The grandmaster diet: How to lose weight while barely moving

The numbers all have very wide error bars, so it puts 1.3 in the range closer to 1 than to 2. Still hard to believe, but I'd consider "comparable to a marathon" far more likely than "twice as much".

I tracked weight loss for a month. Eating only one meal a day. I recorded multiple times a day my weight. Only in the morning did I actually record any "loss".

So, I did some tests for this. I stayed up all night to see if I lost weight in the morning like every other day, but I didn't.

I slept, woke up in the afternoon, and I had lost .5 pounds from the previous day.

Something special happens during sleep that is unrelated to a general concept of metabolism, but instead a specific process. It's like some kind of processing the bodies does that is related to weight loss/waste management that does not occur at all (or maybe only a little?) when you are awake. (my amateur assessment)

I was tracking weight loss over time, so it's not just water loss. I tracked weight multiple times a day to see when weight loss actually happens.

If it was simple dehydration then sleeping would be irrelevant, but sleep is when something is processed, an action occurs that expels the waste/water.

No this is because you've had a baby and don't need to be in good shape to keep or sleep with your partner, so you stop going to the gym, eating well, doing exercise etc. Applies to both sexes.

Once upon a time video games did it. I’d fire up Empire Total War and 20 minutes later it was getting dark and I felt queasy. Oh wait it’s been 12 hours.

Nowadays I only get that on my motorcycle. Fire up the engine, find an open road, and you don’t even know you’re hungry until you come home 6 hours later and sit down for dinner.

In my experiments (using the widely understood concept of "morning weight = true weight") the fat I burned did not come off my body in a measurable way until after I slept. If I didn't sleep, my weight did not diminish until I did. The worse/less sleep I had effected the amount of weight I lost.

I think the amount of weight lost through exhaling is minimal compared to urinating and defecation. And defecation is almost none at all. (my tests showed that bowel movements have very little affect on weight)

This surprises me. I find that being hungry dulls my edge and makes me noticeably less clever. It's easy for me to forget to eat if I'm doing something mindless, but when I'm actively problem solving I find that I become more aware of my hunger (and other forms of general discomfort.)

The quickest way to gain two pounds is drinking 32oz of water.

Yes sure calories in calories out. But metabolism has so many variables. It can be revved up and burn a lot of calories. It can become quiescent when you are in starvation mode. What causes it to start using the fat reserves is definitely more than a univariate analysis. If there is a catalyst that starts breaking down fats faster it won’t matter that you are eating more.

Some people are naturally skinny and others put on weight quickly. This is already well known and shows that there are complex genetic inputs as well as other ones. We have to discover what those are. So saying it’s just calories in/out, stupid... nope!

I assume you're referring to the "energy in" vs "energy out" meme in weight-loss.

The body is not a closed system. While you _do_ have to balance your chemical equations for glucose catabolysis (or whatever), weight loss is far from a "simple physics" problem.

There's a scientific term for what it is. It is called bro-science

If my mother wants to cut weight, I'm telling her this. If an athlete has to make weight for a fight, this is a stupid way of thinking. At the end of the day, calories in calories out is an objectively good rule of thumb. It's not the be all end all rule though.

Nothing about the body is simple.

- There is a virus that studies suggest (show correlation) increase weight gain [1]

- There is a study that shows water in != water out (unfortunately my googlefu is failing me though).

- Empirical: I've lost weight eating 900 calories/day and I've lost weight eating 3500 calories/day with the same level of exercise. The difference was the 900 were carbs, the 3500 was >90% protein.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adenovirus_serotype_36

I agree that not eating is what caused weight loss more than anything else. But, I have found that solid waste is not where I lost weight, but through urine. And I mean weight loss as in fat, not water.

> Losing weight and gaining weight is simple physics. > you are losing weight because you are consuming less calories.

This is only true in the first up to 6 months of a calorie-restriction diet. Then, body adjusts its metabolism (lower body temperature, making you feel more lethargic to keep you from exercising, etc) and your weight begins to slowly climb back up, sans any further calorie restriction. At this point, it's easy for a dieter to blame himself of lacking willpower: "it worked, and it stopped working now, I must've been not strict enough!".

The same thing happens if you force someone to overeat even if they're not hungry. They will gain weight -- for up to 6 months. Then, the body increases its base metabolic rate and adjusts to the new food intake level.

As Dr. Jason Fung meticulously explains in his book Obesity Code, there seems to be a weight set point. He then argues that the root cause of obesity, and the body's set weight point, is insulin resistance.

The books hails your grandma's advice: "Cut back sugars and starchy foods. No snacking."

This is from the last part (The Solution):

1. Reduce your consumption of added sugars. 2. Reduce your consumption of refined grains. 3. Moderate your protein intake. 4. Increase your consumption of natural fats. 5. Increase your consumption of fiber and vinegar.

The author also stresses the importance of fasting.

Everything the book asserts seems to be pretty well backed by science, go check for yourself.

