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.' "

Comments

I've been using this...

[Dicky]

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???

The exercise program is a weak point

[discHead]

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. :-)

Re:Coke

[eht]

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

Hacker's Diet is very similar to Weightwatchers

[Smack]

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.

Some of the flaws and some of the basic math

[LetterJ]

One of the biggest flaws I see in it is his view of exercise. He lists the caloric expenditure for several aerobic activities and then says that it's too much work compared to the amount of food it amounts to. This seems to fly in the face of the entire rest of the book. After all, he's advocating a daily deficit of 500 calories per day. If 200-300 can come from treadmill, biking, etc., that means a smaller change in your diet. You only need to change your diet the other 200-300 per day.

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