Instigator / Pro
45
1432
rating
11
debates
22.73%
won
Topic
#1724

Diet Battle

Status
Finished

The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.

Winner & statistics
Better arguments
21
0
Better sources
14
0
Better legibility
7
6
Better conduct
3
6

After 7 votes and with 33 points ahead, the winner is...

Singularity
Parameters
Publication date
Last updated date
Type
Standard
Number of rounds
4
Time for argument
Three days
Max argument characters
30,000
Voting period
Two weeks
Point system
Multiple criterions
Voting system
Open
Contender / Con
12
1697
rating
556
debates
68.17%
won
Description

We will both write a prescribed general diet in round one, and then use the following 3 rounds to defend the diet as the best one offered. First round is 30,000 characters 2nd round 10000. Third round 5000 and final round 2500 characters. I advocate for a fasting approach, a pill regimen that involves rapamycin and metformin and using optimal nutrition.

Round 1
Pro
#1
I will give my arguments defending this diet in the following rounds, and I will waste a few characters talking to my opponent. Thanks RationalMadman in accepting this debate. I want to take this time to also remind you of the structure you agreed to by accepting this debate. Please read the description to understand it. I actually did not have as much time to write this as I thought I would either so unfortunately I am probably giving Mr. Madman a 20,000 character advantage, but I look forward to reading his diet plan anyway and hopefully we all learn from it.




I advocate for a diet regimen that increases the length of a person’s life so they can live long enough to see the technological changes that will help them to live even longer. The diet regimen is part of a bigger regimen to increase your life span. The plan offered here will be 3 diet prongs that will allow everyone who adopts it to live a longer life, barring any unforeseen circumstances.

Prongs

1. Eating Choices
2. Supplements/drugs
3. Eating Style

Before we get further, let’s define diet. I don’t want some silly rhetorical debate to distract from the essence of what this debate is supposed to be about. I do want the definition to have more of a descriptive than prescriptive role, because of the naturally ambiguous way that language works.

Definitions

1. “the usual food and drink consumed by an organism (person or animal)” [1]

DIET APPROACH

As humans we have a limited maximum lifespan of about 120 years.[2] Our average lifespan is about 80 years. Technology is constantly advancing at an exponential rate, which includes health technology. The concerning part is that we can’t know with 100% certainty when a cure for aging will occur. Most likely it will happen in our lifetime. [3] So we must prioritize adopting a diet that will keep us around as long as possible so we can reach the point where technology can stop and even reverse aging.

The younger we are, the more conservative we can afford to be with our diet approaches to extending our lifespans as much as possible. As we age, we need to be more aggressive moving over to really paying attention to and adopting bleeding edge breakthroughs. This is because the older we are, the more we are at risk of dying without being present for the health care advances that will stop and reverse aging.

The fact that we can be more conservative with our approaches at a younger age, does not mean we can afford to be conservative, with our approach to fighting off death. Since we don’t know when these technologies will occur, only that they will occur. Most likely in our lifetime, but there is no guarantee. All we know, is that the longer we live, the more likely it is to occur in our lifetime.


PRONG 1 Choices

The whole point of the diet I am laying out is to make it practical. If we aimed for optimal, it will usually fail us because as humans optimal approaches are theoretical and very hard to implement, so we need to lean towards systems that take into account our psychology and how well we will be able to personally implement such systems. The point of systems is not to achieve would is optimal, but is to create the most practical approach to moving us closer to optimal nutrition.

Being overweight leads to a bunch of health problems. Problems such as cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart problems, stroke, kidney disease and many many more. [4]

Other than overeating, and inactivity. One of the leading causes of obesity is a diet high in simple carbs.[5] Simple carbs are usually full of empty calories and have been known to be addictive, cause heart disease and diabetes as well. [6]

The Main problem with simple carbs is it is not a nutrient dense food. If we are going to consume fewer calories, we need to focus on nutrient dense foods, to meet the recommended daily allowance of certain vitamins and minerals.

I recommend people start by just eliminating any product with sugar by any of the names it goes by. Before you buy and item in the grocery store. If it says sugar, high fructose corn syrup or really any name you don’t recognize, just don’t buy or consume it. I would also avoid fruit juices.

The next way to easily eliminate simple carbs, is to reduce the amount of flour in your diet. Look at the first 3 ingredients on your product label. If it says flour, don’t even think about consuming it. I am going to give you a list of rules to follow along to at the bottom of this paper to make it easy. Closely follow these rules for a year before you start adding onto them, to bring your diet close to the optimal range, or if you prefer just follow this as outlined and you will already have added several years to your life.

This is just the beginning. This is the bare minimum white belt stuff. To get your next belt you need to implement new things you learn about your body and nutrition on a gradual basis, so the new habits stick. Ideally you look at some charts on nutritional density after you do the white belt phase for a year and swap your foods with similar but more nutrient dense foods, while eliminating the worst ones completely.

