• Here’s a classic, but depressing, study that compared the effectiveness of Weight Watchers with self-help efforts at dieting. 150 participants (71%) in the Weight Watchers group finished the study, as did 159 (75%) participants in the self-help group. After two years, the self-help group lost an average of 1/2 of a pound each, while the Weight Watchers group lost an average of about 6 pounds each. (And remember, these were people who were so desperate to lose weight that they signed up for a clinical weight loss trial). This is usually considered a significant success for Weight Watchers because almost nobody can do any better.

• A lack of sleep increases not only your risk of obesity, but also diabetes: “Research shows the risk of getting type 2 diabetes goes up if you get less than seven hours per night. The chances rise significantly if you sleep for five hours or less. This is because poor sleep alters the way the body metabolizes the blood sugar glucose. People with type 2 diabetes have difficulty turning the glocuse into energy, due problems with insulin.”

• Meet the average American family: they don’t have a retirement account, they have $3,800.00 in the bank, and they have no mutual funds, stocks or bonds. 25% of them have no savings at all.

The QOTD, on mind vs. matter:

Fat people who lose large amounts of weight may look like someone who was never fat, but they are very different. In fact, by every measurement they seemed like people who were starving…

On every count, the weird, bizarre, almost depraved behavior that Ancel Keys reported when he studied young men who were deliberately starved in his experiment during World War II was just like what Hirsch observed among the formerly obese subjects at Rockefeller University Hospital. Something ws driving these people to regain their weight, and it was not a deep-seated desire to be fat.

Their metabolisms, for example, had changed so that they hung onto, clung to, every calorie that was consumed, making it harder for them to stay thin. Before the study began, the fat people had a normal metabolism–the number of calories burned per square inch of body surface was the same as for people who had never been fat. That changed substantially after they lost weight, with fat people burning 24% fewer calories per square meter of surace area than were used by people who were naturally thin…

Eventually more than fifty people went through the months-long process of living in the hospital and losing weight, and every one of them had the physical and psychiatric symptoms of starvation, Hirsch reports. There were a very few who did not get fat again, but they made staying thin their life’s work, becoming Weight Watchers lecturers, for example, and always counting calories and maintaining themselves in a permanent state of semi-starvation.

Did those who stayed thin simply have more willpower? In a funny way, they did, Hirsch says. ‘The strange thing is that it really does have to do with willpower in the sense that extremely powerful and very disciplined minds can force the body to accept and maintain a weight-losing or even low-weight-maintaining diet. But there is a biochemical or basic biological element in what it is that we call willpower,’ Hirsch says. ‘And the dichotomization of mind versus matter is not a very helpful way to attempt an understanding of obesity.”

- Gina Kolata, Rethinking Thin, pg. 6.

The QOTD, on the long-term nature of weight loss efforts:

“[T]he battle for weight control is never won, even after you lose weight. [According to the National Academy of Sciences:] ‘An obese individual faces a continuous lifelong struggle with no expectation that the struggle required will diminish with time. For most people, even a brief abatement in effort will be met with a significant setback in control.’”

- Gina Kolata, Rethinking Thin, pg. 6.

• Sleep improves learning and mental performance.

• Sleep deprivation causes you to consume more calories.

• Men with untreated obstructive sleep apnea have less brain grey matter.

• “Exercise is not real great at causing weight loss. But every study has shown that if you want to keep the weight off you have to exercise. “

• Which is why I need a heart rate monitor.

• According to Dr. George Blackburn of Harvard Medical School, if you are more than 100 pounds overweight, “this is beyond our ability to make these lifestyle changes to lose enough weight to get healthy.” In other words, you’re out of luck unless you get gastric bypass surgery.

• If you buy music online, be sure to buy it from Amazon to avoid dirty mp3 files.

• Here are the incredibly depressing results of one of the longest and most robust weight loss studies I’ve seen to date. After two long years (with various groups trying low-carb diets, low-fat diets, and everything in between): “Among the 80% of participants who completed the trial, the average weight loss was 4 kg; 14 to 15% of the participants had a reduction of at least 10% of their initial body weight.”

