Most computer folks find John Walker's site, https://www.fourmilab.ch/, fascinating. Not only is it home to The Hackers Diet but it also hosts other things John has done. Start-up folks should read The Autodesk Papers, which details the growth of Autodesk.
I've used this method for almost exactly 6 years now, and I have a very interesting chart on trendweight.com to show for it. My success has been rather mixed. In that time period I've twice lost 20 lbs and twice regained it.
The first time, I gained very gradually, the result of having moved to an employer with free food, and needing to learn new habits of self control.
The second time, I regained very rapidly, because I was a new dad, and really underestimated the combined stress of working and parenting.
Hoping I can pull off a third time and keep it off.
I’ve been using it for five years as well. I find that when I regain some weight (usually 2-3kg on vacations and holidays) I tend to loose much quicker than the last time. Have you noticed that?
I've been weighing myself every day and entering into the hacke diet online website for a good 6 or 7 years now. Seeing my trend (and not worrying about day to day fluctuations) has been a great tool to help me maintain my weight and not let it get out of control.
Note that this diet does presuppose not just the hacker's love for numbers, but also the drive that founders tend to have. Just counting calories requires a certain sort of discipline and drive that many (including myself) do not have.
I've been counting calories for at least 5 years now.
It makes my life so much easier. That chocolate looks delicious. Can I have it?
Normal person: Ugh but I didn't work out today. Humbug my belly is getting big. Those pants from last year are kinda tight. I'm a little peckish and bored. Hm agony for 20 minutes before you finally give in and have the chocolate. Then you feel guilty for the rest of the day.
Swiz: Check calorie and macro tracker. Yup, all good. Eat chocolate. Enjoy life. Take 20 grams less potatoes at dinner.
I have tracked calories in the past. At some point I developed some sort of intuition about how much food I can have and what foods I should prefer and stopped counting.
I managed to look my best ever by doing that. But that's not the point. The point is that not counting obsessively is liberating.
If you are counting the calories of 20 grams of potatoes you're worrying too much.
Smart person: I only eat a tiny bit of candy/chocolate per week, and I haven't had any yet. This small piece of rich dark chocolate will be my allowance for the week, so I'll make sure to savor it.
Myfitnesspal’s database is surprisingly good. Most chains are in there.
For other restaurants I guesstimate. After 5 years my guesstimates have gotten pretty accurate.
I also don’t sweat about perfect tracking. It’s more about observing general trends. 100 cals up or down all averages out over your lifetime. Or even a single week.
That said when you have strict goals, the only solution is not to eat out or at least to limit it a lot. Like when you have to be a certain weight or bodyfat for a specific event that’s X days/weeks out
Yes, there are pretty good proxy items, even if you don't have exactly the same item. If they have wings from chain X in MFP, but you're at chain Y and you know chain X has a bigger order, or bigger wings, estimate and do your best. Use what you know about other comparable items.
There are some apps that have calories from some restaurants.
Also after some time weighting all the food you get better at estimating how much each ingredient weights, and at knowing how much each thing "costs" in calories.
Counting everything you eat is pretty arduous, but at least being aware of how it works and how many calories are in the most common foods you eat can be immensely useful. It's a huge step up from most people's vague notions of foods being "good" or "bad".
Yeah it's definitely much easier to keep a rough estimate in your head. Just knowing that a piece of cheese is 400kJ, a beer is 450 and a can of coke 900 is worthwhile. People tend to underestimate their eating habits if they don't keep a rigorous diary but it's far better than nothing and was a big help in losing weight for me (along with working to find an exercise regime I could actually covert to a habit, even though I still hate every minute of it).
It's draining and kind of silly of you think about it. Why don't we also track and and count other activities: like when you go to the bathroom, how much sex you have, and perhaps how many breaths a day you take.
Animals with no analytic faculties still manage to live healthy lives, so how do they do it? Simply, our bodies have built-in systems for regulating automatic functions. The problem is it's built to survive in the state of nature and modernity is an unnatural environment that throws a wrench in the system.
