Wikipedia defines snack as a small portion of food that is eaten between meals. The way I think about it, that is the only distinction between a meal and a snack. That “in between meals”.

This, as far as weight goes, carries with it an inherent quality that makes regulating weight harder. If not impossible, depending on your sleep patterns (the etymology of the term breakfast indicates exactly how this is relevant to what I am saying here). It’s nearly impossible to find snacks that have zero insulin response in your body. Insulin not only promotes energy storage, but it also prevents the body from using energy already stored. Making a habit of doing that, even when you don’t face weight problems (which are related to health issues), is essentially making a habit of preventing your metabolism of using energy already stored from previous meals.

This is also probably the most important reason why people speak highly of intermittent fasting or low carb diets. Most of them, through these two approaches, regardless of the other positive/negative aspects, completely eliminate the habit of constantly spiking their insulin levels, effectively allowing the body to regulate energy levels through both the energy still available from a meal and the energy stored from previous meals.

As someone who grew up with a (quite) younger sibling in the most disabling end of the spectrum, witnessing all the development from infancy to adulthood, I am very reluctant to recommend for/against any specific approach, because I think that what matters most is the people who actually practice it. So, I absolutely agree with the last sentence of your comment.

The negative aspects of ABA are not entirely in the past. I am not in a position to verify the information I will quote, but this is mentioned in the third of the linked articles:

Mandell says ABA needs to renounce that history — especially the early reliance on punishments like yelling, hitting, and most controversially electroshocks, which are still used in a notorious residential school in Massachusetts called the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center.

To be clear: I am not arguing with your experience here. Rather, I am pointing out how important is the kind of practice of whatever theory and what the focus of the practice actually is. It’s really very difficult to find professionals who are actually both able and willing to care properly for autistic people. At least in the place I live.

Beyond that, I have to say that there are many things that now have positive effects on people’s lives that weren’t exactly positive in their original forms.

Believe it or not, what you swallow has almost nothing to do with your weight. The only place the body absorbs energy from food is in the intestines, and the brain controls that process.

I would believe it if I started gaining weight by just breathing. Also, no. Not the only place. Part of the alcohol consumed is absorbed through the stomach.

The digestive tract is a tube, open at both ends, through which food passes. The process of extracting energy from that food is complex and highly tunable: the brain controls the production and secretion of hundreds of enzymes and other chemicals, as well as the physical action of the muscles lining the tube.

The brain controls pretty much everything, and this everything is highly tunable. I mean, how else would well adjusted people adapt to the highly complex lives they live as adults? With commercial pills?

I never tried to limit the fat too much, for various reasons. Always considered it important for hormones. Also, it is nearly impossible to cook real food without using some kind of fat. Then, I always enjoyed nuts. Whenever I wanted to lower my bodyfat, I always tried to limit carbohydrates, which, again, I don’t really want to lower too much because getting them from unprocessed plant foods is actually a side effect in the attempt to get sufficient quantities of micronutrients.

Never thought about gallstones before this article. It also contains a very nice explanation of how fats are usually categorized. Also, the point about fat soluble vitamins (some of which we store in our own bodyfat) is very interesting to remember when considering deficiencies. Really worth the read, even though it doesn’t provide definitive answers on anything (which would actually be suspicious if it did), it contains some very important points one has to consider when thinking about food and quantities.

Btw, since I enjoy a lot of cycling the past few years, I think it doesn’t really make sense to consider competitive (especially elite) athletes as an example of healthy individuals. I mean, some of the top cyclists drop to insanely low single digit bodyfat percentages for the competitions they participate in. Which is neither sustainable nor healthy.

Anyway, that was a very interesting article, thanks!

Well, I try not to use supplements when I can go for real food, so I wouldn’t know which protein powder is more effective… I enjoy peas even though I don’t eat them often. The foods I mentioned were examples of cheap protein sources. Vital wheat gluten (which is actually an ingredient for meals) is more than 4 times cheaper than pea protein powder in my area and roughly the same amount of amino-acids. All the rest of the nutrients (and the amino-acids it has on lower concentrations) gluten doesn’t have and may exist in a pea protein powder supplement, exist in the rest of the options I mentioned :-)

This was a very nice article, both an enjoyable read and informative. Kept the study about endurance athletes on a deficit for later, since I recently went about losing a few kg in exactly the manner they tested.

50g/day is perhaps on the low side, but not unreasonable for a 2000kcal/day person who’s not trying to gain muscle.

Thanks for pointing that out. Yes, I don’t think its unreasonable either, but haven’t even actually tested it on myself.

I like my bread, my sides, my potatoes, my noodles, my rice, and etc. These are all things with protein. Just not enough to get to 100+ figure.

These are all great carb sources, most meals contain them for that reason, not for their protein. Their protein is really negligible. Let’s take a look,

• baked potatoes ~ 1.7g protein in 100g (1.7%)
• Rice ~ 7.5g protein in 100g. (7.5%)
• Bread, I assume common bread based on wheat flour, so roughly 12g of protein per 100g. (12%) This one is not exactly negligible, but it has almost as high carb content (~75g) as rice (~80g).
• Noodles, depends on what they are made of. Wheat flour or rice, you can see the previous bullets.

So what you say makes sense. If you try to get all your protein mostly from such sources, you will load a great deal of carbohydrates, almost certainly more than you need, even as a very active athlete. Regardless of what path you choose though, even without chicken breasts, there are foods with great concentrations of protein.

