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The Hacker's Diet

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Re: The Hacker's Diet

#31

Post by jacobmischka »

justinator wrote: post #20
baash05 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is "lean muscle" regardless of fat?

Take a look at a sub elite/elite power lifter. They may be have a body composition of 20%+ fat, but they are also packing a lot of lean muscle. For the most part, I would call that a healthy individual, even though they're BMI (which is... problematic) would say that this person is overweight and in need of a diet. That doesn't even pass the sniff test for me. Thinness is not the goal you want to achieve. It's a very…

As someone who follows too many fitness influencers, it sounds like you follow too many fitness influencers. Muscle is lean by definition. This guy isn't fit, but I don't think he claims to be. He's a software developer who seems to be uninterested in fitness as a concept, he just doesn't want to be obese, which he isn't.

Yes, being fit, strong, and lean is harder than not being extremely overweight. But not everyone cares about that.

Re: The Hacker's Diet

#32

Post by coffeebeanHH »

ctur wrote: post #19

The Hacker's Diet has helped me lose a good bit of weight over the years, but it is a somewhat simplistic model. Metabolism isn't quite as simple as CICO and can adjust over time to compensate for lowered metabolic rate. Herman Pontzer's recent book, Burn: the Misunderstood Science of Metabolism, goes into metabolic differences in quite a bit of detail and is very well researched and based in science. https://www.che…

Please notify us on the next achievements. Losing a {byte,word,dword,qword} of weight

Cheers ;)

Re: The Hacker's Diet

#33

Post by asimpletune »

ralferoo wrote: post #24

I did this years ago and lost some weight doing it at the time, but the basic premise of "a calorie is a calorie is a calorie" is provably not true. The body's metabolism plays a massive part in determining how many calories are consumed, and this in turn is driven by availability. Long term calorie deficit will result in your body learning how to operate more efficiently, and slow down your weight loss. I've also tr…

The “a calorie is a calorie” is on over-simplification, but it’s a fairly safe one to make, until you’re managing all the upstream concerns optimally. It’s like the eng. concept of first getting the orders of magnitude right, before zeroing in on the details.

(This is for people with normal metabolisms, ie not diabetics)

Re: The Hacker's Diet

#34

Post by asimpletune »

pizza234 wrote: post #28
rex_lupi wrote: post #6

For me the challenge is not to lose weight, but to gain weight and develop muscles. I'm an otherwise healthy young male but even with proper diet my weight gain rate is way too slow. I'm guessing I've a high metabolic rate. Is there any actually good guide for gaining weight quickly in a healthy way?

You're very likely what's called "hardgainer" in the fitness field. Just search for it, you'll find lots of information. However, starting with the idea of doing things "quickly" is the worst possible approach. In the fitness, quick improvements are also lost very quickly; plus, staying fit requires permanent, lifelong changes, and in this perspective, quick or slow don't matter.

Please don’t look up “hardgainer”… it’s full of a bunch of ad-speak designed to prey upon your insecurities in the hopes that they can take your money.

Some people are skinnier. If you are one of these people it is a very lucky thing, as you are much less likely to experience health issues due to your weight over the course of your life.

Gaining weight is harder for you, but i think you know that already? So you can skip the bizarre indoctrination of a relatively useless word like hardgainer. Anyone who insists otherwise is either drinking the cool-aid themselves or trying to take your money.

And at the end of the day what’s the point? All the fundamentals are relatively the same. If you want to gain weight you will just have to eat more food? How much is literally as personal as something gets. So start with counting what you eat, be empirical about it, and slowly raise/lower accordingly. This is the same advice as anyone, regardless of what category of marketing speak and I securities they have.

Re: The Hacker's Diet

#35

Post by harveynick »

justinator wrote: post #11
gumby wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? It’s been a few years since I saw him last but the diet had really helped him to lose a lot of weight and keep it off. I know others who have lost a lot of weight with it. And his “floater/sinker” graph has been copied in several applications.

I think it's solving the wrong problem. If I look at a picture of Mr. Walker himself, https://through-the-interface.typepad.com/through_the_interf... (just the first one that came up on a Google Search) This doesn't look like a fit and healthy man and I don't some that isn't fit and healthy should dole out advice on how to control a chaotic system such as human physiology using engineering. Perhaps - and this is a th…

Your logic seems to be “he doesn’t look like a fitness influencer, therefore he’s not fit and healthy”, and I’m not sure that stacks up. Maybe his goals are not the same as yours, and you shouldn’t conflate them?

