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Programming Technology

Programming and Dieting? 130

Posted by Cliff from the it's-all-about-the-brain-fuel dept.
duncan bayne asks: "I've been using the Hacker's Diet to lose weight. What's interesting to me is how hard it is to focus on a complicated task when my body is busy running out of energy. I'm having to pay careful attention to snacking - eating enough that I don't 'fade out' in the afternoon, yet not so much that I exceed my daily kilojoule allowance. This got me to thinking about energy levels of those who aren't dieting. Do you find yourself correcting 'fade' by snacking (careful or otherwise) as you work?"
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Programming and Dieting? More

Programming and Dieting?

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  • No. (Score:5, Funny)

    by madaxe42 ( 690151 ) on Thursday November 03, 2005 @11:13AM (#13940863) Homepage
    I have an IV Caffeine drip, and a catheter. I once 'moved' in order to see whether the big shiny thing in the sky was still there. It was.
    • Amphetamines, my son, amphetamines. They worked for Paul Erdos, and they can work for you.

      Ritalin puts more people than medschool than trust funds do.

  • I find that if I consume too much food, my ability to focus is diminished. This is particularly true for sugars, caffeine, and simple carbs. I can feel my blood sugar getting high, and then the weird antsy hyper mentality kicks in, and I'd be better suited for writing off the wall humor.

    If I snack, I have to make sure that it is not the stuff that comes out of a vending machine. What I typically do, or would like to, given the amount of self-control that I have on certain days, is to eat half the sandwi

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • The reason being the sugar hits your system in one go, and is then gone. Bananas etc take longer to digest so it's a more gradual release.
    • Interestingly, many anoretics get a "fasting high"---eating a very low-calorie diet tends to produce feelings of mental clarity and some extra energy. Or perhaps it's the excitement of losing weight... who knows?
    • I agree. Most days I make a sandwhich on lite whole wheat bread with fat free cheese and turkey. At 12 I eat half, two hours later I eat the other half, two hours later I eat a cup of instant oatmeal, and two hours later I have a soy yogurt. The total damages are 500 calories and in general it keeps me full half the day as well as more awake.

      The real trick is to make sure you never go more than 4 hours without eating and that when you eat you do not eat too much or something super unhealthy. Also when

  • Snacking isn't actually that bad (Score:4, Informative)

    by antifoidulus ( 807088 ) on Thursday November 03, 2005 @11:20AM (#13940937) Homepage Journal
    if you eat the right stuff. Some diets recommend you eat 5 small meals a day instead of 3 bigger meals. Why? There is a significant "fixed cost" to digesting food, ie the amount of calories you burn to digest any amount of food, however after you pay the fixed cost the incremental cost is quite small. So you are actually doing yourself a favor if you snack on stuff like carrots and apples during the day. Esp. since your body has to do more work to break down carrots and apples than it does a Snickers bar.....
    • That could make sense, I read an article a while ago that explained about sport drinks. It stated that you best drink a lot at once, instead of taking small sips over time. If you apply your theory, this would mean that starting up digestion time after time would cost a lot of energy, making the drink less effective.

      Personally I lost my own overweight simply by blocking the calory intake after dinner. During the day I eat normally and drink soda, but after dinner I switch to water and stop eating candy/snac
    • You're supposed to do the following things:

      1) East as soon as you wake up
      2) East 6 times a day
      3) Eat mostly healthy food and not cereal, milk, or ice cream.

      And that is not only a way to lose weight, that is the most proper way to eat for the rest of your life. People who skipped breakfast were almost 2 or 3x as likely to be obese. Eating breakfast keeps your hunger urges down for the rest of the day.

      Eating 6 times a day is important because you eat in small portions to give yourself a boost and you don't
    • That's not true. I do not know about carrots, but apples are between 150 and 200 calories. You can get fat by having too many apples, vegetables in general provide much less sugar/calories than fruits...that is why diet plans generally have more servings of vegetables than fruits in a given day (some even allow infinite vegetables under the premise you will get full before you eat enough to sabatosh your diet significantly). Celery is a known food which takes more energy to break it down than it provides
  • Stay with the diet, and avoid snacking whatsoever. I've found that the fade goes away with time. After a few weeks, my body regained its earlier concentration level. I found it helpful _not_ to think about the possibility to snack: thinking about it usually made it worse.
  • For a second there, I thought it said "Programming and Dating?".

