A Hacker on his first (and hopefully last) diet

Hi everybody,

I'm an engineer and programmer in Saskatchewan, Canada. I was a bit overweight through high school, but gained 10 lbs per year throughout college, leaving me at 5' 10" and 245 lbs, which I've kept consistent for 5 years. I had always considered diets to not be worth the trouble, though I longed to look and feel better. Things changed recently when my father died unexpectedly. His bad habit (smoking) lead to his early demise and I realized that my obesity was my bad habit. I decided to take a stand and started dieting one month ago. Since then I have lost 10 lbs.

For direction I read "The Hacker's Diet". As an engineer myself, I appreciated his no-nonsense approach and rigorous method for tracking and controlling my weight loss. I've been following the steps as described and have been consistently losing 2 lbs per week for the last 4 weeks. Just as he said, the first few days were difficult as I became used to eating less, but I quickly became accustomed and now feel entirely comfortable with my diet.

My initial goal is to reach the 190 lbs that I was when I graduated high school, though I plan to continue towards a healthy 160 lbs. I'm confident that, just like the last 5 years, I will be able to maintain my weight without excessive control once I return to a healthy weight.

I use MyFitnessPal as a convenient meal planner. It has a humongous database that covers nearly every meal I can buy in any grocery store or restaurant. Though I would change a few things about the Android app, it works well enough for me to use every day. I also use the Hacker's Diet website to track my weight daily and monitor my progress. It works much better than MFP's weight tracking; I don't fear a day when I show no loss or a small increase, as long as the trend continues downward. I highly recommend the combination. It has made it quick and easy to control my diet.

Wish me luck and persistence and I wish the same to you!