So Matt walks into a bar....

I own a fitbit watch, a Motiv ring, a withings scale, a withings blood pressure cuff, a Thermo thermometer. ABSTRACT. All of my personal fitness trackers generate low variability data series. When a data series doesn't change day to day, there is no information to react to, at least in the short run. These data series are driven by other low variability series, name my lifestyle (what my various, slow to change habits are). Only the HR monitor has a good deal of daily variability, which is mostly only useful if you are actively training for a race or something. But when a health tracker catches something, it could be really important. So far, most important catch was that my BP was too high. Not high enough that a doctor cares-- they got patients with BP 180+, so my "yellow zone" BP is not a big deal for them. But for me, this is pre-hypertension, something I will have to pay attention to. Other people, but not me, have reported getting early warnings from their he...

A food stamp diet is eating on a crazy limited budget for a week or a month to gain first hand impression of what it is like to be poor. The hypothesis is that if you try it, you will find out that the food stamp allowance is only enough food to be chronically underfed & hungry most days and some days completely out of food. Regular Rules (I'm not going to follow these unmodified) - Buy ingredients at start of week. - You can use all your pre-existing house hold gear. You can use salt and pepper. - You can't use any other pre-existing food you have. - If you run out of food at the end of the week, you fast. You might be eating on a daily basis a number of calories that makes you technically malnourished. - You can drink unlimited water & don't have to drink water contaminated with raw sewage and lead like the poor do. Lets just get people knee jerk reactions out of the way: - Being poor isn't just eating too little, it also means being low on human ca...

I finished! On fifth day I discovered I'd been eating 90 calories too few for my weight. The FMD's patent has a chart with recommended calories & weight. If you are using a recipe set from the internet, make sure you do something to adjust for weight. I added 1/2 oz of walnuts to my day. I figured the magic of this diet comes from being low protein & high fat, so walnuts are least likely to mess with the ratios. Also on 3rd round, I now firmly understand that if you buy anything in grocery store sizes for a recipe set, you will have enough for five days of cooking. So, say if you buy cabbage for a single cabbage recipe, you will have enough cabbage to eat cabbage recipes for all 5 days of a FMD. So when you pick recipes, pick recipes from 2 "families", say carrot recipes and bok choy recipes. Or eggplant recipes & spinach recipes. I lost between 8 and 10lbs, about double what I should have. I don't know why, possibly because I was 90 calories shor...

There are a lot of skepticism about fasting & skepticism is a good thing. It is possible this protocol doesn't pan out- lots of great ideas didn't pan out - transfat margarine, protocols that are probably based on really bad data (carnivorism). So what are the FMD immediate benefits: - If you are cooking from scratch, it is cheap, you probably save $50-$100 provided you don't waste any left over ingredients. - The prolon boxes are $50-$60 a day, so about the cost of eating all your meals at a restaurant for five days. If you use the prolon boxes, you don't have to cook much for 5 days - It is an amusing activity involving planning, cooking, and exercising self control - When I am fasting, I'm so hungry that the food that I eat is the most delicious food & incredibly enjoyable. This is one point in favor of a FMD over water fast. When I'm fasting, I drink water and tea when I feel hungry, but it isn't the most delicious tea I've ever ha...

ABSTRACT. I've been doing health related experiments my whole life. FMD is a continuation. The goal is to not die, not just out of a fear of death, but because I have dependents who need me to live well past 60 and to be healthy enough to work well past 60. Well, it starts back when I was in my teens and started reading books at random at the library. I ended up in the health section and found it a strangely compelling genre because unlike fiction, it had actionable advice. So starts a lifetime of health hacking. First major experiment - vegetarianism. A read a book that made a solid case about the environmental, ethical and health case for vegetarianism. I signed up as a vegetarian, aka cheesatarian, because I could find cheese & egg dishes my family made & restaurants served. I spend the next 20+ years eating too much dairy, bounded only by some low-fat protocols I followed. Second major experiment - low fat. This was highly compatible with vegetarianism. It...

I'm doing a Fasting Mimicking Diet again. This my 3rd. I've been too cheap to buy a Prolon kit, so I'm using Enid Kassner's recipe set . I'm starting late because it is hard to do the cooking in addition to regular cooking during the week. I couldn't start any later because I don't want to end fast exactly on Thanksgiving. I'll have 24 hours of regular eating to prepare for the big lunch on Thanksgiving. Yesterday I did my last run until after the fast. I'm training for a 5K in 6 months. I'll just be doing my unavoidable walking for exercise. My weight is 148 or so, so I should survive losing the 5+ lbs. The first FMD I did, I went from 150 to 145, and mostly felt fine. The second FMD I did, I went from like 145 to under 140 and I was ravenously hungry all the time. After that one, my new rule is I don't fast if I'm not at or near 150 lbs. My cheats enumerated: * Swapping sesame for walnut, my knee hurts from running & sesa...