The hacker's diet works for me

suomaf
suomaf Posts: 5 Member
edited September 22 in Introduce Yourself
Hey guys,

Like a lot of people in the programming industry, I have gone overweight. I recently went to my best friends' wedding and they did one of those montages where they show the bride and grooms photos of when they were babies until the age they are today. In one of the photos, I saw myself 18 years ago, and it was a shock. I had it in my mind that I have always looked this way; overweight. That is not true, and the proof was in front of me. Anyways being a generally lazy person, I went to look online if there was any lazy mans way of hacking their own weight. I found it in "The Hacker's Diet" It is available as an free online ebook. Basically the book works on controlling your calories, and the tools it gives us. It also helped to prepare me for the ups and downs.

I am going to go metric and apologize. I am 35 years old male who is 1.78 m and at the beginning of this project I was weighing in at 100 kgs. The 100 kgs was part of the wake up call for me as well. Its a round figure, and the operative word here was round, everything about me was round. Anyways, I have started on 17th of November last month and now with just controlling my calories, I am now at 93.5 kgs. I am finding this site is extremely helpful in figuring out what calories I am eating. I know that I am putting the weight loss on fast track, and I know that it is not exactly healthy but at the moment I am anxious to get close to my goal.

Thanks for reading, happy weight loss everyone

Replies

  • Natalie511
    Natalie511 Posts: 75 Member
    Hello
    Well now that is a book I can get into....thanks for telling us about it....and Good Luck with the rest of your weight you have to loss...
  • Ge0rgiana
    Ge0rgiana Posts: 1,649 Member
    Hacker's diet? :laugh: Welcome fellow code monkey. I don't know what's worse, sitting on our arses for so many hours or the junk food they ply us with when we're doing it. I just started at my job, and already they sent me to a 2 day Scrum seminar that featured high-calorie (and high preservative... migraine trigger) food. I ended up bringing my lunch for today, which was day 2.

    Logging is my most powerful tool. I have cut down on anything processed and excess salt. I prepare most of my own food, and I'm not afraid to turn down anything more than the occasional lunch or treat. The temptations are there, and they will always be there. It's really a matter of following good, sound nutrition principles at least 80-90% of the time and not giving up. You have a foul-up, and you get right back to it.

    It also helps if you can move every once in a while, like at least 3 times a week. Weight lifting is great if you can squeeze it in. I love kickboxing workout videos like Tae-Bo because I can throw the DVD in whenever I want and a short workout can deliver a great calorie burn. Yes, they can work us long hours. You have to combat that with physical activity.

    I'm not telling you anything new or spectacular, just some strategies for coping with this particular job. It's totally doable if you put your mind to it. Welcome to MFP, and feel free to add me as a friend! :flowerforyou:
  • binary_jester
    binary_jester Posts: 3,311 Member
    Greetings from a fellow computer geek, although I don't do data entry (my roommate who is a programmer loves it when I that is all he does).
  • Ge0rgiana
    Ge0rgiana Posts: 1,649 Member
    Data entry? Me neither. :happy:
  • suomaf
    suomaf Posts: 5 Member
    Thanks guys for the encouragement. Good luck on all your weight loss adventures. I wonder if enough geeks can get together to make a iphone / android app that is RGP based on weight loss :) kinda like Epic Win. hehe that will get the geeks interests
  • suomaf
    suomaf Posts: 5 Member
    So carrying on the hacker's diet, I saw on Gizmodo talking about a book called 4-hour body. It seems to be about hacking the body. I have gone out and bought this, and will read through it to see what it talks about.
  • utamore
    utamore Posts: 53
    So what's the gist of the hacker's diet? I'm not going to go read the e-book...
  • Ge0rgiana
    Ge0rgiana Posts: 1,649 Member
    So carrying on the hacker's diet, I saw on Gizmodo talking about a book called 4-hour body. It seems to be about hacking the body. I have gone out and bought this, and will read through it to see what it talks about.

    Huh. I'd actually be interested to hear what it has to say.
  • datagram40
    datagram40 Posts: 33 Member
    I will have to take a look at this diet. Sounds appealing :)
  • suomaf
    suomaf Posts: 5 Member
    Ok having read through the 4 hour body, I can say that it will not work for me. Not because the techniques will not work, its just not for me. Basically what he is saying is go slow carb. Cutting down on the amount of carbs. I am sure that it will work for some people, but the rules seem quite strict and I would not be able to follow it, I eat out and entertain quite a bit. What I am doing now, seems to be working so I am just going to stick with it.
  • GremlinJenny
    GremlinJenny Posts: 151
    That's smart. No single diet is gonna work for everyone. People forget to factor in lifestyle and realistic day to day habits.

