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Lose Weight The Slow, Boring Way
urbazewski writes "As spring gets underway (in the northern hemisphere anyway) it's a good time to start undoing the effects of a winter's worth of websurfing and gameplaying on your physical condition. A meta-analysis of studies of currently popular low carbohydrate diets by doctors at Stanford and Yale reveals that they are really just low calorie diets in disguise: 'findings suggest that if you want to lose weight, you should eat fewer calories and do so over a long time period." John Walker's 'engineer's approach' to losing weight is built around this astonishing insight, as described in his online book/weight loss plan The Hacker's Diet. The spreadsheets are out of commission, but the basic insights are an excellent antidote to fad diets." Ramen, Ramen, Ramen is not on the approved list.
The Hacker's diet totally works. I lost 35 lbs in 3 months by:
-eating less than 2000 calories each day
-exercising every day
I ate whatever I wanted, as much as I wanted, as long as the daily total remained under 2000 calories. You do have to pay attention to serving sizes to get accurate calorie counts.
I did the 5BX (http://www.flwd.com/5bx/main/) every day, which takes 11 minutes a day to do. Its simple, good exercise that requires no equipment and can be done pretty much anywhere.
I was fat and not while I'm not thin, I'm at least less fat. I would recommend this approach to anyone wanting to loose weight.
I actually followed The Hackers Diet about three years ago and lost 25 pounds over the course of 3 1/2 months.
I lost the will power to keep on the diet and have gained most of that weight back over the last two years, and am currently trying to work up the will power to start it up again. I'm 6 feet tall, so it would be nice to be back to a nice lean 170lbs again.
A lot of people don't realize that resistance training is essential to losing weight -- even more so than regular cardiovascular, aerobic exercise.
I get a lot of funny looks when I mention this (especially from women who want to not bulk up). However, the key ingredient to weight loss is an increase in your resting metabolic rate (how much energy your body consumes on a regular basis). The only true way to do this is to increase your muscle tissue because muscle burns more energy than fat.
Obviously, resistance training is essential to increasing the muscle tissue and resting metabolic rate.
I am over here... now I am back over here!
If you want to read a REAL nerds book on nutrition, how about one that explains the molecular structure of different fats and explains everything in technical terms. I didn't know any biology before reading it and I was able to follow along. The book actually teaches you all about fats, carbs, free radicals, anti-oxidants, etc. If you're interested in bodybuilding, this one's a must for most of us.
I'm 6'2". In the last year, I've gone from little muscle at 155 lbs to 10% body fat at 180 lbs. Yeah, a year is a long time, but I've done it in a healthy way which is more permanent and life sustaining. :)
-Lucas
I realize this is a touchy subject, but losing weight, even for geeks, is not that difficult if you take some time to study human physiology.
The fact is that most of the commonly held beliefs about losing weight are exactly wrong and only serve to lead one down the path of endless cycles of losing and then gaining back more. If you've ever tried a traditional diet, you know exactly what I am talking about.
I, myself, have struggled with it for many years. I took just about every approach imaginable (and a few I won't even mention here). Sure, some things had short-term benefits but ultimately they lead me right back where I was going.
So what really works?
First I'll tell you, and for many people you'll hate to hear it: eat right and exercise.
Okay, now that that's out of the way, here is the semi-techy explanation. Excuse my over-simplifications because I am looking to cover the subject lightly:
Consider your typical overweight person. He has a high percentage of body fat, and he knows it. How to get thin? Well you could start by reducing caloric input. Sounds reasonable, right? After all, the less you take in the less that becomes body fat.
True, but here is what really happens: When you reduce your caloric intake your body responds to this as if it were a crisis of famine. Blame evolution, but your body is going to think that food is scarce. If the amount of energy input is less than the output needed to live, the body must make up for the excess somehow. And it has two main choices: It can either munch on energy stored in our fat cells (which would be swell) or it can chew away at energy stored in our muscles.
