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The Hacker's Diet Revisited
e4 writes "Remember the Slashdot article last summer on The Hacker's Diet? Well, it looks like John Walker finally gave up on maintaining his Excel spreadsheet tools. Instead, he's written a Palm-based implementation of his "Eat Watch" to make this stuff more convenient. But even if you're not ready to hack your own body (or if you don't have a Palm), the page is worth a look just to get some vintage anti-MS ranting, like 'that ever steepening spiral into the foul pit of intellectual corruption from the days of "386 Enhanced Mode" to the era of the talking paper clip.' "
The most valuable part of the Hacker's Diet for me was the fact that it taught me to monitor my weight properly. If you don't know about exponentially smoothed curves and moving averages and stuff, read up on it (all you need to know is in there). Using both those trendlines, you will be able to see how you are doing every so often. So if you gain 500 grams in 2 weeks (about 1.1 lbs) on your trendline you can see this as significant. Your weight will bounce around a lot, and you need trendlines to, well, help you see the trend.
Monitoring your weight daily is a MUST. For those of you out there who need to lose weight, be it 15 pounts or 150 pounds, the first thing you must do is buy yourself a reliable digital weight scale, one that is accurate to about .2 kilograms, or .5 pounds. (I paid US$30 for mine here in Delaware.) Learn how to calculate a moving average and an exponentially smoothed curve (10%), and then start plotting your weight.
That's where a computer will come in handy, the author supplied Excel worksheets, but if you are a typical hacker reading /., then you probably don't use a Windows machine all too often. But it shouldn't be too hard to whip up some simple programs with Perl and Gnuplot, I use an HP 48G programmable handheld calculator myself. If you don't mind using plotting paper, and pencils, you can do that to.
And that's about it, as you accumulate more data, you will be able to interpret it properly over time, and lose (or gain, if you wish) weight properly.
Best of luck to you.
Seriously, I have no idea why this is under the "humor" section. I've known about the Hacker's Diet for quite some time, since I saw fourmilab mentioned in an internet magazine, and I have to say that it isn't a joke. The only really funny thing about it is the title. It's actually a well thought-out guide that Walker has put together for executives and hackers so that they can lose weight, as well as help them get back into shape. I'd suggest that people actually take time to read things before putting it up under the "humor" banner.
I don't know about John Walker, but I'd be pretty insulted if my work on whatever serious subject that just happened to have a funny title was made fun of at a popular internet site.
-- K
I don't know about the teeth! soda and candies tend to have interesting effects on the teeth, long-term.
:)
let's just say I don't think any dentists will be recommending it
Lea
Yeah, I remember that article from last summer all right. In my not so humble opinion, there are serious problems not just with the so called "hacker's diet" but with dieting plans in general. That's right. Dieting plans in general. That's all the hacker's diet is: a diet for people that feel like they're getting somewhere faster if they take the matter into their hands mathematically by religiously counting every calorie they consume, as if they were analyzing and optimizing the runtime of a complex algorithm. You want to lose weight? Great, but don't think about losing weight. Think about getting healthy. And don't EVER write off exercise.
--
grappler
Vidi, Vici, Veni
...as you lose weight excercise will become easier, and you will lose weight faster. It becomes a self-reinforcing loop.
Alas, it doesn't work that way. When most of us diet, the body goes into a sort of "famine mode". Our minds have eveolved, but our bodies are the same ones we had in the stone age. The body recognizes that it's not getting enough calories, so it sends out hunger signals, telling us to eat more. Also, since the "famine" may last a while, it tends to preserve fat (that's what fat is for - to keep you alive during famines) and burn up blood sugar (reduced blood sugar levels result in irritability and loss of concentration) and muscle (noooo!) for energy instead. The loss of muscle can be prevented by rigorous exercise (tricks the body into thinking that it needs that muscle to outrun predators or something) but there's not much to be done about the blood-sugar thing except suffer through it.
Exercise becomes easier as one loses weight, but that's not the whole story. Hauling lots of weight around burns calories, and when there's less of it, the "easier" exercise burns fewer calories, not more. It's not a self-reinforcing loop - it's more of a self-regulating mechanism.
And there's more! A heavy body uses more calories as it exercises than a light one... but a lean body uses more calories as it rests than a fat one. Just maintaining muscle - even at rest - burns calories.
Oh Well...
Exactly. Diet is okay, but obsession is not.
Not only can it just piss you off and make you stop and do something easier, but it can also lead into an eating disorder, which really isn't any different than any other compulsive disorder, but focussed on health, and thus more likely to wreak your health than some other disorder.
Diet, but don't sweat the small stuff. A hundred calories to either side is nothing. Any diet can be broken without problems. If it's a special day, have cheesecake, and if you really like it, have another. And target weights are only a rough guideline, my friend at 240 is all muscle, I am semi-soft, but we're both the same size, weight is a simplistic measure of when to stop dieting.
Take it easy, think of everything as a rough guideline, and don't commit to a diet if you don't think you can stick with it.