Source: Obesity Code by Dr. Jason Fung. Read it, it's not only a brilliant weight loss book, but also a wonderful book about how the wrong incentives for companies have led to the obesity epidemic in the US.

Hydration wasn't the issue, because I weighed myself consistently at regular intervals. And "true weight" (if that is right term) is supposed to be based on morning weight. Well I could compare morning, noon, even and night weight across all days for a month. So I could tell when I weighed at any particular time.

In my experiment I always was my lowest weight in the morning. The normal explanation is "because you pee'd and were dehydrated." Well, then if I stay up all night, don't drink anything extra, and pee in the morning as usual, then I should weigh the same as when I slept?

But that is not what happened. I didn't lose weight. Then i went to sleep, woke, urinated, and then I had lost the expected .5 pounds that afternoon instead.

Again, I only ate one meal a day (at the end of the day, 5pm, so this did not effect the sleep pattern), and I tested for water intake/urination.

I lost on average .5 lbs a day, and that day I didn't lose that weight until after sleeping until the afternoon.

I seem to have stirred up a hornets nest by making this claim, but I was careful about my testing, and it's not a crazy notion.

I was wearing a HRM tracker for two of the interviews, but I didn't turn it on any activities to track frequent metrics. Heart rate was elevated for the entire interview, like I was briskly walking. In my hardest Google interview, my heart rate was at its peak.

You described the panacea: Eat less. If you eat less than you burn, you will lose weight. This effect is so predictable and reliable that taken to its logical conclusion it results in death. We call this starvation.

And everyone really isn’t different. The only thing different for most people is what sort of diet they find more tolerable. The fundamentals don’t change though.

I'm not the OP, but I'm also not convinced that the set point exists. Regardless, fasting is a better way of losing weight than caloric restriction IMO since it lowers insulin, but to each their own. Either way, the laws of thermodynamics haven't changed, it's just how your body responds, and we're all unique in that sense. Whatever works for people, so long as they're losing weight if they're obese or overweight.

This seems unnecessary. The rest of your comment does not support this assertion. And it's inflammatory, which is contrary to the HN guidelines.

To this point:

> There is also definitely nothing magic that happens at the 6 month mark and the absurdity of this should be enough to make it clear that this is garbage.

There doesn't have to be anything magical. I would have to read the book to be sure, but pretty sure 6 months describes the general point at which the continuous process fades into noise. Nothing about the body has an on/off switch, but that doesn't mean we can't describe biological processes in general terms.

A few hundred calories is ~10-16% of the daily necessary caloric intake of many people, I daresay most? It is most certainly a major effect and considering that people become obese most often by consuming a small daily surplus, a few hundred calories extra, over many years, a swing of 100-300 calories can easily make the gaining weight much easier or much harder.

While I'm not a proponent of Jason Fung or his book, I have read it. From what I recall, where your as-long-as-I-could-control-my-portions diverges from Fung's book is that he believes its nearly impossible for people generally to ignore their appetite in the long run, without correcting the issues that are continually increasing their "set point" and appetite.

He defines your "set point" as your level of secretion and resistance to insulin, which is continually, but slowly, increased by frequent meals, snacking, sweeteners, poor sleep, stress and consumption of mostly processed foods.

He believes insulin levels strongly influence appetite and metabolism. Inject a thin person with insulin, and they will invariably gain weight. Suppress insulin, and people lose weight. He lists studies to that effect.

He rejects calories-in-calories-out, not because it's false, but because it ignores people's inability to ignore their appetite in the long run.

His solution is both correcting the frequent meals, snacking, sweeteners, poor sleep, stress and processed foods. He also advocates fasting, which he claims is safe and reduces chronically high insulin levels better than any other (non-drug) intervention. He provides more studies supporting those assertions.

As to the 6 months, I vaguely remember him mentioning "6 months, or a year" in the contexts of most diet's plateauing effectiveness, but his general thrust was, most diet's don't work in the long run, because they ignore insulin.

Strength training is one way to do that for example -- more muscles, more food burned just by sitting there.

Getting back to the perfect analogy with debt -- you can spend more or less money and control your debt that way, or you could make more, or a combination of the two. Which way is likely more effective in your case is what varies.

Saying that controlling debt is as simple as spending less than you make is both true and too general to be useful.

It's easy to overeat even with just two meals per day.

As for better cognitive facilities - I feel like a lot of that also can be achieved with being disciplined about sleep and getting enough of it. Nothing can really replace it.

From my own experience I think being well attuned to your own appetite patterns is helpful, like you say. That's going to be hard if you have a volatile and busy lifestyle.

I've been in a 52-versus-one simultaneous (offline) game with a Champion (not a Grand Champion). I'm mediocre at chess, but can you imagine the kind of skills you need to beat 52 mediocre-to-interested-amateur players? At Magnus's level stimulants possibly no longer work -- much like amphetamines wouldn't help me pass a calculus exam; probably even set me back.