out of me.
Bodies are cool. Greek yogurt + banana is my breakfast 90% of the time, and it makes me feel like a superhero. Everything else I seem to burn through (which is bad, because then I finish teaching and eat the kitkats in the candy dish on the secretary's desk.) s
AWB, are you drinking because you're bored? (Plausible in Collegeville.) I'd try the potato chip or similar carb substitution and see if it works (and if it does, then find something better to eat than potato chips.)
||Chopping veggies after a bottle of Sekt seems ill-advised. But let me assure you, it was well worth the obvious risks,|>
I don't care about candy....
I ... I ... what? Nothing makes sense anymore.
I am also drinking because Collegeville is boring and there is no one to fuck, yes. But when I pick up a beer, I'm not thinking "Ah, oblivion!"--my mouth is watering for the taste of beer itself. Offered wine, I'll mostly turn it down.
I do believe in carb addiction, but alcohol is also extremely addictive -- there doesn't really need to be a reason to drink beyond that. I'm in a two glasses of red wine/night habit; don't like beer and a hard drink feels like too much unless Im out with friends. But I think it's just a mild psychological addiction, not some dietary craving, though if I were more strictly paleo I'd stop.
About two years ago, all the yoghurt became Greek and nobody has explained why to my satisfaction. I had spent years comfortable in the knowledge that Greek yoghurt was for savory dishes and regular yoghurt had berries on the bottom and that this would ever be the state of the world.
489: you could compromise by eating fermented berries off the ground.
488: I know that feeling, don't know the answer to "why." Habit? specific dietary deficit? If it were an alcohol addiction (and I am as hypersensitive as they come to that possibility!), I would think wine would appeal as much as beer. I lean toward habit. I've personally been more peckish than usual lately, and I trace it back to a couple ice-cream outings with the middle school set. doesn't take much to get your body a-cravin'!
Drinking cause you're bored. Check.
Can't have alcohol in the house without drinking it. Check.
Promise that I'll drink some tonight, but it'll be the last night, then craving it even more the next night. Check.
I'll add another.
Seizing on extremely minor setbacks during the day as an excuse to break your promise not to drink. Check.
If you have a copy of "Infinite Jest", you should read the second chapter (pages 17-26). Sound familiar?
I'm right there with you, and I don't think it's dietary.
458, 460: Cloudy here too, so no eclipse.
I don't think soda will work because I don't like sugar. Maybe it would be aversion therapy. Juice instead, perhaps.
Anything that will get your blood glucose up rapidly. The object is see if that's the issue or it's a craving specifically for alcohol. If you can resist the urge for the beer for a time then fruits should work, just slower than full sugar sodas.
I do best on proteins + fats. Carbs and especially the sugars have my comfort level and moods varying widely and wildly. However, it did take a while to learn to pace the intake so I wasn't stuffing myself.
493: Nobody got that far into Infinite Jest.
Rituals are lovely just because they're lovely rituals. If you enjoy a six pack of beer or two glasses of wine, your body will crave it and your mouth will water because we're Pavlovian, and because rituals are lovely.
If you want to break the ritual because it's not working for you in some other way, my recommendation would be to find some sort of lovely vice to end the day with, otherwise. It's nice to wind down.
Or maybe it's the carb thing. Either way, James' potato chip substitution is a decent investigatory step. Report back immediately. I recommend salt and vinegar flavor for maximum pleasure.
466: Trader Joe's has a high fiber pasta that's slightly better in that way.
493: Far too familiar for comfort. Currently abstaining from alcohol to see how hard it is. 3 days doesn't kill me.
I'm also drinking grapefruit juice a lot instead of orange if I feel a need for juice. It doesn't seem to boost sugar as much and makes me eat less.
Pro tip: if you drink every day, don't just stop drinking completely as it may induce withdrawal. a) If you drink a lot, it can be dangerous, and b) each time you do this, you withdraw more severely and at a lower threshold.
This eclipse is kind of a bust. Who cares.
I'm confused by what "at a lower threshold" means. Does it mean you can get withdrawal symptoms while drinking some, but less, than before?
503: Once it's over, you are stare at the sun.
I wanted to see some end of the world type action, and it just feels a little hazy.
505 s/b "you can stare" or "you are free to stare." I'm not sure which I was going for.
I need to do a top 5 overrated astronomical events list. This would be on it. Haley's comet was pretty weak as well. I think astronomy in general is overrated on the coolness scale.
504: Does it mean you can get withdrawal symptoms while drinking some, but less, than before?
