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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?"
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.