6 ms·

The Hacker's Diet

60 points by jarbus 5y ago

rdubs333 5y ago
That was written by the cofounder of Autodesk and coauthor of Autocad, John Walker!!!
- jarbus 5y ago
  Oh cool, I didn't even realize that!
- justinator 5y ago
  Although I commend the effort, I'm not sure if John Walker himself is a good example of this diet's effectiveness.
  - gumby 5y ago
    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.
    - justinator 5y ago
      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_interface/WindowsLiveWriter/John%20Walker%20holding%20an%20M9900%20and%20the%20prototype%20hardcover%20manual%20for%20AutoCAD%202.1.jpg 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 theory I subscribe to: less fat/weight loss isn't what we're trying to achieve as a goal. Perhaps just being fit is. And fit looks different for different people because genetics. And what I mean is, is there lean muscle mass on a person's body (irregardless of % of fat, to a large degree). If I look at this photo of Mr. Walker, to me he looks skinny fat, which I think is just as bad as being "fat". Just as an idea - as one who has a BMI of 25.8 and who could also run a marathon, then pump out 10 or so pullups. I think fat % or weight in general is just the wrong metric to use.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - baash05 5y ago
        What is "lean muscle" regardless of fat?
        justinator 5y ago
        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 easy goal to achieve when compared to being a fit individual. Starve yourself and you're done. You can not starve yourself into being a fit individual.
        jacobmischka 5y ago
        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.
        justinator 5y ago
        We're actually not assessing him very differently. But I'm saying being "thin" and "weak" is just as big of a problem as, "fat" and "weak". The problem isn't being fat, it's being "weak". If I'm assessing someone and they have 30% bodyfat, but are as strong as an ox, I'm not worried about their long term health. I use the example of a advanced power lifter in a post, upstream - you know a someone that looks like this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5ywwZlESOU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5ywwZlESOU Chiseled abs and a penchant for energy drinks isn't needed. If I was to be critical, I'd say that low of a body fat % for long periods of time is counter productive to overall fitness and ugh: the shit you find in some energy drinks.
  - theoa 5y ago
    The last time I met up with John - about 20 years ago, he was quite fit. He was much slimmer and more fit than he had been as the Autodesk CEO. My primary take-away in all this - even to this day: You are what you eat and (thank you, John) your only limit is your imagination!
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
rex_lupi 5y ago
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?
- adamfaliq 5y ago
  Assuming you have been lifting/ exercise, you just gotta eat more whole grain carbohydates. Rolled or steel cut oats, brown rice, pasta 2-3 times a day and you can exceed your daily calories requirement pretty easily.
- spaetzleesser 5y ago
  I used to be like that. I couldn’t get above 75 kg no matter how much I lifted or ate protein and stuff. This solved itself by getting older. Now I still have trouble putting on muscle but getting fat is quite easy :-). In hindsight I think it’s not a good goal to gain weight if your body doesn’t respond. I would focus on eating right and being strong, flexible and coordinated and let the weight settle wherever it wants.
- OminousWeapons 5y ago
  Are you assessing and recording your caloric intake and your macros currently? Are you assessing and recording your weight daily on a reliable scale? If not, those are the places to start. Buy some scales (body and food), get the MyFitnessPal app, and start collecting data on what you normally eat and how much you weigh over time. If you are losing weight over time, eat more of what you normally eat until you weight stabilizes. Once your weight has stabilized and you have a baseline, go to iifym.com and develop a weight gain / bulking plan. This will be what you currently eat daily calorie wise + 200-300 calories with prescribed macros. Try to hit your newly prescribed calories and macros each day with a focus on healthy eating (track and record your food intake to monitor this) and keep track of your weight. You should aim for 1-2 lbs per week of weight gain. If you are not achieving that, increase calories by 100-200 per day until you do.
- anonporridge 5y ago
baash05 5y ago
I read this pdf years and years ago.. I wish that I could say I followed it. It's rather brilliant in its simplicity, and honesty. The math can't be argued with. Eat X, expend < x and M++.
mwattsun 5y ago
I found the local discount grocery store selling Soylent for 70 cents a bottle, normally $4, so I bought the store out, all 6 cases. I'm not living exclusively on it, but it's nice to have a meal in the bottle for someone who doesn't always like to cook. I especially like it for breakfast because I feel good afterwards, like it gives me everything my body needs. Soylent was introduced in 2014 after a crowdfunding campaign...In January 2013, American software engineer Rob Rhinehart purchased 35 chemical ingredients—including potassium gluconate, calcium carbonate, monosodium phosphate, maltodextrin, olive oil—all of which he deemed to be necessary for survival, based on his readings of biochemistry textbooks and U.S. government websites. Rhinehart used to view food as a time-consuming hassle and had resolved to treat it as an engineering problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_(meal_replacement) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_(meal_replacement)
ctur 5y ago
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.chemistryworld.com/review/burn-the-misunderstood-science-of-metabolism/4013855.article https://www.chemistryworld.com/review/burn-the-misunderstood...
- kuhewa 5y ago
  > can adjust over time to compensate for lowered metabolic rate Isn't that part of CO?
- coffeebeanHH 5y ago
  Please notify us on the next achievements. Losing a {byte,word,dword,qword} of weight Cheers ;)
ralferoo 5y ago
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 tried low-carb twice, the first time I lost a reasonable amount pretty quickly, but gained it back over a few years when I reverted to a normal diet, and the second time when I shifted to intermittent fasting as I went back to a more normal diet. There's lots of good advice available if you search for intermittent fasting, but the key take away is that insulin is produced in response to excess carbohydrates, and not only promotes storage of carbohydrates as fat, but also inhibits burning existing fat. Of course, if you are at a calorie deficit, you'll probably still lose weight especially with regular small amounts, because the insulin effect will be low, but if you have few carb-heavy meals, your body will still create a lot of insulin to get rid of all the carbs, and then after you work through the hunger phase after that's happened, then you will start converting that fat back to energy, and in a calorie restriction situation hopefully burn more than you need.
- kuhewa 5y ago
  You are right in that caloric expenditure is going to affect the CI-CO balance, and at a deficit your expenditure will decline due to both a decrease in basal metabolism as well as decrease in spontaneous activity.. but at the end of the day a calorie deficit is by definition the only way to lose weight. Choice of macronutrient composition directly (and indirectly through hormones) affects satiety, and many find it easier to eat less calories by restricting carbs, but for weightloss at the end of the day a calorie is still a calorie.
- asimpletune 5y ago
  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)
- 5y ago
benjamin-lee 5y ago
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 engineering mindset, it's absolutely worth the read. It changed my life. I still follow the plan to this day, albeit with more sophisticated logging. I use a combinatorial optimizer web app that tells me what to eat every day so that it completely takes the element of choice (and ability to screw up) out of the equation. I've developed it for the last five years and am hoping to release it as a product and/or open source eventually. If anyone's interested, shoot me an email (link on my website) and I'll share access.
- noman-land 5y ago
  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.
abducer 5y ago
It's 2022. Where's my "eat watch"? (from chapter 2)

