4 ms·

Calories in < calories burned == healthy hacker

by thespace12 11y ago

rimantas 11y ago
Or just thin hacker.
- kaybe 11y ago
  Or even dead hacker if kept up long enough. I also like me some moderate energy reserves; it improves almost keeling over from low blood sugar when forgetting to eat or no food is available for a few hours tremendously.
spacemanmatt 11y ago
Not if they're all Big Mac calories. Quality matters.
pizza234 11y ago
The exact same concept applies to premature optimization, except that in case, it would be obvious that the person is a poor programmer. When you put in context saving, say, 150 calories (500 ml whole vs. skim milk) in the diet of an obese person who stuffs 4000+ calories in his belly, and practices no sports ("walking a lot" is not included, sorry), then we're talking about mental masturbation, not meaningful, rational, strategies.
pluma 11y ago
Except it's not quite that simple. First of all, quality matters. You could satisfy your entire calorie requirement with lard, but that would be extremely detrimental to your health. Also, how our bodies process food is still not well-understood in detail (although there are tons of self-titled experts claiming otherwise). In other words, excess calories == weight gain and insufficient calories == weight loss don't work out just as nicely as you'd think (I think there was an article on HN recently that even pointed out different people have different "default weights" they would find very difficult to stray from in either direction). Additionally simply not eating that much can be very difficult. Not everyone has the time, energy and money to ensure they eat healthy (and the right things eat the right times of the day) -- although of course for energy this can be somewhat of a catch-22 (bad eating habits lead to lack of energy leading to bad eating habits). And there's also the problem of satiation and rabbit starvation: it's hard to stick with a diet if your body signals you that you're starving and must eat. As a rule of thumbs, sure, just eat less calories if you're overweight. But good luck sticking with that if you don't have the time, energy and money to experiment with how you can make that sustainable. Otherwise the "yo-yo effect" wouldn't be such a widespread and widely-known problem.

Calories in < calories burned == healthy hacker

rimantas 11y ago

Or just thin hacker.

kaybe 11y ago
Or even dead hacker if kept up long enough. I also like me some moderate energy reserves; it improves almost keeling over from low blood sugar when forgetting to eat or no food is available for a few hours tremendously.

spacemanmatt 11y ago

Not if they're all Big Mac calories. Quality matters.

pizza234 11y ago

The exact same concept applies to premature optimization, except that in case, it would be obvious that the person is a poor programmer. When you put in context saving, say, 150 calories (500 ml whole vs. skim milk) in the diet of an obese person who stuffs 4000+ calories in his belly, and practices no sports ("walking a lot" is not included, sorry), then we're talking about mental masturbation, not meaningful, rational, strategies.

pluma 11y ago

Except it's not quite that simple. First of all, quality matters. You could satisfy your entire calorie requirement with lard, but that would be extremely detrimental to your health. Also, how our bodies process food is still not well-understood in detail (although there are tons of self-titled experts claiming otherwise). In other words, excess calories == weight gain and insufficient calories == weight loss don't work out just as nicely as you'd think (I think there was an article on HN recently that even pointed out different people have different "default weights" they would find very difficult to stray from in either direction). Additionally simply not eating that much can be very difficult. Not everyone has the time, energy and money to ensure they eat healthy (and the right things eat the right times of the day) -- although of course for energy this can be somewhat of a catch-22 (bad eating habits lead to lack of energy leading to bad eating habits). And there's also the problem of satiation and rabbit starvation: it's hard to stick with a diet if your body signals you that you're starving and must eat. As a rule of thumbs, sure, just eat less calories if you're overweight. But good luck sticking with that if you don't have the time, energy and money to experiment with how you can make that sustainable. Otherwise the "yo-yo effect" wouldn't be such a widespread and widely-known problem.