Self-quantifiers: Silicon Valley types who treat their bodies like computers | Hacker News Reader

Self-quantifiers: Silicon Valley types who treat their bodies like computers

slate.com

49 pointscodex12 comments

Self-tracking is great. I track everything I eat and a range of markers and symptoms. Over the last few years I've greatly stabilized my mood, sleeping patterns, and productivity. I only wish there were better tools on the market. There's a whole bunch of chemicals in my bloodstream that I'd love to track the concentration of.

How many hours a day do you devote to tracking? What do you do about prepared food that you didn't prepare? Do you bring weight scales? How deep in detail do you go into your tracking?

I probably spend about 10 minutes a day tracking. I keep a textfile open and have a markup language for documenting what I eat and how I feel.

I shy away from prepared food, both because it complicates analysis and because I've noticed it has a higher chance of causing negative effects. It's unavoidable sometimes though. If I have a brand or a restaurant I'll note that, but otherwise I mark the item with ???? to indicate it's uncontrolled.

I spent a few weeks measuring everything so that I could build up an intuition. I can eyeball most things reasonably well. It's not perfect, but it's a good ball park figure which is all I really need for my analysis.

The depth of the food tracking isn't too great, just food item, brand, quantity. I'm debating starting to track cooking method.

If it isn't too personal, what have you learned? I'm curious if is common knowledge nutritional stuff that tracking just gave you the willpower to follow (refined carbs are bad!) or something more novel (bacon is the answer!)?

I've learned that certain refined carbs (white flour) give me an energy boost followed by a satisfying crash, whereas other refined carbs (white rice) just make me moody. I avoid refined carbs in general, but I have occasional insomnia so it's good to know which things can induce a good crash. Sweet potato yams are probably the best pure carb source that I've found for inducing sleep. Nuts and fruit help as well.

I've discovered some food allergies (soy, bananas, oranges) which have greatly eased symptoms after removal (especially digestion problems).

Magnesium and calcium have strong influences on cardiac events (skipped beats, bounding pulse, etc), but I haven't been able to leverage them to eliminate symptoms completely.

Ginkgo is great for circulation and body warmth (probably specific to my own body chemistry though, as it sounds like most people don't have any reaction to it). Ashwaganda is ridiculous (for me).

I wouldn't be surprised if nothing I've learned applied to anyone else. I don't encourage anyone to follow my specific diet (except for avoiding refined foods), but I do encourage people to track themselves. It's quite empowering.

"he takes a picture of his plate with his mobile phone, which then logs the calories"

Is this real? Am I missing something? I can't imagine that there exists some sort of app to automatically identify the caloric contents of food simply from a photo. But then, what sort of tool could he be using for this purpose? Is this just journalistic liberty being taken with the idea of keeping a food photo journal and manually-updated log of dietary data?

It's called Meal Snap. I've never used it myself but mashable seems to think it works well.

http://mashable.com/2011/04/06/meal-snap/

MealSnap uses MechanicalTurk to do the job http://dashdingo.org/post/4391031302/how-mealsnap-works

I heard that's because MealSnap is a ripoff of another app that uses AI and applied to YC for this session, but didn't get in because a cofounder bailed. I wish I could remember the app's name - the main dude is still going and a super sharp German math whiz.

The app is called Photato, it's not out yet but we have a new team and are building something that is accurate enough to be of use to the Quantified self community. If anyone here is interested in testing Photato, drop me a line at taro.franke (at) gmail (dot) com

Congratulations to those who gain benefit from this, but I can't help but feel that a little bit of introspection is all that is really needed. Listen to your body. It is always talking to you, reporting how it is doing. Most of the time we just aren't listening.

Am i the only one that went online shopping for the items mentioned after reading the article? :)

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