Akrasia and Shangri-La

The metabolically privileged don't believe in metabolic privilege, since they are able to lose weight by trying!

Some of us do believe in it since we are able to stay very thin without trying. I have never dieted and never needed to.

But, we probably don't post very much on diet blogs.

I come from a family of thin people who eat fairly unhealthily but are quite active. When I first stopped living with my parents, I basically stopped exercising and ate even more unhealthily. I became very unfit in the sense of e.g., not being able to run a block without getting out of breath, but gained very little weight. So I figure the causation is probably not mainly exercise -> thinness, but more on the lines of genes -> (thinness & athleticism) or genes -> thinness -> athleticism.

Slightly off topic here, but even in cases where it is "just willpower" that a person needs, anecdotal experiences suggest that said willpower is often more easily obtained by strategy than by, um, willpower. For example, I was unable to do much of anything in college, and stressing out about it (which is what I somehow thought "willpower" was; I wasn't very intrapersonally sophisticated) didn't help, and eventually trying to investigate how I worked and how to sort of rewire the relevant skillsets, did help. Similarly, someone I know well yo-yo dieted for a couple decades, literally (though with longish pauses), then used the Beck CBT book to successfully stick to one of those same diets. (I realize willpower of any variety won't help some with healthy weight loss. I don't mean the example like that. It's just interesting that even willpower kind of isn't about willpower.)

I've got a slew of digestion issues and some metabolic problems (first ulcer at age 13). Pertinent info I've learned:

1) Diarrhea is a hell of a way to lose weight.

2) Treating your diet like a controlled scientific experiment does wonders. For about a year I never at more than 2 - 4 ingredients per meal (an ingredient being a single, unprocessed, whole food). That was a tough year, and my diet remains restricted due to what I learned, but the health I've earned is invaluable. What helps me is to think of food as a source of fuel, not pleasure.

"There are no outs. Even if someone else would call it an extenuating circumstance and forgive me for giving up, I'll just get it done anyway."

This post and Extenuating Circumstances aren't literally contradictory, but their implications seem to point in opposite directions. I would like to see more discussion of when to apply this mode of thinking and when to apply the Extenuating Circumstances mode of thinking.

Right now I'm interpreting the difference as being that if you really want to lose weight, you shouldn't accept "I have an inconvenient metabolic set point" as an excuse not to do so, but you should realize that it will shift which routes are easier than others and take that into account when planning your best strategy for weight loss. So you might try devote effort to finding some clever trick instead of trying to steamroller ahead with sheer willpower.

Am I on the right track?

The metabolically privileged don't believe in metabolic privilege, since they are able to lose weight by trying!

I, for one, believe in metabolic privilege. There is enormous variance in the human metabolism. I am six feet tall, I have (in the past) consistently eaten over 3,000 calories a day, rarely eat less than 2,000, engage in an irrationally miniscule amount of exercise, and have not tipped past 135 pounds in ten years.

I've joked that I've been on "the video game diet" - I would be so absorbed in my video games that I'd skip meals.

Yeah, this is so true.

I think I give some credit for how SLA and ADCR work for me to "willpower", but when I look at my dietary history, it is not one of willpower! I stayed overweight for 2 years before discovering SLA. The difference was a technique that worked, not willpower. And for exercise, I was out of shape for ~5 years until I found a form of exercise (olympic-style weightlifting) that was really fun. My willpower didn't change.

My mind keeps wanting to take credit, but really, these were matters of technique. Although, that perspective leads me to pitch these techniques more, not less!

Of any area that is fraught with bad advice and poor thinking, it has to be nutrition. Because of the emotions tied up in body image, I think it may even surpass politics as a mindkiller.

As far as anecdotal evidence goes, I've always been very thin, but my wife has struggled with multiple diets. She tried Shangri-La at my suggestion, and experienced the appetite suppression, but with no weight change. That seems even stranger for Roberts's theory than it just not working.

Diet is heavily moralized, and advice often boils down to "try harder and it will work, otherwise it is your fault". It may be the case that the only existing way to lose weight is to eat less and exercise more, but I'm beginning to doubt it.

Thermodynamically, it has to be the case that "calories in - calories out = calories stored", but that equation says nothing about causality. The standard advice assumes that the left side determines the right side, but there is no clear reason why that should be the case. Gary Taubes [1] [2] makes a fairly convincing case that the causality tends to go in the reverse direction. He argues that weight loss is a lot more effective if you change your metabolism, and your body will adjust your hunger and energy levels to compensate.