PRONG 2 Supplements/Drugs

If you just sit back and eat the right things, you might not maximize your ability to live as long as possible. Drug use is not all bad, and I am going to advocate for some drug use right now, as all responsible adults should.

Here are your new rule to add to the list at the bottom of this page.

4. Take Metformin daily
5. Pulse dose Rapamycin
6. Take a daily omega 3 fatty acid supplement

Metformin

Metformin is an extremely safe drug. It has been used to tread diabetes since the 1940s and is now the most common drug to be chosen to treat diabetes. Up to a 2000 mg dose has been proven to be safe on humans.[7] So there is no reason to think to be overly cautious about taking this drug.

Besides being safe it is proven effective at keeping people alive. Lifeextension.com says;

roundworms treated with metformin have higher AMPK activity and live about 20% longer than untreated control animals. Mice treated with metformin have been found to live nearly 6% longer than controls.And most impressively, diabetics taking metformin were shown to live 15% longer than healthy individuals without diabetes!”

Metformin has been proven to reduce your chances of getting, heart disease, cancer or fat. It is truly a miracle drug everyone should take. Everyone who doesn’t fall into the population of people who normally have adverse effects from it anyway.

I would recommend doctor hopping for a while until you find one willing to prescribe you metformin, and discuss the dosages you would need to take.

Rapamycin

The reccommended way to take Rapamycin is

Rapamycin taken in a pulsatile way. Suppress mTor1 inhibition without mTor2 inhibition.
2-5 mg every 5 to 7 days is probably the dosage sweet spot.”[8]

The thing to know about MTOR1 is that it causes the production of senescent cells. These are cells that cause damaging of tissues and leads to diseases. Taking Rapamycin can prevent this destruction. [9] In short Rapamycin dramatically slows a lot of the aging processes. It prevents cancer, heart disease, diabetes and many other diseases that come from the aging process. This should be another tool to keep you from dying for as long as possible.

Omega 3

Dr. William Li says;

A 16-year study of 2,692 senior adults done in 2013 by the Harvard School of Public Health and the University of Washington concluded that a diet rich in fish actually predicts longevity…. participants whose blood showed high levels of omega-3 PUFAs lived an average of 2.2 years longer than those without high levels of PUFAs in their blood. High levels of blood omega-3s were also associated with a 27 percent decrease in overall mortality risk, and with a 35 percent decrease in the risk of mortality from heart disease …..
One specific omega-3 — known as DHA — was associated with a 40 percent decreased risk of dying from coronary heart disease, and was …. associated with a reduction in death caused by arrhythmia (irregular heartbeat).”[10]

This is a no brainer. Find a reputable supplement seller and buy some omega 3 fatty acid, to extend your life expectancy.

PRONG 3 Style

7. Incorporate regular fasting into your routine

Calorie restricted diets that decrease the calorie intake of animal test subjects to 25-50 percent below the recommended daily intake increased the years of every animal it was tested on rats, mice fruit flies etc. Humans are harder to test this on, because it would take a 100 year study, but the health benefits that appeared in the animals tested who had an extended lifespan, also seem to work on humans. Test subjects had decreased body mass and better levels of glucose, triglycerides and cholesterol, along with other factors”[11]

A lot of people on this extreme form of calorie restriction find it torturous. A lot of people criticize it as giving you a longer lifespan while simultaneously making you wish you could die sooner. The good news is that the same benefits from calorie restriction also seem to happen to people who adopt a fasting or fasting mimicking diet. Dr. Longo recommends eating a 500 calorie a day diet, 5 days a month, but honestly fasting just seems much easier for me.

I suggest you experiment with a few things to see how you can incorporate fasting into your life. Here are a few suggestions you can use.

1. Warrior Diet

With this fasting protocol, you pick a 4 hour window of every day and just eat with-in that window.

2. OMAD diet

You eat one meal every single day and stop.

3. Every Other day diet

You only eat every other day

4. intermittent fasting

All of the above, qualify for this title, but I like to reserve it just for taking a few days off a week from eating. Maybe Tuesday and Thursday.

Whatever you do, just do something, with one small caveat. If you are prone to eating disorders, I would advise not doing any sort of fasting protocol, but other than that any healthy adult should be fine with some occasional and routine fasting. Personally, I do the warrior diet, because I have a pretty intense workout regimen, but to each his own.

Cage your inner Fat Person

I must warn anyone with an eating disorder not to take the following advice. I think people who have or who have had or who are susceptible to developing an eating disorder should probably avoid these suggestions. The reason I say this, is because they often use these very same techniques but for unhealthy ends.

Psychological splitting is a technique that can be and often is used to break bad habits and start new ones. I read a book titled “Never Binge Again” by Glenn Livingston and it has truly helped me get my eating on track. Below is an Amazon review that sums up the book nicely. Take the advice in the review and immediately apply it.


