
Weekend ‘catch-up sleep’ is a lie - wallflower
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2019/02/28/weekend-catch-up-sleep-is-lie/
======
lm28469
Sleep is fun, people who regularly lack it will tell you they're "just fine"
but they've been lacking sleep for so long that the baseline they're comparing
themselves to is already skewed.

Take two weeks off, avoid alcohol and other stimulant, avoid artificial light
after 8 and wake up without an alarm. You'll see how you feel after that
regimen. Your body knows exactly how much sleep it needs.

But that's not compatible with the "work hard, play hard" and hustler
mentality I guess. Let's see how it impacts us when we get older, I'm fairly
certain that the younger you are the more abuse your body can take, it usually
has lasting consequences though.

[https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/7-scary-ways-sleep-
depr...](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/7-scary-ways-sleep-deprivation-
affects-teen-physical-and-mental-health_us_55a7bd07e4b04740a3df0fb3)

[https://www.huffpost.com/entry/teen-sleep-crimes-
adults_n_58...](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/teen-sleep-crimes-
adults_n_58b70880e4b019d36d0fec64)

~~~
mruts
I dunno, maybe I’m weird, but without an alarm I can sleep 12 hours. And when
I do, I feel like total shit: very tired, groggy, and a little depressed.

If I sleep 5-7 hours on the otherhand, I feel much better.

~~~
Loughla
See, I'm the opposite. Even without the screen time or stimulation, I will
fall dead asleep at 10pm, and no matter what, will wake up promptly at 4am.

I feel like there really are people who have different needs.

~~~
wyldfire
> will wake up promptly at 4am.

A possible explanation is that you've trained your body to wake at that time
-- but it isn't necessarily enough/appropriate sleep.

~~~
Loughla
Wouldn't there be feelings of tiredness or some kind of exhaustion? I
generally feel well rested and chipper all day.

Without those feelings of tiredness, how would you know if it's training or
your actual internal clock working correctly?

~~~
farresito
You might very well be a short sleeper.

------
kuu
I think the research behind this news is quite weak: only 9 days and not that
many participants (18 men and 18 women).

~~~
sz4kerto
Please support your argument with numbers. 36 participants can be plenty or
can be absolutely insignificant. My partner is just in the process of getting
subjects for an experiment and she's trying to estimate the required number of
participants. In their case 30 participants would make the experiment useless,
40-42 would make it very powerful (significant).

You can't judge the weakness of an experiment just based on the number of
participants. Your comment might mislead others with not enough knowledge of
stats I think.

~~~
c1as
Academia has had their chance. No one believes "studies" about personal life
choices any more if the results conflict with each other every 5 years.

It's just publication pressure (or worse, as other commenters have hinted at).

~~~
Ragnarork
> Academia has had their chance

Oh, so what should we go to now in order to try to expand our knowledge about
this? What are you suggesting?

~~~
Frondo
This is always the implicit question, and I'm guessing the answer is scientism
-- material that has the form of academic product, but isn't academic. Like
Jordon Peterson videos or a lot of the scientific racism stuff on Youtube.

It's draped in the language of knowing, but it's purely emotional material;
stuff that makes you feel good, and makes you feel smart for feeling right.

(I also think the desire to drape our tribal impulses in scientific form comes
from society prizing smarts for so very, very long, but that's another story.)

~~~
unabst
Jordan Peterson is as scientific as a social scientist gets. He cites papers
and describes the work of past scientists and his premises are evidence
driven. He is a professor; a professional academic.

He has his opinions, positions and motives just like anyone else, but is open
about them. If anything he is a rock star lecturer that exemplifies how
informative, accurate, sincere, progressive, intimate, and inspiring science
can be. He helps people for a living as a psychologist and a lecturer. If he
offends you then you either have issues or don't understand him or both, but
he would gladly engage with you either way.

Most that disagree with him disagree with the science, which puts them in the
same boat as climate change deniers, of which there are plenty voicing their
alternate facts online. But their voice doesn't validate their claims. Science
is not a democracy.

~~~
cr1895
The effusive praise bordering on reverence of Peterson always strikes me a bit
strange. He is an exemplary rock star lecturer-scientist and if you aren't on
Team Peterson you've got issues or you misunderstand or if you disagree with
him you probably are pretty much a science denialist. A bit excessive, no?

