Determining Effect Of Diet On Metabolism And Weight Loss/Gain Through Data Collection

[Cirion]

Interesting to see the different responses to it.

Also, this may be harder to track, but it'd also be interesting to see if you noticed changes with something like sunbathing. I definitely feel much refreshed and feel a pulse/temp increase if I can get 1 hour in the sun just reading, but I am not keeping my diet the same everyday so it's hard to isolate the effect.

Also, have you considered tracking the effect of light walking? I think in walking, fat is primarily used for energy, which is why I wonder if it can somehow produce a 'fat deficit' the same way one could get by eating ultra-low fat, with the knockon weight loss effects, without cutting carbs/calories.

I am almost certain sunbathing has a factor. I do try to walk out in the sun when I can. I do track both. I don't have any fascinating plots with profound discoveries to show regarding either yet though. I absolutely would love to move to a beach somewhere tho. And it's on my list of things to do, ideally before I retire, but definitely after I retire. ANd I plan to retire young, probably. My financial net worth calculator suggests I can handily retire by age 40 (I'm 32 now). $200k net worth now and growing by the yr. Possibly sooner and bitcoin hits $1 million like some people are suggesting it might. I'm taking a gamble on it with a few thousand dollars to see if I can grow it into a hundred thousand +. That would push my retirement further as early as age 35 =)

 

[Cirion]

Latest plot giving some more telling information

It is quite evident that for me, a very high carb/protein ratio is desired (7-8). This is one explanation as to why high protein days always lower my temps and pulses the next day. Let's say I had 180 gram protein. To get a carb/protein ratio of 7, I'd have to eat 1,260 gram of carbs!! Wow. Welp, maybe time to increase my carbs even beyond 900-1,000 a day LOL

 

[Cirion]

Now here are a couple of good ones.

Look at that relationship to temp and especially pulse. R squared of 0.8275, incredible fit! That's an insanely good fit for such complex data.

 

[Cirion]

More fun! SFA/PUFA:

 

[Cirion]

Fiber seems to directly lower metabolic rate

 

[sladerunner69]

I coincidentally drink the same brand as Ray, just conventional Darigold. Or sometimes Organic Valley, as they taste the best.

I

I am almost certain sunbathing has a factor. I do try to walk out in the sun when I can. I do track both. I don't have any fascinating plots with profound discoveries to show regarding either yet though. I absolutely would love to move to a beach somewhere tho. And it's on my list of things to do, ideally before I retire, but definitely after I retire. ANd I plan to retire young, probably. My financial net worth calculator suggests I can handily retire by age 40 (I'm 32 now). $200k net worth now and growing by the yr. Possibly sooner and bitcoin hits $1 million like some people are suggesting it might. I'm taking a gamble on it with a few thousand dollars to see if I can grow it into a hundred thousand +. That would push my retirement further as early as age 35 =)

What is your target retirement networth, approx.??

 

[Cirion]

What is your target retirement networth, approx.??

Well for me the minimum networth I need is such that I can pull out roughly 25-30k a year. This would allow me to maintain my current lifestyle (after house is paid off). Being conservative and assuming only 5% returns, that would mean 500-600k. I'm probably going to aim for up to 1 mil as a minimum, though, because let's face it, in retirement with increased free time means spending more money probably. I'll see how I feel once I get to 500-600k. My goal is just to get to that asap, and go from there. That way I can reduce my stress about life, because knowing I can quit any day will be quite liberating.

If by that point I've restored my health, I might have a renewed outlook on life and actually might not want to retire. We shall see. Right now I am not where I want to be health wise, so my motivation for things like work is still fairly low.

 

[Cirion]

Tryptophan directly lowers metabolic rate and causes weight gain. Cannot say I'm surprised.

 

[Cirion]

Probably my best fit yet in terms of R squared.

Haidut has spoken many times about Methionine. Here's some pretty solid proof.

 

[postman]

Maybe you've already mentioned it but how do you time your meals? Just regular 3 meals a day with snacks or what? Do you eat a lot of food right before going to bed to wake up warm like that?

 

[Cirion]

Maybe you've already mentioned it but how do you time your meals? Just regular 3 meals a day with snacks or what? Do you eat a lot of food right before going to bed to wake up warm like that?

My quantity of food is pretty high so I honestly do a fair bit of grazing but usually I eat my protein and fats in timed "meals", grazing usually only occurs with carbs. Total # of calories seems to be the key, but yes, I eat a lot before bed typically. As I increase my calories, my nightly awakenings to urinate seem to be less finally. A few days the last week or so I've gone almost 8 hrs without one awakening but I have to eat almost 5000 calories to do that.

