Followup on the Hacker's Diet?

shayne321 writes "After learning about the Hacker's Diet on /., I started the program myself. In a little over six months I've lost a little over 35 pounds and around 6% of body fat. Lately I've been substituting the Tae-Bo workout in place of the recommended exercise program and I've been having even better results. I was just curious as to success stories/failures of other Slashdot readers... I was also curious for those who've had success as to if they've been able to keep the weight off."

Comments

Re:Works great

[coyote-san]

I believe that the reason rapid weight loss is strongly discouraged is not because of concerns with fat-soluable toxins - it's because that much weight loss implies you're losing much more than fat. The problem is that the only way to burn fat is via the "Kreb's Cycle" in your muscles (aka aerobic exercise), and someone who has enough fat to lose more than a kilogram or so per week is probably not in good enough shape to maintain the high aerobic levels required! This implies that the weight loss is actually due, in part, to loss of muscle mass... not a Good Thing.

Your liver and kidneys will need to handle anything dissolved in the fat, and that can include some pretty nasty toxins. But unless you live on the Love Canal it's unlikely you're talking about more than milligrams (or even micrograms) of toxins per gram of fat. Of course, when you consider how nasty dioxin and other toxins are...

(Before I get a nitpicking response, I believe the liver does use modest amounts of fat in the production of other compounds, but it's not enough to have any impact on your weight.)

Also, IIRC fat cells don't hold onto fat until you finally go on a diet. Instead, they constantly release a little bit at all times, and constantly absorb a little bit from the blood stream at all times. (I think they show up on blood chemistry profiles as triglycerides, but I could be mistaken.) That said, the fat (and dissolved toxins) could simply take a scenic trip around your body before being absorbed by another fat cell, but this does tend to "stir" the toxins up so you shouldn't get any nasty spikes in toxin levels.