~~~
unabst
Excessive maybe, but not false, and only to counter his blatant
miscategorization to which I was responding. I underestimated the support for
JDP here, which is my bad but I am happy to defend him. My mother is an
anthropologist. The social sciences are flawed in many ways but JDP fully
acknowledges and navigates this. If anyone has better ideas or conclusions
than he does please share. He wants to know. We all want to know. But if there
is one thing a man answering his calling deserves is respect.

~~~
cr1895
Is it really about his work, or is it about glorifying Peterson himself?

~~~
unabst
For other's it may be, but I was responding to a blatant miscategorization
which was attacking his identity, not his work. And this is just how I write.

If dissing someone is allowed then why isn't praising them? And praising them
well?

Because I exaggerated?

But did I?

He continues to help millions of people. Can't say that about many people.

Regarding his work/words: He's right about the biological differences between
men and women. He's right about social hierarchies and power structures being
inevitable. He's right about the government's overreach on speech being
dangerous. He's right about proper discourse on any matter being
uncomfortable. He's right about the value of honesty and integrity. He's right
about ways to piece your life and yourself back together.

And by right I don't mean binary true or false, because that isn't how science
works. By right, I mean the most accurate knowledge we currently have on the
topic that could be usefully applied to a problem at hand compared to other
less accurate knowledge that is already being applied to problems at hand.
Seeing this is why he stood up, and many stood up with him.

You can't be a quack and help so many people or be right about so many things.
And at the end of the day he's just a lecturer that's really really good at
his job -- at engaging his students and sharing the wealth of knowledge that
already exists. And yes, using that knowledge to point out why you are wrong
does make him offensive to a lot of people. You don't have to be one of them.
And yes, he has turned activist. You don't have to turn into one, by why not?
But if you have, then why against?

He isn't anti-scientific. He just isn't. That's a blatantly false claim.

------
Zitrax
A recent Swedish study[1] following 43 880 people over 13 years mentions in
the summary: "Possibly, long weekend sleep may compensate for short weekday
sleep."

[1]:
[https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jsr.12712](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jsr.12712)

~~~
kabacha
Wow, what a contrast to this study of 36 people. Personally I feel that it's a
bunch of placebo but a bunch of people I know swear by it.

Nevertheless it's much harder to convince people to do what's more efficient
compared to what _feels_ better when it comes to sleep. I for one feel much
better if I wake up 7am sharp every day but it doesn't not feel that way
naturally.

~~~
OJFord
It's not necessarily a placebo though right? I think 'catch-up' just isn't
very well defined.

I can be short of sleep and feeling awful each day of the working week, and
then sleep in at the weekend and feel good that day relative to the last five.

Have I 'caught-up'? Or does catching up mean negating long-term side-effects
of sleep deprivation?

~~~
Bartweiss
> _Have I 'caught-up'? Or does catching up mean negating long-term side-
> effects of sleep deprivation?_

This is _the_ issue, and it's why the person who titled this article ought to
be ashamed.

We know sleep-deprived people sleep extra if you let them, in amounts
predicted by their sleep deprivation. We know the recovery sleep produces
better results on a bunch of metrics than getting ~8 hours without extra
recovery time. We also know that they don't make up lost sleep hours one-to-
one; they add a few hours over a few days then return to baseline, and the
fraction recovered declines as the amount of deprivation rises. So.. what does
all of that _mean_?

I know my athletic performance responds to recovery sleep; I've seen studies
saying cognitive performance does too. Does insulin sensitivity recover fully?
(The author's past work finds "sorta".) Does that recovery provide a better
baseline when deprivation starts again, or does it just shift to a new target
level regardless? (This implies it just moves to the lower level.) How about
the same two questions for memory? For muscle and aerobic exercise? And then:
does time with recovered functioning correct long-term damage, mitigate it, or
just stop worsening it? Is the short-term "elevated amyloid plaque levels"
result actually tied to Alzheimer's, or do they just share a mechanism?

Summarizing a one-weekend insulin sensitivity result as though it settles 50
different questions sharing a broad label is ridiculous.

------
sebslomski
I highly recommend reading Matthew Walker‘s Why We Sleep [0] where stuff like
the above mentioned is summed up. Great read! [0]
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34466963](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34466963)