    After a while, reality kicked in and reminded me that the two are mutually exclusive.
    • And dieting is a regular thing for Programmers? I'd say they are just about equal. there are programmers that do both. Usually one followed by the other but they are the exception.

  • Bleh, more phewie! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by RingDev ( 879105 )
    from TFHD: "There is no magic secret to losing weight and keeping it off"

    Incorrect. There is one great key to losing weight and keeping it off. Its called Math. If you take in more calories then you use, you will gain weight. If you burn more calories then you take in, you will lose weight. It is that simple. Eat a healthy blend of foods. Eat less and exercise more and you will lose weight. Period. Whether you eat nothing but stake, are a vegitarian, a junk food muncher, what ever your gimmic is, you need t
    • Best thing would be to go join a gym and exercise for atleast 45 minutes. I have been doing that since the last 1 year and have lost 25 pounds. It makes you fresh, and de-stresses your mind and body. Plus at the gym if you don't disclose that you are a programmer, maybe one of the hot chics will go out with ya :)
    • Congratulations on contradicting TFHD and then restating its basic premise.

      The point it's making is that eating fewer calories than you burn isn't "magic," it's physics.

      • "Congratulations on contradicting TFHD and then restating its basic premise."

        I read the introduction. I figured reading the introduction of the guide would give me at least an idea of what the book would cover. I appologize for making that assumption. My bust. </sarcasm>

        -Rick
        • I read the introduction. I figured reading the introduction of the guide would give me at least an idea of what the book would cover. I appologize for making that assumption. My bust.

          The book is based on the premise that there is no "magic secret" to losing weight. You stated that was incorrect. Then you listed a bunch of things that aren't magic secrets as ways to lose weight.

          Also, the online book has some computerized tools like you mentioned available for download, although they might be out of date no
          • "Then you listed a bunch of things that aren't magic secrets as ways to lose weight."

            No, I listed 1 way. Not magic, but very much a (media/marketing) secret. No gimic, no huge price, no crazy fad, no marketing department. Just Math. If that's what the guide gets to, great, but the intro made it sound like loosing weight was painful, hard, confussing and very complexe. Which its not. It is challanging though.

            -Rick
    • How insightful. That's exactly the sort of advice "TFHD" gives. Bravo.
      • What you say is the exact point of the Hacker's Diet - read about the rubber bag.
      • The hacker's diet is closed loop a diet tracking system. It is a feedback system for monitoring your food intake vs. metabolism, giving your rate of change of weight rather than monitoring absolute calories.
      • The amount you burn is not a constant, and can be changed by not only exercise, but by diet as well. This is why low-carb diets work: you body burns more calories/day when burning fat than when burning sugars.
    • Go out and drop a few bucks on a quality diet/exercise tracking system. They are simple to use, just plug in what you eat and what type of activities you do during the day. They can spit out graphs of your expected weight changes and make recomendations for how to meet your weight goals over a period of time.

      Or you could just ... exercise a bunch, eat better, and then use common sense.

      Some got it, others don't.

      I've lost 76 pounds over the past 6 months (I'm now 6'3", weigh 170, 31" waist).. just exercise a
      • how often were you working out and for how long? based on your figure of 76 pounds in 6 months you were losing an average of roughly 3 pounds a week. Burning 3000 calories loses about a pound so thats about 9000 calories a week, that must have been a lot of working out to burn 9000 extra calories a week.
        • I do about 2 hours a day 6 days a week of cardio.

          Then I do an additional 2 hours a week of strength training not to get big but because you're obviously going to lose what you don't use during heavy weight loss.
    • >Whether you eat nothing but stake

      I guarantee that will help you lose weight!
    • As everyone else says, this is the basic premise of TFHD: There's no magic way of losing weight and keeping it off, but there's a very simple practical one: Take in less calories than you burn, and burn more than you take in.

      And as for buying a quality diet/exercise tracking system? As far as I can tell, that's exactly what the book's Excel files are. And yes, they make graphs.

      Remember, it's the Hacker's diet. Do you really expect a self-respecting hacker to buy such simple software?
      • "As everyone else says, this is the basic premise of TFHD:..."