In making this decision, the body considers this critical fact: Muscle mass requires energy to exist, whereas body fat requires very little. So, in a leap of perfectly sound logic, the body consumes the wrong kind of weight. And since muscle weighs a lot more per volume than body fat, the result is weight reduction. The diet seems to work!
It works for awhile, yes. But as you lose muscle mass your basil metabolic rate drops. This causes you to need less and less energy to exist. Do the math. Eventually you reach equilibrium with the input (your diet) and you hit the dreaded plateau we all know too well.
This is so disconcerting that people eventually give up. But here is the killer: Your body has been ravaged! You may have lost weight, but your percentage of body fat is probably worse than when you started. And now you are start eating the "old way" again and soon you are ballooning back up again. And, often, you get worse than when you started.
That's the cycle. And I'm sure a lot of you know it really well.
So how do you break that cycle?
The basic principle is simple: Do the opposite of what doesn't work. Duh.
To do this, you increase your muscle mass. When you do this, your BMR goes up and your body requires more and more energy. Efficient and effective cardio and strength training out requires a really good understanding of how they work to do them right. You can bang away all day long in a gym and not get much results if you don't know what you are doing. More on this in a bit.
Second you feed yourself carefully. I hesitate to use the word 'diet' here because this has nothing to do with starvation. In fact, you typically feed yourself a lot more than you use too. Most importantly, you eat six times a day. This feeding pattern prevents your body from going into "oh my god...we're going to starve" panic mode. You also hydrate a lot more than you are probably use too (10 glasses of water a day).
I'll simplify here for brevity, but the meals consist of a portion of protein and a portion of carbohydrate. A couple of them you add a portion of veggies. A "portion" is roughly the size and thickness of the palm of your hand for protein and your clenched fist for carbs. That simple hand rule is all you need. Note: there is no need to count calor
David Whatley
... omg, i've stooped so low as to post a comment with THAT subject line.. Oh well.
The advantage of a low carbohydrate diet is that the calories you do take in make you feel more satisfied, as well as not driving up your insulin levels.
This is so important. Read Dr. Mercola's pages on Insulin. Eating a diet based around carbohydrates is a lot like filling your car with gasoline, and neglecting the rest of the regular maintenance - no oil changes, no tranny service, no brake pad replacements, never replacing the windshield wipers, headlights, air filters or tires, etc.. Your car will run, well for a while, and it'll keep chugging along for even longer still - but eventually, the damn thing just doesn't work. Nutrition/food is the same way - carbohydrates provide energy to run the body, but are seriously lacking in the "routine care" maintenance nutrients present in veggies and animal products.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
1. Realize that the world has been lying to you. McDonalds, BurgerKing, and all respectable fast food joints have been getting fat by making you fat. Candy bar companies, soda pops all exist not to "quench that thirst" or "feed that hunger" but to destroy you. No one is meant to be fat. NO ONE no one is big-boned, no one is "natually" fat. I have been 250+ since I was 15, and hit my heaviest at 285. I am now down to 240, and still losing following this concept.
:) You like Pizza and COke? Just make sure it's within your Caloric intake. Hell I'm vegetarian (a bit harder) but think of all you meat eaters! Lots of meats to choose from with little calories!
2. Slow and steady wins the race. I have lost 45 pounds in the past 6 months, not the fastest out there, but at 1 or 2 pounds a week my body is GRADUALLY changing, which means it's VERY fogiving when I blow my diet once every couple of weeks. Like a rubber band my weight snaps right back into losing weight. It's the law of averages, if you eat 2000 calories a day for 3 weeks, then all of a sudden eat 4000 in a day, then the next day go back to 2000, your body expects and DEMANDS that 2000. It won't store the exceess because you're not starving yoursef.
3. Find your DMR (Daily Burn Rate). Because I sit all day, my caloric DMR is about 2000. Therefore I eat 1850. if you burn 2000, and only feed yourself 1850, where does the other 150 come from? YOUR FAT. It's a beutiful simple concept.
