Hacker's Diet Fan
![OsricTheKnight](https://d34yn14tavczy0.cloudfront.net/images/no_photo.png)
OsricTheKnight
Posts: 340 Member
I've been posting here and there with my opinions but I thought maybe I should start a thread to explain where I'm coming from and why I think what I do to find like minded (and critical) people to support (and challenge) me.
My first well documented attempt to lose weight focused on exercise: lots and lots of exercise. This was sort of working, because I was very overweight, and even though it was taking 1.5-3h every day I managed to keep it up for a short while. Here's the chart:
![Chart.ashx?t=WeightLoss&w=500&h=450&s=2004-12-25&e=2005-04-30&u=Osric](http://physicsdiet.com/Chart.ashx?t=WeightLoss&w=500&h=450&s=2004-12-25&e=2005-04-30&u=Osric)
At that time, I wasn't doing daily weigh-ins because I believed (wrongly) that weighing in less frequently would be less noisy; so the empty circles on the chart are that charting system assuming linear changes between each data point. In any event, I did manage to lose about 20lbs and that's with a (pretty visible) 1-week vacation in February, through exercise alone. I couldn't keep it up though, and the next step was to gain and lose and gain and lose it back, until by Christmas the following year (2005) I was pretty much the same:
![Chart.ashx?t=WeightLoss&w=500&h=450&e=2005-12-25&s=2005-04-30&u=Osric](http://physicsdiet.com/Chart.ashx?t=WeightLoss&w=500&h=450&e=2005-12-25&s=2005-04-30&u=Osric)
The following summer (2006) I got serious again, but this time with a difference:
![Chart.ashx?t=WeightLoss&w=500&h=450&s=2005-12-25&e=2006-12-25&u=Osric](http://physicsdiet.com/Chart.ashx?t=WeightLoss&w=500&h=450&s=2005-12-25&e=2006-12-25&u=Osric)
And the difference was I'd read "The Hacker's Diet" in August that year. The nearly linear straight down drop was the new plan: frozen dinners to control portions, and as much fruit and vegetables as I wanted. It worked excellently; I was hungry at first but then became used to my new intake and recognized that I used to call "full" what I'd now describe as "stuffed"; and that I used to call "hungry" what I'd now describe as the "absence of being stuffed". I came to view hunger at mealtimes as desirable and normal; and at other times as a reminder that I was succeeding and losing weight. This happy situation was interrupted by special occasions, trips, business travel, and so on, but prevailed enough of the time to keep my weight moving down for a while ... about 15 months total, until October the following year (2007):
![Chart.ashx?t=WeightLoss&w=500&h=450&e=2007-12-25&s=2006-12-25&u=Osric](http://physicsdiet.com/Chart.ashx?t=WeightLoss&w=500&h=450&e=2007-12-25&s=2006-12-25&u=Osric)
But then, I messed up big time. I started to think "I've been doing this for over a year. It's easy: I can lose weight whenever I want; I know how to do it, I can stick to that plan." And I started to give myself exceptions, and then recover from them. Except I wasn't really recovering fully; each time I wound up a little worse off than before. Each time I thought it was the time I'd get back on the wagon. But somewhere along the line I totally lost it and just stopped really tracking.
The first year of this problem wasn't even that bad. It was 2008, and it looked like this:
![Chart.ashx?t=WeightLoss&w=500&h=450&s=2007-12-25&e=2008-12-25&u=Osric](http://physicsdiet.com/Chart.ashx?t=WeightLoss&w=500&h=450&s=2007-12-25&e=2008-12-25&u=Osric)
I mean, yes it is bad. But I was still 170, a weight I hadn't been in 10+ years, and this was 2.5 years after I'd done the big weight loss. I still was thinking I was successful; diet registries consider you successful if you've kept off more than 30 pounds for a year (http://www.nwcronline.com/join.aspx). However, I was wrong, as 2009 was to prove:
![Chart.ashx?t=WeightLoss&w=500&h=450&e=2009-12-25&s=2008-12-25&u=Osric](http://physicsdiet.com/Chart.ashx?t=WeightLoss&w=500&h=450&e=2009-12-25&s=2008-12-25&u=Osric)
You see, the problem in 2009 is I wasn't weighing daily anymore. I wasn't focused on the issue, I was stressed out by various things and letting the issue pass and eating for comfort like I've often done. Comfort, but at what cost! 2009 was a good year in other ways, but in retrospect it was the year I let go of thinking about my weight, and I just can't afford to do that.