        Yes, I realise that now. It appears that the guide has a very valid thesis and a very weak introduction.

        "Remember, it's the Hacker's diet. Do you really expect a self-respecting hacker to buy such simple software?"

        So, answer me this hacker, how many calaries are in a grilled cheese sandwhich, A cup of OJ, and a side salad with light dreasing? Sure, you could look up each item, figure out how much cheese you used on your sandwhich and how many cal

  • correcting 'fade (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Threni ( 635302 )
    > Do you find yourself correcting 'fade' by snacking (careful or otherwise) as you
    > work?"

    If by `fade` they mean `falling blood sugar levels` then the answer is to not binge on sugary stuff in the first place. But no-one wants to do boring stuff like eating properly, especially if you want to stay up all night debugging...uh, I mean coding.
  • I've weaned myself off coffee before lunchtime, and I avoid anything sugary until late afternoon. I now eat a light lunch, and drink more water. Since doing this, I find I get much less of the afternoon "fade" - even when I haven't eaten breakfast, or slept well the previous night.

    Seems avoiding the caffeine / sugar crash is what's important. You can only keep yourself on the leading edge of a sugar or caffine rush for a limited amount of time during the day.

  • work PT at.... (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I am not kidding when I say this. I am a science student and work also at Home Depot. If you work on the floor doing sales it is like a 8 hour visit to a gym. The pay sucks but with all of the moving around, climbing, pushing, pulling, and lifting you will loose weight quickly so long as you eat healthy and not in large quanities. When there, I walk about 7 miles. Granted managment is evil at times and oh the stories I could tell about customers (better to laugh than to get angry), but it is really good at
    • I would love to do this.

      Unfortunately. my job is currently so over-tasked that I leave home at 0530, and frequently don't return until 2100. Then there are several support calls during the night.

      Hopefully, this will be temporary, otherwise thats it for me.

      -WS
  • Eat something like a whole grain breakfast bar between meals if you're concerned about 'fading' energy levels. Whole grains take a while to break down and provide good metabolic energy. Stay away from anything with sugar, you'll just burn out even more 20 minutes later. Caffeine is okay but stay sugar free. If you must have something sweet, eat an apple. The fiber and pectin will help offset the fructose sugars in overall calorie count but you'll get a relative quick boost to your blood sugar.

  • Please. Burning something and seeing how hot the water gets. How does that relate to the human body?

    I wrestled for 8 years. You want to loose weight? Get a good scale. Step on it with the sandwich, snack, drink or whatever. If you weigh more than you did in the morning or what your goal is then don't eat it.

    You will quickly learn what your body burns during the day and at night.

    Also drink a glass of water and wait 15 minutes before you eat anything.
  • Seriously, increase your alertness by carefully consuming stimulants. Energy drinks like Redbull or a can of Rockstar...will really pick you up and as long as you're counting your calories and alloting for them you'll still be ok.

    Or you could go for calorie free caffeinated water from www.buzzwater.com which is the best solution...caffeine actually speeds up your matabolism so you'll feel pumped from the extreme caffeine dosage and burn more calories.

    Just don't get too addicted!

    Good luck.

  • You may want to experiment with your food intake (Score:4, Interesting)

    by arnie_apesacrappin ( 200185 ) on Thursday November 03, 2005 @11:57AM (#13941320)
    I started on the Hacker's Diet earlier this year. I went from 205 to 185 in about two and a half months. While I didn't notice the mental fade you are talking about, I did notice that some days my workouts went really well and other days I could barely make it 20 minutes before I wanted to quit and go home. I started tracking those days inside my weight and workout spreadsheet and I found that the good days correlated with the days I had yogurt and fruit for breakfast. My total calorie consumption was always roughly the same (1800 - 2000), but the difference on yogurt and non-yogurt days was astonishing.

    I'm not saying that yogurt and fruit is a magic combination that will work for everyone, but it worked for me. Try different foods and different mixes of the big three (protein, carbs and fat) and see how you feel. If you're already doing the hacker's diet, it shouldn't be too hard to track the additional information.

    Good luck and keep at it. It's been about nine months since I started and I'm down to 175 pounds. I lost my workout routine (new job doesn't have a gym like the old one), but I have been able to keep my food intake under control thanks to what I learned using the Hacker's Diet.

