How Fat May Hurt the Brain, and How Exercise May Help

Promise of an answer to a question? Check!

Excuses for common flaw? Check!

Ding ding ding we've got ourselves certified linkbait.

Who knows, Half Life 3 could even arrive sooner.

Is Linus obese by the way ?

What they found at the core of the study was that something in the fat cells was, in some way, contributing to decreased cognitive abilities.

So going along the lines of your initial thought, we can entertain the idea that "Newell, Torvalds, or Wozniak would have even higher cognitive performance than they already have if they exercised everyday and reduced their store of fat cells". That's more in line with what the article was suggesting.

There's an awful lot of very intelligent people who never did anything with their life, and conversely there are a lot of perfectly average people who have done ground breaking things.

That's not true, and that's a mentality that justifies self-destructive behavior. I used to be overweight but turned it around a few years ago, and in my case it boiled down to fixing some incredibly unhealthy habits

1) better sleeping habits. I used to go to sleep at 3-4 AM, now I force myself off of electronics by midnight and read a book or write until I doze off. Nowadays, when I first get up in the morning, I roll out of bed and do some pushups to avoid the crawl back to bed.

2) better eating habits. Eating breakfast is probably the best thing you can do for your diet. I found that I was eating much more later in the night, so as I shifted my sleeping pattern I also shifted my eating pattern (eating much more at breakfast and lunch and much less at dinner).

3) better exercise. It started with simple things: going to the grocery store, rather than waiting for the closest parking spot, I would park at the far end of the lot and walk the extra N steps; after a few months, I purchased a collapsable cart and just walked the mile from my house to the store. And bit by bit I would try to increase activity.

Obviously everyone's experience is different, but please don't propagate the idea that overweight people can't lose weight

If I eat litle for a prolonged time eventually I will feel full whenever I eat a normal amount. Same go's for me in the other direction.

However I agree with you to some extent. Once you have been fat once the time to get used to larger food amounts is significantly reduced.

Sincerely, a short guy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/19/health/overweight-maybe-yo...

It is restrictive: high fat, very low carb, adequate protein. However, it is comparatively easy to maintain since a high-fat diet leaves you feeling much fuller.

After the adaptation phase (~3weeks) your metabolism shifts to becoming much more efficient at burning fat. As a result if you go on a slight calorie deficit, the rest of the calories come from stored fat and you don't feel hungry.

Many people do these diets for nutritional health (myself included). There is lots of new research about it and while its nutritional benefits may be debated --its well understood to be the most effective way to loose fat sustainability.

ketotic.org is a good place to start research on it. It has research summaries on ketogenic diets by Zooko Wilcox O'Hearn (a well-known cryptographer and open-source dev of Tahoe-LAFS) and Amber Wilcox O'Hearn, a researcher who found that a stricter variant of a ketogenic diet completely cured a major health issue of hers.

reddit.com/r/keto is actually the best place to start once you've decided you interested. They have a good FAQ and the focus is mostly weight loss.

...says the skinny guy.