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Wellness Wednesday for December 21, 2022

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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The problem is that you and I both assessed that the effects SMTM saw from the Potassium study were more likely than not a placebo, but the SMTM people are treating it like a win. Their judgement on this study does not align with mine, and it calls into question their assessment of other papers they reviewed and will review going forward.

I still appreciate that they are investigating the contamination theory of obesity and are gathering data for everyone to look at. But now I trust their interpretation of the data less.

If you want unorthodox views that I think are further developed than SMTM, check out https://fireinabottle.net/ or watch this video series. But even there I have a caveat - Brad naturally wants to make money from what he's researching and therefore has an interest in selling supplements to people. When possible, he does link to other places to get the supplements, but some of his theories seem to involve supplements that only he sells in the US, which is a little suspicious.

The point being, I don't put all my cognitive eggs in one basket, but that doesn't mean I don't appreciate these unorthodox people looking into the rise in obesity. I appreciate them for what they are and don't trust anyone wholeheartedly.

Revisiting my posts from last night, I agree with your take. I guess I just am overly sensitive to criticism of SMTM because I am aware they are dealing with an environment where criticism tends to be extreme and often unproductive. Much of it in the variety of "just eat less, herp derp". But you are right.

I think there is something else going on here. There do seem to be an array of exclusion diets that work well including the potato diet and croissant diet.

Here's another one that has mysterious results:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/BD4oExxQguTgpESdm/the-unfinished-mystery-of-the-shangri-la-diet

The Shangri-La Diet is unfortunately named - I would have called it "the set-point diet". And even worse, the actual procedure sounds like the wackiest fad diet imaginable:

Just drink two tablespoons of extra-light olive oil early in the morning... don't eat anything else for at least an hour afterward... and in a few days it will no longer take willpower to eat less; you'll feel so full all the time, you'll have to remind yourself to eat.