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Book Review: The Healthy Programmer
benrothke writes "Diet books are literally a dime a dozen. They generally benefit only the author, publisher and Amazon, leaving the reader frustrated and bloated. With a failure rate of over 99%, diet books are the epitome of a sucker born every minute. One of the few diet books that can offer change you can believe in is The Healthy Programmer: Get Fit, Feel Better, and Keep Coding. Author Joe Kutner observes that nearly every popular diet fails and the reason is that they are based on the premise of a quick fix without focusing on the long-term core issues. It is inevitable that these diets will fail and the dieters at heart know that. It is simply that they are taking the wrong approach. This book is about the right approach; namely a slow one. With all of the failed diet books, Kutner is one of the few that has gotten it right." Keep reading for the rest of Ben's review.
The Healthy Programmer: Get Fit, Feel Better, and Keep Coding
author
Joe Kutner
pages
220
publisher
Pragmatic Bookshelf
rating
9/10
reviewer
Ben Rothke
ISBN
978-1937785314
summary
A diet and lifestyle guide that works for all, not just for programmers.
While the title of the book says it's for programmers, it is germane to anyone whose job requires them to be at a desk for extended amounts of time.
Kutner is himself a programmer who builds Ruby and Rails applications, and a former college athlete and Army Reserve physical fitness trainer.
The book focuses on two areas that require change: regular exercise and proper nutrition; and it details the steps necessary to create a balanced lifestyle.
While popular diet books require rapid and major lifestyle changes and promise quick weight-loss, the book notes that small changes to your habits can provide the long-term effects that can improve your health. The book focuses on incremental changes and sustainability, not about losing x pounds in x weeks.
The book is different (read: effective) as opposed to other diet and lifestyle books, in that its goal is to make your healthy lifestyle pragmatic, attainable, and fun. It is only with those aspects that long-term change be possible.
As to programmers, Kutner writes that programming requires intense concentration that often causes them to neglect other aspects of their lives; the most common of which is their health. People's bodies have not evolved to accommodate a lifestyle of sitting and there are many negative health effects from it.
The book takes a start small approach, rather than one of drastic changes. In chapter 2, it notes the myriad benefits of walking. It states that walking is a powerful activity that can stimulate creative thinking (a required trait for a good programmer) and is a great way to bootstrap your health. The chapter details the ways in which a few short walks during the day can have a dramatic positive effect on your life.
Chapter 3 is about the dangers of chairs and sitting for long periods of time. It details a number of ways to counter the dangers of sitting. It also notes that while sometimes you simply can't get away from your chair, and when that happens, you can make sitting less dangerous by forcing your muscles to contract without even getting up. It then details a number of different calisthenics to use to do this.
Chapter 4 – Agile Dieting — is perhaps the best part of the book. It details how to fight the real causes of weight gain and details proven solutions that work. That chapter repeatedly uses terms like iterative, sustainable, slow to show what it really takes to lose weight and achieve a healthy lifestyle.
Kutner notes that most of the popular fad diets are idiosyncratic and unbalanced. They will provide short-term benefits, but ultimately fail miserably. The chapter quotes research data on what needs to be in a balanced diet. It then notes that almost every fad diet violates those needs. Nutrition needs to be rounded and well-balanced and the fad diets for that reason will only work in the short term.
This book is everything the fad diet books are not and this is most manifest in chapter 4 where Kutner writes one should cut calories slowly. This is based on research which shows that quick drastic weight loss is counterproductive. While the fad diets talk about drastic caloric changes, Kutner suggests dropping your intake slower, about 100 calories every two weeks until you get you your targeted caloric intake level.
While much of the book is on fitness and nutrition, it takes a complete body approach. Chapter 5 details the importance of eye health. This is an important topic since the average programmer spends much of their week behind a monitor.
Kutner writes about computer vision syndrome (CVS); an eye condition resulting from focusing the eyes on a monitor for extended amounts of time. Symptoms of CVS include headaches, blurred vision, neck pain, redness in the eyes, fatigue, eye strain, dry eyes, irritated eyes, double vision, vertigo/dizziness, polyopia, and difficulty refocusing the eyes. The book also details methods in which to minimize the effects of CVS, and how not to become a victim of it. Kutner writes that CVS is what most programmers refer to as life. But it does not have to be that way.