4. Eat the right foods. I can have 1/2 bowl of pasta or 5 bowls of chili (insert "fart joke here"). It's all in the calories. Lots of calories in rice and pasta, very little in beans. I eat a lot of fruit now, lots of salad piled with veggies and low-fat dressing. Oh and another choice is 2 tblspoons of regular salad dressing or 5 bowls of salad piled high with lowfat dressing, your pick.
5. DON'T RELY ON ANYTHING. Don't do exercises. I don't do exercises because I know I can't keep them up. Too many stories of "oh I lost 50lbs once, but now it's all back" what did they do differently? Stopped anything they were doing which shocked their body.
6. PROFIT!......a wonderful program I use for my palm pilot called e-diet has an entire database of foods (yes pizza and coke are in there) and you can modify it with your foods and calories. It helps me maintain my daily calories while also telling me what specific exercise and for how long to burn off calories when I go over (stuff like laundry, cleaning, coding). You plug in your height, weight, activity level, and how much you want to lose in how long and it shows you the path you need to take. Losing weight really is just plain mathematics, which should motivate at least SOME of you geek's out there.
Good Luck and drop me a line if you have any questions.
Yo Grark
Canadian Bred with American Buttering (bread and butter is 200 calories a slice!)
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
Around new year, I decided I'd got heavier than I'd like. I'm reasonably fit, and a good weight for my height and build, but as a result of an injury I hadn't been doing nearly as much of my physical hobbies as usual, and I'd put on around a stone. So, I decided to try a genuine, honest-to-goodness diet + exercise regime to lose that weight.
For three months, I kept a spreadsheet of everything I ate or drank, with calorie counts, amounts of protein, carbs, fats and fibre, etc. I also kept a record of how much significant exercise I was doing, and my weight, daily.
Curious facts I discovered while researching/doing it...
So there you go. My top tips for healthy eating with almost no change to your lifestyle:
I lost the stone I wanted to comfortably in three months, and now feel much fitter as I get back into training. And I'm the laziest guy in the world, so if I can do it, anyone can.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
When is a calorie not a calorie? When it's protein. 1 g of protein has the same calories as 1 g of carbohydrate. However, it takes your body more energy to digest the protein, so the net result is that 1 g of protein provides you, in the end, with less calories than 1 gram of carbs. That is also something to consider if you're on a high-protein bodybuilding type diet.
First off, the basis of energy consumption in your body called the Krebbs cycle. The input is sugar (glucose, to be specific) and oxygen. The output is water, carbon dioxide, and energy stored in the bonds of a ATP (adenosine triphosphate). This chemical reaction is fixed. While the body can operate in an anaerobic process, this occurs when vigerously exercising. Even then, the input is still glucose.
Any sugar or starch you consume is converted to glucose. Sucrose is two glucose molcules stuck together. Fructose is a sugar with 1 carbon missing. Starch is a chain of sugars. All of these are converted into glucose.
So, what happens when not enough sugar is around? The body draws on the reserves of fat and protein. Glucose is able to come out of fat pretty easily. For protein, the body does some complex conversion which use the protein to create glucose to stuff into the Krebbs cycle. The downside is some unpleasant byproducts need to be dealt with by the liver.
So why does the body burn fat and protein? Because, when you burn protein, you reduce muscle mass, and hence your caloritic requirements. Kind of like a layoff.
Ok, so after all that: Glucose (sugar) is the only thing the body "burns". It all comes down to how much you take in. It is simply accounting. If you eat more than you need, you gain weight. If you eat less, your body starts cutting back on muscle and uses up fat. Carbs have 5 cal/gram, while fat has 9cal/gram (I don't remember protein).
So you can think all you want about high GI and low GI and fat and so on. You still get X cals from Y grams of carbs, and X cals from 5/9Y grams of fat. End of story.
I think that the real reason that these diets are effective is because they are less "boring" than high carb diets and also self-limiting. If you can only eat the patty and not the bun, how many burgers are you going to stuff in your face?
