Hacker News Reader

Comment by robg | Hacker News Reader

I seem to find the Zone better when I haven't eaten all day. I wonder if the principles are the same. The studies in rats would seem to be very straightforward - combining a restricted calories diet with maze tests. I'm surprised they haven't been done yet.

View on HN

I seem to find the Zone better when I haven't eaten all day. I wonder if the principles are the same.

This works fine for me, but I've seen counter-examples too - I've had colleagues that are absolutely braindead/grumpy/etc unless they eat.

To add another anecdote, one of my most productive programming periods was when I was eating a single (small) meal per day at 6pm.

I used to actually enjoy skipping breakfast and sometimes lunch. I'm thinking at the moment particularly of college when I would be in "crunch mode". I'd get a bit hungry, but it somehow "felt" as if it lent itself to the overall push to get stuff done.

I'm generally an evening person, but I could have a very enjoyable morning by jumping, sans breakfast, straight into work while things were still quiet and somehow associate my work and progress with a certain "leanness" in the gastrointestinal area. I don't know quite how to describe it, but it was a distinct and useful impression.

I seem to remember reading a study (cannot find it at the moment) hypothesizing a lower food intake triggers an evolutionary response. Basically: hungry->must find food->more alert

Metabolically humans alternate between anabolic and catabolic modes: sleep and eat more, then work more with less sleep and food. Human metabolism is a sophisticated system for smoothing out highly variable energy intake. Always eating the same three squares a day isn't synergistic. I have found skipping meals when busy to be a very good idea. There's a reason all cultures have traditional fast and feast cycles.

The idea of sustained caloric restriction, however, is probably stupid. You just want variable intake, not low intake. First of all, the studies are only of rats and worms. Secondly, the studies fail to control for the fact that the starved animals get more exercise whereas the well fed animals languidly sit around.

A friend last week described some study which he said showed some evidence that as you consume calories, your body winds forward in age, and that very simply calorie restriction may wind your clock forward more slowly. I believe he said something about mitochondria was involved, but I might have just been having flashbacks to Parasite Eve. I just did a little googling and there are a few abstracts out there.

calorie restriction may wind your clock forward more slowly.

There is some recent evidence against the efficacy of calorie restriction: http://www.mailbucket.org/ieet-life-11416105.html

Sat, 01/24/2009 - 04:37 - NLN

If you are a mouse on the chubby side, then eating less may help you live longer. For lean mice - and possibly for lean humans, the authors of a new study predict -- the anti-aging strategy known as caloric restriction may be a pointless, frustrating and even dangerous exercise.

I started dieting with small meals recently and found the same thing happening. The co-founder I worked for at my last job was well-known for being a well-focused hacker as well as skipping lunch. He seemed to run on tea alone.

There may be something to the hungry hacker hypothesis... perhaps it's another reason for startup productivity!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com