Never Binge Again," by Glenn Livingston, is a unique conceptualization of the inner struggle between eating the way one impulsively wants to eat in the moment vs eating the way you know you want to (for good health, weight management, etc.). Three of the main ideas he presents have a basis in science/current thinking. Firstly, there is a more primitive part of your brain craves more and more starches or sugar, for example, when you know that you are no longer hungry. Secondly, people are not their thoughts. This is a tenet of mindfulness/meditation. To illustrate this, if you sit and examine how your mind wanders and what it "says," how can these thoughts be "you," since you are outside of them enough to examine and observe them? It this sense, it's not truly "us" with the out-of-control desires and disordered thoughts. Lastly, it is scientifically true that if you totally reject cravings, they eventually go away. Giving into cravings only makes them stronger, which is why it’s so important to NEVER do so.

What Glenn asks is that you label all "mid-brain" thoughts (the ones demanding excess food) as "the pig" (or whatever deprecating term you prefer). You disparage any thoughts coming from "the pig," and only listen to your "higher brain." It may seem like the author is telling people to be down on themselves, but this is not the case: he teaches that the part of you that wants to do all the disordered eating isn't really you at all. There is no self-hatred in this book. Glenn points out, and quite correctly, that we cannot “love” this part of our brain into thinness. The fact is, the desire to overeat or binge, when it comes on, is powerful, and saying yes to it can feel like we are showing ourselves love. But truly loving ourselves means making good choices for our future and saying “no” to disordered eating, even though it feels emotionally (and sometimes even physically) painful.”[12]
That was “Amazon Addict’s” Review which starts us on the right path by telling us to label our inner fat guy. Give the demon a name, so we can tame him. After this you create a food plan, which I have given you the beginning stage of below. These rules give you a good line in the sand, because your inner pig will try to trick you by asking you to make on the spot choices and justifying it by implanting thoughts in your head like “Well just one bite won’t hurt”, or “Can’t you make an exception for birthday parties”. Get this psychological trick down, like me and implementing this plan will be no problem.


Rules

1. No sugar
2. No flour
3. No fruit Juices
4. Take Metformin daily
5. Pulse dose Rapamycin
6. Take a daily omega 3 fatty acid supplement
7. Incorporate regular fasting into your routine

sources

1. https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/diet
2. https://www.aish.com/atr/120-Year-Lifespan.html
3. https://www.debateart.com/debates/1719/radical-life-extension-is-more-likely-than-not-in-our-lifetime
4. https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/weight-management/health-risks-overweight
5. https://www.medicinenet.com/obesity_weight_loss/article.htm
6. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/318615.php#simple-carbs-can-be-detrimental-to-your-health-
7. https://www.lifeextension.com/magazine/2017/4/metformin-slashes-cancer-risks
8. https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/05/peter-attia-has-a-clinician-approach-to-longevity-and-discusses-rapamycin-dosage.html
9. https://rapamycintherapy.com
10. https://drwilliamli.com/fish-key-to-longevity/
11. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-hunger-gains-extreme-calorie-restriction-diet-shows-anti-aging-results/
12. https://www.amazon.com/Never-Binge-Again-Permanently-Overeating/product-reviews/151516294X/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_paging_btm_next_2?ie=UTF8&reviewerType=all_reviews&pageNumber=2


Con
#2
Forfeited
Round 2
Pro
#3
I would still like to stick with the prescribed character limit if con continues. My suggestion is that if he forfeits every round than leave the debate a tie, if con does not object to that. 
Con
#4
I have a good enough diet but I got sick IRL and busy so couldn't attend to this debate in time. 
Round 3
Pro
#5
understandable, stuff happens
Con
#6
My main angle was going to be that it's not just about lasting long, but enjoying life while you last. I'd higlight significant social isolation and lack of enjoyment in life that comes from removing the entire element of taste and texture involved with food and also Kritik there being any 'right amount' for a human, especially when difference in genetic disposition towards nutritional processing, size, lifestyle and such will keep meaning what is healthy to one is the unhealthy dosage to the next person to take the same pill.

I'd basically make an individualist counterangle that would generalise what is optimal and prove that the 'best diet' doesn't exist and then work with seeking the most sustainable one to enjoy life with.
Round 4
Pro
#7
I'd definitely agree that diet is a very individual thing. I would begin with some sort of easy frame work like the one I suggested and then make adjustments based on your own needs as you experiment and learn new things about yourself and proper diet.
Con
#8
That's not true. I pity you for the life you lead and you pity me for this defeat I take (even though you offered me a tie). You must be ready to seize the day, this is my defeat and I don't want to be in your debt, you are someone I barely know.

I admit defeat, yet I enjoy my diet more.