An Engineer's Guide To Weight Loss
teddziuba.com
teddziuba.com
Bzzzt! Wrong attitude. If you hate the exercise you are doing, find another one, there are more sports than anyone can count. If you hate healthy food, learn to cook, I guarantee that anyone who knows what they are doing can prepare a healthy meal that tastes better than pizza or a burger.
Setting out to make yourself miserable is setting out to fail.
And I love that there are soccer field sprinkled all over SF, and plenty of co-ed leagues (which tend to be more fun).
Plus, having a great run, gives you a certain natural high, that it is just awesome. Running all the way to Golden Gate Bridge from my home and back, feels just great.
Soccer is _the_ jock sport in Europe.
Ultimate Frisbee is geek friendly even here, though.
Are you FAT, you would be a great for a golie (if playing small goals). Are you tough, but kinda slow, play defenese. Do you have great endurance, then midefield, are you good at sprinting and shooting, then offense.
In soccer there is a place for everybody, as long as you can run some.
Ah, probably ultimate frisby is a very geeky sport, in kinda lame way. It is a very demasculating sport.
Ultimate did not feel demasculating the last time I played. It is a very competitive sport but in terms of physical aggression is almost the opposite of soccer. You have to run a lot, too.
As soon as I am back home I'll go back to juggling, unicycling, lock picking and walking on a slackline. The real geek sports.
Yeah, it's strange. I convinced a friend who was visiting from Holland for a semester to play on a team with me, but he said he'd never do that at home.
The diet part was only hard for two weeks, which I got through by having only one day's food in the house at a time. Now not eating that much just feels normal.
"The Hacker's Diet"
http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/
Written by John Walker, author of Autocad. He claimed to have solved every problem he had except weight loss, so he just treated it as another engineering problem. Very interesting read for those with scientifically oriented minds. The Palm software is cool, too.
Quick summary of what has worked for me:
1. Stopped eating anything between meals. I probably cut out 12 cans of Coke, 2 chocolate bars, and 2 cakes/treats per week. I estimate this at 2,640 kcal alone
2. Started listening to my stomach so that I'd stop eating when I was full, and didn't take second helpings that I didn't actually need.
3. Have been following the exercise plan and now avoid taking lifts or escalators.
4. I am not counting calories for my meals since excluding my between meals rubbish I eat fairly balanced food.
Also I'm saving money... basically I'm losing weight, feeling better and saving about 26 Euro per week. Since I plan to cut out that stuff permanently I'll be able to afford a spanking new iPhone after 6 months.
Lose Weight, Save Money, Feel Better, Get an iPhone!
I'd follow a diet by an engineer as much as I would listen to algorithms from Nonagenarians from Okinawa.
Okinawans (Japan) have the longest life expectancy on Earth due not only to a good dose of genetics but through a) regular hard physical work, b) good diet and c) community of friends ~ http://www.wonder-okinawa.jp/026/e/long.html
Following the link shows me a great application. But listening to Engineers about food, exercise is a waste of time. While engineers may be educated. They are also stupid. Take for an example ~ http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/e4/exercise.html some of the reasoning in the HD diet:
1. Exercising consumed time.
2. Exercising was not programming.
3. Therefore, by exercising, less
time was available for programming
Here's a couple.
1) Exercise a lot
2) Eat lots of vegetables, fruits, some meats and stay away from processed foods.
3) Eat with other people (reduce chance of eat too much)
4) Practice, "'hara hachi bu', eat until your four-fifths full" ~ http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2007/s2257391.htm A peculiar Japanese concept to counter over-eating.
Part two is becoming a problem as Industries have sprung up claiming to solve this and substituting unprocessed foods with highly processed foods. Good for making money, bad for health.