I'm not entirely sure I buy Taubes, but he's made me strongly doubt the standard story. If the best weight loss program is one that tries to influence metabolism, you should cut carbs, eat small frequent meals, eat a greater variety of food, include flavorless calories ala Shangri La, avoid sweet calorie-free food, and exercise moderately, but not heavily. Under this story, if you are hungry, you're doing something wrong because that means your body is trying to store more fat.

I just want to emphasize again that I'm not speaking with certainty, but the Taubes hypothesis definitely needs more consideration.

Addendum: Noticed Taubes's book Good Calories, Bad Calories was mentioned by mattnewport. If someone is very interested, I'd recommend it. It appears very well-researched, but in this case, that translates into a very dry and technical style that I had trouble staying interested in.

Some people are 'immune' to exercise.

This could have been a good article. Unfortunately, Eliezer falls into the same trap as Robert by implicitly making up his own model (the "metabolic privilege model") which should explain "everything". Whereas some argue that the "non-responders" are lacking willpower, Eliezer argues that they are just metabolically disprivileged. Thus, he explains why the rest does not respond.

But what does it mean to be "metabolically disprivileged"? Is our metabolic system really such a static system?

In science, every model simplifies. Take a look at physics: Quantum Mechanics & Classical Physics do not explain each other yet they aren't wrong. Roberts model simplifies and might be wrong, but it seems to fit better than the "metabolic privilege model" which does not explain anything. He just put a black box called "metabolic privilege" in the room which explains the problem away.

Heh. I just started on a slow carb diet. It's been fantastically successful - I lost 8kg in a week (105kg down to 97kg), which is generally considered rather too fast, but I have lots of energy and feel great.

I got it from Four Hour Body, Tim Ferriss' latest magnum opus of, ah, broscience. He applied science to his own body! ... then generalised from himself to everyone else in the world. But the diet's promise was remarkable and it just so happened that I like all the foods he listed for it, so it wouldn't be onerous. And it hasn't been. I don't miss potatoes or rice, I do miss wheat products, but there's the scheduled binge to take care of those.

I posted about my weight loss win on Twitter and promptly got a pile of friends asking about it. I have had to give all the caveats: mostly that it works because I really like the foods in question and the diet was in fact almost no work at all. (Tin of tuna for breakfast, every day? Two tins of chickpeas for lunch, every day? OM NOM NOM.) Also that it's, ah, a bit faddy and broscience-based. YMMV. Etc. That is, warning people off what worked for me but may well be a very bad idea for them.

Lesson learned: when giving "this worked for me", take care to avoid hazards that may lead to other-pessimisation!

Eliezer, excuse me if you've already done this, but have you tried doing your own research about what's going on with your metabolism? Everything you've mentioned has been trying other people's ideas about diet and exercise.

Insulin / tendency to insulin resistance. Or perhaps your body is just very reluctant to give up fat. In Atkins' book he describes some extreme cases of such people one chap could not lose fat on 800 calories a day of pure fat in his diet.

I would also consider the effect of high cortisol levels on metabolism. Apart from Cushing's {disease,syndrome} it would appear that high cortisol levels are associated with various forms of childhood trouble (illness, neglect, abuse, hunger) - perhaps an epigenetic effect. And high cortisol produces a strong tendency to insatiable appetite, tendency to store fat and difficulty in mobilizing fat.

Endocrinologists seem to assume that you either have Cushing's or there is no problem. Maybe you have high cortisol due to alcoholism (pseudo-Cushings). How much do you drink?

If you have a tendency to excessive appetite, abdominal obesity, and perhaps high levels of anxiety and conscientiousnes (there are many cortisol receptors in the brain) have a look into your cortisol levels.

At this point your troubles start. Apart from the idea that you have Cushing's or you are fine as mentioned above, there is a problem with testing cortisol levels. Doctors will assume that a blood test is best. But for measuring the cortisol burden it is not. The reason is that cortisol levels fluctuate wildly on an hourly basis and across the day, lowest after midnight. So a blood test is like measuring traffic by taking a single photograph across a road. A 24 hour urine test is best for assessing the overall cortisol burden.

A lot of people with high 24 hour numbers have normal serum numbers during the day. The problem is that the serum levels don't go down overnight in some people (eg me).

Also worth noting that the normal levels of cortisol cover a very wide range and that levels in the upper half are associated with bad outcomes in life (heart disease, blood pressure, strokes, diabetes, eye damage etc). So get the numbers not just the "normal/not normal" result.