  • What works for me ... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Rayder ( 39469 ) on Thursday November 03, 2005 @12:06PM (#13941405)
    I've been following Atkins diet for a while and it worked until I reached a line that my body refuses to cross, so I changed to a hipocaloric one (less than 1600 KCalories every day) and a little of exercice (walking as much as I can, and 2 hour gym every week), the results are very promising, and at this moments I think that I know a little about dieting and losing weight, some things that work for me :

    1.- Watch what you eat, (http://www.nutritiondata.com/ [nutritiondata.com] has been a wonderful help) 1600 Kcalories enables you to loose up to 2 Kg every month.
    2.- Eat frecuently, no more than 4 hours without eating something, 100 gr of fruit is right between meals when you are hungry. This way you are not empty (and hungry) when you do the real meal.
    3.- If you are really hungry between meals, 10 gr of butter (yes pure butter only) helps me to avoid the starving feeling (thanks to Atking, this really works).
    4.- Don't eat outside meal time, and stop doing it as soon as you have enough or you don't have hunger, this is really important, and it is an habit change that you need to track carefully.
    5.- Make a little exercice, you don't need to train like Mr, Universe, just 20 minutes walking every day and some serious aerobic exercice 2 times (or more) a week is right.
    6.- Avoid highly carbohydrated food, like rice, sugar, pasta, flour etc..., vegetables and fruit will give you more than enough for your needs.
    7.- Drink, no less than 3 Liters of water every day, but no sodas or similar, just water or tea with a sugar substitute, saccharin is better than aspartame.
    8.- Put the maximun food intake in the breakfast and the lunch, and the minimun in the dinner, this way you go to sleep almost empty.
    9.- Loosing weight is a SLOW PROCESS, so don't try to recover your perfect weight in 2 weeks, put a realistic schedule, 1 to 2 years is a correct one. Going faster will not work in the long term.
    10.- Persistence, all this is nonsense if you do it for 1 week and forget it the next one, loosing weight is a state of mind.

    I've lost 20 Kg, in the past 18 months, and today I'm quite happy, even my sexual life has improved a lot, but I understand that every person is a world and at the end you need to decide what is right and what works for you, so watch how your body reacts to your actions.
    • If you are really hungry between meals, 10 gr of butter (yes pure butter only)

      God, I stopped reading there to go vomit at the thought. That must be how atkins works.
    • >I understand that every person is a world

      sheesh, am I really THAT big???
    • Some more personal notes:

      (1) Stairs really help a lot. It made me realize how out of shape I had become. Take the stairs when you can, and be persistent. You'd be surprised how much more you can go after a few weeks of stair climbing at your office.

      (2) Avoid drugs, including caffeine and alcohol. You've got to break that caffeine habit if you have one. When I drink a caffeinated beverage, I get really, really hungry.

      (3) A little bit of candy or anything with too many carbs really does ruin your week. Avoid
    • You can do all that, or you can make a career move. I am now working for a linen company, driving a truck, and with commissions and bonuses, I make MORE than I would with a BSc in compsci. Besides the better financial situation, I also get a good 25 hours of physical activity a week. I've not changed my diet at all, eating around 3000 calories a day, and I've lost 2 kg a month since I started. The exercise is great, and I get to enjoy my food, too!
    • I've been following Atkins diet for a while and it worked until I reached a line that my body refuses to cross

      This is a known phenomenon and is usually called a plateau. It happens with any kind of diet if you keep at it long enough. Simply keep going and eventually you will start losing weight again.

      I've lost 19 kilos using Atkins so I'd like to add a few comments:

      • Not all fruits are equally good when it comes to Atkins. Generally any kind of berries are OK, melon too if you don't overdo it but be ca

  • The 'Fade'... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by tansey ( 238786 ) on Thursday November 03, 2005 @12:07PM (#13941419) Journal
    I was in your same spot (although I had never heard of the hackers' diet) about 4 years ago. I had gone through surgery and gained significant weight due to being bed ridden for 3 months and having a mother that loved to buy junk food for me. At the point where I finally stepped on the scale and said "enough is enough", I had gained about 45lbs in 5 months, and I was consuming ~8 cans of mountain dew every day (this was when I was in high school, so that's 8 cans after 3pm when I got home), 2 ice cream bars, and 3 sugary meals a day.