Of course, my belief is that people really evolved eating mainly vegetables and only occasionally fruit, meat, and grains. Do I eat that way? Hell no! But I do try to eat vegetables whenever I can.
No, I don't trust in god. He'll have to pay up front, like everybody else.
if you want to be lean, you actually have to weigh MORE,
since lean strong muscles weigh more than fat, but they
look more toned.
therefore, using weight to guage fitness is totally bogus.
a lean person will look 'skinnier' but weigh MORE.
the other thing that makes people fat is 'Low Fat' food.
if all you eat is low-fat stuff, your body never gets the
nutrition it needs, and hence you have to eat more of
the stuff to make up your body's requirements. the best
thing to do if you want to lose weight is to eat more
of the 'Regular Fat' foods, and then your body won't
need so much of the stuff to feel 'full'.
best regards,
john
It works great, especially for engineers/programmers!
The hacker's diet is very simple: you can eat whatever you want, just make sure you eat less calories than what your body needs. You can feed on hamburgers if you want as long as you eat less. You can worry about exercising or eating healthy stuff later, this will come automatically once you've lost some weight.
4 years ago I was at 215 lbs (for 5'10), loathed any form of physical activity, and was not very happy about this situation. After skimming through the hacker's diet I decided to lower my daily food intake to around 1000-1200 cal (the average intake for a man is between 2000-2500 cal)
This wasn't very pleasant at first but it worked and 12 months later I was down to 155 lbs (60 pounds less), without any exercise at all. To keep the same weight I started eating a bit more and I immediately felt like running everywhere instead of walking! So I bought a bike to get some low impact exercise and a year afterwards I found myself cycling 20 miles every day to work (not in the snow though)
Today, 4 years after I started this very simple diet, I'm still at 155 lbs, very active and generally much happier. Also I'm not closely counting calories anymore as my body automatically knows how much food is enough.
The most difficult part I found when starting the diet was evaluating calories in food. You can find calories on most food labels (usually in cal/100g of product) but it took me a while to learn what type of food would bring me the best quantity/energy ratio. I found some great low cal food are veggies (I am lucky to love beans and 1kg of beans is about 200cal - you can stuff yourself on this without any problem), chicken, fish...
All this food happens to be very healthy too, so as you see there is no need to worry about knowing what's healthy and what's not because if you want to eat a lot (as in volume) without taking in too many calories, it will have to be healthy food anyway.
Read the Hacker's Diet for more info, it is definitely worth it!!
BTW the first time I heard about the Hacker's diet was on Slashdot, 4 years ago.
blop.
You will find that a nice cold glass of water/juice more than cures your hunger for the few hours until your next meal.
Orange juice 8oz: 100 to 120 calories
Coke (or cola)8oz: 95 calories
Didn't want to argue, its just shocking how many calories, and carbs are in fruits and juices. You would have been better off with the coke. (fructose is not much better than sucrose)
I prefer the Atkins approach. I researched it for many months and spoke with my doctor about it. In spite of rumors to the contrary, it is quite healthy if done correctly. I have lost 20 pounds, 10 more to go, and feel better than I ever have. I lose it slow, and never go hungry. Ever.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
It's aboslutely appalling that the above post was modded up as informative. From the first sentence to the last, it's filled with half-true statements, and reeks of absurd pseudo-science.
First off: "The body is not designed to burn sugar."
Ugh. Go to the bookstore. Pick up an introductory biology textbook (biochemistry would work too). Find out that, in fact, the preferred source of energy for living organisms is sugar. Can the human body process other compounds for energy? Yes, but you'll find that none of these processes are as efficient as the catalysis of sugar for energy production, and that nearly all are overlooked in favor of glycolysis when glucose is present.
Next: Bacon is easier to burn and digests slowly
First, you have to define "digest," and you have to define "burn." If, by digest, you mean that a chunk of bacon is absorbed by the intestines less rapidly than a chunk of rice, you may or may not be correct. It doesn't matter. What does matter is that the body will absorb these things, and will somehow break these foods down into molecular units it can use. Fat, protein and sugar can all be converted to glucose through molecular pathways of varying efficiency -- this is what is traditionally meant by the "burning" of food.