I've suffered from insomnia for as long as I can remember (I'm 25). I've tried every form of medication / therapy / sleep study / sleep hygiene that you could possibly imagine. Just like Eliezer can't lose a pound -- I can't still can't get into a normal / sustainable sleeping pattern. Very frustrating! We have a long way to go.

OK, guilty. Most of my successes in life so far are explained by the fact that it's easy for me to work hard for long periods of time without burning out, and that my internal reward system is set up to make delayed gratification easy.

...Amusingly, I used to think I had inherited an awful metabolism that made it impossible for me to lose weight, because it is really hard for me to lose weight by dieting, even though I was swimming competitively and very fit. A couple of years ago, when I finally decided that my actual weight was just fine and what the hell, I concluded that I was fortunate to have a fast metabolism and be able to eat whatever I wanted without gaining weight. Unsure what to conclude from this.

The whole business is an unbelievable nightmare realm. I'm slightly underweight, but I've watched several people close to me go though all sorts of struggles with it, and I can understand how much everyone wants to be the one who's going to deliver the secret that can help all these people achieve what they want.

On the engineering level, only one fact matters: change in energy stored equals energy consumed minus energy expended (as The Hacker's Diet observes). But acting on that equation looks like the hardest thing in the world. Did you read "Breakdown of Will"? His explanation of why in some ways dieting is harder than kicking heroin made sense to me, though I don't think much in that book besides the fact of hyperbolic discounting is empirically verified.

I'm going to hazard a theory why the olive oil in the morning causes weight loss. I do something similar, except I use coconut oil. I put a dollop into my morning coffee along with other foods like tumeric and, cocoa beans. I'm making up an energetic cocktail with lots of good stuff in it. The fats in this slow digestion and cause satiation. It doesn't seem to me like there's any rocket science to it. Fats are slower to digest and provide long lasting energy. If you keep the carbs in this low or non-existent, you don't get an insulin rush, which leads to depletion which leads to hunger pangs. When I have this drink I often feel pretty well wrapped until noon or so. I would typically give myself a protein rich snack, maybe a hard boiled egg, perhaps an apple or carrot at mid morning, but today for example my activity level is low so just one egg at mid morning and I feel pretty energized. If you are able to cut out a morning meal, slow digestion, and keep away hunger pangs, you will eliminate all the caloric activity that usually gets ingested in the morning, plus get a longer fast. You're not really fasting of course, but giving the gut a lot less to deal with in the morning. I get a big dollop of olive oil in my lunch/midday salad, a big one with more protein and lots of green stuff, nuts and so forth. Insulin level still stays low, more fats, so you're pretty much good to go until evening.

My two cents worth, your mileage may vary.

Looking at this, and then at Yvain's blue-minimizing robot analogy...

... I wonder if akrasia isn't just what happens when the conscious "rider" tries to enforce something on the unconscious "robot"?

Due to recent emotional trauma, I've shifted from a rather cliche procrastinating college student to someone much more focused. On the inside, it feels like I'm just trying harder - but remembering how I felt a year ago, it's clearly not that simple. A year ago, I felt like I was trying as hard as I feasibly could.

Oh, sure, I had plenty of excuses why I couldn't try harder... but reversed stupidity, etc. My conscious self would very much have liked to work harder back then.

So I wonder if overcoming akrasia isn't a matter of knocking your unconscious tendencies into something useful to you...

Of possible relevance for failure to lose weight on a diet: Clinical significance of adaptive thermogenesis

I don't have access to the article, and have only read the abstract. If anybody does have access or has read the paper, what are the environmental factors that might influence thermogenesis during dieting (as mentioned in the abstract)?

it's a relief to hear of others not having success with shangri-la. i wish it worked for everyone but it doesn't and it's (apparently) not just me doing it wrong. though how you mess up drinking oil is beyond me.

i have lost 20 pounds this year (after about 2 years of trying various strategies including shangrila) and the answer was just discipline. cut out sweets ruthlessly and practice letting myself feel hunger. but i'm definitely plateaued now. and i have to exercise my free will every day to stay there. and it slowly starts moving up when i relax it. sigh

and i wish exercise worked as well. but i'd already maxed out that strategy years ago.

How does one reject the hypothesis "You're failing because you aren't trying hard enough / you're doing it wrong?"

In the case of the Shangri-la bit, it obviously works, but in the "eat less, excersize more" diet, how can one conclude that the failing is in the strategy and not the user?

I'm not trying to say you're wrong; I'm genuinely curious as to how one can decide this approach fails.