And I think you are overestimating the amount of protein you need. 100+ figure is fine, but really not necessary, anything close to 80 for the weight you mentioned, especially in a fairly inactive person, should be pretty much fine. Especially if you have days every once in a while that you go well above 100g.

Carbs tho, regardless of size or calories, once you load all your glycogen (which is what carbs are converted to if you are not already full) stores in the muscle tissue and liver, if you are inactive, will become triglycerides (fat). And an average person doesn’t store too much glycogen either, you can estimate it around 500g to get a sense of how excessive carbs can make us both fat and, eventually, sick. One important reason why complete inactivity (especially in the big muscles groups, take a walk, run, lift, jump, dance -use your legs!), makes us fat fast.

I believe you are correct, the most recent study I am aware of is this which points to an upper limit of 1.6g per kg. So even with the upper limit as target, its less than 150g (~129g) for a person of 180lbs. Again, this is the upper limit. As far as I am aware the lower limit is close to 0.8g per kg. Anywhere between these limits seems to be okay for me (an athlete).

edit: “0.8g per kg, not 0.8g total”

also, on a personal note, it sucks how difficult it is to get clean, environmentally friendly protein and fat that doesn’t have milk or soy in it. as someone who does keto, there’s basically no brand out there who does meat substitutes right except for Beyond, which is free of allergens (although i’m sure there are a few people who are allergic to pea protein out there) and doesn’t add a bunch of carbs

It’s sad to have issues with soy :-/ I really love tofu.

I’ve been on keto in the past (for a year or so), mostly as an experiment to test various aspects of it and I learned a lot of things about how insulin and glycogen works (I am a complete nerd on food among other things XD). At some point I re-introduced carbs and started relying heavily on plant based food sources (and what a relief it was to stop worrying about getting out of ketosis when eating plant based foods). But avoiding to spike my insulin levels and avoiding the excessive heights stayed with me as a good thing. So, I try to spike my insulin before or after emptying my muscle glycogen (long bike rides or runs) and avoid spiking it in the last meal of the day, where what I eat can be considered keto. Coconut oil, olive oil are my preferred fats, a few veggies, and a protein source like seitan/tofu/tempeh in a stir fry.

Nuts & seeds are also heavy on protein and fats (but need more care on keto because most of them contain a few carbs too) and really very rich in most of the other nutrients too.

Anyways, I started typing because I wanted to tell you that you might find seitan a good option in order to limit or replace whey. You can prepare it in many different ways (really a matter of taste and variety) and keep it both low on carbs and easily accessible when you are hungry. I usually make a small loaf (remains okay for 5 days -probably even more- or so in the fridge), cooked (so that I can just toss it in a salad if I don’t want to stir fry), and like 3-4 portions of around 30grams of protein. Easy, lazy, tasty, cheap dinner :-)

So, the rock is the guy that carries muscle mass 7 - 10 times what normally fits his frame because of steroids supporting it instead of his gonads, right? Obvious answer then is -no. Not unless you are blasting all kinds of PED.

I am no expert by any means, but my experience (in decades of sports and experimentation) is really close to a study I 've seen in the past, that proposed 0,8 to 1,6-2 grams per kg of bodyweight. I go for the upper limit when I increase activity (especially strength related, instead of endurance), I go for the lower limit when I decrease activity. Been healthy and strong during all this time.

As for food I try to find the least amount possible my body needs to process (why overload my vital organs? is there a good reason?) in order to support my lifestyle (active, and heavy on sports). Going for the most amount possible without a good reason, I consider greedy and harmful for both the environment and the rest of the people. Resources are not limitless.

As for the expensive part, protein exists in cheaper foods too, not everyone relies heavily (or at all) on animal products. Simple (cheap, especially if you prepare them yourself) examples: legumes & beans, seitan, tofu (and all kinds of tofu related products), tempeh. Especially legumes & beans are incredibly rich in most of the other important nutrients too. One might consider vital wheat gluten a protein powder (almost 80grams of protein in 100grams total), even though its lacking a bit in the amino-acids that legumes/beans are full of, comparing the price it has with an actual protein supplement makes it pretty clear what overpriced means.

So in my own paraphrased and cobbled together words, structural color is different from pigment. Pigment is based primarily on the absorption of light and reflection back of some of it, while structural color is based purely on the reflection of light by microscopic structures somehow arranged to wavelengths of light.

Structural color depends on the arrangement (structure) of the organelles that will produce certain effects on the way light travels when it meets them. Color from just pigments depends on the type of pigment which determines which wavelengths will be absorbed from it and which will be reflected. You can have certain structural color from melanosomes that contain pigments positioned in a manner relevant to the observable light properties (which for example will produce blue from a pigment other than blue, mentioned as rare in the video). So, they are different, but they can co-exist (pigmentation & structure that facilitates certain light phenomena) in organelles like melanosomes.

Beautiful subject :-)

I am eating something like 400grams of watermelon as I read this study. My feet hurt a little, its been a long ride, almost 3,5 hours (no snacks) on the bike. 80+ km distance, 1300+ meters of elevation. I keep wondering, does that count as hibernation? Will I become obese until I get 40 (getting close)? Will my (lower than 15% atm) bodyfat increase? Is it only the few grams of fructose in watermelon, or is it sorbitol (produces small fatty acids when eaten in moderation) too? What about lycopene (makes my sperm diagrams look like I am in my 20ies)? Oooof, all those studies, really, make me worry! At least I 'm safe, in the winter there is really no watermelon for poor me that doesn’t shop fruit out of season. Maybe that’s the secret and I don’t get fat? Who knows !!