The rest of the book covers other physical ailments that plague programmers. This runs the gamut from headaches, backaches, wrist problem, carpel tunnel, head strain and much more. Most of these problems can be obviated if one follows proper ergonomics practices and employs some of the physical conditioning detailed in the book.
Another theme of the book is using goals as an impetus for change. The book lists 16 goals which can be used as a progressive framework to improve your health. These goals include buying a pedometer, finding your resting heart rate, getting a negative result on Reverse Phalens test and other lifestyle changes.
Given the preponderance of obesity, diabetes and other maladies associated with a sedentary lifestyle, this may be one of the most important non-programming books that every developer should read and take to heart.
The book has hundreds of bits of excellent advice and subtle lifestyle suggestions that over time can make a significant difference to your health.
The author has a web site and an iPhone app that can be referenced for additional help. The book is full of sage and pragmatic advice. It has no celebrity endorsement, no gimmicks or false claims; meaning it has a high chance of working.
The book concludes with the observation that programmers often say the hardest part of software development begins when a product is released. The real work, maintenance, continues on, much like your health. You must sustain a stat of wellness for the rest of your life, and you need to continue setting goals, iterating and making small improvements.
For many programmers, they love their job but not the lifestyle problems that come with it. For the programmer that wants the challenges of the professional and the benefits of a healthy lifestyle, The Healthy Programmer: Get Fit, Feel Better, and Keep Coding, may be a life changing book, and should find its rightful place on every programmer's desk.
Reviewed by Ben Rothke.
You can purchase The Healthy Programmer: Get Fit, Feel Better, and Keep Coding from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews (sci-fi included) -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Kutner is himself a programmer who builds Ruby and Rails applications, and a former college athlete and Army Reserve physical fitness trainer.
The book focuses on two areas that require change: regular exercise and proper nutrition; and it details the steps necessary to create a balanced lifestyle.
While popular diet books require rapid and major lifestyle changes and promise quick weight-loss, the book notes that small changes to your habits can provide the long-term effects that can improve your health. The book focuses on incremental changes and sustainability, not about losing x pounds in x weeks.
The book is different (read: effective) as opposed to other diet and lifestyle books, in that its goal is to make your healthy lifestyle pragmatic, attainable, and fun. It is only with those aspects that long-term change be possible.
As to programmers, Kutner writes that programming requires intense concentration that often causes them to neglect other aspects of their lives; the most common of which is their health. People's bodies have not evolved to accommodate a lifestyle of sitting and there are many negative health effects from it.
The book takes a start small approach, rather than one of drastic changes. In chapter 2, it notes the myriad benefits of walking. It states that walking is a powerful activity that can stimulate creative thinking (a required trait for a good programmer) and is a great way to bootstrap your health. The chapter details the ways in which a few short walks during the day can have a dramatic positive effect on your life.
Chapter 3 is about the dangers of chairs and sitting for long periods of time. It details a number of ways to counter the dangers of sitting. It also notes that while sometimes you simply can't get away from your chair, and when that happens, you can make sitting less dangerous by forcing your muscles to contract without even getting up. It then details a number of different calisthenics to use to do this.
Chapter 4 – Agile Dieting — is perhaps the best part of the book. It details how to fight the real causes of weight gain and details proven solutions that work. That chapter repeatedly uses terms like iterative, sustainable, slow to show what it really takes to lose weight and achieve a healthy lifestyle.
Kutner notes that most of the popular fad diets are idiosyncratic and unbalanced. They will provide short-term benefits, but ultimately fail miserably. The chapter quotes research data on what needs to be in a balanced diet. It then notes that almost every fad diet violates those needs. Nutrition needs to be rounded and well-balanced and the fad diets for that reason will only work in the short term.
This book is everything the fad diet books are not and this is most manifest in chapter 4 where Kutner writes one should cut calories slowly. This is based on research which shows that quick drastic weight loss is counterproductive. While the fad diets talk about drastic caloric changes, Kutner suggests dropping your intake slower, about 100 calories every two weeks until you get you your targeted caloric intake level.
While much of the book is on fitness and nutrition, it takes a complete body approach. Chapter 5 details the importance of eye health. This is an important topic since the average programmer spends much of their week behind a monitor.
