6 ms·

>Eating healthy is incredibly difficult in western society, This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever read on this site. Fresh, healthy, affordable food has

>Eating healthy is incredibly difficult in western society, This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever read on this site. Fresh, healthy, affordable food has never been more accessible to any society. >"Just eat less" is not a very helpful answer, it's incredibly frustrating to hear, believe me. Eating less is the only thing that works. You only find this advice unhelpful because it's hard. But the reason it's hard is because you've trained yourself to overeat and now you have to break that habit, a habit that has its psychological and physiological meathooks in you. People who haven't lived their entire lives stuffing themselves to the bursting point have no problems autoregulating. I mean, shit, my cat can manage it. >It takes a lot of effort, lots of planning (preparing food, planning what, where and when to eat, snacks, etc) and a LOT of information (nutrition, insulin effects on the body, pros and cons of current 'fad' diets, etc) which takes a while to collect, also, lots of trial an error. You sound like a pathetic whiny snot who has embraced a life of learned helplessness.

AlisdairO 12y ago
Is there anything you find hard?
- seekingtruth 12y ago
  Deadlifts. That's why I do them.
  - AlisdairO 12y ago
    So you've never wanted to achieve something but found it too hard to take the necessary steps to do so?
    - seekingtruth 12y ago
      No.
      - AlisdairO 12y ago
        Fair enough. I'd say that you're either a deeply unusual person, or that you don't want or have to do much that genuinely pushes your self control.
        seekingtruth 12y ago
        Self-control is a skill, not an inherent trait. It can be mastered and become almost effortless.
        AlisdairO 12y ago
        Being unchallenged can also give the illusion of having fantastic self control. My wife stays slender, in large part because she has no desire to eat to excess, and is sated by small quantities of sweet food. By contrast, staying thin same costs me a monumental effort. How can you possibly know whether you have superior self control or are simply lucky?
        seekingtruth 12y ago
        What is challenging is dealing with the finiteness of time. Having to prioritize my list of what I want to do/learn and slowly progress through it. Sometimes new things suddenly come up and move their way to a high priority. Other things will, at times, be moved down the list according to changes in my interest level or circumstances. But what is an entirely foreign experience to me is having something I want to do, arriving at the time to do it, and just... not doing it. I can only think that people who have this kind of experience must be suffering from self-deception or dissonance between what they believe they want and what they really do want. Like the student who tries his damnedest on exam day but has not spent any time familiarizing himself with the course material. What we want is revealed by our behavior, not what we think. What I actually am is what I do. As to the particular topic at hand, it is a core value of mine to keep my body as able as possible for as long as possible. My body is the vessel that conveys my existence through time-space and getting the most out of that existence requires optimizing my fitness. If I were to wake up one day twenty pounds overweight and pre-hypertensive, remedying that situation would shoot up my priority list. It would become an emergency situation that would simply have to be dealt with as expeditiously as possible. So when I hear people talk about how much they "really want" to lose weight but then present no behavioral evidence to support that statement, I can only conclude they they are either simply lying for the sake of garnering social approval or are deluding themselves as to their true desires.
  - cbd1984 12y ago
    If that's the only thing you do you find hard you're intellectually deficient by choice and therefore not worth listening to.
    - seekingtruth 12y ago
      Learning new things is fun. Lifting twice my bodyweight for reps is hard work. You sound like a typical fatty harboring the delusion that fit people are incapable of excelling at anything other than being fit. This is a particularly laughable notion given the clear evidence that low IQ is positively correlated with obesity [1] (and, likewise, physical fitness is positively correlated with higher IQ and cognitive function). 1. http://personal.lse.ac.uk/kanazawa/pdfs/COEDO2014.pdf http://personal.lse.ac.uk/kanazawa/pdfs/COEDO2014.pdf
      - cbd1984 12y ago
        And you sound like a typical asshole with a hugely inflated opinion of your own intelligence, which negatively correlates with actually having one.
        seekingtruth 12y ago
        Well, these things do vary over a lifetime but, in most cases, not by much: http://i.imgur.com/hRaXDDQ.jpg http://i.imgur.com/hRaXDDQ.jpg
        adl 12y ago
        Have you had a Baron-Cohen EQ test?
        seekingtruth 12y ago
        I am not autistic but fuck you for asking.
adl 12y ago
> You sound like a pathetic whiny snot who has embraced a life of learned helplessness. I'm trying to change my circumstances the 'hacker way': learning, experimenting and trying my best, even if it is a hard problem for me to resolve. For me, staying healthy, slim and fit is incredibly hard, it seems that for you it is not.
- seekingtruth 12y ago
  But this is a well-trod path. There is no need to reinvent or rediscover anything. In fact, belaboring the "how" is really just a diversion that prevents success. Anyone who is successful at body transformation does two things: 1) Permanently changes their diet 2) Permanently changes their activity level. The particulars vary in any number of ways but the one constant is that the person moves from thinking to action. The process becomes not something that they "try" or "work on" but an imperative. A guy I went to high school with was an all-star center on our (American) football team at six feet tall and 294 lbs. He had always been "the fat guy" from the time we were children. Between the end of one football season and the start of the next school year, he dropped to 160 lbs. When he spoke on the topic of his change, he always first answered the "how" question with this response: "I just decided I was tired of being fat." For him, the particulars involved introducing heaping servings of fibrous vegetables (to help satiety) and running. But those things were of secondary importance. Look at this guy: http://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness/comments/2xczpt/6_month_progress_45m_207lbs_to_165lbs/ http://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness/comments/2xczpt/6_month_prog... 45 years and old and resigned to being dumpy and hypertensive. Then he decided "fuck this" and changed his life. This is how it always works. You have to become sufficiently fed up to no longer accept the status quo. No one can do that for you nor will it appear in any study, book, or other "how-to-be-fit" advice. This is why I no longer talk to people in real life about this topic. I can give them an endless supply of information on nutrition & programming but not the one thing without which they are doomed to failure.

