Hacking Weight Loss: What I Learned Losing 30 Pounds

reifman writes The CDC reports that 69% of adult Americans are overweight or obese. Techies like us are at increased risk because of our sedentary lifestyles. Perhaps you even scoffed at Neilsen's recent finding that some Americans spend only 11 hours daily of screen time. Over the last nine months, I've lost 30 pounds and learned a lot about hacking weight loss and I did it without fad diets, step trackers, running or going paleo. No such discussion is complete without a link to the Hacker Diet.

Comments

eliminate extra sugar

[i.r.id10t]

I did it by eliminating extra sugar. Doc warned me I was pushing hte pre-diabetic stage with my morning blood sugar.

No more sweet tea, coke, or adding sugar to my coffee. Sucked for about a week, after that, no problems, and I've dropped 30lbs with no real effort other than breaking the sugar habit in that first week.

Quit smoking 2 weeks ago, we'll see how that part goes and if I end up gaining weight back ('cause food will taste better, supposedly, or maybe just noshing as a replacement for having a smoke ... so far hasn't happened)

Re:eliminate extra sugar

[losfromla]

I would note that the guy who dies at 65 with a Bic Mac in hand appears to be happier than the guy who dies at 82 on a treadmill sweating his bloody ass off.

Really? Some fat guy with high cholesterol, a non-functioning penis, out of breath from walking from his car to McDonalds looks happier than the 82 year old who has a fully functioning body and still wears out his old lady? Besides, he's likely to die instead while running outside on a bright sunshiny day or harvesting in his garden. Even if he is in the gym, he died while doing what he wanted to do and outlived the 65 year old fattie by almost 20 years, win!

Re:eliminate extra sugar

[NotDrWho]

First off - congrats on losing the weight. 30lbs is nothing to scoff at.

Not to be too much of a dick about it, but I never congratulate someone for losing weight. If pushed, I'll tell them I'll congratulate them in 5 years, if they've managed to KEEP it off.

Losing weight is actually not that hard. Some of us have done it many, many, many times. It's keeping it off in the years that follow that's really tough.

Move more, eat less

[Anonymous Coward]

Another thing is to eat slower. Put your knife and fork down between mouthfulls.

Re:Move more, eat less

[NatasRevol]

Not sure why you're down voted, but this is how I reduced my caloric intake. A drink between every single bite. Slows down intake, makes you feel fuller, satiety sets in sooner.

Re:Move more, eat less

[Austerity Empowers]

As far as I'm concerned this is the real problem. Most meals come with way, way more calories than you should have, particularly if you're eating any form of take-out. To the point where you may be eating two days of food in one sitting, and not really even realize it. I looked at one meal at a restaurant my wife likes, and calculated 4500 calories. We like to laugh at the imgur photos with the fat person and 5 buckets of KFC, but this particular meal did not look nearly so gluttonous.

Eat slowly, take drinks, but if you clean your plate like mom asked then you just ate 2 days worth of food in one sitting and probably didn't even realize it (and will be hungry in a few hours, depending on how starchy it all was). I've lost 50 lbs by just packing my own food 19/21 meals a week (and actually eating 3x a day, which goes to OPs point about spacing things out a bit, which does help). Not only does it save a ton of money, it takes the pounds off.

Take-out has a dilemma, in that labor and rent is a high cost to them, so they tend to give you too much food which is relatively cheap in the US to make you feel like you got your money's worth. But what we really need is half that amount of food, spaced better through the day.

Common sense

[sadness203]

Eat well.
Exercice

Everything else is plain wishful thinking.

Re:Common sense

[gatkinso]

Don't eat anything that wasn't alive.

For instance, there is not a creature called a "Dorito"

Re:Common sense

[Anonymous Coward]

You can do it without either of those, I dropped from 215 pounds to 170 pounds and have held it off for years with almost no exercise and a pretty poor diet. I really didn't change what I ate at all, I just strictly regulated how much of it I did. Smaller portions for everything to keep myself averaging around 1,500 kcal a day.

Re:Common sense

[danbob999]

Neither was one called "Salad" or "Tofu".

Not a diet, but a lifestyle change

[QuietLagoon]

If you "go on a diet" you are defeated before you even start.

.
If you want to lose weight, you have to go into the process with the goal of changing your lifestyle permanently, otherwise the weight will return when you finish the diet.

Go into the weight loss process with the right mindset - a permanent change of what and how you eat, along with any changes in your activity regimen.

The reason most people regain the wieght they lose on a diet is that they view a diet as something temporary, which it is.

Don't go on a diet (Hacker's Diet or otherwise), but do make a permanent change to your lifestyle.

Re:Not a diet, but a lifestyle change

[dave562]

This is spot on and should be modded up.

Enter personal anecdote...

About fifteen years ago I was starting to struggle with sciatic nerve pain due to years spent driving a car with a heavy racing clutch in traffic, and a lack of exercise. I considered my options and decided to start practicing tai chi. I caught a bit of a break and found a legitimate sifu. After a couple years of tai chi, I started training kung fu as well. It has been over a decade and I train on a daily basis. I can eat whatever I want because I burn it off.

None the less, it is a struggle. Despite all of the benefits, there are plenty of days when I would rather go home after work and play video games instead of heading over to the temple to train or teach classes. I still have not overcome the "exercise sucks" mentality. Sure, the endorphins are great and being able to defend myself is great, and have a strong and healthy body is great... but it is still work for me, not fun.

Amazing post

[kamapuaa]

Wow! The guy ate less calories, and he lost weight!

Re:It's simple. Eat less and eat less crap

[TheRealMindChild]

East less calories? Gotcha.

