Sleep because it would be like extending your life by 20 years
this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2024
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Would You Rather
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I eat so poorly that being able to eat whatever I want and it be nutritionally perfect would probably also extend my life 20 years.
The difference is that the food one would extend your life by 20 years at the high end, and the sleep one would extend your life by 20 years spread across time starting now.
That's a good point, but I'd rather have better health immediately than an extra 7 hours a day of being out of shape
Damn, this is such a good question. I hate the food part of life and have longed for a solution but at the same time I don't know if in ever fully rested.
Yup! 7 extra hours of the same challenges...great, now I have more time to work on taking better care of myself. Or I can just instantly be healthier.
You can get the benefits of good nutrition through a conscientious diet. You cannot reduce your needed sleep to 1hr/day outside of this WYR, believe me I've tried.
If you took a part time job for even half of the gained time (25hr/wk) at the federal minimum wage ($7.25/hr) you could get $175/wk to spend purely on nutritious food. Better health is a benefit of better nutrition, but it's not immediate. Half an hour per day researching a more nutritious diet would outpace the head start from immediate results within a few weeks.
That gives you 3hr/day of pure free time at minimum. Assuming the absolute minimum income. Assuming you don't quickly learn how to achieve a nutritious diet with less than $175/wk. Assuming you don't utilize some of your extra time for exercise which will further increase your health. Assuming this extra income does nothing to decrease the amount you currently spend on food.
If you increase that wage to a more typical $15/hr: you can work an extra 10hr/wk for $150/wk to spend on good food, exercise an hour a day, and spend another hour every day learning how do do both of those things better, and still gain 25hr/wk, over 3.5hr/day, of pure free time.
The sleep one. I'd go to sleep at night with my wife as usual, get up one hour later, slowly and quietly leave the room and get tons of shit done.
I've been so chronically online that I was ready for you to say 'and go to my mistress'.
No mistresses at this time, but I guess more waking hours might make me more interested in finding one (we're ethically non-monogamous, so a second partner would be a girlfriend, not a mistress).
Aaaand there's the plot twist. I AM chronically online
Sleep for sure, I've had to call out of work so many times for being non functional after a terrible night of insomnia, and I almost never get more than four hours. Actually waking up rested would be amazing.
Nutrition, the money that could be saved would be sick
...does this mean I can overeat but it'll still be at the nutrition level I need so overall I'll just be a healthy weight no matter what?
Sign me the fuck up, gunna eat all the chocolate chip banana bread and be fine!
Yep that's exactly what it means
Then food all the way please!
Eating anything also means a ton of saved time since you don't have to cook anything fancy. Granola bars here I come, no cooking, no dishes.
Hmm this is hard. I have a pretty strict diet so it takes out a lot of possibilities for travel and flexibility and such. So for me I'd go with food being magically suitable (and easy).
You'd save a ton of money too. I eat one peanut and now my nutritional needs are perfectly met for the day? My usual food budget for a day can now last the year easily. I could hike for weeks on end with a light pack and no resupplies. Indulge and overeat a bunch of junk food and not gain weight and it wasn't bad for me. No more hangovers?
Oo but is it no alcohol? If it's perfect nutrition, then alcohol is nutritionally transformed into something else when it enters your ? mouth? stomach?
Sleep. More time to enjoy my life while also focusing on the many projects I've started and will probably never finish.
I would rather have the "eat anything for perfect nutrition".
If I took the "sleep 1 hour a day for perfect rest", I would use that extra 6-7 hours a day to try to achieve the nutrition and exercise goals I'm already working on.
It takes approximately 4 hours of jogging to work off the calories in a Five Guys meal. I'd rather eat a guilt-free bacon cheeseburger and fries, then get a nice 8 hours of sleep.