Once you realize this, the solution is clear: minimize the bad influences of modernity and try to live as close as possible to how our ancestors did. Eat meat when hungry, drink water when thirsty, lift heavy weight, and sleep at night and wake up in the morning, get some air and sunlight etc.
I've been down the quantified-self road before and at best it leads to a big useless unanalyzed database. At worst, you become paranoid constantly questioning whether you're getting the optimal sleep, calories, sun etc.
Different strokes for different folks, man. I get off on quantification. I hyper focus and I cannot do anything passive.
Dieting? That's passive: it involves not doing something. All I can think about is the fact that I shouldn't be eating, which makes me think about eating, which makes me eat.
Obsessively counting calories? It makes me do something active: strive for a minimal caloric intake for the day (I say minimal but minimal for me is healthy for anyone else).
I need to do the same thing with reading papers. Reading a paper is a passive activity while writing a paper review is active. I try to find at least one major flaw with each paper I read so that I have something active to keep my attention, a goal.
Saying "behavior xyz is silly" is unfair and not super constructive. Each of us has a single data point of human experience. Generalizing from that is kind of silly if you think about it.
If I could curtail my bathroom activity healthily, and if that would lead to a better and happier life, then dammit I'd track that shit in a heartbeat. Ditto for breathing. And unless you are having an unhealthy amount of sex there is nothing to gain from tracking it (except for ego/lack thereof).
The examples you list above all have something in common: there is no benefit to tracking them. For calories, there is an actual benefit.
I meant silly from a species perspective -- like you never see a bear counting calories ;)
There are two kinds of animals that suffer from obesity, modern humans, and animals that modern humans feed. The culprit is clear, it's our interventionist mindset. It's the USDA telling you exactly to eat the opposite of what you're supposed to eat.
The answer is less intervention, not more. Try eating an all
or mostly meat diet and I assure you'll feel a lot better and food will go back to being an automatic function for you: http://justmeat.co/
> There are two kinds of animals that suffer from obesity, modern humans, and animals that modern humans feed. The culprit is clear, it's our interventionist mindset. It's the USDA telling you exactly to eat the opposite of what you're supposed to eat.
There could be a different reason. Getting more food is lot easier for these two animals. Other animals (at least meat eating) need a lot more effort to get their food. It's a natural limiting factor. Non-meat eating animals need to digest a lot of fiber which makes eating a lot quite hard.
I doubt it. Alas, it's not studied yet but a lot of people are going on the carnivore diet and finding that there system reset and find it hard to over or under eat -- they just fall into a natural way of eating. Certainly my experience.
> You also never see a bear walking on the Moon, or playing Candy Crush Saga.
If we do something right, like science and engineering, it doesn't mean we're doing everything right. In fact, most people are miserable and suffering from health issues that bears don't suffer from.
> Or maybe that we no longer live on savanna, and the foods we have available are quite different from what our great-{n}-ancestors had.
Although the megafauna are extinct (shame), meat is largely the same and that's what most of what our ancestors ate.
> In fact, most people are miserable and suffering from health issues that bears don't suffer from.
They also don't suffer from health issues that bears suffer from (and that preindustrial humans suffered from, too). As for misery, I can agree about the part caused by stress and ennui, but along most imaginable metrics, humans today are better off than in any other period of history.
> meat is largely the same and that's what most of what our ancestors ate
Technically, meat and fruits are "the same". In practice, meats are heavily processed products of factory farming exercises, and besides that, who buys just meats and fruits? Most food we buy has at least one more level of processing involved.
Quantifying doesn't necessarily lead to overwhelming data or questioning.
If you want to improve something it is a good idea to measure it.
Sensible examples might include: repetitions and weights at the gym, body weight, running / walking distance, hours slept, time wasted on social media
Counting calories might not have to be done continuously depending on your diet and goals but definitely helps to realise how much sugar and carbs are in many foods. Calibrating your perception in this way might be enough to convince you to change your habits for good.