The Hacker's Diet

60 points by jarbus 5y ago

rdubs333 5y ago

That was written by the cofounder of Autodesk and coauthor of Autocad, John Walker!!!

jarbus 5y ago
Oh cool, I didn't even realize that!
justinator 5y ago
Although I commend the effort, I'm not sure if John Walker himself is a good example of this diet's effectiveness.
- gumby 5y ago
  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.
  - justinator 5y ago
    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_interface/WindowsLiveWriter/John%20Walker%20holding%20an%20M9900%20and%20the%20prototype%20hardcover%20manual%20for%20AutoCAD%202.1.jpg 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 theory I subscribe to: less fat/weight loss isn't what we're trying to achieve as a goal. Perhaps just being fit is. And fit looks different for different people because genetics. And what I mean is, is there lean muscle mass on a person's body (irregardless of % of fat, to a large degree). If I look at this photo of Mr. Walker, to me he looks skinny fat, which I think is just as bad as being "fat". Just as an idea - as one who has a BMI of 25.8 and who could also run a marathon, then pump out 10 or so pullups. I think fat % or weight in general is just the wrong metric to use.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - baash05 5y ago
      What is "lean muscle" regardless of fat?
      - justinator 5y ago
        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 easy goal to achieve when compared to being a fit individual. Starve yourself and you're done. You can not starve yourself into being a fit individual.
        jacobmischka 5y ago
        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.
        justinator 5y ago
        We're actually not assessing him very differently. But I'm saying being "thin" and "weak" is just as big of a problem as, "fat" and "weak". The problem isn't being fat, it's being "weak". If I'm assessing someone and they have 30% bodyfat, but are as strong as an ox, I'm not worried about their long term health. I use the example of a advanced power lifter in a post, upstream - you know a someone that looks like this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5ywwZlESOU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5ywwZlESOU Chiseled abs and a penchant for energy drinks isn't needed. If I was to be critical, I'd say that low of a body fat % for long periods of time is counter productive to overall fitness and ugh: the shit you find in some energy drinks.
- theoa 5y ago
  The last time I met up with John - about 20 years ago, he was quite fit. He was much slimmer and more fit than he had been as the Autodesk CEO. My primary take-away in all this - even to this day: You are what you eat and (thank you, John) your only limit is your imagination!