~~~
CaRDiaK
Currently about two thirds through this. I agree that it's a great read, quite
fascinating actually. Interestingly, he's conducted similar tests measuring a
whole range of properties including; response, recovery, memory, health on
hundreds of people and he draws the same conclusion as the article. It's
certainly made me more aware of my own sleep habits. Highly recommended
reading.

------
CalRobert
When I first had a kid, it was living hell. I mean, it was wonderful, and
joyful (really, I'm not kidding) but waking up 5 times a night with a
screaming 2 month old was effing brutal. I wore a 50 yard stare all the time,
my colleagues tell me.

Now, though, with an 18 month old I do a lot better - maybe even better than
before having her. She still wakes up early (6:30 AM or so) BUT now that I
know I absolutely, positively, HAVE to get to bed at a decent hour, I go to
bed before 10 PM most nights - 9:30 or even 9:00 is not rare (and I find
myself considering it a luxury). I used to know that I _should_ get to bed by
11:00 PM or so but often pushed it to 12:00 or 1:00 (mind you in college I
tried to get to bed by 4 AM as a rule - I like night).

I wake up before her even some mornings, and we have a couple hours of daddy-
daughter time. We even watched the sun rise in winter; it's nice.

But before her I HATED getting up early.

~~~
Loughla
My favorite thing as a parent is telling other parents that kids are a joy.

They are (after the first 10 months are over). But for that first 6-10 months,
oh sweet fuck is it miserable. I honestly don't remember anything from that
time period other than exhaustion. And you can see it on new parents faces.
That blank, almost ptsd stare.

It's hilarious.

~~~
mcv
It's a good thing we are genetically programmed to find young babies the most
adorable things in the world, especially our own, no matter how loud, wrinkly
or poop-producing they are. Without it, babies would never survive.

By the time the cuteness starts to wear off, the worst is over. Well, they
don't listen, disobey everything, and supposedly puberty is going to be even
worse, but at least you can play boardgames with them. Played X-wing with my 9
year old yesterday. That makes the 9 year investment worth it.

------
baxtr
This seems to contradict a recent study that I came across [1]:

 _The mortality rate among participants with short sleep during weekdays, but
long sleep during weekends, did not differ from the rate of the reference
group. Among individuals ≥65 years old, no association between weekend sleep
or weekday /weekend sleep durations and mortality was observed. In conclusion,
short, but not long, weekend sleep was associated with an increased mortality
in subjects <65 years. In the same age group, short sleep (or long sleep) on
both weekdays and weekend showed increased mortality. Possibly, long week- end
sleep may compensate for short weekday sleep._

[1]
[https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/jsr.12712](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/jsr.12712)

------
ferros
I can’t speak for scientific analysis, but I can say that if I have had a
disrupted week of sleep, a weekend catch up ‘resets’ me and serves its
intended purpose (for me)

~~~
bgentry
While it may feel this way, the science strongly indicates this is not the
case. The study in the linked article is one proof point. Many others are
summarized in Matthew Walker’s “Why We Sleep”.

~~~
dasanman
But if it "feels that way", doesnt that have something to say as well?

~~~
freddie_mercury
In the absence of any actual evidence? Generally we take self-reported
feelings as not especially strong evidence.

Maybe all it says is they grew up thinking that "weekend sleeping helped
catch-up" and now they only remember the confirming evidence and discard the
disconfirming evidence to support their confirmation bias?