Re: The Hacker's Diet

#36

Post by Kon5ole »

ralferoo wrote: post #24

I did this years ago and lost some weight doing it at the time, but the basic premise of "a calorie is a calorie is a calorie" is provably not true. The body's metabolism plays a massive part in determining how many calories are consumed, and this in turn is driven by availability. Long term calorie deficit will result in your body learning how to operate more efficiently, and slow down your weight loss. I've also tr…

"A calorie is a calorie is a calorie" is true once the calories are in the bloodstream of your body, and that's clearly what "the hackers diet" means.

Every pound of extra fat on your body comes from a calorie surplus that at one time or another existed in your bloodstream. If that surplus came from bacon or carrots doesn't matter for the pound of fat (it might matter for your heart and health in other ways of course).

It's also true that in order to lose that pound of fat, you need to create a deficit of calories in your bloodstream.

The problem is that you can't know how many calories from various foods actually end up in your bloodstream in advance. Just like any given number of "calories per hour of running" is obviously just a rough estimate (varies by how heavy you are, how cold it is, if it's uphill, how good a runner you are and so on), the number of "calories per serving" on the box of food is also an estimate.

Your body could be particularly good at absorbing calories from rice, or particularly bad at absorbing calories from beans. This could also be temporary, or affected by what other things you eat, or when you eat during the day.

The hackers diet solves this complex thing by having you keep a record of what you eat and do over time, and /measuring the results/. Then you know what is true /for you/, personally, and you can adjust your habits and predict the results.

The best tip I got from it however was the idea that hunger is a signal telling your body to start burning fat. That made me able to endure the periods of hunger during the first few days without giving up. Once the body started to burn fat, all the discomforts of hunger went away permanently for the duration of the diet. I think a lot of dieters fail just because they think the discomfort is unbearable and will last forever.

Re: The Hacker's Diet

#37

Post by pizza234 »

asimpletune wrote: post #34
pizza234 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're very likely what's called "hardgainer" in the fitness field. Just search for it, you'll find lots of information. However, starting with the idea of doing things "quickly" is the worst possible approach. In the fitness, quick improvements are also lost very quickly; plus, staying fit requires permanent, lifelong changes, and in this perspective, quick or slow don't matter.

Please don’t look up “hardgainer”… it’s full of a bunch of ad-speak designed to prey upon your insecurities in the hopes that they can take your money. Some people are skinnier. If you are one of these people it is a very lucky thing, as you are much less likely to experience health issues due to your weight over the course of your life. Gaining weight is harder for you, but i think you know that already? So you can…

"Hardgainer" is simply the term for a person that struggles to put mass ("hard" "gainer") using generic programs; it's not associated to a specific methodology.

For this reason, by looking the term up, one will find different approaches, and try a few, to see what works.

> If you want to gain weight you will just have to eat more food?

This is imprecise/wrong for several reasons, the first being that the parent assumes already a correct diet:

> I'm an otherwise healthy young male but even with proper diet my weight gain rate is way too slow

Now:

> All the fundamentals are relatively the same

Even assuming that fundamentals are "relatively the same", each body responds differently, and there are lots of ways to structure a plan, even if the same exercises are performed.

It's ultimately a matter of finding what works effectively for a given body. I actually write as somebody who does only fundamentals (as in "multi-joint exercises" for the main muscle groups) with a nonconventional schedule.

Re: The Hacker's Diet

#38

Post by jodator »

ralferoo wrote: post #24

I did this years ago and lost some weight doing it at the time, but the basic premise of "a calorie is a calorie is a calorie" is provably not true. The body's metabolism plays a massive part in determining how many calories are consumed, and this in turn is driven by availability. Long term calorie deficit will result in your body learning how to operate more efficiently, and slow down your weight loss. I've also tr…

I second that. The calorie in calorie out model looks like ELI5 explanation of the human physiology. It is OK to some extent but too simplistic.

Re: The Hacker's Diet

#39

Post by noman-land »

benjamin-lee wrote: post #30

I followed this plan and lost over 100 lbs (45 kg) in about a year and have kept it off for the last five years. Even more impressively, I did it while eating the very same junk food that made me fat, albeit in different quantities. I tried every diet you could imagine before reading the book and failed every single time. As a programmer, the approach Walker uses just clicks with me. If you're overweight and have an…

This is really cool and I've wanted to make a similar system for myself.

My ideal system would be tied into a smart fridge capable of knowing what food is inside, how much if it there is, and how old it is.

Then it could recommend you meals and snacks based in what you have, and what nutrition you still need for the day.

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