2010:
![Chart.ashx?t=WeightLoss&w=500&h=450&s=2009-12-25&e=2010-12-25&u=Osric](http://physicsdiet.com/Chart.ashx?t=WeightLoss&w=500&h=450&s=2009-12-25&e=2010-12-25&u=Osric)
As you can see, 2010 was more of the same, until the very end. This time my focus only lasted a couple of months, into the start of 2011, before I fell off the wagon again:
![Chart.ashx?t=WeightLoss&w=500&h=450&e=2011-12-25&s=2010-12-25&u=Osric](http://physicsdiet.com/Chart.ashx?t=WeightLoss&w=500&h=450&e=2011-12-25&s=2010-12-25&u=Osric)
Then, physicsdiet.com stopped being reliable. I started using a withings scale, but didn't have a graphing system I liked. I didn't really do much about it, though I was weighing myself: I wasn't looking at the graph. My weight didn't change much for better or worse from the middle of 2011 right up until this past August, 2013.
But on August 25th this year, I found Libra (Android only) and trendweight.com ... and these integrate with my withings scale. So now I have charts like this for no effort - all I have to do is eat right:
![3m.png](https://trendweight.com/u/78fac1a24a5440/chart/3m.png)
I'm motivated again, and I'm on it. I know the rules: a diamond below the line: success. A diamond above the line, and I know I've been egregiously bad. Since starting on this weight loss effort I've been to a wedding (see the scary diamonds near the line on the second weekend) and eaten out at least twice per week (one work dinner, and one with my wife or my family each weekend). In other words, I'm living a pretty normal life ... but a life with the trend pointed firmly in the right direciton.
One year. One year of this and I can turn my thoughts to maintenance. Goal: 132 lbs or 10% body fat, whichever comes first.
Off I go.
Osric
My first well documented attempt to lose weight focused on exercise: lots and lots of exercise. This was sort of working, because I was very overweight, and even though it was taking 1.5-3h every day I managed to keep it up for a short while. Here's the chart:
At that time, I wasn't doing daily weigh-ins because I believed (wrongly) that weighing in less frequently would be less noisy; so the empty circles on the chart are that charting system assuming linear changes between each data point. In any event, I did manage to lose about 20lbs and that's with a (pretty visible) 1-week vacation in February, through exercise alone. I couldn't keep it up though, and the next step was to gain and lose and gain and lose it back, until by Christmas the following year (2005) I was pretty much the same:
The following summer (2006) I got serious again, but this time with a difference:
And the difference was I'd read "The Hacker's Diet" in August that year. The nearly linear straight down drop was the new plan: frozen dinners to control portions, and as much fruit and vegetables as I wanted. It worked excellently; I was hungry at first but then became used to my new intake and recognized that I used to call "full" what I'd now describe as "stuffed"; and that I used to call "hungry" what I'd now describe as the "absence of being stuffed". I came to view hunger at mealtimes as desirable and normal; and at other times as a reminder that I was succeeding and losing weight. This happy situation was interrupted by special occasions, trips, business travel, and so on, but prevailed enough of the time to keep my weight moving down for a while ... about 15 months total, until October the following year (2007):
But then, I messed up big time. I started to think "I've been doing this for over a year. It's easy: I can lose weight whenever I want; I know how to do it, I can stick to that plan." And I started to give myself exceptions, and then recover from them. Except I wasn't really recovering fully; each time I wound up a little worse off than before. Each time I thought it was the time I'd get back on the wagon. But somewhere along the line I totally lost it and just stopped really tracking.