~~~
baddox
Wait, what? Why would self-reported feelings not be taken as strong evidence?
It seems to me like self-reported feelings are great evidence, and need
particularly strong evidence (e.g. evidence of long-term damage that isn’t
felt in the short term, like for smoking cigarettes) to contradict.

~~~
judofyr
> Wait, what? Why would self-reported feelings not be taken as strong
> evidence?

Because you might be stuck in a local maxima that's close to your global
minima. I've been reading "Why We Sleep", and while I don't have the citations
here at the moment he mentions that one of the tricky things with sleep
deprivation is that people are often not very aware of it themselves. Your
body gets used to the new, lower, level and thinks that it's normal.

It should also be mentioned that most people don't try to distinguish between
correlation and causation, and as such it can be hard to draw any conclusions.
Imagine a person who reports that "I'm so happy when I drink alcohol", but it
turns out that he has no social contact (e.g. working at night, sleeping
through the day; no friends) outside of the bar setting, and it's actually the
social element that he most desires.

I guess it depends on what you mean by the word "evidence", but I wouldn't
really say that his self-reported feelings show any strong evidence that
alcohol makes him happy.

[0] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34466963-why-we-
sleep](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34466963-why-we-sleep)

------
zokier
I invite the authors (both from WP and the study) to do same 5 hours per
workday _and no catch-up_ during weekend and then tell me that catch-up sleep
"is a lie".

~~~
rocgf
It is a catch-up in terms of how you feel, but it doesn't repair the damage
done to your overall health.

------
rjf72
The referenced study [1] showed that taking people out of their regular
sleeping patterns had detrimental effects, which is a surprise to nobody. It
did not test for the effects of different habitual sleep patterns!
Participants were required to engage in one of a variety of different sleep
patterns over up to 11 nights, with no consideration given to their normal
preexisting sleep pattern.

Our bodies adjust to different behavior over time, and it's only after the
adjustment that you can begin to meaningfully compare and contrast different
behaviors. Imagine you take random people and require they start running 4
miles a day with no consideration given to the preexisting patterns of
physical activity! Well it'd certainly give the media their clickbait of the
day as they 'discover' running is bad for you.

[1] - [https://www.cell.com/current-
biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(19)...](https://www.cell.com/current-
biology/fulltext/S0960-9822\(19\)30098-3)

------
sergioisidoro
I wonder if what people call "catch up sleep on weekends" is just "having 2
days of appropriate sleep".

I would love to see an experiment where:

Group A: Sleep 5h per day on weekdays, and "catch up on sleep" during the
weekends.

Group B: Sleep 5h per day on weekdays, and sleep the normal replenishing time
on weekends (8-7h).

And then compare the effects of the weekend sleep.

I'm very sceptical of the "sleep debt" idea, which gives people the impression
that they can do whatever they want with sleep and pay it back later. I
honestly doubt you can pay any of the sleep debt you contracted over 2 days
ago...

~~~
Bartweiss
Yeah, I'm sad this wasn't tested. The subjects definitely moved back towards
baseline, but if the extra sleep didn't produce any kind of overcompensation
it's not super clear what it did. I know there are two other relevant results
here.

One finds that people recover a portion of recent lost sleep and that's it; a
week on 5 hours/night and two weeks prompt similar recovery amounts, and 48
hours awake prompts similar recovery to 72 hours awake. Which certainly says
you can't "pay off" arbitrary debt.

The other one is from the same authors as this, finding that after chronic
sleep deprivation, oral-glucose insulin response recovers within 3 days of
'free' sleep, but IV-glucose response isn't back to baseline after 5 days.
Which suggests the added recovery sleep might just be a way to get back on
track faster, rather than actually offsetting anything (at least for insulin).

But I don't think I've ever seen a study actually comparing the two
conditions.

------
yaseer
There seems to be some confusion in the comments over our anecdotal and
subjective 'experience', and the conclusions of the study. Detrimental health
effects, does not preclude feeling better.

It's possible to feel good and still have detrimental health effects
occurring. It feels good to eat cheeseburgers. We all feel better after catch-
up sleep, that doesn't mean that detrimental effects haven't taken place.

(This is leaving aside the debate about the study's sample size - which
clearly requires further replication of results).

------
zxcvbn4038
Study or not, I feel great after sleeping in on Saturday mornings. I look
forward to it all week. Sensational studies like this come out all the time,
usually don’t hold up over time and peer review. Wish people would get so
excited over shorter work weeks.

~~~
rypskar
But the problem isn't sleeping long on Saturday, the problem is that it might
not be enough to catch up to lost sleep during the week.

