Well, I suppose it really *has* been a while since I posted. Funny thing is, every time I start something like this, I tell myself that I'm going to keep it up. Two months later, lo and behold, I'm writing up a post like this. C'est la vi...
As you could probably tell from the title, I'm currently on a diet. I stumbled upon the Hacker's Diet. It was a quick read, and it's completely 100% free to read online. I don't even think it's published (a crying shame if you ask me).
It was written by the founder of Autodesk, a very successful software company (ever hear of AutoCAD?). After achieving much success in most of his life, he wondered why he was still struggling with his weight. He then began to approach his weight as an engineering/management problem. The solution he came up with is called the hacker's diet.
The basic concept is that if the number calories burned throughout the day is greater than the calories taken in that day, weight is lost. Add up the differences, and keep track of them. One pound of fat is roughly equivalent to 3,500 calories. There was no pie-in-the-sky promises about losing 30 lbs in a week, no promises of eating whatever I want, etc. It was a book that explained why some people are overweight from a mathematical point of view, and how to fix it. Weight would then "peel" away gradually. This made sense for me.
The deal is to plan how many calories I will eat in a day (1300 at the moment) in the morning. I need to update my weight daily at the hacker's diet website so it can calculate a trend. This means if I don't know how many calories are in a food item, I'm not allowed to eat it. This includes restaurants, so if I eat out with any of you be prepared for me to be "that guy" who asks the waiter for nutrition information :-). That is, at least until I can shave off some pounds.
Some of you may think this is madness. Why not use my intuition to decide what I eat? Well, it was using my intuition that got me into this mess. Plus, I can ignore my intuition, eat poorly, and forget about it immediately. If I write it down and track it, I have to look at it the subsequent days, as a reminder of the food I decided to eat.
So I'm on day 5 now, hungry, and miserable. But I am losing weight little by little. When I get back to a manageable weight I can increase my calorie intake to something more sane. You can track some of my progress on my traineo page (http://joemcc00l.traineo.com/), and if you're feeling particularly helpful today, even decide to be a "motivator" for me. Although this site doesn't have the same kind of graph as what I use on the hacker's diet website, I do update it with my weight every day.
I read a post somewhere, that said, "I wouldn't cheat on my wife, why would I cheat on my diet?" That makes sense. Hopefully staying loyal to my future wife won't be as miserable as dieting is ;-).
-Joe