    For me personally, I find that what works is not changing the foods I eat per se, because I can't stick to those omissions... but changing just the quantity of what I'm eating. I still have Taco Bell a few times a week. Instead of ordering nachos and full tacos with sour cream and perhaps a taquito and quesadilla.... I get 2 fresco style tacos. I eat slowly, take my time, and I wait. Lo and behold, I'm completely full for hours, off of 350 calories (instead of my usual 1400 cals!) Granted, I am only 5'2", but you get my point.

    I work in entertainment so btwn catering and the craft services table and treats from vendors and cast&crew... there are always gourmet cookies, cakes, coffee runs, pasta dishes, cream based foods, etc.... And, when it's all free, it makes it all the harder to say no, doesn't it? lol... There is no way I'm NOT gonna eat any of it (especially if I'm on set and there aren't too many other options and I have to eat something that will actually sustain me for the next 7 hours before I get a chance to eat again). Again, it's about eating less amounts of everything and to stop eating before I'm completely stuffed and fall into food coma. It's taken awhile to figure out the difference btwn being full and being overfull.

    In the beginning I was embarrassed to leave my food diary open bc it contained pizza and hotdogs and burgers in addition to salads and veggies and steelcut oats, etc... But after I started losing my 20+ lbs, I realized that it might help others to realize you don't have to eat bird food to lose weight.

    Congrats on finding what works for you! It's a great (and challenging) journey and I look forward to keeping up with your progress and success!!
  • taletreader
    taletreader Posts: 377 Member
    Just some ::waves:: from a fellow computer geek. I read Jeremy Zawodny's posts about the variant of the Hacker's Diet that he carried out http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/006836.html . Personally, I don't own a pair of scales (and will be moving across the Atlantic soon, so no buying right now), and just MIGHT get a little too obsessed by weighing every day. Even if my mind knows what a 5-day floating average is, I'm not sure I wouldn't fixate too much on day-to-day fluctuations (and given I'm female, there's also a sizeable once-a-month fluctuation that I don't want to ascribe too much importance to). I would be interested to see the curve though. Some seem to have used the WII Fit balance board for daily automatic tracking. Also, I want to get fit(ter) even more than getting lighter.

    Anyhow, the principle makes sense. Good luck to you, too!
  • punkrawkcutie
    punkrawkcutie Posts: 439 Member
    Thanks!!! As someone who works overnights, I have a similar problem and this has been a great find!!!
    Hope it's all still going well for you
    xoxo - S
  • utamore
    utamore Posts: 53
    For me personally, I find that what works is not changing the foods I eat per se, because I can't stick to those omissions... but changing just the quantity of what I'm eating. I still have Taco Bell a few times a week.

    I completely agree. I am in a similar situation in that I attend a lot of events with meals and I just can't control what is served there so instead it becomes about quantity control. I like it because I still get to eat the super-tasty bad stuff just eat less of it.

    Also, I still am unclear about what this hacker diet is... anyone read the book and can explain it in more concrete terms than just "slow carb"?
  • kumamushi
    kumamushi Posts: 103 Member
    This is The Hacker's Diet: http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/e4/

    As suomaf said, it is free and it also happens to be an enjoyable read. Feel free to skim a bit over the chapter or two that covers how to do what MyFitnessPal already does, though. ;-)

    I would *love* to see the weighted moving average chart in MFP; I tried it out on that site and it's really interesting to see the overall trend of my weight loss so far. Apparently the trend says that I'm losing roughly 1.93 pounds a week, which shows I'm right on track. Because I'm OCD and don't like doing things halfway, I do weigh myself every single morning with a scale that's accurate to the nearest fifth of a pound.

    Here's a rough summary of what he says. Your body is a feedback system, and some people have a broken appetite feedback which leads to mild or moderate weight gain over time. Calorie tracking and weight tracking is a good start to weight loss, but because our weight fluctuates so much from day to day it's hard to see the true progress. The weighted moving average chart is a fairly accurate way to see what your weight loss trend is without all the noise. This makes it much easier to stick to a diet instead of getting hung up on short term gains that are offset by the long term loss. Also, while exercise is certainly a valid supplement to losing weight, it should not be the main focus because it takes a *lot* of exercise to burn off just one burger, for instance. He recommends a 15-minute workout every day that touches on your basic muscle groups and gradually builds up endurance and strength over time. And with each week that you improve your fitness, you can go up a rung or two on the exercise ladder he lays out.

    Here is the trend chart part of it, which is freely available as well and can be updated online just like MyFitnessPal: http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/e4/comptools.html
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