In the excellent BBC series about the history of design (The Genius of Design), chairs played a large role. Perhaps a fifth of the show is about them, far more than any other product. Yet I rarely use them and own only a few. I sit while socializing but otherwise usually work reclining (on a bed or in a rocking chair) or standing up. Long ago I discovered that if I stand a lot I sleep better. Since then I’ve spent a lot of time on my feet for someone whose job doesn’t require it.
My self-experimental discoveries led me to avoid about 99% of the food sold in a typical store — granola, cake mixes, flour, rice, breakfast cereals, and so on. Most of what I avoid is carbohydrate. Just as we are pushed to sit in chairs, we are pushed to eat carbohydrate. I don’t think carbs cause obesity — it’s more complicated than that — but they raise blood sugar (making diabetes more likely) and rarely supply essential fats. They are also poor source of microbes, which I’m sure you need to eat.
Over the last 30 years, designers have focused more and more on sustainability, “green design”, and so on. I think of this as the second half of the industrial revolution — cleaning up the mess. As far as I can tell, designers have not yet started to understand that we need certain things from our environment just as we need certain things from our food. Here are some things I think we need from our environment: 1. Sunlight in the morning. Some buildings have daylighting to save energy. 2. Faces in the morning. 3. Absence of fluorescent lights at night. 4. Movement throughout the day. 5. An hour of walking per day.
Great heading for your post, Seth. The following may be of interest:
Sedentary Physiology Part 2 — Can Sitting Too Much Kill You?
https://blogs.plos.org/obesitypanacea/2010/12/07/sedentary-physiology-part-2-can-sitting-too-much-kill-you/
Seth –
I’m familiar with your learned calorie association theory and have lost a significant amount of weight as a result, but am curious your take on why so many others have been successful through only eating a low carb diet?
Why do you recommend daily movement and an hour of walking? Also why walking as opposed to other aerobic exercises?
TIA
I think low carb diets work because they push people away from foods that have (a) the same flavor each time and (b) lots of quickly-digested calories. Foods that have the same flavor each time are usually food in packages or fast food. And those foods are usually high in carbs: soft drinks, candy, french fries. I have avoided such foods for a long time. When I went from medium carb to low carb I lost no weight. When I stopped eating foods that taste the same each time, not worrying about carbs, I quickly lost weight.
I recommend an hour of walking daily because only that caused my fasting blood sugar to be normal. (I posted maybe a year ago about this.) Aerobic exercise every few days did not. Movement throughout the day because it’s pretty clear our bodies are not meant to sit all day. Nor stand in one place all day.
what was interesting to me after going to SLD (lost 20 pounds in half a year after 10 in a year with a willpower diet, stopped gradually six months ago and have gained
funny, my last content was truncated. i’ll try again
what was interesting to me after going to SLD (lost 20 pounds in half a year after 10 in a year with a willpower diet, stopped gradually six months ago and have gained
i think my last content was truncated because i used a less than sign. trying again. if this works, please delete the above?
what was interesting to me after going to SLD (lost 20 pounds in half a year after 10 in a year with a willpower diet, stopped gradually six months ago and have gained less than 1 pound since then) was that when i went on there was an immediate change in how my body felt after eating carbs. prior to starting, i felt kind of wishy-washy after carbs — couldn’t tell whether i was hungry, felt a craving for more, so hard to stop. after just a short time on SLD — maybe it was immediate — carbs made me feel full. ambiguity about being hungry or not hungry was gone, and cravings were much, much lower. that’s persisted more or less until now. and it’s PLEASANT not having so many cravings.