The Hacker's Diet
by Duncan Bayne
I strongly recommend The Hacker's Diet to anyone seeking to lose or gain body fat - it is rational, easy and free.
I am a hacker (as defined by Eric Raymond), I am on the Hacker's Diet, and probably will be for the rest of my life. In the few months I have been on the diet, I have reduced my weight (20-day moving average value) from 91kg to 82kg - around 0.5kg off my original target weight. As progress has been so easy, my intention is now to lose a few more kilograms of fat, then start strength exercises to increase my muscle bulk.
The author of the Hacker's Diet is John Walker, the founder of AutoDesk. He is an eminently rational man who is opposed to the faddishness and mass hysteria commonly associated with dieting; there is a parody of such matters on his site that should be compulsory reading for health fad followers everywhere.
The Hacker's Diet itself is elegant, simple, and easy to understand. It boils down to the idea that a reduction in body fat is caused by eating less energy than your body requires - the same shortfall in daily energy consumption must cause the same weight loss in anyone of any age or gender. So, the trick is working out what your weight really is, and how much you really need to eat. The Hacker's Diet makes this easy:
1. Determine your target weight, and the deadline for achieving it. From this, determine your intended daily weight loss, and thus your required daily energy shortfall.
2. Take a guess at your daily energy requirement, and subtract your shortfall. Try to avoid eating more than this in any given day.
3. Monitor your weight, calculating a moving average to smooth daily variations.
After around 20 days, your weight loss (or gain) trend will become apparent from the moving average, and you can start adjusting your daily energy requirement to match the actual trend with the desired trend.
As your initial energy requirement was a guess based upon weight and gender, you'll likely have a lot of adjustment to perform initially, with ongoing fine-tuning as your weight and exercise levels change over time. Once you reach your desired weight, simply adjust your energy intake up until the trend becomes stable. In my case, my original estimate was low, leading to weight loss that was more rapid than I intended. However, I haven't adjusted my estimate up, as although the loss is rapid, it is still safe.
Really, that's all there is to it. The website provides much more information, including energy values of common foods, hints and tips for beating diet-induced hunger, and exercise suggestions. Helpfully, there are many computer-based tools provided that make the diet even easier to implement, including spreadsheets for meal planning and weight trend calculation. There are even tools provided for the Palm Pilot, so you can take your diet data with you wherever you go.
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