If I were a good person I’d go with 5 hours of sleep and spend my waking time trying to feed the poor.
Instead, I chose gluttony. Hardly surprising.
B***ard.
I can’t eat heavy or fatty foods every day for too long without going on a vegetable binge for a few days afterwards, and I’m quite happy with my diet and health right now. I don’t exercise to lose or ‘maintain’ weight, I exercise to get stronger because I like being strong.
On the other hand, I have about fifteen major projects that I care very passionately about on my plate right now, and I would kill for more time to work on all of them.
I would rather be productive and accomplished, and have time to do more things I love, than thin.
I lifetime of only needing 5 hours of sleep would prove a lot of time with nothing to do.
As far as the eating thing… it’s not about eating as MUCH as I want, but eating WHAT I want.
Sorry, just wondering: What do you want to eat that you are not currently eating, even in small quantities?
I don’t usually sleep that much, but I sure don’t wake alert and refreshed after 5 hours, or 10. I appear to have no natural sleep cycle. I’m not usually sleepy until I lay down in bed, and I set an alarm and drag myself out of bed in a semi-coma every morning; it’s a bit easier for me to wake up if I get 6 hours or less, and I feel gross if I get more than 8 unless I’m ill. No matter how much I get, after I’m up I feel wide-awake all day as long as I manage my blood sugar.
I’ve generally found that people like this usually have it caused by sleep debt. They feel tired when they sleep for five hours each weeknight, and then on the weekends, they sleep ten hours and still feel tired. Then they think that no matter what they do, they’ll always be tired.
But the real reason you feel tired after ten hours is because you only slept for five hours the night before. You only got 15 when you should be getting 16 total- you’re still short an hour!
If you get up for work after only 5 hours of sleep every weekday morning, you’d have to sleep an extra 15 hours (!) to make that up on the weekend. So if you go to bed at midnight that Friday and want to make up that time, you have to sleep through Saturday until 11 p.m. Saturday night! No wonder you’re tired all the time.
Can I answer? Cupcakes, ice cream, candy bars, regular-calorie pop, caramels, cheesecakes, potato chips, dips, and creams. Those things are so high-calorie that I actually feel disappointed when I eat them. They taste good, sure, but not at that cost. It’s like the feeling you get when you spend $50 on something worth $10. Yes, that’s a good comparison- I feel nutritionally ripped off.
While I like a good meal, it’s not that big of a deal to me. And I have to work a lot, it’d be nice not to be running on fumes more often than not.
I’ll take the 5 hours. Besides, I gain a little here and there, but it’s not that big of a deal to lose it either for me. Right now, I’m at my ideal weight.
If the sleep choice included the power to go to sleep on command and automatically wake up in 5 hours, this would be a tough question.
As it is, I don’t see how the sleep choice would even help my sleep issues. My problem isn’t that 5 hours isn’t enough, my problem is that I have insomnia and can’t stay on a regular sleep pattern. I can’t predict when I will fall asleep, so it would be difficult to set an alarm for 5 hours later to take advantage of my sleep power. It would end up going to waste much of the time.
I wish this were true but from age 15 (when I finally hit puberty) until just a few years ago I slept 10-14 hours out of every 24… I still couldn’t wake naturally. I’ve tried to establish a circadian rhythm but it does run in my ADD family not to have one (father and one sister have the same problems as well as also having hypoglycemia).
Now I never permit myself to sleep more than 8 hours, as well as eating much better and exercising, and I’m in the best health of my life and NEVER feel tired except for that 30 minutes after I get out of bed. It’s annoying to never wake up alert but I seem to do a lot better sleep-wise than most I know.
Wow, I am surprised by how many people would opt to be able to overeat without consequence.
I love to eat, but see a much bigger advantage in being able to forego the sleep. That would amount to getting two whole bonus months every year in terms of what you’d be able to get done. More time to earn money, more time to spend it.
Hell, if I had an extra three hours in each day I might actually have time to get some regular exercise in during the week, so there’d be an “eat what you want” benefit built in. 
For sure I’d have more money to afford to eat what I pleased, and more time to dedicate to eating. No-brainer for me.
ETA: That’s like someone offering you about another seven years of life - and not tacked on at the end when you’re too fagged out and broken down to properly enjoy it, either.
Easiest choice ever. I can already eat how much I want without gaining weight. I’m underweight my entire life, can’t gain a pound no matter how much I eat and I eat a lot already.
On the other hand the number one problem in my life is lack of energy and constant fatigue. And I sleep 11+ hours when I can and I hate myself for it.
So, yeah, very easy choice.
But you chose “Sleep”, right?
If I understand your analogy, high-calorie low-nutrition foods taste good but they are too “expensive”, in terms of calories, health issues and impact on the body. If, though, they were less expensive, then they would be worth eating.
That makes sense, but, in this thread, the “cost” is zero, and that’s why I question someone who says that it’s not the amount of food – it’s the choice of food. If the food is indeed desirable, then why not be willing to pay some price for it – for a least a small amount of it? If though the only time you’re going eat it is when it’s “free”, then what value does it have?
There will always be times in my life when I can’t sleep as much as I want, but they usually last no more than a few weeks. There has seldom been a day when I didn’t want to eat more than I should, so I went with the second.
But seriously, the Mom thing, it is sooooo much harder than it looks! I feel your pain. Hang in there and remind yourself each morning to smile at the baby.
Easy choice. Less sleep. I need to clock in 8.5 hours of sleep to feel truly rested and to perform optimally throughout the day. The rare times I actually get that (plus all the sleep debt I’ve accumulated), I’m always amazed how easy life seems. 8.5 hours of actual sleep plus the hours of getting to sleep takes a huge chunk off my life. Typically, I go to bed wishing I didn’t need to, since there’s always a long list of cool stuff I want to do instead. Several hours of extra time to do the cool stuff with full faculties would be an incredible boost. I’d be a much more productive researcher than I am now, for one.
Food is a logistical problem like sleep. Hunger distracts from research and fun, and eating is both time-consuming and expensive. Often I have to force myself to eat because it’s a distraction but necessary for performance. I rarely want the stuff most people seem to dream about, food-wise, anyway. Being able to eat anything would be wasted on me.
How do you figure the cost is zero? I’d have to give up the less-sleep ability. That’s a huge cost!
And the problem is that a candy bar is always going to be ~200 calories. That’s why I can never eat them. If that candy bar was only, say, 50 calories, then I’d eat it. So it’s not true that the only time I’d eat it is when it’s free.
I don’t understand your point about paying “some price for at least a small amount of it”. If it’s too calorie-expensive to eat, why would I spend half the calories for half the product? It sounds like you’re suggesting that if I don’t want to spend $50 on a $10 item, I should spend $25 on a $5 item instead. That wouldn’t make sense either. So what are you getting at?
Please review post #85.