Kutner writes about computer vision syndrome (CVS); an eye condition resulting from focusing the eyes on a monitor for extended amounts of time. Symptoms of CVS include headaches, blurred vision, neck pain, redness in the eyes, fatigue, eye strain, dry eyes, irritated eyes, double vision, vertigo/dizziness, polyopia, and difficulty refocusing the eyes. The book also details methods in which to minimize the effects of CVS, and how not to become a victim of it. Kutner writes that CVS is what most programmers refer to as life. But it does not have to be that way.
The rest of the book covers other physical ailments that plague programmers. This runs the gamut from headaches, backaches, wrist problem, carpel tunnel, head strain and much more. Most of these problems can be obviated if one follows proper ergonomics practices and employs some of the physical conditioning detailed in the book.
Another theme of the book is using goals as an impetus for change. The book lists 16 goals which can be used as a progressive framework to improve your health. These goals include buying a pedometer, finding your resting heart rate, getting a negative result on Reverse Phalens test and other lifestyle changes.
Given the preponderance of obesity, diabetes and other maladies associated with a sedentary lifestyle, this may be one of the most important non-programming books that every developer should read and take to heart.
The book has hundreds of bits of excellent advice and subtle lifestyle suggestions that over time can make a significant difference to your health.
The author has a web site and an iPhone app that can be referenced for additional help. The book is full of sage and pragmatic advice. It has no celebrity endorsement, no gimmicks or false claims; meaning it has a high chance of working.
The book concludes with the observation that programmers often say the hardest part of software development begins when a product is released. The real work, maintenance, continues on, much like your health. You must sustain a stat of wellness for the rest of your life, and you need to continue setting goals, iterating and making small improvements.
For many programmers, they love their job but not the lifestyle problems that come with it. For the programmer that wants the challenges of the professional and the benefits of a healthy lifestyle, The Healthy Programmer: Get Fit, Feel Better, and Keep Coding, may be a life changing book, and should find its rightful place on every programmer's desk.
Reviewed by Ben Rothke.
You can purchase The Healthy Programmer: Get Fit, Feel Better, and Keep Coding from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews (sci-fi included) -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Diet books are literally a dime a dozen. They generally benefit only the author, publisher and Amazon, leaving the reader frustrated and bloated. With a failure rate of over 99%, diet books are the epitome of a sucker born every minute. One of the few diet books that can offer change
That is where you should stop reading. When someone tells you nearly everything in a category is ineffective, then offers you something in that category as somehow worth your money, something stinks.
Let me fix that for you:
Books on (any subject) are literally a dime a dozen. They generally benefit only the author (as long as the author is using the book for publicity), publisher (financially) and Amazon (to drive traffic to competing or complementary products), leaving the reader frustrated and bloated (99% of time).
>> Diet books are literally a dime a dozen. They generally benefit only the author, publisher and Amazon, leaving the reader frustrated and bloated.
Welcome to the publishing industry, newbie critic.
Whenever I get the urge to exercise, I lie down until the feeling passes away. :)
Only eat when you are hungry. Too many people think 3 meals are mandatory. Too many people go out during lunch, eat a huge meal and come back bloated and tired. Stay hungry. Eat until you are satisfied. Stop eating when you feel nourished.
Try it. It works.
Author Joe Kutner observes that nearly every popular diet fails and the reason is that they are based on the premise of a quick fix without focusing on the long-term core issues.
Nothing wrong with a quick fix, but the weight also needs to be maintained. Or you snap right back.
Dieting is problematic for one huge reason. People generally go about it in the most unhealthy of ways. Balance and portion control elude much of the West in this day and age. I know I'm certainly guilty of it, and I feel crappy healthwise.
Sitting is a huge problem too. Long commutes are similarly problematic. People often neglect to realize how much time they spend just sitting at the office, only to sit for 45 minutes or more both on the way to and from work, and then what little time is left is spent largely sitting at home.
Weather is also problematic, especially in climates where spending time outside is often impractical. The heat of Texas and the cold of some other region I've never lived in are made further difficult by the relative ease of Western life today. Gone are the days when outdoors is usually more pleasant than indoors in hot weather thanks to A/C, and modern heating soruces have all but eliminated the reason to be outside during cold winters except to get to and from heated vehicles. As a result, it's harder to handle the outside temperatures as one never acclimates to it.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
There's an almost magic weight loss formula I've followed that just works. I was going to write a book about it, but as it turns out it would be more of a pamphlet or brochure in length.