The problem isn't so much "too many calories" consumed, but that the sedimentary lifestyle people are accustomed doesn't require even close to the 2000 calorie "standard diet". If you drive to work, sit behind a desk all day, go home and even do mundane, unimpactful chores, like vacuuming and wiping things down, and average person would be lucky to need maybe 1200-1300 calories as their TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure). Even drinking nothing but water, and consuming mostly calorie empty foods like lettuce/salad, you still need your macronutrients, which when adding carbs and fat now will take you to your quite low TDEE with very little food/effort.

dyson mod

[xombo]

Was I the only one who went to his site hoping for an Arduino mod for my dyson that will turn it into a liposuction machine?

Here's the scientific evidence

[nbauman]

I realize that randomized, controlled trials in peer-reviewed journals may not be the whole, final truth, but this is a nice catalog of everything that you can argue over.

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/1...
Myths, Presumptions, and Facts about Obesity
Krista Casazza, Kevin R. Fontaine, Arne Astrup, et al.
N Engl J Med 2013; 368:446-454. January 31, 2013. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMsa1208051 [FREE]

Results. We identified seven obesity-related myths concerning the effects of small sustained increases in energy intake or expenditure, establishment of realistic goals for weight loss, rapid weight loss, weight-loss readiness, physical-education classes, breast-feeding, and energy expended during sexual activity. We also identified six presumptions about the purported effects of regularly eating breakfast, early childhood experiences, eating fruits and vegetables, weight cycling, snacking, and the built (i.e., human-made) environment. Finally, we identified nine evidence-supported facts that are relevant for the formulation of sound public health, policy, or clinical recommendations.

Re:Eat less than you burn

[Anonymous Coward]

"How fricking complicated is it to eat less than you burn?"

Followed by a huge, complicated, wall of text.

I suppose it's THAT complicated!

Here's an easier alternative:
1. Eliminate all sugar (read labels... do not eat anything over 2g of sugar)
2. Eat vegetables (brussel sprouts, celery, broccoli, peppers, onions)
3. Eat fish
4. Eat nuts
5. Eat salad
6. Eggs and bacon for breakfast
7. Drink lots of water, and eat salt as you crave it

Fat is good, protein is good, carbs should be avoided, but if you must eat carbs, eat fresh potatoes.

Re:Eat less than you burn

[itzly]

How fricking complicated is it to eat less than you burn?

It's not complicated, just hard.

Cut Calories and Increase Exercise. My god!

[lordmage]

My Fitness Pay is a great "Food log" which was told I should use 25 years ago when I first started noticing the "behind the desk" effect. I still play sports constantly but the weight gain was huge.

I lost 50+ lbs on MyfitnessPal. I didn't need to eat the crappy "whey" and other tasteless stuff. I chose to eat a bowl of cereal in the morning, low cal lunch (100-200 cals from a frozen quick meal) and I would eat a big dinner. Big dinner? Steak and Potato with a Salad at Outback. All that under the calorie limit to sit sedentary and lose 1.5 lbs a week.

When I stopped Myfitnesspal, I gained weight. Its a simple equation: Get a real Food Diary and use it.

Now, to get that my fitness pal back on track.

Oh, and avoid Diet Drinks. This guy mentions he ate high protein to make sure he burned FAT but diet drinks just make you crave food. I really think high protein foods = less sugar = less cravings. Thus the steaks are much better than burgers effect for losing weight. They stay in you longer and are half the calories.

Hacking?

[jdharm]

You didn't hack crap. You just acted like a reasonable person and not a mindless sedentary eating machine. That's like walking and saying you "hacked sitting" to get you from point A to point B.

Consider the alternative question

[Average]

The flip side of the question is "Why are skinny people not fat?".

It's a more interesting question than you may think. One bit of semi-famous research is the 1970s Vermont 'prisoner overfeeding study' (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5Rv8JnFgw4). Like bits of Nazi science, this is probably irreproducible, as it'd *never* get past a human subject review committee today.

A number of lifetime-normal-weight prisoners were fed substantially over their basal metabolic needs for an extended period. Their input was rigorously controlled (being prisoners), and their exercise regimen was pretty easy to monitor and control. Most of them gained weight, but almost none of them nearly as much as the standard "3500 kCal is a pound of fat" Standard Model would predict. Several plateaued on weight gain, and a few lucky (?) prisoners were *never* able gain 10% of their body weight when eating nearly 10,000 Calories a day. Simply couldn't do it.

A lot of people are overeating in the western culture. A lot more that, by the numbers, should be in the 300-pound range. And while there are no shortage of very-very-fat people, they're not nearly as common as they should be if you study individual diet patterns. This is part of the problem. People look at their skinny friends' diets, and some of those skinny friends are like the luckier Vermont prisoners.

Re:Eat less than you burn

[bill_mcgonigle]

How fricking complicated is it to eat less than you burn?

It's way more complicated than you make it out to be. You're offering the very best advice 1983 had to offer.

Until you factor in the rates of digestion, the enzyme production rate of the individual, the hormone response of the individual, and the freaking liver and pancreas, not to mention the brain which mediates the whole thing, the very best you can offer is an order-of-magnitude estimate. There aren't seven billion different metabolisms out there, but there is at least an n-by-m matrix of them for every variability in the human metabolic system.

This is why so many people fail even at strict calorie-counting diets. Humans are NOT bomb calorimeters! Say it again and again until it sinks in.

For Pete's sake, there are leptin-resistent people who can put weight on at 500 calories a day.

Until we have mastered DNA analysis on this to genotype individuals, cutting out simple and refined carbohydrates is at least a way to claw back the worst of the modern diet, and avoid big swings in the leptin/ghrelin/insulin feedback systems - most people eat because they are hungry.