Comment by cup-of-tea | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cup-of-tea | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I read the introduction to this and thoroughly disagree with it on multiple points. I'm someone who used to be obese but I've been in excellent shape (six pack etc) for more than eight years now.

For a start, you should not be aiming to "lose weight". You should be aiming to maintain weight, and that weight might be lower than what you currently maintain. A diet is not a short term thing that is hard. If you think about it like that then when you finish "losing weight" you'll just go back to your normal mode of eating too much. This is what most people do. What you actually want to do is change your lifestyle forever.

Changing your lifestyle forever cannot actually include counting calories. You are not going to do that for the rest of your life. Counting calories should be merely an educational exercise. Before long you should just know how much to eat. If you're the kind of person who can't drive a route you've already driven with GPS a second time without GPS then you won't have much luck. Learn to be that person.

The biggest lifestyle change you can make is cooking everything you eat yourself and do not snack at all. Learn to be hungry and look forward to your next meal. I observe fat people all the time and they don't necessarily eat huge meals, they just eat constantly throughout the day.

A hacker's diet should be one that is incredibly easy to follow. I eat two meals a day. I weigh out starchy ingredients because I know how much I need. I do not place calorific items into my mouth between meals. Never ever.

> Changing your lifestyle forever cannot actually include counting calories. You are not going to do that for the rest of your life.<

My personal experience: 1) Using MyFitnessPal I can enter what i ate in less than 2-3’ (split during the day) 2) Being self-aware of how much I eat is extremely harder and amazingly less accurate than counting calories on Mfp 3) Whenever I stopped counting calories my weight loss either or even turned it weight gain.

Not everyone is the same. Different things will work for different people.

Unfortunately for most of us, work lacks proper kitchens and reheated food is vastly inferior and harder to prepare. Plus you're not getting paid for the time cooking unless you work in a restaurant or as a house maid.

Lunch is a mediocre or inconvenient meal if you work, it's best to opt-out entirely. A protein shake is healthy and low calorie, and a couple of them spaced through the day will get you to dinner, at which point you've built up a nice calorie deficit, so you can enjoy yourself.

Why does it need to be hot? I eat room temperature food for lunch (not cold. I don't understand why people put their lunch in a fridge).

I used to be about 50lbs heavier then I am now (not 6 pack yet ) but I found most of your suggestions to be similar to what work for me. I make my meals in advance for work, if I can’t pack a meal I simply don’t eat. (For example. Lunch may be a tuna sandwich made with 1 can of tuna(110 calories) soy sauce (6 cal) low cal mayo (10 grams, 45 calories) and two slices of light bread toasted in advance (90 calories ) and carrots or celery or an apple if I’m feeling adventurous. )

Otherwise I prepar my meals, and mostly avoid snacking. If I snack it’s going to be some carrots or similar that I log in a tracking app.

Though now after a year of nearly continuous meal and excrsice tracking I have found I tend to eat appropriate sized meals.

People put food in the fridge to slow bacteria growth. This quote is from a USDA Health brochure

>Bacteria grow most rapidly in the range of temperatures between 40 ° and 140 °F, doubling in number in as little as 20 minutes. This range of temperatures is often called the “Danger Zone.” That’s why the Meat and Poultry Hotline advises consumers to never leave food out of refrigeration over 2 hours. If the temperature is above 90 °F, food should not be left out more than 1 hour.

Yet somehow people survived for a very long time without refrigeration. In fact, we evolved to live without it, so those bacteria are probably good for us if anything. Personally I don't even like to eat cold food as it diminishes the flavour.

It's super easy to bring food to work and just eat it at room temperature. But instead people insist on this weird fridge then microwave ritual then complain about it being too difficult.

Or maybe we didn't survive. Life expectancy was half what it is today for most of humanity up until 1900. Even if you remove childhood deaths, life expectancy was still only about 33 years in the Paleolithic era.

I don't understand the romanticization of a time period where it was normal for people to die before they were 40.

Life expectancy has increased mostly thanks to modern medicine and in particular drastically reducing infant mortality. Keeping food in the fridge at all times has no effect other than reducing your enjoyment of the food and making it less likely that you bring food to work, thus decreasing your overall health.

The rules obviously change if you are doing any sort of lifting routine for muscle building.

I've done exactly the same thing with and without a lifting routine. When I didn't lift I was skinny with abs, now I'm muscly with abs.

This is exactly what every single dietitian/nutritionist learn in school.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com