Just make sure the following is true: calories consumed
I've been monitoring my calorie intake using a free app (My Fitness Pal) and it's been working great. I can scan barcode for just about anything that has one (it sometimes doesn't find odd things I might purchase in, say, an Asian Grocery). You punch in what your goal weight is, and how much you want to lose per week and it calculates your calorie intake and keeps track of how much of various nutrients you're getting (Sodium, Potassium, etc).
I told the app I wanted to lose 2 pounds per week, and over 15 weeks lost exactly 30 pounds. It takes a bit of discipline, but it helps develop the habits you'll need to keep the weight off.
I'm lazy.
Didn't we just have an article this morning (EST) about how Twinkies were the programmer's "Breakfast of Champions?"
Only one more paperback copy left in stock on Amazon! (as of this posting)
Ok you convinced me, where do i download it from?
I hope you're not expecting me to pay for it
Well, as we are looking at the category of "diets tailored for programmers", I guess The Hacker's Diet is an obligatory mention. I guess most of you know that book already though. Tell me if you know any others.
you've obviously never worked out AC.
To clear my head and take my mind off the predicaments of coding I try to get regular exercise. I'm fortunate enough to live near several very large open space parks, state parks and county parks.
I hiked about 8 miles in the mountains on Sunday. You can't exert energy like that and then eat and drink garbage, your body knows what it needs and tells you by rather convincing means. Headaches, cramps, lethargy and such are symptomatic of eating poorly. A bag of chips and a soda after a 90 mile bike ride is guaranteed to make me utterly ill. Fruit and raw almonds after exertion along with water replace energy, protein and electrolytes which have been consumed in effort.
Sitting at the desk and slogging through code isn't much different than muscle exerting - the brain seeks it's own fuel, quite a bit of sugar, but I find processed sugar gives me sugar rushes and headaches, followed by lethargy. Fruit sugar works more effectively and goes into the blood quicker. Tea rather than overstrong coffee or soda (with its high fructose corn syrup) I try to avoid. Marathon development sessions go more smoothly when I resist the urge to eat fried foods, sugar glazed stuff, too much salt and beverages which overly stimulate me - I don't need no stinkin' "energy" drinks (instant ice tea and Tang are more effective anyway and way cheaper.)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The Hacker's Diet did this quite a while ago.
The concept is pretty simple: To lose weight, eat fewer calories than you burn. To not gain weight, eat only as much as you burn. You can increase how much you burn with exercise, or you can decrease how much you eat, or both. Anything else as far as dieting is concerned is window dressing.
I am officially gone from
If more goes in your mouth hole than comes out your butt hole, you get fat.
Oddly, no.
Carbohydrates used as an energy source are oxidized into carbon dioxide and water (vapor); these are exhausted by breathing them out your "mouth hole." Not all the calories input come out your "butt hole." So, you could have put it: "if more (caloric content) goes in via your mouth hole than you exhale via your mouth hole, the difference is incorporated into your body in the form of fat."
The amount oxidized is proportional to how many calories you expend in the form of metabolism and physical effort
Did I miss the special on Amazon where you get 12 books for 10 cents?
Words have meanings: literally has a meaning.
Is 1563649 a prime number?
Don't mess with tradition.
I wish I could find it, but I read about a long-term large-population study about diet and weight loss. They concluded that they only meaningful types of lifestyle changes, diet, exercise, weight loss happen on a very long term scale. Like 6 to 12months.
They found what you did on a day to day basis was largely irrelevant as long as the long-term calorie intake was less than long-term calorie usage. Dieting for a month is meaningless. You'll always rebound if you don't keep it up for a year.
Weight loss is long, hard, full of work and sacrifice. For a long, long time.
People are always bad at evaluating long term risk. This is why people are fat.
An alternative, of course, is to instead write a book about it, then profit and pay a personal trainer to drop by the beach house once a week.
No digital version? No Kindle, epub, mobi, PDF versions? I find it odd to come across a book for programmers that isn't available in digital form.
+ $27, that feels a bit much for a diet book.
Here we go The Healthy Programmer: Get Fit, Feel Better, and Keep Coding DRM-free Format
Still awfully expensive for my tastes, I'll wait till it goes down in price before I check it out.
Hmm, the humour and sarcasm seem to have been be lost on you.
All you have to do to lose weight is eat less calories than you burn. That's it. Simple, right?