• Why food is getting sweeter.

• The science of obesity and processed foods, from a former FDA commissioner: “The latest science seemed to suggest being overweight was my destiny. I was fat because my body’s ‘thermostat’ was set high. If I lost weight, my body would try to get it back, slowing down my metabolism till I returned to my predetermined set point… ‘Higher sugar, fat and salt make you want to eat more.’ I had read this in scientific literature, and heard it in conversations with neuroscientists and psychologists. But here was a leading food designer, a Henry Ford of mass-produced food, revealing how his industry operates. To protect his business, he did not want to be identified, but he was remarkably candid, explaining how the food industry creates dishes to hit what he called the ‘three points of the compass’. Sugar, fat and salt make a food compelling. They stimulate neurons, cells that trigger the brain’s reward system and release dopamine, a chemical that motivates our behaviour and makes us want to eat more.”

• Meditation may help relieve the uniquely modern types of stress that evolution arguably did not prepare us to deal with.

• How to train to do one hundred pushups.

• Why DRM doesn’t work.

• How to always get free shipping on Amazon.

• How to make use of different types of people in a company. I aspire to be smart/lazy.

• On facebook and other social media.

• Neuroscientists at Cambridge University have shown that running stimulates the brain to grow fresh grey matter and improves mental ability.

• Willpower can be developed, like a muscle. (It can also be exhausted like a muscle, but that’s a topic for another post).

• The top two changes you can make in your life to feel happier.

• Good health, without supplements.

• Diets with lower cognitive complexity are more likely to be sustainable. It’s about more than just willpower.

• Good, simple rules for eating and living better (even if they do oversimplify and confuse correlation with causation in places).

• How to sleep better and lose weight as a result.

Quoted for truth: Moff’s law.

Of all the varieties of irritating comment out there, the absolute most annoying has to be “Why can’t you just watch the movie for what it is??? Why can’t you just enjoy it? Why do you have to analyze it???”

If you have posted such a comment, or if you are about to post such a comment, here or anywhere else, let me just advise you: Shut up. Shut the fuck up. Shut your goddamn fucking mouth. SHUT. UP.

First of all, when we analyze art, when we look for deeper meaning in it, we are enjoying it for what it is. Because that is one of the things about art, be it highbrow, lowbrow, mainstream, or avant-garde: Some sort of thought went into its making — even if the thought was, “I’m going to do this as thoughtlessly as possible”! — and as a result, some sort of thought can be gotten from its reception. That is why, among other things, artists (including, for instance, James Cameron) really like to talk about their work.

Now, that doesn’t mean you have to think about a work of art. I don’t know anyone who thinks every work they encounter ought to only be enjoyed through conscious, active analysis — or if I do, they’re pretty annoying themselves. And I know many people who prefer not to think about much of what they consume, and with them I have no argument. I also have no argument with people who disagree with another person’s thoughts about a work of art. That should go without saying. Finally, this should also go without saying, but since it apparently doesn’t: Believe me, the person who is annoying you so much by thinking about the art? They have already considered your revolutionary “just enjoy it” strategy, because it is not actually revolutionary at all. It is the default state for most of humanity.

So when you go out of your way to suggest that people should be thinking less — that not using one’s capacity for reason is an admirable position to take, and one that should be actively advocated — you are not saying anything particularly intelligent. And unless you live on a parallel version of Earth where too many people are thinking too deeply and critically about the world around them and what’s going on in their own heads, you’re not helping anything; on the contrary, you’re acting as an advocate for entropy.

And most annoyingly of all, you’re contributing to the fucking conversation yourselves when you make your stupid, stupid comments. You are basically saying, “I think people shouldn’t think so much and share their thoughts, that’s my thought that I have to share.” If you really think people should just enjoy the movie without thinking about it, then why the fuck did you (1) click on the post in the first place, and (2) bother to leave a comment? If it bugs you so much, GO WATCH A GODDAMN FUNNY CAT VIDEO.