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

rex_lupi 5y ago

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?

adamfaliq 5y ago
Assuming you have been lifting/ exercise, you just gotta eat more whole grain carbohydates. Rolled or steel cut oats, brown rice, pasta 2-3 times a day and you can exceed your daily calories requirement pretty easily.
spaetzleesser 5y ago
I used to be like that. I couldn’t get above 75 kg no matter how much I lifted or ate protein and stuff. This solved itself by getting older. Now I still have trouble putting on muscle but getting fat is quite easy :-). In hindsight I think it’s not a good goal to gain weight if your body doesn’t respond. I would focus on eating right and being strong, flexible and coordinated and let the weight settle wherever it wants.
OminousWeapons 5y ago
Are you assessing and recording your caloric intake and your macros currently? Are you assessing and recording your weight daily on a reliable scale? If not, those are the places to start. Buy some scales (body and food), get the MyFitnessPal app, and start collecting data on what you normally eat and how much you weigh over time. If you are losing weight over time, eat more of what you normally eat until you weight stabilizes. Once your weight has stabilized and you have a baseline, go to iifym.com and develop a weight gain / bulking plan. This will be what you currently eat daily calorie wise + 200-300 calories with prescribed macros. Try to hit your newly prescribed calories and macros each day with a focus on healthy eating (track and record your food intake to monitor this) and keep track of your weight. You should aim for 1-2 lbs per week of weight gain. If you are not achieving that, increase calories by 100-200 per day until you do.
anonporridge 5y ago

baash05 5y ago

I read this pdf years and years ago.. I wish that I could say I followed it. It's rather brilliant in its simplicity, and honesty. The math can't be argued with. Eat X, expend < x and M++.

mwattsun 5y ago

I found the local discount grocery store selling Soylent for 70 cents a bottle, normally $4, so I bought the store out, all 6 cases. I'm not living exclusively on it, but it's nice to have a meal in the bottle for someone who doesn't always like to cook. I especially like it for breakfast because I feel good afterwards, like it gives me everything my body needs. Soylent was introduced in 2014 after a crowdfunding campaign...In January 2013, American software engineer Rob Rhinehart purchased 35 chemical ingredients—including potassium gluconate, calcium carbonate, monosodium phosphate, maltodextrin, olive oil—all of which he deemed to be necessary for survival, based on his readings of biochemistry textbooks and U.S. government websites. Rhinehart used to view food as a time-consuming hassle and had resolved to treat it as an engineering problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_(meal_replacement) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_(meal_replacement)

ctur 5y ago

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.chemistryworld.com/review/burn-the-misunderstood-science-of-metabolism/4013855.article https://www.chemistryworld.com/review/burn-the-misunderstood...

kuhewa 5y ago
> can adjust over time to compensate for lowered metabolic rate Isn't that part of CO?
coffeebeanHH 5y ago
Please notify us on the next achievements. Losing a {byte,word,dword,qword} of weight Cheers ;)

ralferoo 5y ago

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 tried low-carb twice, the first time I lost a reasonable amount pretty quickly, but gained it back over a few years when I reverted to a normal diet, and the second time when I shifted to intermittent fasting as I went back to a more normal diet. There's lots of good advice available if you search for intermittent fasting, but the key take away is that insulin is produced in response to excess carbohydrates, and not only promotes storage of carbohydrates as fat, but also inhibits burning existing fat. Of course, if you are at a calorie deficit, you'll probably still lose weight especially with regular small amounts, because the insulin effect will be low, but if you have few carb-heavy meals, your body will still create a lot of insulin to get rid of all the carbs, and then after you work through the hunger phase after that's happened, then you will start converting that fat back to energy, and in a calorie restriction situation hopefully burn more than you need.

kuhewa 5y ago
You are right in that caloric expenditure is going to affect the CI-CO balance, and at a deficit your expenditure will decline due to both a decrease in basal metabolism as well as decrease in spontaneous activity.. but at the end of the day a calorie deficit is by definition the only way to lose weight. Choice of macronutrient composition directly (and indirectly through hormones) affects satiety, and many find it easier to eat less calories by restricting carbs, but for weightloss at the end of the day a calorie is still a calorie.
asimpletune 5y ago
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)
5y ago

benjamin-lee 5y ago

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 engineering mindset, it's absolutely worth the read. It changed my life. I still follow the plan to this day, albeit with more sophisticated logging. I use a combinatorial optimizer web app that tells me what to eat every day so that it completely takes the element of choice (and ability to screw up) out of the equation. I've developed it for the last five years and am hoping to release it as a product and/or open source eventually. If anyone's interested, shoot me an email (link on my website) and I'll share access.

noman-land 5y ago
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.

abducer 5y ago

It's 2022. Where's my "eat watch"? (from chapter 2)