Many things can be tracked conveniently or automatically even without the need to go BigData.
A cheap air monitor can detect high CO2 or VOC in enclosed spaces. Without insight a simple fix such as opening a window may not occur to some.
The hope that our bodies can regulate everything intrinsically is not good enough in an increasingly artificial environment and natural is not always healthy.
b) caused by ways that tracking the number of times you go to the bathroom, have sex or breathe would fix?
Obesity is directly caused by a failure to moderate how much we eat, so yes, some of us track how much we eat. It's not really that crazy. If you can do that without tracking it, cool, but its pretty damn clear a lot of people can't.
>Obesity is directly caused by a failure to moderate how much we eat, so yes, some of us track how much we eat. It's not really that crazy. If you can do that without tracking it, cool, but its pretty damn clear a lot of people can't.
Actually research shows that people who watch WHAT the eat vs how much they eat lose the weight and keep it off. Calorie counting empirically doesn't work.
Read the article and study you posted. It doesn't show that, it just shows that you can lose weight without using the calorie counting technique.
Objective: To determine the effect of a healthy low-fat (HLF) diet vs a healthy low-carbohydrate (HLC) diet on weight change and if genotype pattern or insulin secretion are related to the dietary effects on weight loss.
Findings: ...weight change over 12 months was not significantly different for participants in the HLF diet group (−5.3 kg) vs the HLC diet group (−6.0 kg), and there was no significant diet-genotype interaction or diet-insulin interaction with 12-month weight loss.
A study on low fat vs low carb diets has got absolutely nothing to do with calorie counting.
You said "Obesity is directly caused by a failure to moderate how much we eat, so yes, some of us track how much we eat" for which research shows that:
a) people on caloric deficit almost always gain the weight back
b) people can lose weight without calorie counting
> I didn't say people can't lose weight without calorie counting, just that some of us do use it
You did. If you're walking back on it then ok, but don't lie straight to my face: "Obesity is directly caused by a failure to moderate how much we eat"
moderate != calorie counting. I said we have a failure to moderate what we eat, not we have a failure to calorie count. Nor did I say it's the only way to lose weight.
You can too.
Since I'm at 12% body fat, no, I probably couldn't, and I shouldn't
> at best it leads to a big useless unanalyzed database
For me, rigorously tracking my caloric intake by weighting nearly everything I've eaten with a food scale and recording it in the Cronometer smart phone app has led to a 100 pound weight loss over the last year, and normalizing my blood pressure & triglycerides.
But, you know, at best ... just a useless database. Good grief.
It seems right that if you have things well handled there's no value in putting a lot of effort into analysis. But what's a good approach if the solution isn't clear?
Many animals with a surplus of food available do not live healthy lives. If you have to expend calories to get food, as most animals do, then you are at equilibrium.
Counting calories is really not that difficult. It's more about awareness than anything else, and the main benefit is investigating how dense the various consumed items are. I've been able to implement it and saw others do it who similarly weren't really what you'd call "disciplined" people.
I think the idea that calorie counting is something super difficult is a bigger barrier than the activity itself.
I built https://www.eatclock.com after I started reading this: I really liked the idea of an "its-now-time-to-eat" indicator. I tried to keep it super simple (one of 3 meal sizes, and no history editing) and there is quite some ways to go to get to full eat watch status from where I am, but it has been immediately useful to me just to have a weekly "you ate 49 times last week" email. After the third week where I ate 49 times I started paying a bit more attention (down to 42 now).
> Before sending this file to a printer, consider that the book is almost 250 pages long.
My immediate reaction is how can someone with a programming background write 250 pages about a topic as simple as dieting?!
So I skimmed it a bit and it’s quite a fun read! It’s reads as if the author is speaking directly to you, with both pure facts and colorful analogies. Looking forward to going through the rest.
