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Machine Learning meets ketosis: how to effectively lose weight
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Extending the fasting time vs. eating fewer calories #14

Closed thenickcox closed 8 years ago

thenickcox commented 8 years ago

In the docs, you mention

Extending the fasting time was one major accelerator of weight-loss rate.

You also state

Sleeping longer consistently appeared as the #1 factor in losing weight.…It took me a while to figure out the sleep part. When we sleep we don't eat. It is that simple.…Our sleeping time is our longest daily fasting time.

I was surprised by your conclusion and, after thinking about it, thought, "That makes sense."

After thinking about it some more, I'm curious how you determined longer fasting was a factor in and of itself. There is more than one variable there, it seems. If you skip breakfast, you're not just fasting longer; assuming you ate at roughly the same rate throughout the day on a day you didn't skip breakfast, you're also eating fewer calories. That is, if you normally ate 3 x 800 calorie meals, but then switched to sleeping longer and skipping breakfast, then ate 2 x 800 calorie meals, you're also cutting your calorie consumption by ~33%.

Did you eat an amount of calories equal to what you would've eaten during breakfast throughout the day to be more confident that it was fasting time alone that lead to the weight loss?

If so, that would be both a surprising and valuable insight, and worth mentioning!

arielf commented 8 years ago

@thenickcox

  1. You're probably right on all counts :)
  2. The original data-set I played with here, is pretty old (over 3 years) and I simply didn't have the time/chance to redo the research better. I can't answer your specific answers since I don't really remember these details. I decided to publish something which is very far from perfect, and has multiple issues, in order to share what I learned, encourage questions, and to give others a chance to improve on it.
  3. I would have definitely tacked this differently, given a second chance. In particular, I would try to get more accurate data (more accurate calorie count, BMI measurements, more accurate scales, to name a few)