AlisdairO 12y ago

Is there anything you find hard?

seekingtruth 12y ago
Deadlifts. That's why I do them.
- AlisdairO 12y ago
  So you've never wanted to achieve something but found it too hard to take the necessary steps to do so?
  - seekingtruth 12y ago
    No.
    - AlisdairO 12y ago
      Fair enough. I'd say that you're either a deeply unusual person, or that you don't want or have to do much that genuinely pushes your self control.
      - seekingtruth 12y ago
        Self-control is a skill, not an inherent trait. It can be mastered and become almost effortless.
        AlisdairO 12y ago
        Being unchallenged can also give the illusion of having fantastic self control. My wife stays slender, in large part because she has no desire to eat to excess, and is sated by small quantities of sweet food. By contrast, staying thin same costs me a monumental effort. How can you possibly know whether you have superior self control or are simply lucky?
        seekingtruth 12y ago
        What is challenging is dealing with the finiteness of time. Having to prioritize my list of what I want to do/learn and slowly progress through it. Sometimes new things suddenly come up and move their way to a high priority. Other things will, at times, be moved down the list according to changes in my interest level or circumstances. But what is an entirely foreign experience to me is having something I want to do, arriving at the time to do it, and just... not doing it. I can only think that people who have this kind of experience must be suffering from self-deception or dissonance between what they believe they want and what they really do want. Like the student who tries his damnedest on exam day but has not spent any time familiarizing himself with the course material. What we want is revealed by our behavior, not what we think. What I actually am is what I do. As to the particular topic at hand, it is a core value of mine to keep my body as able as possible for as long as possible. My body is the vessel that conveys my existence through time-space and getting the most out of that existence requires optimizing my fitness. If I were to wake up one day twenty pounds overweight and pre-hypertensive, remedying that situation would shoot up my priority list. It would become an emergency situation that would simply have to be dealt with as expeditiously as possible. So when I hear people talk about how much they "really want" to lose weight but then present no behavioral evidence to support that statement, I can only conclude they they are either simply lying for the sake of garnering social approval or are deluding themselves as to their true desires.
- cbd1984 12y ago
  If that's the only thing you do you find hard you're intellectually deficient by choice and therefore not worth listening to.
  - seekingtruth 12y ago
    Learning new things is fun. Lifting twice my bodyweight for reps is hard work. You sound like a typical fatty harboring the delusion that fit people are incapable of excelling at anything other than being fit. This is a particularly laughable notion given the clear evidence that low IQ is positively correlated with obesity [1] (and, likewise, physical fitness is positively correlated with higher IQ and cognitive function). 1. http://personal.lse.ac.uk/kanazawa/pdfs/COEDO2014.pdf http://personal.lse.ac.uk/kanazawa/pdfs/COEDO2014.pdf
    - cbd1984 12y ago
      And you sound like a typical asshole with a hugely inflated opinion of your own intelligence, which negatively correlates with actually having one.
      - seekingtruth 12y ago
        Well, these things do vary over a lifetime but, in most cases, not by much: http://i.imgur.com/hRaXDDQ.jpg http://i.imgur.com/hRaXDDQ.jpg
        adl 12y ago
        Have you had a Baron-Cohen EQ test?
        seekingtruth 12y ago
        I am not autistic but fuck you for asking.

adl 12y ago

> You sound like a pathetic whiny snot who has embraced a life of learned helplessness. I'm trying to change my circumstances the 'hacker way': learning, experimenting and trying my best, even if it is a hard problem for me to resolve. For me, staying healthy, slim and fit is incredibly hard, it seems that for you it is not.

seekingtruth 12y ago
But this is a well-trod path. There is no need to reinvent or rediscover anything. In fact, belaboring the "how" is really just a diversion that prevents success. Anyone who is successful at body transformation does two things: 1) Permanently changes their diet 2) Permanently changes their activity level. The particulars vary in any number of ways but the one constant is that the person moves from thinking to action. The process becomes not something that they "try" or "work on" but an imperative. A guy I went to high school with was an all-star center on our (American) football team at six feet tall and 294 lbs. He had always been "the fat guy" from the time we were children. Between the end of one football season and the start of the next school year, he dropped to 160 lbs. When he spoke on the topic of his change, he always first answered the "how" question with this response: "I just decided I was tired of being fat." For him, the particulars involved introducing heaping servings of fibrous vegetables (to help satiety) and running. But those things were of secondary importance. Look at this guy: http://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness/comments/2xczpt/6_month_progress_45m_207lbs_to_165lbs/ http://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness/comments/2xczpt/6_month_prog... 45 years and old and resigned to being dumpy and hypertensive. Then he decided "fuck this" and changed his life. This is how it always works. You have to become sufficiently fed up to no longer accept the status quo. No one can do that for you nor will it appear in any study, book, or other "how-to-be-fit" advice. This is why I no longer talk to people in real life about this topic. I can give them an endless supply of information on nutrition & programming but not the one thing without which they are doomed to failure.