Diet and nutrition has to be one of the most complex and divisive topics currently. There is an incredible amount of anecdotal advice and "scientific" evidence for every theory imaginable, driven by the vast diversity of the human population and commercial agendas.
Or do you think in terms of "calories in - calories out = weight gain", which is as simple as it is useless?
From what I observed, there are two factors at play that work to discourage this simple model:
1) The body is good at up and downregulating its calories use and cravings depending on what you eat.
2) The "calories in/out" approach doesn't depend on particular foods you eat, which means you can't sell your new magic fad diet without doing your best to discredit it.
1) Yes, which is why it gets much harder to lose weight the longer the diet lasts, which makes more people do it as they don't get any effect.
2) Everyone wants a magic bullet, but sip far there isn't one. On the other hand, specific diets and restrictions may be easier to keep and cause faster or more weight loss than others, as well as suppress appetite more or less.
> Is it regarded as useless in a dietetic context?
Yes. For example, it's why a dietitian will tell you to eat whole fruit, and tell you not to drink smoothies or juices (apart from very limited amounts).
I made it through the first few pages and the author seems to treat calories from all sources the same. I wonder what his take on the theory that calories from some sources (e.g. saturated and monounsaturated fats) are generally not translated to fat in your body whereas calories from other sources (glucose, fructose) generally are.
For example, a tbsp of coconut oil contains 117 calories while the same volume of sugar contains 48. Yet anyone following a ketogenic diet would argue in favor of calories from the coconut oil over sugar any day.
Another great nutrition book for the analytically-minded among us (not actually a prescriptive "diet" despite the title): Perfect Health Diet http://perfecthealthdiet.com/the-diet/
Then again, lots of studies point towards the keto diet being equivalent to a moderate-carb (e.g. 100-200g for an average person) diet that has the same amount of calories.
Personally, I think low-carb diets seem to work better for most people, because almost all junk food is high in carbs, and therefore forbidden. Obviously if you want a healthy and lean body, you need to focus on healthy foods and keep the junk to a minimum.
I used this to lose a decent amount of weight a few years ago, it was a good read and quite motivating. Unfortunately I then got back into homebrewing, increased my craft beer consumption, and most of it came back. It's good to know what's possible though :)
This takes me back! I ended up using the excel sheet that comes with this to start measuring myself, and literally ran my ass off on a treadmill over a couple of years.
It’s good stuff, and I trusted it because he was “one of us.”
Tracking what you eat is important, counting calories not necessarily. The calories-in/calories-out model misses a number of important factors like the effect of insulin on weight and lowering of BMR on non-fasted caloric restriction.
IOW, 100 calories of fat are very different from 100 calories of sugar, and that's completely erased when everything is standardized as a simple "calorie".
The easiest thing to do to reduce your caloric intake is to start cooking...it's very hard to get to high calorie numbers if you are making your own food instead of eating out.
Oh, and when you're hungry eat a meal first then snack later. Don't start snacking first or you can find yourself over indulging in chips to make up for the meal you didn't eat on time.
Cooking your own food is a great way to improve your health and also unplug from technology for a while. Restaurant food is usually way too full of oil, sugar and salt.
Another very healthy way to reduce your caloric intake is to make fresh vegetables the center of your diet and then fill in from there instead of eating the occasional side salad.
When I started to cook I actually gained a huge amount of weight. I've no idea what you mean by being hard to get high calorie numbers. It's as easy as any other way: you eat too much food. It was only when I actually learnt what a sensible serving size was and actually weighing out my ingredients (especially carbs) that I became normal again.
Usually I just throw some meat on the grill and put it in a quesadilla or sandwich with various toppings. I occasionally make a salad, but very very occasionally.
I feel pretty full and rarely take in more than 2k calories a day - I'm not limiting intake in any way.
I've never struggled with weight though, just a few pounds after college prompted me to start cooking.
I read the introduction to this and thoroughly disagree with it on multiple points. I'm someone who used to be obese but I've been in excellent shape (six pack etc) for more than eight years now.