Most of all, do a moderate diet to cut out problem foods, don't just restrict intake, it doesn't do anything because your metabolism kicks in, and going on and off of restricting diets will screw you up and cause major health problems later in life, not to mention that stopping a restricting diet causes you to gain weight as your starved body prepares for the next lean times.
I started using this diet the day after /. posted it. I lost about 40 pounds in 2.5 months. 15 of those pound were in the first 3 weeks. After that I started slacking off....
....
In fact, I started writing my own spreadsheet for the Palm just so I could chart my diet progress on it. Now maybe I won't have to
---
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
The great thing about it is that it speaks directly to hackers. It doesn't tell you to lose weight in order to be more attractive and get laid (although there's that advantage *grin* ). It tells you to successfully diet because it's a hacking problem and you should treat it as such.
That small bit really got me. It's actually the reason I've started reading this thing and went through with it. I've lost 50 pounds as a result.
Any other 'testimonials' out there? :)
(Darn, this thing makes me wish I had a Palm!)
Beefcake!
j/k >;)
Actually, there are a few things that "underweights" can do to increase body mass. Of course, I no longer have that problem...Norwegian genetics have kicked into full force so I'm on the upside by just a few pounds.
Dieting the wrong ways can help bulk up mass but assuming that you want to gain muscle, that isn't the best.
Working out 3 times a week MWF or TRS works ok. Make sure you do some stretching etc, so to minimize chances of hurting something and do some light weightlifting. It'll take a few weeks for your body to adjust to the resistance workout but after that you should be able to begin to push yourself. (Don't use free weights without a proper spotter!!!)
Any new muscle groups you work will usually take 2+ weeks to get acclimated to the program. (age varies this)
Squats/leg workouts will help you gain the weight the fastest but complement it with some upper body because chicken legs and chicken wings (results of 100% upper xor lower body workouts) are unbalanced.
30 min - 1 hour should be sufficient for any workout. If you feel like you can go longer than an hour, odds are that you're not pushing yourself hard enough and vice versa with the being totally exhausted at the 30 minute mark.
Drink plenty of water, it helps move nutrients, wastes around and is used as a cooling system.
Hope that helps...any more questions, just ask...
Vel
Seriously, it might also be alcohol that's driving your weight down. It tends to drive mine up, but I've got more of a German metabolism.
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
One of the things that will drive your metabolism up is nicotine. Have you tried quitting the cigs for a while and seeing what it does to your weight?
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
http://zerodefect.net/123
Don't tell the lawyers.
"I didn't believe the claims of the Hacker's Diet, and used Microsoft's Diet 2000 instead. I've gone from 100 lbs to 1000 lbs, my hair turned blue and if I chew just so, my tounge flies out and around the room."
There you have it.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I read it this summer, but never got time to reply. it'll be interesting to see if he got certain bugs ironed out, e.g. :
:)
"these are the charts for men. the women's ones are completely different, but I can't see why" etc.
well, for starters, any mensturating woman's weight is going to fluxuate a bit depending on hormones. for some women this can be 10 pounds or so gained/lost over the course of a month -- AND IT'S ALL WATER. makes the whole chart look a bit different, not to mention clothes.
the whole exercise thing is going to be different as well. there are ways of exercising that work very well (developed for the military academies, I believe), but don't require as much strength.
another thing about the book was it's relentlessly self-congratulating tone. maybe some people like that, but it's quite annoying to me.
but if it inspires someone to eat a few more vegggies and do some jumping jacks, I guess it's a good thing. no need to shrink the geek community unneccisarily due to heart attacks caused by caffine and pizza!
Lea
I started back when this came out and have lost 50 pounds and 6 inches off my waist in about 6 months. I'm thrilled.
:-(
The one important thing I can't remember him mentioning is that as you lose weight excercise will become easier, and you will lose weight faster. It becomes a self-reinforcing loop.
Now all I need to do is to port this to the Newton.
Don't question authority -- they don't know either.
You people disgust me.
~Month ago, A friend and myself coined the "All sushi, Rootbeer, and Penguin Mint Diet."
Strong teeth and bones, low fat, lots of sugar, Assloads of caffeine... Stick to it, and you'll loose 50 pounds in 6 months, WE GUARANTEE IT!
Not to mention, the benefits of sushi on the geek brain....
wow, that was quite a run-on sentence. But you get my point. I would even, in fact, recommend Ultimate, along with a suitable weight training program, for the folks out there (like me) who are 6'1", 115 lbs. I'm steadily improving speed, strength, and muscle mass, and I feel great too.
For a couple of months now. It hasn't been out for much longer than that, and when I asked the author why he hadn't announced it, he told me he wanted it to be out 'in the wild' for a while to iron out any bugs before a full-scale announcement. Apart from a problem at the start of January when calculating the trands resulted in a Palm lock-up (no, not a Y2K problem, it would have happened in any January), it's great.
And I've lost some serious weight while trying out a new cool program for my Palm. How great is that???
Paranoia isn't an infectious condition, it's a way of life
I first found out about The Hacker's Diet a few years ago. It is an entertaining read and makes a lot of sense. It inspired me to go out and buy a scale, which I didn't own up until then.
