Comment by feintruled | Hacker News Reader

Comment by feintruled | Hacker News Reader

I embarked on a similar course as the author - just after Christmas I realised my BMI was well into the overweight category - and the same strategy of calorie counting worked for me. I can especially recommend using an app, this really helped me too. Turns it into a game almost - where can I cut out the unnecessary calories? Whereas before you might help yourself to a biscuit with a coffee now you know it is going to blow your budget right open. Makes it a lot easier to resist.

And it was easier than I thought - a piece of fruit for breakfast, a small lunch (single sandwich, down from two with crisps and chocolate bar on top some days), and a normal evening meal. That would come to around 1500 calories or less a day, easily enough to lose a few pounds a week. It becomes easier as time goes on - your body expects less, I guess. And you do gravitate towards healthier food, simply because you can eat so much more of it.

I've lost two and a half stone since then (I don't follow the diet at weekends so I could have lost more) and am back in the green. Not as much as the article's author - his loss was spectacular!

Alas I did not take a before and after picture, though others have commented, which feels good.

So yeah, great article that I can fully endorse, and encourage others to follow. Just set realistic targets, change will come eventually.

Downloaded the app, immediately deleted it because it asked me to create an account.

Are there any similar apps which store the data locally?

I used the Samsung Health fitness app, you can use it without an account I think. Seems to offer pretty much the same functionality (definitely does the calorie counting and targetting).

You don't need to create any accounts with Samsung, they already have all your data anyway, linked to your device Id. Your data is safe in their cloud, don't worry. /s

For people who are downvoting, these apps have a history of leaking personal data.

For example: https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/29/17177848/under-armour-myf...

That is one instance of one app leaking data which is "not particularly sensitive." I bet you've had e.g. your email leaked many times by now by many companies. Are calorie counting apps _more_ likely to leak data as you are implying?

I agree it's not that sensitive...but I guess that's because I'm biased and released all my own data willingly :)

We have an app called Bitesnap that doesn't have an account and works offline.

We are working on syncing across devices though so at some point we'll add a way to create an optinal account.

Excel

If you just want to build your own iOS app you can fork mine (change the part the sends email to me as a back up):

https://github.com/wcochran/calfoo

I just create my own "refrigerator" by manually adding foods I eat (no bar code scanner or online database).

BTW, someone actually took forked my code and placed a version in the App store without ever asking me. I was sort of dumbfounded that someone would do this.

Looks like you don’t have a license so I think you could get it taken down if you wanted to.

I should have thrown a license on this, but it was really just a personal project and never meant it to be released into the wild (GitHub was just a place to store the code)... I suppose I should go back and update this, add a README, and a license.

GP is saying that since there is no license, the code is copyrighted and there is no allowable use anyone could put it to. Therefore, since you own the copyright, and did not license the code to a third party, you could have the app using your code taken down from the App Store.

In contrast, if you had put an open source license on it, then anyone would be well within their rights (assuming the license allows it) to compile and release a version to whatever app store they want.

> In contrast, if you had put an open source license on it, then anyone would be well within their rights (assuming the license allows it) to compile and release a version to whatever app store they want.

This is actually potentially untrue, as some versions of the GPL require that the end user must not be restricted wrt the app they download, and that's not compatible with the Apple's store requirements. See e.g. https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/6109/is-it-possibl...

I use mynetdiary. It's not perfect but it's free and doesn't require an account. And most importantly for me it's effective (lost about 17 lbs in four months).

I’ve downloaded this and am trying it out. Seems pretty good so far, thanks!

I just use an excel spreadsheet that /u/3suns (I believe is his handle) from reddit put together. You just put in your current weight, target weight and a couple other metrics then fill in your current weight and calories consumed each day. It's supposed to have a pretty good estimate of your true TDEE after about three weeks assuming the information you input is good.

Besides that, I wrote a small JS script that allows me to input various foods along with their respective protein/fat/carb macro ratios that I then combine into meals along with a few helper functions that print the total calories based off the macros. It's nothing special but it gets the job done and I don't have to worry about signing up for yet another app or getting bogged down by a bunch of features I don't care about. I'd be happy to push it and a link to the spreadsheet up to a repo if anyone else would be interested in using them.

App looks like Waistline from f-droid

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.waist.line/

BMI is a fairly bullshit metric. I’m 12% bodyfat and am on the cusp of “obese” sporting a six pack.

Yep, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is also obese based on BMI numbers alone.

A world-class athlete with a near superhuman physique may be the perfect definition of an edge case in this situation.

I’m neither of those and fall into the same “edge case”.

12% body fat with enough muscle to almost be considered obese by BMI standards is quite a few standard deviations outside of the mean. Anyone with that kind of body is well aware of that BMI shortcoming. For most of the population, it’s still a pretty good rule of thumb.

There's a very good chance you're not testing your body fat correctly. I've gotten several friends, including bodybuilders and various athletes to get DXA scans done... pretty much every one underestimated their BF% by 5-10%. Including the ones who swore up and down by their personal trainer's caliper measurements, the BF testing machine (the electric handles one) at their local supplement store, etc.

I'm 14% BF and a BMI of 20... looks to be right on point.

Edit: Nevermind, stupid question. Thanks for the corrections!

BMI isn't a percent, but based on your height/muscle mass you can have an overweight BMI with very low body fat.

BMI = kg/m^2. (Weight divided by height). It doesn’t account for the composition of the person whatsoever.

The 12 was body fat percentage, not BMI.

BMI is not a percentage. The unit for BMI is kg * m^-2.

Ancestor post was referring to either percentage of total body mass as fat, or percentage of lean mass. Both are dimensionless, as kg/kg cancels out.

As such, if the 12% was % of lean mass, that would be 10.7% of total body weight. If it was 12% of total body mass (more likely), that would be 13.6% of lean mass. Either way, that's classified as "very lean".

It is a useful guideline for the general public. If it says you're overweight and are sporting a beer belly, you likely aren't an edge case.

Better measurements exist, but for most collecting the data needed is complex (and the impedance measuring ones aren't reliable). If you have a suggested alternative I'd welcome reading about it.

It is only used for historical reasons. It's really bad science, made popular by Ancel Keys whose reputation for bad science is impeccable.

Waist to Height ratio is AFAIK the best "simple but data supported" measure: https://qz.com/1002707/bmi-calculators-arent-accurate-but-ou...

It's not, if you understand what BMI actually means.

BMI is an aggregate metric that has been misapplied to individuals.

Due to the averaging effect, it's a pretty decent predictor for groups, but due to variation within groups, it's not going to predict that well for all individuals (except for individuals who are close to the average of the group).

He's right - the BMI formula penalizes very muscular people and tall people. The height issue comes from the square term in the formula, and obviously it cant distinguish muscle from fat.

Nick Trefethen from Oxford:

https://people.maths.ox.ac.uk/trefethen/bmi.html

How are you measuring bodyfat? I'm interested in tracking it, but seems tricky to do accurately.

DXA scan is pretty much the only way to do it accurately. Calipers, "smart" digital scales, and comparing yourself to diagrams online are all very poor methods of checking bodyfat and should be considered to have somewhere around a +-10% error range.

I found a guy in my city doing DXA scans for $80, I usually go get one done every six months or so.

Someone with 12% bodyfat is not going to be in any danger of confusing themselves for being overweight. For average people it is a good rule of thumb.

Obviously there are better tools, but none of them are so easy to measure.

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