For a start, you should not be aiming to "lose weight". You should be aiming to maintain weight, and that weight might be lower than what you currently maintain. A diet is not a short term thing that is hard. If you think about it like that then when you finish "losing weight" you'll just go back to your normal mode of eating too much. This is what most people do. What you actually want to do is change your lifestyle forever.
Changing your lifestyle forever cannot actually include counting calories. You are not going to do that for the rest of your life. Counting calories should be merely an educational exercise. Before long you should just know how much to eat. If you're the kind of person who can't drive a route you've already driven with GPS a second time without GPS then you won't have much luck. Learn to be that person.
The biggest lifestyle change you can make is cooking everything you eat yourself and do not snack at all. Learn to be hungry and look forward to your next meal. I observe fat people all the time and they don't necessarily eat huge meals, they just eat constantly throughout the day.
A hacker's diet should be one that is incredibly easy to follow. I eat two meals a day. I weigh out starchy ingredients because I know how much I need. I do not place calorific items into my mouth between meals. Never ever.
> Changing your lifestyle forever cannot actually include counting calories. You are not going to do that for the rest of your life.<
My personal experience:
1) Using MyFitnessPal I can enter what i ate in less than 2-3’ (split during the day)
2) Being self-aware of how much I eat is extremely harder and amazingly less accurate than counting calories on Mfp
3) Whenever I stopped counting calories my weight loss either or even turned it weight gain.
Not everyone is the same. Different things will work for different people.
Unfortunately for most of us, work lacks proper kitchens and reheated food is vastly inferior and harder to prepare. Plus you're not getting paid for the time cooking unless you work in a restaurant or as a house maid.
Lunch is a mediocre or inconvenient meal if you work, it's best to opt-out entirely. A protein shake is healthy and low calorie, and a couple of them spaced through the day will get you to dinner, at which point you've built up a nice calorie deficit, so you can enjoy yourself.
I used to be about 50lbs heavier then I am now (not 6 pack yet ) but I found most of your suggestions to be similar to what work for me. I make my meals in advance for work, if I can’t pack a meal I simply don’t eat. (For example. Lunch may be a tuna sandwich made with 1 can of tuna(110 calories) soy sauce (6 cal) low cal mayo (10 grams, 45 calories) and two slices of light bread toasted in advance (90 calories ) and carrots or celery or an apple if I’m feeling adventurous. )
Otherwise I prepar my meals, and mostly avoid snacking. If I snack it’s going to be some carrots or similar that I log in a tracking app.
Though now after a year of nearly continuous meal and excrsice tracking I have found I tend to eat appropriate sized meals.
People put food in the fridge to slow bacteria growth. This quote is from a USDA Health brochure
>Bacteria grow most rapidly in the range of temperatures
between 40 ° and 140 °F, doubling in number in as
little as 20 minutes. This range of temperatures is often
called the “Danger Zone.” That’s why the Meat and
Poultry Hotline advises consumers to never leave food
out of refrigeration over 2 hours. If the temperature is
above 90 °F, food should not be left out more than 1
hour.
Yet somehow people survived for a very long time without refrigeration. In fact, we evolved to live without it, so those bacteria are probably good for us if anything. Personally I don't even like to eat cold food as it diminishes the flavour.
It's super easy to bring food to work and just eat it at room temperature. But instead people insist on this weird fridge then microwave ritual then complain about it being too difficult.
Or maybe we didn't survive. Life expectancy was half what it is today for most of humanity up until 1900. Even if you remove childhood deaths, life expectancy was still only about 33 years in the Paleolithic era.
I don't understand the romanticization of a time period where it was normal for people to die before they were 40.
Life expectancy has increased mostly thanks to modern medicine and in particular drastically reducing infant mortality. Keeping food in the fridge at all times has no effect other than reducing your enjoyment of the food and making it less likely that you bring food to work, thus decreasing your overall health.