I was happy to discover the new Palm tools last month. I had been using a program called WeightLog, which I didn't like much. The "Eat Watch" program with its moving averages is excellent and gives you pretty swift feedback on what your diet is doing to your weight. (It has been progressing steadily downward this month, but the Godfather's pizza I had on Saturday already made a noticeable blip on the chart!)
But I must say I have some issues with the exercise program (even though I have been trying to get into the habit of doing it just to do some kind of exercise). Walker claims to have based it on the Royal Canadian Air Force's "5BX" exercise program. When I did some rudimentary Web research on this program, I discovered that the RCAF itself recommends not using this program anymore: "...the exercise principles of the program have long been proven invalid--or even hazardous--by scientific advances in modern exercise physiology." Going by the ACSM Fitness Book from the American College of Sports Medicine (a book I had for years before reading The Hacker's Diet), the exercises that are ineffective or potentially hazardous appear to be the standing toe touches, the full sit-ups, and the jumping jacks.
It would be nice if The Hacker's Diet exercise program could be reworked into something like the program recommended in the ACSM's book. Admittedly, that program is more complicated and it might take more convincing to get the average hacker to stay on it. Maybe a happy medium could be found. I'm envisioning a new document: Hacking the Hacker's Diet. :-)
Afri-Cola 100.0 (?)
Jolt 71.2
Sugar-Free Mr. Pibb 58.8
Mountain Dew 55.0 (no caffeine in Canada)
Diet Mountain Dew 55.0
Kick citrus 54 (36mg per 8oz can, caffeine from guarana)
Mello Yellow 52.8
Surge 51.0
Tab 46.8
Battery energy drink -- 140mg/l = 46.7mg/can
Coca-Cola 45.6
Diet Cola 45.6
Shasta Cola 44.4
Shasta Cherry Cola 44.4
Shasta Diet Cola 44.4
Mr. Pibb 40.8
OK Soda 40.5
Dr. Pepper 39.6
Pepsi Cola 37.2
Aspen 36.0
Diet Pepsi 35.4
RC Cola 36.0
Diet RC 36.0
Diet Rite 36.0
Canada Dry Cola 30.0
Canada Dry Diet Cola 1.2
7 Up 0
taken from http://aomt.netmegs.com/coffee/caffaq.html
also has a neat picture of a caffeine molecule
I was struck by the similarities after I tried both. Weightwatchers 1-2-3 Success is basically the same system. Instead of counting calories, you count points. But points are basically just manipulated calories.
:)
The relation is: Take the number of calories, add the number of fat grams times 4, then subtract the number of fibre grams times 10. Divide that number by 50 and you get the number of points. Simple...
Essentially it takes a lot of the accuracy out of the Hacker's Diet method. NO! you scream... less accuracy??? We should be measuring our calories to the 3rd decimal place, right? But in a diet, the goal is to try to stay on it, and having to obsess about every little calorie is very hard. Especially in food that you have no real control over, like a school cafeteria. Guesstimating make it realistic and followable.
I'm using his mathematical principles and creating my own version. Rather than planning out meals, I make changes for each meal. I started out by writing down what I eat for 2 weeks or so. That was as long as it took to detect patterns. In those patterns I looked for ways to cut 200-300 calories per day. It ended up being pretty simple. For example, I typically eat a sub sandwich and a cup of soup with a 20oz Coke every day for lunch. How to cut from that? Well, I started drinking water with lunch. There's a couple of hundred down already. I also looked at the soup and noticed that I eat 8 or so Saltines with it every time. That's 60-80 calories or so (I don't have the real numbers in front of me right now). I eat at McD's once a week or so. By switching from the large fries to small fries is 230 calories alone. Basically, this has resulted in the following philosophy on food, "Is there any way I can cut calories from this meal?" Cutting butter, sour cream, mayo, etc. are good ways to still eat where you want, what you want.
I weigh myself every day and measure my neck, chest, waist, hips and one thigh every 7 days. I walk on a treadmill, lift weights and other exercise as well as taking the 6 flights of stairs at work.
I use his "trend" weight concept on my weight and chart it. I then use the measurements, both keeping general track of them in a trend and using the waist measurement to determine lean body mass and fat percentage, and approximate needed calories.
Math: done in pounds
Trend weight = (Today's weight - Yesterday's trend)/10
Round that number to one decimal place.
Monthly loss = Initial Trend - Final Trend
Extra Calories Burned Per Day = (Monthly loss in pounds x 3500)/days in month
Lean Body Mass = (Trend weight x 1.082) - (Waist measurement in inches X 4.15) + 98.42
I use the trend weight on the day of measurement.
Fat Percentage = (Trend weight - Lean Body Mass)/Trend weight
Base Metabolic Rate = Lean Body Mass * 13.83
That's the number of calories needed daily to sustain your weight.
I chart weight and fat percentage. As long as fat percentage is going down, you're losing fat. Weight can go up when gaining muscle. And, since one pound of muscle burns 50 calories per day just sitting around, adding muscle is a good thing. I put it all in a spreadsheet that prints out on one piece of paper. Works pretty slick. I've been using this for about a month and I'm losing about a pound a week.
LetterJ
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things