LOL @ the guy who’s written e-books saying he’s “not promoting it”
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Because they know I’ve done health experiments and research… I’m also an amateur competitive eater, so it comes up when people ask me what the fuck I’m doing eating four pounds of raw ground beef…
There’s a big difference writing an ebook and marketing it. It’s there and yeah, I think it’s an interesting read… The book itself mostly discusses the science an theories - not recommendations.
But you said you’re experiments have never been submitted for peer-review or published…
- How do they know about them?
- What gave them the idea that YOU were the guy they should talk to instead of, I don’t know, a doctor?
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The very first week I started my experiments I went to my brothers wedding. I was the guy eating nothing but potatoes. Word got around…
Later that month, I am going to a strip club with a couple buddies. I have a pot of mashed potatoes in the car because I have to eat 7 1/2 pounds a day. They kind of saw.
Why ask me? I never asked… I think it’s because they believe I could give them some valuable advice.
How?
So let me get this right. A bunch of people notice you’re eating a lot of potatoes. Next thing you know, they are asking you for advice on how to reduce A1-C and fasting glucose levels.
Is that the gist of how this went down?
Once again, help me understand these strange events. They thought you could be helpful because of all of the potatoes you ate?
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Well, when people ask why the fuck are you eating nothing but potatoes? I would tell them I was doing health experiments. Not to mention that I have friends I actually do tell that I’m doing health experiments. When you’re in your office and you bring in several bunches of bananas to eat for lunch, people tend to ask what the fuck you’re doing. I told them. Not that they should ask me for advice, but they know I’m analyzing my own blood work. I got a lot of questions when I was doing eggs. I can’t tell you how many times I went to buy 20 dozen eggs and people I asked why are you buying so many eggs? Then do usually added that eggs don’t raise cholesterol. Because somehow people who believe that need to share it with the world.
All of the above start a conversation. After a while someone might ask for advice.
But you never promoted yourself as an expert?
But you sure seem eager to give it, and to charge people money for your ideas. I’m guessing you never said anything like “I’m not an expert. This isn’t real research. I’m just doing crazy shit to myself and measuring some stuff. There are other people you should go to for advice.”
You really can’t see the glaring ethical problems with your behavior?
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In an ideal world, people would ask for advice from someone who has actually achieved what they are seeking.
In this world, they ask for advice from the dude doing weird enough shit to get noticed,
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I achieved what I was seeking. There’s still plenty more questions I feel are unanswered, but I knocked out a bunch…
You never read the book then… That’s actually how it starts… I will claim all day though that many published studies are BS, but that’s due to how academia is set up now… John Oliver even did a segment on it…
On that we agree.
I’ve told you repeatedly you’re not getting four dollars from me. Nice try though. Do you carry a tip jar around with you too?
Shine on, you crazy diamond!
“The more I looked the less it seemed any theory on diet had proper studies with causal, conclusive evidence. Not only that, but the direction the health of the nation is heading in serves as evidence people are taking the wrong advice. Newton started with an apple falling on his head – observational evidence – so I decided I would start observing and wait until something hit me on the head.
The world provided clues but I didn’t have much clinical evidence. While there are a plethora of health studies available most of them rely on self-reported data with poorly controlled variables that produce conflicting results to other studies. How could I tell which studies were the valid results if any? I decided I would have to start experiments from the ground up. I forgot everything I thought I knew, I isolated all the variables, and I just watched what happened. The experiments started without a hypothesis because my goal wasn’t to validate an existing theory but rather to learn and produce new theories. The Health Satori Project is my experimentation and research this journey has led me on.”
As a card-carrying member of the academic community with a PhD and (as of today) 72 peer reviewed publications on subjects such as diabetes, peripheral vascular disease, maternal/fetal medicine, oncology, valvular heart disease, and cardiac arrhythmia among other things, you’ll find few people more familiar with or more critical of the sheer volume of meaningless or outright deceptive research that gets published in second- and third-tier journals than yours truly.
That doesn’t make your work valid.
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Unlike ActivitiesGuy, I dropped out of college. You’ve got me sold!
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Never said it does… In fact one could argue that studies as a whole fail because the participants aren’t categorized correctly. While some effects may be more widely applicable, others probably not. Which are which?
I started with potatos because I felt it the safest. The Irish predominantly ate the potato for 300 years and it was almost the exclusive diet of the poor. Figured it was a safe bet… I got sick by the second week and my cholesterol dropped below reference ranges.
My wife is vegan and eats relatively poor. Not typical American diet bad, but a lot of processed foods. Her HDL is in the 90’s. Mine never got more than low 70’s even with 3 dozen eggs a day.
The only explanation here is individual variance.
Here’s my last two cents. I actually think conceptually what you are doing is rather interesting. IMO, you’re getting a lot of hate, on this formun anyway, for the way you’re packaging it… Just a thought. I personally would not give advice, or if I were asked would just say “I wanted to see what happened if I only ate raw meat, or only potatos, or only bananas, and here’s what happened to me…”. Write an ebook dedicated to this. Don’t call it the Health Satori project. Call it One Crazy Guys Experience Eating Weird Stuff. Dedicate whole chapters to two months of only bananas, two months of only potatoes, two months of only breast milk, two months of eggs and raw meat, two months of 36 hour+ fasts, or whatever else… include before and after photos, lab results… that shit might be interesting and I might read it (especially the breast milk one). It’s sort of a Supersize ripoff, but still, you could make it a little more broad. Or even do an ongoing blog / YouTube channel. You might actually make a little coin this way. With said coin, you could get an actual degree and broaden your experience by actually doing controlled experiments (taking into account the problems you believe exist with such experiments and correcting for them) and then at that point, actually be an expert with significant, valid experience, that would be more difficult to challenge.