Yes. Or for a shorter duration.
I mean, there's probably some cool shit going on when a black hole eats a star or something in distant space. But so much of what they hype for the common viewer is butt lame.
508: Haley's was horrible. We were out in a field (to be far away from lights) and looking at a dot of light that looked like the rest.
509: Thanks. I didn't realize it got worse each time.
Holy fuck that was weak. Oh hey it got a little hazy and dark at the end of the day JUST LIKE IT DOES EVERY OTHER DAY. The newspaper promised darkness and a ring of cool looking fire -- I had a mirror out on my deck to look safely at the sun and you know what it looked like? The motherfucking sun.
You didn't cut your nuts off and wait for to be taken onto a space ship again, did you?
A mirror makes it safe? That's not still burning your corneas? I thought you had to do something with pinholes.
I'm not sure what makes castration safe, but I think maybe some kind of antiseptic might work better than a mirror.
Also, "cool astronomy" just means your nerdy little nine year old will totally get his rocks off.
You were supposed to use the mirror to reflect it into the ground. But since nothing happened I just looked up and saw basically the same goddamn sun you can see every day, with a little bit of extra darkness in the sky. So lame.
513: Right. That was the Ishtar of astronomical blockbusters.
But then some dinosaurs chirped in a nearby tree and the natural world was marvelous once again.
Speaking of thing like that, when exactly are we supposed to die Mayan style? I've lost track. Before the election?
522: No, that's been cancelled. Some boffins found Mayan calendars going past 2012. Disappointment.
What's not at all marvelous is when my kids' daycare has a four day weekend. I'm such a terrible parent at like parenting my kids for the longest fucking four days ever.
So eternal December, but never Christmas? Is the White Witch part of it? Maybe WalMart.
||
Thanks to whoever posted the USGS sale link. I'm not really allowed to buy maps, but I bought 12. My blood sugar must have cra Shipping only $5, $17 total.
|>
It's not WalMart. No Christmas, nobody buys shit.
But they won't know, that's the evil part.
If you know me on FB, I posted my screengrabs from the eclipse. I don't know if they're more exciting than my newfound obsession with my insulin resistance, but they're pretty exciting. I made it public, which I never do, so you can share them if you want. Click through slowly and it's like you were there.
I'm trying to imagine what would possess anyone to use a mirror to watch an eclipse. That's insane, Halford!
Hell it makes me nervous to look at pictures, on a computer screen, of the sun.
You were supposed to use the mirror to reflect it into the ground. But since nothing happened I just looked up and saw basically the same goddamn sun you can see every day, with a little bit of extra darkness in the sky. So lame.
That's because you did it totally wrong, Rob.
What bullshit. You used the mirror to reflect the suns image into the ground or a darkened wall to see it darkened by the moon or whatever, like a pinhole. But all you could see were some shapes moving into other shapes -- no cool ring of fire unless you had some special equipment or some other fucking nonsense. A friend put together a better rig and had for 30 seconds something that looked like a crescent moon. Whooooo awesome. More overhyped bullshit from big astronomy, but now all you assholes will take NASA photos or something you didn't take and wouldn't have been able to see and be all like "oooooh the universe is amazing, I love science so much."
Did the sky suddenly blacken in a cool, end of the world way? No. Did a big ring of fire around a black circle become visible in some way someone who wasn't using professional astronomy equipment could see? Fuck no. What a crock.
Preach it brother. Night is where the awesome astronomy is at. When my wife were still dating we did the Salt Lake to LA drive in the spring of '97. Did it at night and the view of Hale Bopp from the Mojave in the middle of the night was unreal.
Well, that's cheating, gswift, because the view of absolutely anything in the sky from the Mojave in the middle of the night is unreal. I'm still gutted we never did a night-time jump over the desert when I was over last time, though the sunset jump was pretty splendid.
Halford, you do know that turkey is an excellent source of lean protein? Do paleo-types avoid poultry?
Did a big ring of fire around a black circle become visible in some way someone who wasn't using professional astronomy equipment could see?
If by "professional astronomy equipment" you mean "a bit of cardboard covered with tin foil and a sheet of white paper" or "a pair of $5 eclipse glasses", then sure. My neighbors had both and we ended up standing on the street showing the eclipse to random passers-by. All told, it was pretty cool.
One of the things they taught us was that the most important thing you need to survive a plane crash is a positive mental attitude.
THIS HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH MY CHIN FOGGA!
Carson Chow responds some more to various complains in this thread.