Via Mimi Smartypants.

Research has linked obesity with how much sleep you get.

“At least two dozen studies have documented that people tend to weigh more if they sleep less, says Sanjay Patel, M.D., a researcher at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. In a 16-year study of almost 70,000 women, Dr. Patel and his colleagues found that those who slept five hours or less a night were 30 percent more likely to gain 30-plus pounds than those who got more rest…

Researchers at the University of Chicago allowed people to sleep five and half hours one night and eight and a half on another, then measured how many free snacks the participants downed the next day. They ate an average of 221 calories more when sleepy—an amount that could translate into almost a pound of fat gained after two weeks! ”

(Via).

The proposed mechanism:

Sleep-deprived animals eat excessively, and humans subject to sleep deprivation show increased appetite and an increased Body Mass Index, the standard measure of excessive weight. The apparent mechanism for this phenomenon is the effect that sleep deprivation has on at least two hormones that influence appetite: leptin and ghrelin. Sleep deprivation causes a decrease in leptin, which boosts appetite and produces obesity, and increases ghrelin, a potent stimulator of hunger and appetite. A study led by J.P. Chaput and published in the International Journal of Obesity this spring found that children who slept an average of 10.5 to 11.5 hours a night were more at risk for obesity than children who slept between 12 and 13 hours a night. Kids who slept only eight to 10 hours a night were at still greater risk. The study had methodological weaknesses (small sample size, data mostly by parental report, absence of correction for age). Still, the trend is striking and suggests that sleep deprivation is associated with obesity in children as well as adults.

– Sydney Spiesel, Slate, Why We’re Fatter.

Of course, sleeping more has lots of other benefits.

The QOTD, on food:

“Perhaps because we have no such culture of food in America almost every question about eating is up for grabs. Fats or carbs? Three squares or continuous grazing? Raw or cooked? Organic or industrial? Veg or vegan? Meat or mock meat? Foods of astounding novelty fill the shelves of our supermarket, and the line between a food and a ‘nutritional supplement’ has fogged to the point where people make meals of protein bars and shakes. Consuming these neo-pseudo-foods alone in our cars, we have become a nation of antinomian eaters, each of us struggling to work out or dietary salvation on our own. Is it any wonder Americans suffer from so many eating disorders?”

– Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, page 301.

Apparently the idea that building muscle aids in weight loss is functionally a myth:

[D]oesn’t exercise turn fat to muscle, and doesn’t muscle process excess calories more efficiently than fat does? Yes, although the muscle-fat relationship is often misunderstood. According to calculations published in the journal Obesity Research by a Columbia University team in 2001, a pound of muscle burns approximately six calories a day in a resting body, compared with the two calories that a pound of fat burns. Which means that after you work out hard enough to convert, say, 10 lb. of fat to muscle — a major achievement — you would be able to eat only an extra 40 calories per day, about the amount in a teaspoon of butter, before beginning to gain weight. Good luck with that.

– John Cloud, Why Exercise Won’t Make You Thin, Time Magazine, August 9, 2009, via Megan McArdle.

About a year ago, Michael Pollan (author of the Omnivore’s Dilemma), gave a talk a Google which I think is very interesting. The upshot is that the “scientific” approach to nutrition that emphasizes the ingestion of certain nutrients rather than certain whole foods doesn’t work. The evidence suggests that our current scientific understanding of nutrition, digestion and health is shaky at best and misleading at worst. So the best practical advice at this time is to avoid the proto-scientific theories of nutrition and eat whole, natural foods based on a few very clearly understood principles (e.g., eat lots of vegetables).

As Pollan notes, “Culture has been greatly undervalued in the era of science, but it’s still, I believe, a repository of terrific wisdom.”

So. I have celiac disease. I think that in time, as I learn more, I’ll start blogging about gluten free cooking and living without wheat.