It's dead simple as long as you enjoy feeling hungry and irritable all day, have a magical body that burns the same amount of energy regardless of food input, and don't mind losing a ton of muscle mass during your diet.
The real answer is to cut out most of the carbohydrates that you eat (or at least lose the grains, there's some debate about potatoes and such) and replace them with fats instead. After a brief adaptation period, you can just eat when you're hungry and, because fat is more satiating, you'll naturally consume only what you need. Because you're not shoving tons of sugar down your throat, you won't experience the insulin surge-crash cycle, you'll have more energy and be less hungry than you would on a traditional "diet". Because you're eating more protein you'll lose less muscle mass than you would on a typical weight loss diet.
It might seem "extreme" or "fad" at first, but there's a growing body of evidence that suggests cutting carb intake is actually a very healthy and sustainable long-term choice. I do it and I recommend it to everyone who is looking to make a long-term diet adjustment.
Keto FAQ:
Q:But won't eating more fat give me a heart attack?
A:No, the idea that saturated fats lead to heart disease was never more than speculation and has never had any scientific evidence behind it.
Q:It's too hard to eat that way in modern America/I don't have time to cook that much.
A:Get a crock pot.
Tell the PHB to stop the 80 hour work weeks then as well the working lunches
Eat healthy
Exercise
Done;
I've been both.
Personally I breath out some of the carbon from the foods I eat. You have a very strange respiratory system if that's coming out you butt hole. You may want to see a medical professional in fact.
Keep up the good work, I probably just lost a good pound or two from all the vomiting I just did!
One sentence; eat less, exercise more. Simple. :)
I'm taking up competition horseshoe throwing; had a ball last tues night
As long as you're fixing thing, take "literally" out of there. It's literally the exact wrong way to use it.
Fat accumulation is driven by the hormone insulin. Undisputed biochemistry.
Insulin levels are driven by blood sugar levels. Undisputed biochemistry.
Blood sugar levels are driven by carbohydrate intake. Undisputed biochemistry.
Stop eating carbohydrates. It's simple.
Alas, we literally lost...
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." --H.L. Mencken
Between the exercise of tearing the pages out and chewing them and the malnutrition from eating only processed dead trees, ink, and glue, you'll lose weight in no time.
Disclaimer: The Diet Book Diet can also significantly shorten life expectancy.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
>> As long as you're fixing thing, take
things
In general, programmers aren't actually interested in food, beyond ending the immediacy of hunger.
But they should be. If what they want is to have sharper and clearer thinking, for longer windows, they should pay attention to what they eat and worse --- they should cook it themselves. Controlling what you eat is a really good thing.
Yes, it's blasphemy I know, and I didn't believe it myself for... decades. But it turns out that a vegan diet, without processed foods (that means no Trader Joes for you), and low in oil and fats (think Engine 2 diet [http://engine2diet.com/]), does that and more. If you eat this way, it's just about impossible for you to gain weight above your healthy norm; you can't physically take in enough calories once you delete the high energy density foods (the animal products and excess oils and fats). So if you are already over, you'll lose weight, without trying, without hunger. And when you get back to your normal, you'll stabilize there.
The other interesting side effect of eating this way, is that you don't actually have to worry about protein. If you eat the plants, you'll get enough. I know, I didn't believe it either, but I've got the spreadsheets to prove it. I'm a geek, what can I say?
There's plenty of science to back this up, from the China Study to the eCornell Plant Based Nutrition certificate program, to the work Dr. Neal Bernard is doing and way more. This is science based eating, and it runs completely counter to what big-ag is trying to get you to eat. But... they are wrong. Science is right. You're geeks, you know this.
And I've put my money where my mouth is. I was a vegetarian for five+ years, and I've been vegan for nearly 2 years now. The step that worked, was going vegan. It's not enough to cut out meat, you have to cut out all the animal products. Including cheese.
Yep, that programmers' special pizza is part of what's making you stupid. You won't believe it until you quit eating it. It only takes a few days to a week before you start feeling better. Within a few months you'll forget what meat and dairy even tasted like. Within a year you'll be grossed out by the fast food commercials on TV. If you make it to that point, you'll never go back.
And that's the problem -- making it to that point. The societal pressures to *not* do this are brutal. Just brutal. You'll catch no end of s**t from your coworkers, especially at lunch when you refuse a trip to a fast food joint and instead eat what you cooked and brought to the office. It's difficult to eat out -- the vast majority of restaurants are hooked on meat and dairy. But it can be done if you'll make the effort. Yelp is often your friend.