I like Ted, foul and potty mouthed as he is. He's made of the stuff "Goo-Micro-Hoo" software corps wants in employee. Well educated, hard working. The mould of hacker that will do everything to avoid exercise. I went to my hacker cousins birthday a month or so back. I had to give up my usual game of "spot the fit bastard". Playing a game of cricket in the park was a fun experience. These engineers exhibit the same boolean logic as Ted. It's ironic listening to hackers like Ted whine about how exercise is hard. Just like Jocks complaining Calculus should be removed from math because it's too hard.
Now if he'd just get off his arse, exercise and eat well.
The real secret is to eat fresh, whole, minimally processed food. It doesn't matter if it's organic, free-range, hormone-free, genetically engineered, or anything else, as long as the first three hold.
That said, anything is better than nothing.
I play Ultimate Frisbee and Basketball. I sucked at first, but eventually it taught my brain to think and react in new ways and I got better - which is pretty cool! For a guy like me who moves to a new city every two years, the social benefit of being part of the Ultimate Frisbee network cannot be overstated.
If he could discover why he desires cheeseburgers so much then perhaps he could find a way to _want_ to eat less. As it stands he is using force on himself and there is a heavy psychological price tag for that, as he acknowledges. This will effect the rest of his life in ways he may not appreciate.
There used to be a diet bar named "Ayds".
In the early 80's people just stopped buying them. Nobody wanted Ayds anymore.
Frankly, I have never followed any diet. I simply limit my carbohydrates to a level that matches my physical activity. I eat about 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight and limit fats. I lift weight three times and try to run about 2 times and it works.
All those micro-managed diet programs have never worked for me. The main thing is to enjoy your workout and to enjoy the fitness lifestyle.
As I propose in my article here: http://www.inter-sections.net/2008/01/02/feedback/ - you need a good, timely, but also effortless system of feedback. Something that requires you to carry a notepad and add up numbers every day is a still-born failure.
The system that worked extremely well for me was much simpler: weigh yourself every day (including body fat %). Plot that on a grid, and that'll provide you motivation enough to keep your calorie intake down.
As an engineer, you should be aware that there's a few key vital behaviours that, if you implement them, typically make all the difference. According to various food associations, there's 3 vital behaviours for losing weight:
- Weigh yourself every day
- Eat breakfast every day
- Have a way to exercise at home
Since I lost 10kg in 3 months by doing just 2 out of those 3 (but going heavy on the "weigh yourself" bit by actually charting my weight and BF%), I can say that it certainly seemed to work for me.
I take it you don't know any bodybuilders, or any guys in a weight-class sport, like wrestling, boxing, BJJ or MMA.
I think exercise can be feedback unto itself. Performance gains in strength training and calisthenics come surprisingly fast.
This article is obviously not targeted at body builders.
Literally counting every calorie gets old quick, but I think everyone should be able to estimate their calorie intake. It doesn't take long to calibrate your own intuition; after a week of paying close attention, most people should be able to guess the calorie contents of a plate of food.
Sadly, a general resolution to "watch your calories" just doesn't do it.
In order to work, a weight-loss system has to remind you each day of where you're at (in perspective with where you've come from). Ultimately there's only two measurements that count: your weight and your body fat percentage. Measure those every day and you'll be much further on the way to weight loss than by calorie counting. Sure, being aware of your rough calorie intake is useful supporting data, but you need to measure the end result to get the "proper" feedback.
The end result of weight loss is not calorie intake, it's loss of weight. If you want to achieve that end result, you need to measure it. Sounds simple enough, no?
Also, the end result is fat loss, not weight. Which is why I think weight is not the best metric, but performance in physical tasks. (As most people can't get their bodyfat percentage checked regularly, and performing various physical tasks is what allows you to keep or increase muscle mass while losing body fat.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diet_%28Aqua_Teen_Hunger_Force_...
Seriously though, if coffee is an appetite suppressant, what about the sugar and cream most people put in their coffee? Not to mention the fact that coffee servings can come in large containers too.
And recommending smoking to replace drinking? Surely he can't be serious.
Enough said.
It is not.