For now, however, I wanted to notice an odd, anecdotal correlation I’ve noticed between (a) lawyers who are unhappy as lawyers, and who seem to have temperaments that are similar to mine, and (b) problematic autoimmune disorders that manifest in the stomach. For example, both Amateur Content and Sherry (whose thoughts on the practice of law are gathered, in part, at her old blog) have recently been diagnosed with Chron’s disease. Chron’s and celiac are very similar autoimmune diseases which are often mistaken for one another.

This is, of course, not the entire story: celiac is at least partly genetic, and there appears to be at least some hereditary component to chron’s. But I wonder if the old wive’s tale about suppressed emotions causing stomach problems doesn’t contain a grain of truth.

(Not that I’m planning to leave the law. Quite the opposite: I enjoy the practice of law. I just don’t enjoy practicing in the environment that I’ve been in for the past several years).

One of the hardest, most profound, and most illuminating lessons that I’ve learned is that truth is hard to find. It is hard to be right about anything. It’s much harder than people think.

“One of the first tricks in Penn and Teller’s Las Vegas show begins when Teller—the short, quiet one—strolls onstage with a lit cigarette, inhales, drops it to the floor, and stamps it out. Then he takes another cigarette from his suit pocket and lights it.

No magic there, right? But then Teller pivots so the audience can see him from the other side. He goes through the same set of motions, except this time everything is different: Much of what just transpired, the audience now perceives, was a charade, a carefully orchestrated stack of lies. He doesn’t stamp out the first cigarette—he palms it, then puts it in his ear. There is no second cigarette; it’s a pencil stub. The smoke from the first butt is real, but the lighter used on the pencil is actually a flashlight. Yet the illusion is executed so perfectly that every step looks real, even when you’re shown that it is not.

The trick is called Looks Simple, and the point is that even a puff on a cigarette, closely examined, can disintegrate into smoke and mirrors. ‘People take reality for granted,’ Teller says shortly before stepping onstage. ‘Reality seems so simple. We just open our eyes and there it is. But that doesn’t mean it is simple.’

For Teller (that’s his full legal name), magic is more than entertainment. He wants his tricks to reveal the everyday fraud of perception so that people become aware of the tension between what is and what seems to be. Our brains don’t see everything—the world is too big, too full of stimuli. So the brain takes shortcuts, constructing a picture of reality with relatively simple algorithms for what things are supposed to look like… This may be why exposing the ’secret’ of a magic trick is so often deflating. Most of the time, the secret is that we’re gullible and our brains are riddled with blind spots.”

- Magic and the Brain: Teller Reveals the Neuroscience of Illusion, Wired Magazine, April 20, 2009.

In a strange way, I believe that this is what the techniques of the meditative traditions (e.g., mindfulness based-stress reduction, zazen, etc.) may really be about: our normal consciousness is cluttered by concepts of the world around us. We create conceptual categories so that we can analyze and understand the world and then predict what it will do. These concepts are necessary because our minds aren’t capable of seeing all of reality. Consequently, as Teller points out in the article, our attention functions as a spotlight in the dark which reveals its subject but which necessarily conceals everything else. Our concepts, while necessary at times, leave us open to biases, distorted thinking, and unexamined assumptions.

In meditation, by clearing your mind of distractions and focusing on the present moment, you are, with practice, hopefully, able to perceive the world with more immediacy.

“We each have three lives: the untouchable past, where our mistakes are stored; the immeasurable present, where we make them; and the impenetrable future, where they group and marshal. The present is the bottleneck: and the only reason most human pasts are not more untidy than they are is that we can only manage one mistake at a time. That bottleneck is the pinch in the hourglass, the restrictor which means events must pass us by one single grain at a time. We could take this as an opportunity to see things clearly, but it seems we’d rather not — most of us prefer to speculate hopelessly in the unfathomable scale of the future, or flounder hopelessly in the massive scale of the past. It’s an unfortunate distraction because, as we often tell each other, once the moment has passed we don’t get it back.