I’m saying this with sincerity and not trying to be a dick. Your approach here doesn’t seem to be working, and your ebook doesn’t seem to be selling like hot cakes, so maybe you should learn from this self-experiment and tweak your methods. It’s in our nature these days to question everything and everybody (many peoples anyway). One way to help support your arguement is with valid credentials, valid experience, valid results, etc. You don’t honestly have this yet - which is fine. That doesn’t mean you can’t get it. Put the cart behind the horse. If you really want to help people, you are a noble person. If you want to just make a buck, I wouldn’t necessarily call you any less noble, but I’m more apt to call bullshit on anything you do (generalizing here - I don’t mean YOU when I say you).
Let me use myself as an example similar to what you’re doing. I’ve had some general success losing some weight and getting stronger in my late 30’s / early 40’s (nothing amazing). I’m about the furthest thing from an expert however - read a lot and try different things (similar to you). The only ‘advice’ I give people (for example who haven’t seen me in awhile and notice I’m in better shape) is that there are a lot of resources out there I wish I would have taped into earlier, followed by being consistent typically works for many people. That’s about it. I’ve tried many different things - high carb, low carb, keto, fasting, excessive protein, moderate protein, fuck tons of cardio, no cardio, different splits, compound only lifting, circuit training, bike riding, blah, blah, blah. All I know now is what works better for me and what is more sustainable. Let’s cut a little deeper and look at fasting - I personally didn’t like it. It totally worked in many ways - I had great success from it in terms of weight loss. On the other hand, it negatively affected my lifting, my mood, and it wasn’t sustainable for me.
If I was super passionate this stuff beyond my current interest level and wanted to make money, I would get training certifications, or get actual degrees in nutrition, or similar things. Seeing you argue science with a phd is a little silly. It would be like me arguing with Dr John Rusin about how deadlifts and farmers walks are all you need to build traps, because hey, my traps a bigger than they used to be. Right or wrong, I would perhaps, look a little foolish.
Back to the fasting example for a moment - in my opinion, if your diet strategy is so odd that people are continuously asking about it, it may not be sustainable. Not being able to have a piece of birthday cake at my kids party because I’m fasting - dumb. Wasting a free meal because I’m fasting - dumb. And having to constantly tell people about it, man, you just end up looking like an idiot, special snowflake. Sort of like explaining why you’re eating mash potatoes in the parking lot of a strip club.
TLDR: you seem very passionate about this subject. Evaluate ways to use this passion effectively.
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There’s a lot of great advice there… As might be obvious, I do have general issues communicating my ideas. I think a lot differently than most, so it makes it hard at times to, as you say, effectively package those ideas. And this particular forum is not the place to go with what I’m doing… That being said I came here to get grilled… I was personally hoping for more studies and science to be presented not just the “you’re an idiot doing an experiment of one” retort.
Ironically I wrote the books because that’s my most effective form of communication. It’s pouring over how I say things, how they’re put in context, the flow, thinking of the the audience perspective, etc. I am fully aware that when I just spit out what I’m thinking it’s usually rather ineffective. I’m lexdysic too. When I think I often put things backwards to the logic flow most people follow, so when writing I often have to reverse the order of my sentences in paragraphs.
It’s on Amazon simply to share my ideas. I actually give the book away for free most the time (free promotions). The price is simply an attempt to say I think it’s a good read, but no I don’t really make money from it nor is that a goal.
At any rate, I’ll still stand behind my ideas being plausible and being able to help others. Namely I want people to start looking at actual studies and numbers. My book covers all my lab work, DXA scans, BMR results etc. I talk about the studies and finding most don’t like Kleiber’s law and how/why it may be deviating for humans.
I know some may call it ethically irresponsible to offer health advice without credentials, but fact of the matter is most people get their health advice from friends and the Internet. You see a friend who lost a bunch of weight, “So what diet are you doing?” I think my advice beats that type of advice…
For T2DM the scientifically proven most effective way to reverse it is severe caloric deprivation. And that’s backed up by published studies not my own. But, many people suggest that fasting and caloric deprivation can have harmful effects; however, that’s also scientifically proven to be bullshit. If you look at success of “extreme” diets, alternate day fasting studies, and BMR studies there is zero evidence of long term impact.
Now for the average person… I’ve got a coworker with T2DM, respects me as a professional, very interested in all the experiments, never tried severe caloric deprivation even after pointing out the studies and science. It’s too extreme… Most find what I have experimented on entertaining, but don’t consider deviating from anything mainstream.
So my goal is 1) learn for myself; 2) try to engage in science based discussions on the material. I’d love for an actual researcher to pick up some of these studies for more than n=1; however, I believe the diets needed to properly control and isolate the variables are beyond what any mass number of people would do.
I’ve talked to several researchers and professors along the way. Ironically someone recently brought up the “Twinkie Diet” and Dr Haub was a person I reached out to years ago. But outside of just having a conversation about the material I’ve accepted it for what it is.
I have no clue where to end this so I’m going to abruptly.
TLDR; I admit I suck communicating ideas but I do it best in formal writing which is why I wrote the book. I have admitted defeat. Blah blah blah, I’m an idiot.
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You still haven’t answered this question.
Have any of your experiments actually yielded a meaningful improvement in health or fitness that would make someone who is basically healthy WANT to listen to you?