    Now, I've never been one for exercise. I played a few sports occassionally just for fun, but didn't really exert myself. Since my operation I hadn't played any, and lost the desire to do it. I had to lose the weight somehow, and I reasoned myself into a simple diet: no desserts, only a bowl of cereal for breakfast and one for dinner, and drink ONLY water. This last part was probably the biggest kicker. I lost 15lbs just from cutting the sugary drinks out of my diet. The best way to go on a diet cold turkey is to use water--whenever you want anything that you aren't supposed to have, cram water down your throat. That may sound extreme, but drinking 100 ounces of water a day is what made me lose 90 lbs.

    I never really started to notice the 'fade' as you're calling it until I got to college though. The key was that, because of my course schedule and economic status (I couldn't really afford to eat that often), I had to start cutting back my meals. I started eating just 1 meal a day (dinner), and made it a big one. While I got used to that diet, and did continue to lose weight on it, I started to notice that midway through the day I got really tired. I needed more and more sleep if I wanted to feel truly rested, and even then I didn't feel great the whole day.

    The main difference between the two diets was that I was eating the two bowls of cereal at regular intervals, everyday, and keeping my glucose levels high. Interestingly, I've recently tried to fix the fade I get now by cutting various things out of my diet and have realized that without a lot of meat in my diet I have a lot more energy. The fade isn't ever going to be completely gone if you aren't having a small meal in the middle of the day, so a snack might be a good idea.

    So my 3 suggestions for cutting out the fade is to eat cereal for breakfast (keep cutting down bowl sizes also if you're like me and are used to much larger portions), eat something relatively small for lunch (nothing more than another bowl of cereal would give you (~300 calories)), and cut back on the meat you're eating.

  • advice (Score:2)

    by Tom7 ( 102298 )
    I would recommend exercise instead of starving yourself. I've found that running for 20 minutes every morning increases my alertness and mood through the day. If you're programming all day, then exercise is advisable for more than just weight loss!

    The other thing to consider is that different foods make you feel more or less full, and this is not necessarily related to their calorie content. If you feel like you need to eat throughout the day, take a look at one of the various lists on the internet, and cho
  • I lost 100 pounds over the course of a year starting in 2003, and have kept it off. It was and is hard work.
    • You need to count calories. This is the big secret.
    • Everything that you have heard about metabolism is mostly wrong. The major differences in metabolism between people are nearly all from activity. And there is exactly zero medical evidence that you can mess up your metabolism through dieting. Putting on muscle doesn't matter very much either (just run the numbers and see). Starvation diet is

    • Re:For me (Score:3, Interesting)

      by ArsonSmith ( 13997 )
      I lost 90lbs right about the same time. I went from 290 down to 199.5. the breaking the 200lbs bariare actually took away a lot of my motivation. Motivation was the key. It took all I had and more to lose the weight over about 7-8 months. I dropped to about 1200-1500 calories a day. Combined the slimfast and subway diet for most of it, and ran constantly. I'd run 5-6 days a week. got up to running no less than 3.5 miles a day. The weight came off fast. Once I started to get into the 220 range peop
  • Let me tell you about my diet. I lost 20pounds (screw metric) and about 2".

    I used to do tech support for a computer company. Think Geeksquad, but without the stupid name. I'd go from company to company during the day, work on their network, their servers, under their desk... It was a LOT of moving around. The catch was, since I was out, I always ate out. Mexican 3 times a week, Chinese 2. (After eating mexican, you're hungry again at 6pm, chinese - 3pm) I was nearly 200lbs, all on a pot-belly.

    Now I wo
  • How do you find out how much calories you burn during a day?

    • How do you find out how much calories you burn during a day?

      You track your caloric intake and body mass over a period of time. At the end of the period of time, you take the difference in your weight at the beginning and end of the test period.

      A pound of body fat is equal to 3500Cal, a kg is 7700Cal, a stone is 49000Cal. Multiply this by your weight gain/loss.

      Now, if you lost weight, add this to your caloric intake. If you gained weight, subtract it from your caloric intake. Take this new numbe

  • I went on the Hacker's Diet in April of 2004 and lost 10kg over a couple of months.