Two other benefits. You'll save money; you can't help it. Plants cost less than animals. And, your general health will improve in interesting and mysterious ways. For me, my knees quit hurting. I can hike up and down the mountains now and never even notice my knees, before, during, or after. For my wife, her breathing improved. She can now hike along side me up and down the mountains, and it's been many years since that was true.
So... what's it hurt to try it? You can do anything for a month -- I used to tell myself I could stand any class for a semester, and a month is way shorter than a semester. Run the experiment yourself, make an honest try. Draw your own conclusions.
If you don't know how to get started, look at the Engine 2 Diet book. If you need more, look at Wildly Affordable Organic [http://www.cookforgood.com/buy/], whose recipes I can vouch for. If this engineer / programmer can do it, you can. It's a smaller learning curve than learning C++ was.
Oh, this is about a diet book? Really? When I read the title, I was thinking it was some fairytale... Come on, a healthy programmer, really?
Here's the topic for your next book:
"Sustainable Kama Sutra: The Green Revolution"
shoot
Good catch, thanks for that!
If you're hungry, eat. When you're not hungry anymore, stop eating. This sounds simple, but it can be difficult to practice.
Yup, partially because processed foods have very high calorie counts, and sweetened drinks are everywhere. One of the reasons soda is such a pain is because it's so many calories for not a lot of stomach space. Switching to water, tea, etc helps. I almost never have anything except water with meals now. Kinda nice - cleans the palate, works with everything, cheap, etc.
But as an instructor pointed out, "You spent 20 years putting on that weight. It's not going to all come off in 20 days."
Eh, that's kind of a silly comparison or line of reasoning. The problem is mostly that there are a TON of calories in one pound of fat - 3500+. Calorie restriction works, it's just that because of the energy in a pound of fat, it can only work at a certain speed (dropping too many calories from your diet will result in weakness, getting sick more, etc), and that speed is a bit slower than people might hope. Let me put it this way: if your daily calorie usage is about 2000 calories and you don't eat anything for 24 hours, you'll lose well less than a pound (yes, I'm ignoring glycogen stores.)
Implementation of calorie restriction is difficult for many, yes. If you eat because you're unhappy, for example, then you shouldn't just talk to a dietician - you should also talk to a (licensed) mental health councilor of some sort. If you're snacking throughout the day or eating a massive lunch, you need a better breakfast. Etc. etc.
Everyone thinks exercise helps - and yes, it does, and you're definitely healthier and better off for it. But one of the cruel jokes about exercise is that when you do more of it, you become more efficient as a food-burning machine. People also underestimate the amount of calories burned from exercise, and above a certain level of activity, most of the calories come from your glycogen stores and carbohydrates, not fat.
Increasing activity and muscle mass helps, too, as muscle mass increase = daily calorie use increase. Everyone should do at least some sort of weight training, including-and-especially women, where weight lifting helps counteract bone density loss. Walking and cycling for transport helps quite a bit - even a 15-20 minute commute by bike is worth a decent number of calories, maybe 10% or so of your daily needs.
Please help metamoderate.
If diet books are a dime a dozen, but *this* diet book is presumably worth $27, then it must be better than $27*(10 dimes/$)*(12 diet books/dime) = 3240 other diet books..
Wow. This must be a great book.
Please show me the proof that Slashvertisement Product 1138 is not yet another failure in dieting books. I would like to see a statistical analysis of at least 100 readers who read the book, and their weight changes over the subsequent year.
What, you say? You just published the book and have no way of verifying this? Then stop making idiotic claims or GTFO.
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
Also, when you eat really does matter.
Don't believe me? I'm fine with that, I'm carbing up now for my marathon in 5 years.
One thing people might want to check out is a blog by an actual obesity researcher
Simply put there's a lot of factors of which the author summarized a few with an 8 part series on what motivates people to eat. One of the main hypothesis he pushes is the particularly depressing palatability hypothesis that says the tastier food is the more of it we'll eat.
He also takes down the nonsense of Gary Taubes.
I stole this Sig
...finds out one of his doctor underlings stooped to writing a diet book!
I can't wait to hear the evilly delicious taunts he'll throw around the hospital.