Now, is bacon really easier to "burn" than rice? No. That's the opposite of the truth, actually. Bacon is muscle, which means that it is mostly protein and fat. And protein digestion is the metabolic pathway of last resort in humans. Thus, the body will (in an average person), digest the fat in the bacon first (and don't forget that, pound for pound, fat contains 9 times the caloric content of sugar!), store whatever it doesn't use as fat, use some of the protein for non-metabolic needs, and, most likely, squirt the rest of the protein out through the kidneys (via the liver). This is why people on extremely-high protein diets tend to have problems with kidney and liver function later in life.
Moving on: "Rice has no fat, so your hormones may get out of balance."
Bzzzt. Wrong again. Let's take another look at that biology 101 textbook: hormones are, by and large, cholesterol derivatives. Testosterone? Cholesterol. Estrogen? Ditto. In fact, you'd be pretty hard-pressed to find an important human hormone that wasn't derived from cholesterol, metabolically. And guess what? Plants have cholesterol too. More than enough for hormone synthesis needs, actually. This fact has been well-known by dieticians and doctors for decades.
So what about this gem: "Rice...is a complex carb, your body is not designed to handle it, so it takes a longer time to burn"
Nope. Compared to the protein or fat in bacon, rice is trivial for the body to "burn". It might take a smidge longer to digest, depending on how it's cooked, but we're not talking nutritionally-important differences here (your body will digest it one way or another). And the suggestion that the human body "is not designed to handle" complex carbohydrates? Utter nonsense. Go spit in a glass. See that? You're looking at a highly efficient mixure of enzymes, designed by evolution specifically for the digestion of complex carbohydrates. Pick up that biology book again...look up "alpha amylase," and you'll see what I mean.
So once we clear away the pseudo-science, what are we left with? Well, we know that protein is burned more slowly than fat, which is burned more slowly than sugars. And carbohydrates are sugars. So there is a bit of truth to your conclusion: when we eat high-protein diets, the body will find other mechanisms to meet it's sugar needs. It will do everything it can to create glucose without digesting protein. Of course, in the real world, no one eats pure protein (and for good reason -- see above), and protein has the nasty habit of coming in animal form, which means that lots of fat comes with it. It doesn't take much fat
Let's try not to let fact interfere with our speculation here, OK?
1 gram of protein does not have the same caloric content as 1 gram of carbohydrate.
1 gram carbohydrate = 4.3 kcal
1 gram fat = 9.5 kcal
1 gram protein = 5.7 kcal
But you were right on the other part. It does take more energy to digest the protein, as it needs to be converted by the liver into a usable sugar.
SF
i've been playing ddr on and off for the past year or so.. i'm not 16 or 17 like a lot of the ddr players at the local arcade but you know what? i still play it anyway.. some of my work friends think its stupid but i'd like to see one of them even try doing afronova in basic ;P
ddr rules
OK, good points, but just a caveat, "strong muscle weigh more than fat" makes no sense. 1 lb. of muscle weighs the same as one 1lb of fat. Are you talking about weight per volume? a fit person WILL weigh more for several reasons: fat (per volume) weighs less than muscle AND they will have more muscle, and aerboic execise increases blood volume and therefore water weight. no excuses people, get off your seat and run a little every day.
It is true that the OJ has more calories, but you are still better off drinking it for a number of reasons:
1. the glycemic index rating of OJ is much lower than coke's index. this translates to a difference in the amount of insulin that is released when you ingest the product, and is directly proportional to the energy you gain, the effect you feel later (slump) and the amount that goes directly to fat cells.
2. OJ has VITAMINS! Gasp! Coke? ZILCH.
Regardless.. both of these drinks will leave you dead tired after the sugar wears off. I'd drink OJ over Coke, but water is by far the best choice.
~j