    I found that, for me, the best solution was to eat around 200-300Cal for each regular meal (breakfast, lunch, dinner) and about 100-200Cal snacks in mid-morning, mid-afternoon, and sometimes mid-evening.

    I also found that, in order to keep my sanity, some small amount of chocolate helped. I ate around 20 M&M's each day after lunch.

    I drink iced-tea all day anyway. Don't get the bottled stuff, make the real stuff. Y

  • Where's Nedry? Check the vending machines.
  • All foods aren't created equal.

    Pay attention to things like the gylcemic index of food. Food which has a really high glycemic index will be processed by your body very rapidly, give you a spike of energy, followed by a lull as your body crashes from all of the resulting insulin. And long term that will exacerbate possible things like Diabetes and the like. There may be the same amount of carbs in your ganola bar or your bag of chips, but medically/nutritionally, you're way better off with the granola bar
  • ...with near-null energy food. Vegetables. Fruits. Mushrooms. Stuff that is immune to processing in your FIFO and leaves in state nearly suitable for eating it again. There are quite a few such foods. When you're hungry you're tempted to eat something high on calories, but when you're full, you don't want to eat, no matter what kind of useless junk fills your bowels.
  • Is this the first time you've done a diet? I ask because I noticed this last year during my first serious diet, but after about 2 or 3 weeks the effect wore off.

    Last year I lost over 30lbs. between October and January-ish using the mathematically proven method of simply eating less. I run with 1100 calories a day while on the diet and it works wonderfully. I just started it again a couple of weeks ago to shave off the remaining lbs. that I didn't get to last year and it's going quite well. It is not nea
  • Eat complex carbohydrates for lunch and you won't fade so much in the afternoon.
  • Really, merge the two.

    I've lost 100+ lbs after I started three years ago, and it is _never_ coming back.

    Hacker's gives you all the tools to meter yourself, Atkins gives you the means to control yourself. The combo of the two is like have a scalpel for your weight.

    BTW: One of the side effects of Atkins is the elimination of the "two o'clock doldrums".

    • Hacker's gives you all the tools to meter yourself, Atkins gives you the means to control yourself. The combo of the two is like have a scalpel for your weight.

      BTW: One of the side effects of Atkins is the elimination of the "two o'clock doldrums".

      The problem with Atkin's is that is treats all carbohydrates as evil, and pretends that outrageous amounts of fat and no greens is healthy. It's way more complex that this.

      Something like the South Beach diet which takes a more intelligent view of greens and carbs

  • I've been steadily losing weight, and getting stronger and healthier, by following the No-S Diet [nosdiet.com]. This is easily the most effective diet I've ever done because it's so simple, the entire diet is encapsulated in 14 words: No Snacks, No Sweets, No Seconds, except sometimes on days that start with S.

    For exercise, I use a portable gym made with a sledgehammer called Shovelglove [shovelglove.com].

    Both of these plans, along with Urban Ranger [urbanranger.com], were developed by a computer programmer, so you may find they work for you too.

    Once

  • I've been using The Hacker's Diet to lose weight

    I haven't read The Hacker's Diet in a year or so, but IIRC what surprised me at the time I read it was its comments about exercise, i.e. it said something like "If you exercise hard for an hour you'll only burn off a can of Coke so don't waste your time with exercise, just don't drink the Coke."

    What this overlooks is the fact that if you exercise regularly you'll build muscle, and once you have more muscle you'll burn more calories just sitting around (muscle

    • increased metabolism from increased muscle mass is mostly a myth (source: National Strength and Conditioning Association). An extra few pounds of muscle will burn an extra 50 cals a day doesnt help all that much (note: those are estimates, I'm in lab now and dont have time to look up the actual article. maybe when I get home if I remember). John L Parker, a pretty good runner once wrote that if the furnace is hot enough anything will burn, even big macs. If you work out enough, you can eat just about an
      • If a few pounds can burn 50 calories a day that is awesome. However, if you are talking about getting the muscle from working out, and not from simply running, then you are talking about 10 or more extra pounds of muscle, or 150 to 200 extra calories according to your information. That is a lot! Plus, when you do aerobics, you only burn calories for the next 3 hours after you stop. But when you work out to build muscle, that turns up your metabolism for the next 24 hours. So, it's not just about having
    • Actually, if you keep reading, you find he does recommend exercise, just not for weight loss.
  • If you're constantly feeling tired or hungry it's not a healthy way to lose weight. You should concentrate on eating healthy foods (get rid of those sugary snacks and pops NOW) and take up a good fitness sport like squash. I know people who have slimmed down a LOT over the past year or so by playing squash, it works wonders for your cardio and helps build muscle too. Coupled with a few hours at the gym a week and you should see yourself improving in no time. The key here is regularity, if you go less than 3