You basically need a jeweler's scale (pocket-sized ones go for under 7$ on ebay, shipping included), a set of rechargeable AAA batteries (those cheap scales drain them relatively quickly) and a spreadsheet that you can carry around on, say, your mobile communication device.
There. Now, you know how much of a certain food you're taking in as it is now rather simple to weigh your food.
On a plus side, if you end up being frisked by police for any reason, you can break the ice by explaining that you're not a drug dealer and that the white substance on your pocket scale is powdered sugar and not some narcotic substance.
Looking up said food in your spreadsheet lets you know how many calories per gram said food contains.
Like you stated above, you already know how to find that for the ingredients.
How much of each ingredient is in actual food you end up eating? Easy.
You got the recipe - you got the ratio of ingredients in the dish. You only need to calculate the amount of calories per gram ONCE per dish.
You don't got the recipe, cause you're eating at a restaurant or you don't want to bother your friends for the recipe - guesstimate.
It's not like one "imprecise meal" will ruin your diet. Or your data.
Stuff you're "adding to taste" can be ignored if it's less than a "significant amount of calories" per serving - i.e. if it's used as a SPICE.
In other words, if you're adding a spoon of butter to an entire pot of "dish X" - it does not really matter.
Though nothing stops you for weighing out the average amount you use (weight of spoon of butter minus the weight of spoon) and adding that to your spreadsheet too.
On the other hand, if you're spreading butter on slices of bread and eating them - that's not a spice, that's FOOD, and you can easily check how many calories of butter you're spreading on average per an average slice of bread and write that down in your spreadsheet.
Stuff you can't find exact calories for - write them down and ROUND UP their calories to the closest thing you COULD find exact calories for.
Considering it erring on the side of caution.
You could probably make a simple app for adding calorie counts of various ingredients in your spreadsheet (or an actual database at this point), subtracting the weight leftovers or packaging and/or empty plates after the meal (when eating outside your home).
You could add shiny graphs to show what you've been eating and how often, personal weight counters, a pedometer option to show you how much of your meal you've just walked off, goals, medals for inputting X numbers of unique (one for each ingredient or dish) calorie counts for food (gotta catch them all)...
There. Now you can treat dieting as a programming task.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
When you're not hungry anymore, stop eating.
You will still over-eat if you wait until you are no longer hungry to stop eating.
While it is true that the body does a good job of telling us when food is required, it is still the product of an environment where food is scarce. Humans did not evolve under conditions where food was practically unlimited (and actually few people live with such abundance to this day). Therefore, eating until you are not hungry does not take advantage of the same healthy instinct as not eating until you feel hungry in the first place.
I think a better practice is to eat small portions (about half of what you think you want), and then wait several minutes before returning for seconds. Also, drink plenty of water before and during the meal.
I came across My Fitness Pal after syncing it to a Withings scale I'd bought. As a data guy this has taken all the fuzziness and cheating out of weight loss. It's great. Calories and nutritional info is recorded, the scale syncs automatically after measuring (just stand on it, no data entry), and I'm getting their version of Fitbit, called Pulse, to help track exercise and sleep.
I think most Slashdotters who sometimes struggle with weight won't get much more out of a book they haven't scoured Google for already. Easily being able to visualize personal info seems to really help with the accountability part, which I think is way more important to the knowledge-savvy crowd.
--- Need web hosting?
We can create new habits and preferences: http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx
"Scientific evidence suggests that the re-sensitization of taste nerves takes between 30 and 90 days of consistent exposure to less stimulating foods. This means that for several weeks, most people attempting this change will experience a reduction in eating pleasure. This is why modern foods present such a devastating trap -- as most of our citizens are, in effect, "addicted" to artificially high levels of food stimulation! The 30-to-90-day process of taste re-calibration requires more motivation-- and more self-discipline -- than most people are ever willing to muster.
Tragically, most people are totally unaware that they are only a few weeks of discipline away from being able to comfortably maintain healthful dietary habits -- and to keep away from the products that can result in the destruction of their health. Instead, most people think that if they were to eat more healthfully, they would be condemned to a life of greatly reduced gustatory pleasure -- thinking that the process of Phase IV will last forever. In our new book, The Pleasure Trap, we explain this extraordinarily deceptive and problematic situation -- and how to master this hidden force that undermines health and happiness."