What this means is that those who can see the present clearly, and who do view the past and the future with the precision of good perspective, have a tremendous advantage over everybody else. They have a different relationship with fortune than the usual fumbling that the rest of us can muster. They can slip through the gaps between events that others do not even notice. They can make coins disappear.”

- Dave Whiteland, Planetarium, September 9, 1999.

The QOTD:

“None of this is to imply that new professionals are left without goals. Ironically, however, the primary goal for many becomes, in essence, getting compensated sufficiently for sidelining their original goals… Once the professional adopts this new, quantitative measure of success, the system has him in the palm of its hand, for he maximizes his compensation by working hard to further the goals of his employer… And work hard he does - 12-hour or longer workdays are standard for many young professionals. According to the Wall Street Journal, “in some investment-banking and law firms, seven-day, 100-hour work-weeks aren’t uncommon.” At First Boston Corporation, a large international investment banking firm headquartered in New York City, “Young associates stay late about three nights a week. The other nights they’re out by eight or nine,” the chairman of the corporation’s recruiting committee tells the Journal.

Moreover, in spite of his marathon effort and to his employer’s further delight, the young professional feels that he must not be working hard enough, because the compensation never quite seems to satisfy him; the feeling of “having it all” eludes him. In fact, his efforts are futile, for no amount of income or status can make whole a social being who has abandoned his own intellectual and political goals. The situation tends to be self-perpetuating. The professional’s priority on compensation inhibits him from developing and pursuing his own intellectual and political goals, because the independent thinking necessary to do that is incompatible with the mind-set necessary to do best for his employers and therefore do best in the rat race. Furthermore, the rat race is an all-encompassing effort: the young professional works the week like a sprint and is left with only a few hours of leisure time out of the week’s 168 hours. To prepare his mind adequately for the professional work ahead, he must spend his hard-won free time “working at relaxation,” certainly not reflecting. Until the professional assigns highest importance to developing and advancing his own political goals, serving the system will be not just his job, but his life.”

- Jeff Schmidt, Disciplined Minds, pg. 121-23.

Now this was a revelation. L’Hote explains where the myth of the stereotypically male “locker room conversations” might come from:

In his nonfiction book Travels, Michael Crichton pointed out that the reason women think that men are always having “locker room conversations” about intimate sexual details is that women themselves tend to take part in those conversations all the time. I have never had a “locker room conversation” in my life, and I think I would find frank conversation about sexual details with my friends deeply off-putting. But it seems that, for an average women, whatever information she has about you sexually has been shared with all of her friends.

That’s been precisely my experience. I’ve never heard a man engage in “locker room talk,” and to my knowledge I don’t know any man who would feel comfortable having such a conversation with his friends. But I understand, from second-hand reports, that this sort of conversation is extremely common among women (or at least the women that I know). Maybe he’s on to something here.

• Why red light cameras don’t work, and actually make us less safe.

• Alternate data streams in NTFS: hide files inside other files.

• Bookmarked for later:Why I need a kitchen scale.

As a former vagabond (involuntarily retired), it’s amazing the sense of imprisonment I can feel when something shocks me out of my routine and reminds me that, for those without massive student loans, life doesn’t have to be like this.

Exhibit A:

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

via Peer-See.

The QOTD:

The waiter sets a menu in front of you, and you realize, while he spills coffee into your saucer, that all the dilemmas of your life can be expressed in terms of oatmeal. You’ve learned that oatmeal makes for a wonderful day, draws out a sustained arc of energy and goodwill. But the craven eye wanders.

“Yes, that way lies happiness,” I say to myself, “and yet this way lies bacon.” Happiness seems, at that moment, such an unwelcomely long-term proposition. The seared, salty idea of bacon flashes in my mouth, fatty slab of the moment; whereas oatmeal squishes over into a digestive chain of planning and forethought, as if I were a stove and not a man. Am I to be fed to burn, or to burst forth in spurts of inspiration?

via Michael Sippey.