------
roland35
I currently have a newborn and I know this too well from experience! I can get
a few extra hours on weekends but it definitely does not help once the work
week starts again.

One advantage of the extra time is that I finally have beaten my favorite game
FTL with every ship! With our first baby I read through all the Game of
Thrones books (I was hoping book 6 would be out by the time this kid was
born!!)

------
ElijahLynn
This title is untrue according to research done by Dr. William Dement at
Stanford. In his book Promise of Sleep he says they did a study where people
were put in a room at an earlier than bedtime time, no electronics or devices
or lights. They ended up sleeping 1-2 hours longer (closer to 10 hours) for a
week and then it started to reach normal levels (closer to 8 hours) over the
second week.

The premise of the book Promise of Sleep is "Sleep Debt" and they proved you
can pay back Sleep Debt up to about 1-2 weeks worth and the rest is absorbed
by the body.

~~~
ElijahLynn
From the WP article "While weekend recovery sleep had some benefits after a
single week of insufficient sleep..." so here they are admitting there are
some benefits from catching up on sleep debt, which is incompatible with the
title that it is a lie.

They then go on to "...those gains were wiped out when people plunged right
back into their same sleep-deprived schedule the next Monday.", which again is
incompatible with the title because they are saying that there is benefit but
most just kill the benefit, so weekend sleep catch-up is not a lie, but
Carolyn Y. Johnson (or their Editor in Chief) are lying with the title.

That title is click-bait for sure.

------
mcv
The primary reason why 'catch-up sleep' is a lie, not mentioned by this
article, is that on Saturday 7 am children will start jumping on your bed.

At least that's been my experience.

More seriously, my body seems to have adapted to shorter sleep. I used to read
about famous insomniacs like Napoleon who functioned quite well on only 2
hours of sleep per night, but lately my body seems to have become unable to
sleep for 8 hours. I often sleep only 5 hours and that seems to work fine for
me now.

~~~
gpderetta
The same kids that you have to literally drag out of bed during schooldays!

~~~
mcv
Only the oldest. The youngest would prefer to come out of bed at 5:30. 7 is
the most important number for a child to learn to recognise.

------
Gpetrium
I think that the real answer is that we do not know the answer yet. It is
likely that both aspects are correct to some degree, I'll explain my take as
of now:

There is a real cost to sleeping less or sleeping too much and that some will
feel the impact more than others also depending on the environment they are in
(e.g increased stress, etc).

Depending on the combined variables in conjunction to lack of sleep, some may
see positive gains by 'catching-up' on the weekend (think of parents for
example), although it is likely that a marginal amount of lack of sleep will
continue to accumulate over longer periods of time. This in turn can
potentially lead to increased risk of heart attack and other issues.

The lack of sleep scenario can be seeing a little with the same lens as
smoking, results can vary from person to person, but on average, it has a real
negative impact when done often or under unfavorable circumstances.

~~~
bksenior
I bet it's much simpler than that. Just like oxytocin amount, being prone to
cancer and everything else there is probably large genetic predisposition and
response.

I bet the range range is enormous as to how sleep affects people.

------
Folcon
Are there any good suggestions for what to do if "just get more sleep" isn't
really working? These sort of articles really frustrate me, their suggestions
always feel fairly weak.

I have difficulties falling asleep and a little bit of apnea and getting a
grip on how to get consistent "gold standard" sleep is really frustrating.

I've tried forcing myself to sleep early using sleep meds, which doesn't
really seem to work well or be a really good long term solution. Cutting
coffee and/or alcohol for periods which doesn't seem to have any significant
effects.

Irritatingly the most successful solution I found for a period was movement,
as in someone driving me in a car on a long drive, I'd fall asleep in seconds
into a deep sleep. Except that doesn't seem to happen on a train or taxi (not
sure why yet), and it would be problematic working out how to do that
routinely.

------
gambler
Maybe catch-up sleep doesn't work to fully repair the damage if you're totally
wrecking your body during workdays, but it definitely helps if you're on the
borderline.