My own collection of health advice and ideas for goign further:
http://www.changemakers.com/morehealth/entries/health-sensemaking
http://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823
But it was a cool idea to make a book about health just for programmers.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I get up and briskly walk up 2 sets of stairs. People have just gotten used to it now, but "I needed to clear my mind" or "The bathroom was full" or a water fountain with better water pressure will give people an answer they want to hear. The healthy types will be okay with it being just a quick exercise. Dips in the office chair, potentially with leg lifts, hit triceps and abs. A quick set of lunges in the hallway or calf raises on the stairs, pull ups in the stairwell, Katas or tai chi are generally tolerated if you look like you might be Asian. Picking your boss up by the neck, though is inappropriate.
1. Do not eat at any establishment that normally has a drive-thru window.
2. Do not drink any carbonated beverage except beer or sparkling wine.
3. Do not eat candy.
4. Eat one fresh apple per day. Generally favor fresh vegetables and fruits over grains, meats and dairy.
5. Eat stuff you like, but don't gorge. For instance, I go to my favorite Taqueria once every week or two, but I get two tacos instead of five. Most days, I eat food I cook myself.
6. Restaurants are not usually making low-calorie high-nutrient food in reasonable portions. If you are going out to eat, eat 1/2 the portion they put in front of you and share the other 1/2 or take it home or throw it out. There's no points for cleaning your plate.
7. Avoid packaged convenience foods. If it comes in a cardboard box with a picture of food on the outside, skip it. It's not food.
8. Count your calories with a smart-phone app. Be honest with yourself. If you log everything you eat, you'll make better choices.
9. A normal deck of playing cards is roughly the size of a day's healthy portion of meat (3 oz).
10. Get a moderate amount of exercise throughout the day. By exercise, I mean getting up and walking 15 mins or doing pushups or planking for 90 seconds. Building the big muscles in your body helps you burn more energy while resting. Overdoing this is useless and causes injury.
For extra credit, try fasting once per week to reset your hunger point and save one day's calories. Learn that being hungry for an hour or two isn't necessarily signaling the imminent end of your world.
I've lost 10-12 pounds in the past month, mostly from lower calorie consumption, habit disruption, and moderate exercise increase. I live in a condo, and the condo board finally got around to doing the roof replacement they'd been planning for a while (with nearly no notice), which meant that we could do the ceiling sheetrock repair that the place has needed after a few years of minor roof leaks, and replace the rug which had long since warn out, and since the ceiling was going to need to be repainted, it was really time to repaint the rest of the place. So we moved all our furniture and junk into storage where we can sort through it, and started talking to contractors, floor people, sheetrock fixers, and trying dozens of different samples of paint that aren't quite the same color of almost-white as the wall [long rant deleted.]
The TV's packed safely away facing a wall, so we're not watching it, and the couch is also packed away. The dinner table's temporarily replaced by a tray table and a couple of chairs. Half the weight loss probably happened the first week, hauling boxes around, but I seem to be eating a good bit less in general, and we've been more likely to have a salad or some hard-boiled eggs at home than to go out for lunch or dinner.
The classic book "The Hacker's Diet - Weight Loss through Stress and Poor Nutrition" really got a lot of things right...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
We're sure the rough tongue of saltyanne sure send you into spasmoanic ecstasy.
I've seen the same health quack stuff branded for every niche you can think of. They love affinity branding to appeal to niches, because it sells books. You name it, there's a health book targeting it. I've seen Tony Robbins' quackery, autism diet quackery, Christian health quackery, and everything else.
To use a metric that reduces human social standing and health to a silly scalar, I lost 10 lbs when I simply switched my work area to a monitor stand that slides on a spring rail, to standing and sitting positions. Juststand.org provided it, but there are likely other fine vendors. In the past I tried inflated balls and kneeling devices, but standing seems more beneficial, and the dork factor isn't as high. I sit half the day, and stand, and my activity level has increased from this almost imperceptible change. Oh - my back feels better too.
Just the washing instructions on life's rich tapestry
Eat less, exercise more.
/ The Arrow
"How lovely you are. So lovely in my straightjacket..." - Nny
Why on earth would you misuse the word "literally" on Slashdot of all places? How can I possibly take you seriously after a boner like that?
Slashdot is not a game, Slashdot is not a game. Crap, I just lost points.
Yes, folks, I've determined that working makes me fat. During periods where I don't work, I typically lose weight. When I start working again, I gain weight. I suspect it is the stress hormones.
ok...what is the PHB?