 

[postman]

My quantity of food is pretty high so I honestly do a fair bit of grazing but usually I eat my protein and fats in timed "meals", grazing usually only occurs with carbs. Total # of calories seems to be the key, but yes, I eat a lot before bed typically. As I increase my calories, my nightly awakenings to urinate seem to be less finally. A few days the last week or so I've gone almost 8 hrs without one awakening but I have to eat almost 5000 calories to do that.

Interesting, thanks.

 

[corvetteseeker]

@Cirion, what's the simplest way to start generating graphs like this on Google Drive or excel.
What features or tools should I be looking for on there to get started?

 

[Cirion]

@Cirion, what's the simplest way to start generating graphs like this on Google Drive or excel.
What features or tools should I be looking for on there to get started?

I just keep all my data in one spreadsheet and graphs in another worksheet. The data is simple enough, just a top row for headers (for filtering, sorting by parameter), and then each row is a different day with all the food intakes and other things of note that you want to track for that day. You can always add new parameters later (I'm up to like 200 parameters now lol, I add more every day) without screwing up any plots you might make by just inserting new columns in the appropriate location.

Do you have much experience on excel? I have over a decade of experience so to me its second nature. The data entering is pretty simple. If you don't know much, it is good to know how to do simple math to calculate values based upon other cells so you can do things like ratios and percents. For plots I usually just do simple xy scatter, and know how to manipulate the legends and axis, font size, and trendlines are fun to play with too. Once you make the plot, it's done, and it'll dynamically update for new data you enter which is nice. You can also filter data to certain values, like let's say you want to see what data results in weight loss. Filter down to days you lost weight and the plots will update. It's pretty useful.

I haven't used google spreadsheets much, but it's probably basically the same as excel or open office. You don't really need any tools, any math you need to do can be performed directly in the spreadsheet.

 

[corvetteseeker]

Right on man. I'm pretty experienced with Excel but I don't do graphs that often so it sounds like I just need to dive in.

I'm going to mainly track the relation to "morning after" weight with different kinds of foods. It should be interesting!

 

[Cirion]

I'm going to mainly track the relation to "morning after" weight with different kinds of foods. It should be interesting!

Yes, that's how I have been doing it. Then I took it to the next level and did 14 day "morning after" averages. So far weight loss is the most volatile parameter compared to temp and pulses and the correlations have been a lot more challenging to determine. That said, if you dig deep into the plots, you can tell that ultimately the parameters that result in improved metabolism (temps and pulses) also result in improved weight loss as that has been the case for me. I find it is more valuable to chase better temps and pulses than it is to chase weight loss, because my experience has shown me that temps and pulses result in automatic weight loss, whereas you can sometimes lose weight but have bad temps and pulses. My ultimate goal is health, not weight loss, but I know that weight loss will automatically follow health, so that's why metabolism and not weight loss is my main goal. But as you can see, I absolutely do plot it, I like to see how weight loss stacks up right next to pulse/temps (metabolism). It helps to remind me that I'm doing the right thing.

 

[corvetteseeker]

Yeah, I totally respect what you're saying.

The reason I'm taking a different approach is that I am comfortable that all of the foods I am eating are pro-metabolic, pro Peat, etc and I am using my energy during the day to refine my food choices further. So if these foods also result in weight loss, I now have pro metabolic, pro Peat foods that give good energy and result in weight loss.

That's good enough for me.

Also, taking temps and pulse is one extra monitoring step that could discourage me from going through the hassle whereas I'm in a good routine right now getting my weight and tracking all my food and energy diligently so I figure 80% of ideal tracking long term is better than 100% of ideal tracking which results in me giving up because of effort needed. I'm sort of taking the Tim Ferriss "Minimum Effective Dose" approach.

 

[Cirion]

Yeah fair enough. It's true generally the foods that make you feel bad are probably the ones that are anti metabolic and vice versa.

On that note, I think I'm gonna give up gelatin/jello or at least cut its intake by 50%. It's strange, my plots suggest gelatin is helpful at 36 gram dose, but this dose seems to be bloating in actuality. Perhaps even 14 day averages are not enough to be fully conclusive of some parameters, or it's an example of correlation but not causation if you will. Probably I won't get the complete picture until I get to 1 month+ timeframes, to completely wash out the noise in the data.

Just a small batch of jello this evening (50% of my normal amount) increased my body weight by 1.2 lb instantly, whereas eating highly dense carbs does not increase my weight at all (even when its like a lb of carbs).

 

[corvetteseeker]

Isn't that so frustrating? I was loving homemade jello but recently cut out all added liquids except for some coffee because of my chronic urination and I'm already seeing a benefit. But it really stinks.

 

[Cirion]

Macros seem to be strongly correlated to waking pulse.