The first year of this problem wasn't even that bad. It was 2008, and it looked like this:
I mean, yes it is bad. But I was still 170, a weight I hadn't been in 10+ years, and this was 2.5 years after I'd done the big weight loss. I still was thinking I was successful; diet registries consider you successful if you've kept off more than 30 pounds for a year (http://www.nwcronline.com/join.aspx). However, I was wrong, as 2009 was to prove:
You see, the problem in 2009 is I wasn't weighing daily anymore. I wasn't focused on the issue, I was stressed out by various things and letting the issue pass and eating for comfort like I've often done. Comfort, but at what cost! 2009 was a good year in other ways, but in retrospect it was the year I let go of thinking about my weight, and I just can't afford to do that.
2010:
As you can see, 2010 was more of the same, until the very end. This time my focus only lasted a couple of months, into the start of 2011, before I fell off the wagon again:
Then, physicsdiet.com stopped being reliable. I started using a withings scale, but didn't have a graphing system I liked. I didn't really do much about it, though I was weighing myself: I wasn't looking at the graph. My weight didn't change much for better or worse from the middle of 2011 right up until this past August, 2013.
But on August 25th this year, I found Libra (Android only) and trendweight.com ... and these integrate with my withings scale. So now I have charts like this for no effort - all I have to do is eat right:
![3m.png](https://trendweight.com/u/78fac1a24a5440/chart/3m.png)
I'm motivated again, and I'm on it. I know the rules: a diamond below the line: success. A diamond above the line, and I know I've been egregiously bad. Since starting on this weight loss effort I've been to a wedding (see the scary diamonds near the line on the second weekend) and eaten out at least twice per week (one work dinner, and one with my wife or my family each weekend). In other words, I'm living a pretty normal life ... but a life with the trend pointed firmly in the right direciton.
One year. One year of this and I can turn my thoughts to maintenance. Goal: 132 lbs or 10% body fat, whichever comes first.
Off I go.
Osric
0
Replies
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This post made me a very happy data geek. I have a similar history (successful loss, complacency leading to slight backsliding, then a wakeup call that got me back on track) and a similar stack of graphs to document it.
I think data collection and graphing are incredibly powerful tools for understanding and controlling weight loss challenges both physical and emotional. Many times after feeling discouraged by a higher-than-expected scale weight, I took solace from the reassuring downward slant of my weight graph's trend line. Tracking and quantifying my weight loss is, in my opinion, one of the biggest reasons I was able to succeed relatively easily. Along the way I have measured all of my food and activity, and used various tools (GPS run trackers, pedometers, and graphs of all sorts) to keep myself motivated and informed.
There are definitely people who don't like the idea of viewing weight loss as an 'engineering problem', or viewing the human body as just a physical system that responds to the laws of physics in predictable ways. In my experience, however, it's a very sound approach, and a healthy one too--as long as you apply it in a sensible way.
I too use the Android Libra app for daily weighing, but I hadn't heard of trendweight.com, so thanks for that! Good luck. I think that as long as you find ways to keep your attention sufficiently focused on weight loss, you'll be successful.0 -
This post made me a very happy data geek. ...
I too use the Android Libra app for daily weighing, but I hadn't heard of trendweight.com, so thanks for that! Good luck. I think that as long as you find ways to keep your attention sufficiently focused on weight loss, you'll be successful.
Yes, Libra is great - I like trendweight so that I can also look at fat %age and fat and lean mass trends in addition to weight. I discovered them at slightly different times so I haven't matched up the settings - I use 7 days for smoothing and 12 for prediction on Libra, but trendweight clearly uses more days in the moving average and is not configurable (I may yet change them to match as precisely as I can - I think trendweight is using 10 days).