I usually sleep more on the weekends. If I don't, I usually start to manifest
cold-like symptoms, indicating that my immune system is struggling. To me,
this suggest that catch-up sleep definitely helps in some regards. I can't
speak about long-term effects, but I don't think having a malfunctioning
immune system would be good for me in the long run either.

This is one of those cases where the effect is so clearly pronounced, I
utterly don't care what "the medical science" says on the subject. Maybe it's
different for different people.

(I generally do get 6-7 hours of sleep on any day, though. No idea how people
sleep less than 6 hours a day without collapsing at the end of the week.)

------
alexozer
Blue light blocking glasses have had such a tremendously positive effect on my
sleep habits (earlier bedtime, better sleep quality) that at this point I
genuinely feel bad for people who don't use them.

I got a pair that claims to block a very large amount of blue light (at the
expense of a distinct orange tint), and just wear them after it gets dark.

It makes sense that they work; your brain uses blue light to time the release
of melatonin and such, and our ancestors were only exposed to non-blue light
from sitting besides the campfire socializing after the sun went down.

Wearing these allows me to experience much less of a consequence for using a
computer at night which I simply cannot get myself to avoid.

------
rhacker
I don't know about "weekend" catch-up sleep being different than other kinds
of catch up sleep, but I just had a session where I pretty much got 1 hour of
sleep in a 24 hour period. The following day I slept 10 hours. Now I know
that's not exactly catch up, but I hardly ever sleep more than 7. It's hard
for me to sleep more than 7. So if catch up is a lie, why is the only time I
am able to sleep 10 if I had a missed day?

~~~
hhjinks
Catching up on sleep is usually said in the context of "I'll sleep more in the
weekend to counteract the negative effects of sleeping 4 hours a night during
the week". That is not how it works, since catchup sleep won't really do
anything to reverse the effects of prolonged lack of sleep. You certainly will
sleep longer when more tired, but it will not counteract the long term
negative effects of sleeping too little.

------
NoPicklez
I find it odd that this has only come to light recently.

When I was at University in 2011, I had a sleep psychologist take one of our
psychology classes and it was well known back then that catching up on a week
of sleep deprivation on the weekend doesn't work and only provides short term
results. This article focuses on the caloric effects, but recently articles
have been linking the research to purely the effects its has on your circadian
rhythms.

------
tachikomagenius
Not a lie. It can't beat actual sleep at the time you feel tired but really
helps a lot.

\- source: I've been doing it for years.

------
smartbit
[https://archive.fo/0ruX4](https://archive.fo/0ruX4)

------
benj111
For UK viewers, there was an episode of Twinstitute on iplayer that looked at
sleep banking v power naps. The results of that seemed to suggest that sleep
banking worked better than power naps, so I'm a bit confused why that works,
but catch-up sleep doesn't?!

~~~
matthewfelgate
Possibly because power naps don't achieve anything.

------
manigandham
Great JRE podcast episode with Matthew Walker (Professor of Neuroscience,
Founder of the Center for Human Sleep Science):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwaWilO_Pig](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwaWilO_Pig)

------
IOT_Apprentice
It may be a lie, but sleeping in till 10am and waking up peacefully is a
wonderful feeling.

------
MickerNews
This would seem to imply that the concept of 'sleep debt' is a lie.

------
P_I_Staker
When I say catch up on sleep, I simply mean I finally feel more rested. It was
never meant to be taken literally. I wish all these people "debunking" it
would understand that.

------
JTbane
The problem is the 8 hour workday for me. Getting ready for work takes an
hour, commute is at least an hour by train each way, so getting enough sleep
is tough.

------
LoSboccacc
...but weekend stress related headache is very real

------
aasasd
ITT: “my feelings say otherwise.”

~~~
ekimekim
Also ITT: "I have no problems with this, so if you do it's obviously your
fault."

------
k__
I stopped setting an alarm and sleep 9h a day now.

Don't know if this is good or bad.

------
nfRfqX5n
the idea of catching up never made sense to me because the damage is already
done. you already suffered the effects from lack of sleep.

------
throwaway-1283
going low carb (+ no sugar), cutting alcohol helped me naturally wake up more
refreshed with less than 7 hrs sleep...

------
rvn1045
A good way to test wheather you’ve gotten enough sleep is to play a game of
online chess. I make way more mistakes when I’ve slept less than optimal
amounts.

------
QuamStiver
The food analogy does not work and is a good example of people talking outside
their area of expertise. Dieting on weekdays and "pigging out" once on pizza
(what's wrong with pizza?) on the weekend would actually be fine. There is no
evidence that food is like sleep and needs to be balanced on a daily basis.