  • zerg (Score:3, Funny)

    by Lord Omlette ( 124579 ) on Thursday November 03, 2005 @02:52PM (#13943119) Homepage
    Fuck losing weight, I need to gain it. >_<
  • I have been on both ends of the weight scale... I found those dizzy moments when my body was busy eating all the fat it had stored to be enlightening... When I feel the urge to snack, it is liquid, tea some sugar.... I am good to go for another couple hours...and it is either lunch time, or quitting time... If you fade, suck it up, and get it done.... the end of the day comes eventually

  • This got me to thinking about energy levels of those who aren't dieting. Do you find yourself correcting 'fade' by snacking (careful or otherwise) as you work?"

    The Hacker's Diet uses a balloon analogy; energy in - energy out = excess fat. You can decrease the energy in by eating low-calorie foods or decreasing the amount of food consumed. You can increase the energy out by exercising or eating the right combination of foods.

    There's nothing wrong with that analogy. Unfortunately the human body isn't

    • The Hacker's Diet isn't really a diet plan, it's more of a diet tracking system. Within that framework, you still need to find a way to get your caloric intake down and/or your caloric output up. If you are losing weight on the Atkins diet, it's not because of some magical properties of low carb food, it's because your caloric intake goes down or your caloric need goes up. It works because it's easier to maintain a low calorie diet that way. The Hacker's Diet does not give you the tools to change your calo

  • This got me to thinking about energy levels of those who aren't dieting. Do you find yourself correcting 'fade' by snacking (careful or otherwise) as you work?"

    As someone who happily has never had to diet, I can report that I've never been in the habit of eating between meals - just the way I was brought up I suppose - and I haven't experienced what you call 'fade'.

    (If I'm out walking in the hills and lunch is very late, I've been known to run out of energy and just have to stop and eat a chocolate bar, but
  • My experience with the hacker's diet has shown me that there are two things that affect fade for me.

    1. When I eat, I have to eat a diverse meal. I need to eat some sugars (simple carbohydrates - immediate energy), some complex carbohydrates (medium to long term energy) and proteins (long term energy). If I eat only sugars then I'll fade and/or feel hungry very soon after eating. If I only eat carbs I'll probably feel sleepy for an hour or so, then I'll pick up for a few hours and then get tired again
    • 2. Exercise is important. When I'm not exercising on a regular basis I have more consistant energy throughout the day.

      Not to co-opt your post here, but I would expect that you didn't mean to include the word NOT in that sentence, correct? That sounds opposite of expected.

      Cheers
  • I lost 10 lbs in 3 months, and then another 35 lbs in less than 3 weeks.

    How? I joined the Marines.

    At first, as a DEPer, I had no change in habit other than twice a week aerobic excersices for less than an hour. Once at MCRD San Diego, the following became my schedule:

    5 minutes before Revelle: Wake up, go to the bathroom, brush teeth, get back in rack.
    Reveille: Wake up (again)
    Rev + 5 seconds: Get dressed, make rack
    Rev + 60 seconds: Get on the street in formation
    Rev + 90 seconds: Start marching to m

  • ...hit a hard thorny problem, go get something to eat or drink...whats going to make you feel better, ususally something bad for you.
  • Part of the thing about sitting in front of a computer is that often it makes you want to eat. You think of food, you think it would taste good, it creates a sense of hunger, even if your body doesnt really need food.

    I suggest learning to drink water as an alternative. You need more water anyways, being mentally active, and it fulfils the oral fixation. I suspect most people do not drink enough water, do yourself the favor and try it. Without fail, everyone I've converted to my h2o cause swears by impro

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