If you're big into data you might also like the Bodymedia FIT device. It's a bit pricey, and I don't like the monthly fees for the website, but my health is worth it and I can afford it. The beauty is it's the other half of Walker's "Eat Watch" - giving you real metrics on what you burn. For myself, I have to say I was surprised to find out how many calories I burn and realize that I must really be eating more than I'm logging. Plus it's a motivator to get more active and get better graphs :-)
Osric0 -
If you're big into data you might also like the Bodymedia FIT device. It's a bit pricey, and I don't like the monthly fees for the website, but my health is worth it and I can afford it. The beauty is it's the other half of Walker's "Eat Watch" - giving you real metrics on what you burn. For myself, I have to say I was surprised to find out how many calories I burn and realize that I must really be eating more than I'm logging. Plus it's a motivator to get more active and get better graphs :-)
Osric
Yeah, I've had a BodyMedia FIT for a while now, and I love it. I originally bought it because I was losing weight faster than I expected (i.e. faster than my models predicted) which I found alarming because I wondered if it indicated a health issue. I had a physical and came back with flying colours, so then I bought the BodyMedia to try to get better data. I realized the problem was that I was underestimating my calorie burn. I had myself pegged as "lightly active" and so all the calculators were telling me to eat 1500 calories to lose weight. Turns out I was short-changing myself, and I should have been considering myself "moderately active" at least. I was burning something like 2750 calories per day on average (I was larger back then, so my burns were higher, and I was walking at least 5 miles per day plus other exercise). No wonder I was losing more quickly than the 1 pound per week I had aimed for!
I do wish there was no subscription fee, but I can spare the money and I don't mind spending it on something that demonstrably improves my weight loss and health. Plus I figure if I was able to justify $10 per month for an MMO subscription for years, I can hardly balk at the BodyMedia price tag.0 -
Data! I love data, this is the sort of weight loss I understand :bigsmile: thanks for sharing!0
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You're referring to John Walker's book, right? He's my favorite. In case anyone else is interested, his book is available from his website: http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/0
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You're referring to John Walker's book, right? He's my favorite. In case anyone else is interested, his book is available from his website: http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/
Yes, that is the book. Also I found it interesting to read his recent related blog posts, about medication that caused his BMR to fall, and about his opinions on Paleo.
Osric0 -
I agree it is a really great book and throws light on a lot of myths regarding weight loss. I thought it would be a bit much weighing everyday, but it turns out it has been really motivating and the feedback you get is next to none, I like immediate feedback as it keeps me on track daily rather than having to wait a week. I am using it alongside 5:2 fasting and it is really working well. It's a shame more people don't know about it as I think it would help reduce some of the dieting crazies that we tend to experience when the scale is not playing ball.
Great charts by the way0 -
I loveLoveLOVE trendweight.com. Without it, my fluctuating weight and bf% measurements would make me a basket case. Using trendweight, I can step back and see what's going on over time and make my adjustments over time, instead of reacting to the most recent measurement and over-correcting like a first-time driver. I'm a big fan of daily weigh-ins and trend watching. And those wireless scales make it effortless.
Haven't read the Hacker's Diet book and definitely wouldn't be up for a diet of frozen dinners, but data-driven weight management? Yes please! Input!0 -
Hacker's Diet is a fun, lightweight read. The frozen dinners are just a convenience shortcut - the real meat of his ideas are about why the trendline works, a theory on why some people gain weight easier than others, and a basic calorie-deficit management approach to weight loss.
A lot of people call it a 'calorie counting' approach but I don't personally think that's right. You don't need to count your calories, you just need to eat fairly consistently day to day and week to week. Then if your deficit isn't giving you the results you want, cut something out and see how the trend changes.
For me this was eye opening in two very important ways: (a) I can't imagine really religiously logging forever, but I _can_ imagine watching my graph forever and adjusting the detla; and (b) it made me realize how much just 50kcals was. This last point was critically important for me, because when you think of 50kcals on your budget of 1200 or 1400 or 2000 kcals per day, it looks really small. But when you compare 50kcals to your deficit of 250 or 500 kcals per day, it's like 10 or 20% of your progress lost, and it looks really large. So focusing on the deficit instead of the total budget makes it a lot more obvious how that little choice - a few nuts, an extra piece of fruit, or god forbid a chocolate - can totally derail your progress.
Osric0
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