~~~
el_cujo
Yeah I was a little confused by reading this. I know several people who
underwent dramatic weight loss but still had cheat days a few times a month, I
don't really think that's uncommon. I mean I'm sure it slows your progress
compared to not "cheating", but I've seen enough success stories to know it
doesn't completely undo everything (depending on how bad you cheat I guess?)

------
thisisweirdok
I think catch-up sleep is just an excuse we grant ourselves for sleeping more
on the weekends... we've been conditioned to feel bad for not feeling
productive, so we need to grant ourselves special permission.

------
Amendeson530
I don't care what the study says. I'm not going to stop trying.

------
AltmousGadfly
I don't care what the study says. I'm not going to stop trying.

------
Golfkid2Gadfly
No amount of sleep will make you feel well if your entire life is economically
and, therefore, emotionally stressed because your country does not care about
you. Provide affordable health care, affordable quality day care, living
wages, and housing security, and people will sleep like babies all the time.
America will be the richer.

~~~
bitcoinmoney
Aren’t you describing Europe though?

~~~
RugnirViking
A wealthy and statistically happier and more free continent? Yes.

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gdfasfklshg4
Is this model actually GDPR compliant?

EDIT Either way I definitely _don 't_ want to trigger another conversation on
the ethics of script/tracking/ad-blocking. I am wondering if this subscribe-
with-your-data model is legally compliant with the GDPR. This is _not_ a moral
question (or at least I am not interested in a moral answer).

~~~
krageon
No, it is not legally compliant. It maybe has lost a little bit of value to
actually discuss this as it's been done so, so much. If you are very
interested in what is and what is not compliant, you can read the resources
published by the EU on the GDPR. They are very legible and relatively easy to
understand.

~~~
gdfasfklshg4
Thank you for answering. I assume you are a subject matter expert qualified to
interpret the legal documents?

I have actually read some of the resources AND been there whilst customers
received advice from lawyers. From what I had understood this model looked
dubious.

I have not seen a discussion of this that didn't just end up in talking about
morals. Even excluding this I really only wanted input from experts - answers
from actual lawyers about GDPR have surprised me compared to what developers
had assumed about it...

NB If I had a customer that proposed this model I would still insist that they
consulted with their own legal advice before proceeding!

~~~
krageon
For various reasons I am and have been deeply embedded inside the process of
making a medium-large sized business (if you really look you may be able to
figure out which one it is - in case you do: My opinions are my own and do not
reflect those of my employer in any way, shape or form) GDPR compliant. I have
heard proper lawyers explain the terms to different kinds of people and found
their conclusions match my own, coming from the literature. I feel like that
allows me to talk a little bit about what this legislation means.

Given what you have said, perhaps the literature is not as obvious as I
thought. As far as this model is concerned, it would not be compliant with the
law as I read it and as I have had it explained to me. I don't deny that a
party with enough money might be able to muscle a reading into existence that
allows them to do this anyway, but that is I think an established risk of the
legal system. For now we must operate with the law as written and broadly
interpreted inside the EU.

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_pmf_
Father of two small children: no

~~~
zwischenzug
Father of two here also, and I hear you!

I think the point of this is to say that the negative effects on the body of
lack of sleep on the body can't be reversed by the weekend catch up.

That doesn't mean you don't feel better after that weekend lie in or catch-up
nap!

I have about 4 years of my life I can barely remember because it was work, on
call, broken nights with babies, sleep, work, take turns to nap at weekends.
Our second child was called Rachel because the only leisure time we had was
taken to watch an episode of Friends every night before turning in and it
worked on our subconscious. We had the energy to do nothing more (well, we
obviously did one thing more... but I digress).