Five Guys Nutrition Calculator
- Bacon Cheeseburger
- Regular Fries
| Calories: 1873 |
Jogging burns 100 calories per mile. 1873 calories = 18.73 miles
Average jogging speed 4-5 mph 4.5 mph * 4 hours = 18 miles
So this was interesting to think about, cause it's a tough decision when I think about it, but ultimately I think one wins out. Let's compare the two options and seeing what benefits are obtained from each.
If we only have to sleep 1 hour a day to be fully rested, that essentially gains us additional life, additional time. After all, every hour we spend asleep is time we're not living our lives and doing things we want to be doing. If we sleep an average of 8 hours a night now, this means we gain seven hours a night. This means that every 3.42 days approximately, we have gained 24 hours of awake-time that we otherwise would have spent sleeping. This calculates out to 29.17% of any given timeframe. That means that, if we were to acquire this ability on our 20th birthday and live to be 80 exactly, we gain 29.17% of those 60 years - we have effectively extended our life by 17.5 years!
On the other hand, perfect nutrition gives us no such clear, easily calculated benefit. However, what it does give us is our body gaining exactly the correct amount of nutrition to be healthy at all times, regardless of how little or how much we eat. That means that within a few years at most from gaining this ability, we will never be overweight or underweight, develop an adequate amount of muscle for the level of exercise we do, and generally feel better since nutrition is one of the most important things in how a person feels. Just as importantly, we're unlikely to ever develop illnesses that are caused primarily by diet, and other illnesses that are exacerbated or diet otherwise increases the risk factor of will be much less likely to happen. This means that not only do we feel better, we are likely to gain some amount of lifespan from this.
Thus, after consideration, it seems to me the perfect nutrition is the clear winner here. We feel better at all times because of perfect nutrition keeping our body in much better condition than most humans experience, we dramatically lower our odds of developing a vast array of health conditions that can lower our lifespan and lower the quality of our life, and we gain some lifespan - probably not as much as 29.17% of lifespan, but we gain some, and that lifespan is likely to be spent in far better health and thus be more enjoyable to us.
1 hour sleep easily, especially if I could pull it off during my daily bus trip to/from work
Sleep, provided my brain and body truly do the things they need to during sleep.
Perfect nutrition because I am a food vacuum.
Gone are all the health concerns too!
Sleep. There are so many books and video games and movies to consume. Also you could hold two full time jobs to quickly learn new skills and make money, which would give you more free time. Plus you could do one full time job while your kids were asleep and then be an amazing parent and spouse.
Yeah, I'll choose "less sleep with no repercussions" for pretty much the same reasons. So much interesting stuff to do!
The eating choice is a no-brainer to me. Having to stop eating has been a mental game my whole life. I could always chow down more.
My theory is that all of you who said sleep are the people who want to optimize life and feel like you're missing out on life or not doing enough.
Meanwhile everyone who says food wants the opposite and wants to have time to relax and not do something.
Perfect nutrition. I already don't sleep enough anyway.
Sleep wins for me, but both good points. To me it's more of a body and mind thing, and getting a good rest isn't just about hours either (and I'm a little biased because I've got a newborn).
Still, when I'm fully rested, I have significantly less anxiety, much more motivation, and make way fewer mistakes. Better judgement, too. Plus, as a bonus, less anxiety means less unhealthy foods. I can manage my own diet, after all.
Sleep for me as well, but because the food option would not apply to people I cook for, so I would doom my SO to unhealthy eating habits.
Ah yes, and in my case I'll have a sweet 7 hours of kid-free time (which realistically likely includes cleaning for my SO since it's hard with two kids!). Unhealthy cooking is quadruply bad when you've got two kids and the SO.
Sleep 1 hour a day: if we assume you would normally have to sleep for 8 hours then your spending 33% of your life asleep vs 4% so you just made your life 29% longer. (Assuming you were just born)
Definitely eating. If I had more time in my day I'd just spend it gaming. I like to get a decent amount of sleep.
Even if I chose sleep I'd be in bed bc I love being in bed. So perfect nutrition.