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Programming and Dieting?
duncan bayne asks: "I've been using the Hacker's Diet to lose weight. What's interesting to me is how hard it is to focus on a complicated task when my body is busy running out of energy. I'm having to pay careful attention to snacking - eating enough that I don't 'fade out' in the afternoon, yet not so much that I exceed my daily kilojoule allowance. This got me to thinking about energy levels of those who aren't dieting. Do you find yourself correcting 'fade' by snacking (careful or otherwise) as you work?"
from TFHD: "There is no magic secret to losing weight and keeping it off"
Incorrect. There is one great key to losing weight and keeping it off. Its called Math. If you take in more calories then you use, you will gain weight. If you burn more calories then you take in, you will lose weight. It is that simple. Eat a healthy blend of foods. Eat less and exercise more and you will lose weight. Period. Whether you eat nothing but stake, are a vegitarian, a junk food muncher, what ever your gimmic is, you need to burn more calories then you digest.
Go out and drop a few bucks on a quality diet/exercise tracking system. They are simple to use, just plug in what you eat and what type of activities you do during the day. They can spit out graphs of your expected weight changes and make recomendations for how to meet your weight goals over a period of time.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
> Do you find yourself correcting 'fade' by snacking (careful or otherwise) as you
> work?"
If by `fade` they mean `falling blood sugar levels` then the answer is to not binge on sugary stuff in the first place. But no-one wants to do boring stuff like eating properly, especially if you want to stay up all night debugging...uh, I mean coding.
I've been following Atkins diet for a while and it worked until I reached a line that my body refuses to cross, so I changed to a hipocaloric one (less than 1600 KCalories every day) and a little of exercice (walking as much as I can, and 2 hour gym every week), the results are very promising, and at this moments I think that I know a little about dieting and losing weight, some things that work for me :
1.- Watch what you eat, (http://www.nutritiondata.com/ has been a wonderful help) 1600 Kcalories enables you to loose up to 2 Kg every month.
2.- Eat frecuently, no more than 4 hours without eating something, 100 gr of fruit is right between meals when you are hungry. This way you are not empty (and hungry) when you do the real meal.
3.- If you are really hungry between meals, 10 gr of butter (yes pure butter only) helps me to avoid the starving feeling (thanks to Atking, this really works).
4.- Don't eat outside meal time, and stop doing it as soon as you have enough or you don't have hunger, this is really important, and it is an habit change that you need to track carefully.
5.- Make a little exercice, you don't need to train like Mr, Universe, just 20 minutes walking every day and some serious aerobic exercice 2 times (or more) a week is right.
6.- Avoid highly carbohydrated food, like rice, sugar, pasta, flour etc..., vegetables and fruit will give you more than enough for your needs.
7.- Drink, no less than 3 Liters of water every day, but no sodas or similar, just water or tea with a sugar substitute, saccharin is better than aspartame.
8.- Put the maximun food intake in the breakfast and the lunch, and the minimun in the dinner, this way you go to sleep almost empty.
9.- Loosing weight is a SLOW PROCESS, so don't try to recover your perfect weight in 2 weeks, put a realistic schedule, 1 to 2 years is a correct one. Going faster will not work in the long term.
10.- Persistence, all this is nonsense if you do it for 1 week and forget it the next one, loosing weight is a state of mind.
I've lost 20 Kg, in the past 18 months, and today I'm quite happy, even my sexual life has improved a lot, but I understand that every person is a world and at the end you need to decide what is right and what works for you, so watch how your body reacts to your actions.
It's interesting how you're able to mix the insightful with the oblivious. Most people can't do that. You've got your facts right, but your attitude renders you incapable of properly interpreting them. Since essentially anonymous postings on public message boards don't change anyones attitudes, I won't try. Let me just point out the basic contradiction you've presented.
You said that "diabetes is believed to develop when..." any of several insulin-related things go wrong. That's right and there's nothing in there about weight. Later, you say that you know people who got diabetes "as a direct result of 30-40 years of doing nothing but getting fat and lazy." That's not the same thing. So, which is it? Do people get diabetes because of an insulin problem or do they get it because they're fat and lazy?
Here's a hint - characterizing people as lazy and attributing (even in part) an endocrine disorder to that characteristic is, shall we say, counterproductive to the pursuit of effective treatment. Understand, though, that remaining factually correct and accounting for attitudes and lifestyle are not mutually exclusive. A better way to explain to a new or pre- diabetic would run along these lines: "Parts of your endocrine system aren't working right. It's not sufficient for you to eat and move just like normal, thin folks. If that's all you do, you'll get fat. You're going to have to work twice as hard as most people to stay thin and you simply must do so because if you don't, that endocrine problem will spiral ridiculously out of control and put you in a world of hurt. It's not fair, but you got dealt a bad hand. You're going to have to play it perfectly if you don't want to lose the game."
See the difference? Or are you going to persist in being like those asshole ex-smokers who insist on denying that nicotine is addictive just because they were able to kick the habit?