OK, I'm a newcomer to YCombinator …. I thought it was almost exactly as tasteful as jessriedel's comment (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1083582), with that added techie twist to make it fun for the crowd; but obviously I misjudged the proper level of discourse. I am sorry. (Were this Reddit, I would delete it, but I see that that is (probably sensibly) not an option for posts that have been voted upon.)
well, it could be, but it doesn't seem like the usual kind of link for here [edit: for example, when i posted, almost all comments - including one now deleted - were negative]. on the other hand, it seems that it's a popular user so perhaps people are simply interested. it's also possible that it got to the front page with just a couple of early votes and then took off (a post of my own just behaved as strangely, which has made me think that is likely).
on the other hand, the pile of downvotes before anyone makes any kind of attempt to explain, tends to confirm the worst.
The pile of downvotes is quite likely a stab at the naysayery you displayed in disregarding an interesting article under the ASSUMPTION that someone did not truthfully obtain their votes
>And, boy, was I hungry at first. After a while I wasn't hungry any more...
That's the real secret, and it could use some expansion. Isn't that where 99% of dieters fail? Why were you able to overcome your hunger when so many people find that an impossible challenge?
People have a great deal of difficulty overcoming that feeling of hunger -- realizing that just because they feel something, they don't have to act on it. I've jokingly considered writing a diet book focused on this concept; apparently diet books are the only types of books that consistently make money.
The very first signs of "feeling" hungry usually means you're thirsty for water, not hungry for food. A lot of people eat instead of drink (or drink something with calories), and that helps increase their calorie consumption leading to weight gain.
I've found keeping a bottle of water on me at all times works well. Whenever I start to feel my mouth go dry I drink some. I catch thirst this way before I even begin to feel thirsty. It's like lubrication for your body. If you don't drink enough of it, things seize up (you'll feel tired, get headaches, hampers athletic performance, etc...).
Buy like two or three of them. Fill them up in the morning and put them in a fridge. Keep one by your side at all times. Once it's empty, grab another from your fridge, drink as needed, repeat.
Keeping the water "ice cold" is important too. It's so much easier to drink cool water than warm. Probably something derived from evolution where humans had better luck drinking cold water from a running stream than warm water from a sitting puddle from a rain storm. I always throw a few ice cubes in once I pull a bottle out of the fridge.
I usually see an encouraging initial weight loss followed by a slow climb back up after a period of stability. The article contains some advice on how he eats less - smaller meals not fewer and eat slowly. I think that could work. I'd like to see how long he's kept the weight off for.
I also read the Hacker's Diet, but I went to a doctor-controlled diet, and lost about 34 pounds so far (15 kg), in two months (not 6 months).
It's fairly similar to what John advocates actually :) - it's eating WAY less, slower, and mostly vegetables (the main thing about this diet was that the clinic provides the food so you can't overeat).
And yes, I was very hungry at first, what I did was drink lots of soup (the instant-soup type, there are some "light" versions by Knorr over here), and yoghurt (also "light").
I didn't eliminate sodas, I replaced them with diet versions (doctor said they were OK for diet purposes).
PD: as another poster said, NO SUGARS, no flour (that means no bread, etc.. . that part is hard!) and no butter and other dairies except for yoghurt.
I've seen some recent news associating low sodium with a possible link to depression. I don't have a news source URL at hand to cite, much less an actual study, but I'm keeping an subconscious eye open for more information.
Nonsense. I'm 8% body fat and eat loads of butter (almost a stick a day) and whole fat yogurt. I don't exercise that much either. Dairy fat is one of the best possible foods. Excellent satiety and virtually no insulin response.
Well that's what my (doctor-made) diet involves. I didn't make the rules, believe me, I'd like to have some butter :)
I've heard good things about Atkins and such, so maybe butter isn't that bad, but I'm losing quite a lot of weight without butter, so without butter it will be.
The Atkin's theory, which I believe has been largely substantiated, is that carbohydrates (sugar, HFCS) do not satisfy hunger, they tend to trigger hunger.
John cut out the sugar and his hunger dropped. FWIIW, my experience was the same and there are many others who echo this.
You have to say specifically "carbohydrate" and not single out sugar. People try to make this false distinction between "complex" and simple carbohydrates and sugar. ANY starch is broken down rapidly in the small intestine and absorbed as sugar.
ANY starch is broken down rapidly in the small intestine and absorbed as sugar.
That may be an oversimplification. Lustig, in the lecture mentioned by the GP, shows that there are big differences between how the body metabolizes glucose and fructose. If these differences are significant enough (Lustig's thesis is that they are), then it isn't a "false distinction" to single out sugar/HFCS from other carbohydrates.
He's talking about the uniquely hepatoxic properties of fructose vis-a-vis other sugars. I'm talking about the metabolism damaging insulin responses triggered by all carbohydrates, regardless of whether it's a piece of whole grain bread or a spoonful of honey (fructose).
Yes, I understand a lot of the science behind hunger. For most failed dieters, it is not enough. Even reduced hunger is too much to overcome for most people that want to lose weight.
People still need some psychological willpower to overcome the urge the eat food, and how to increase that willpower is mostly never explained.
I find distraction a very simple method. When I'm absorbed in a problem, I can go the better part of a day without eating. Often then, when I finally eat, it's because the lack of food / nutrients is starting to significantly hamper my thinking and focus. But it takes (this well/overfed U.S. resident) some time to reach that point.
The problem is to keep this mode of life up for a sustained period of time.
I also tend to lose significant weight while on vacation. This is usually because my vacations involve: 1) Intense, extended interaction with people (very occupying, if "distracting" is perhaps not the best word to use re social company) in non-food settings; 2) A lot of traveling and getting around from one novel place to another, again very occupying and without much of a food context.
I guess I could add that vacations for me involve very little TV.
Finally, as an aside, I've remained a fan of "TV host" Craig Ferguson's simple comment on the topic: "Eat less, move around more." I realize that it's not that simple for everybody, but for a fair number of people -- myself included -- it is. And his phrase, especially delivered in his accent and trademark combination of absurd and serious, is very memorable. This makes it useful to me on an ad hoc, day to day basis.
>That's the real secret, and it could use some expansion
Spending time hungry is totally unnecessary to achieve low body fat. It's about insulin management.
If you eat a high saturated fat diet you simply don't get the strong hunger pangs that are symptomatic of crashing blood sugar with a metabolism trained to run on sugar in preference to fatty acids.
He's got the right idea. As Michael Pollan( author of the Omnivore's Dilemma, which everyone should read) says: "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants"
I've just started the cutting phase of my weightlifting diet. I'm eating healthily but at about 500 kcal per day less than my resting metabolic rate (2500 kcal down from 3000 kcal).
It's not so much the hunger I have problems with but the tiredness. I can still concentrate well on my work, but social situations seem to be a lot harder! I guess I feel a bit more grumpy than usual.
You don't drop below your resting metabolic rate, you drop below the level you need to maintain PLUS the weightlifting activity you're preforming. Large shortfalls in calories are counter productive unless it's in a short burst.
Also, make sure you're getting enough dietary fat. Many make the change to a low carb diet by just dropping carbs from their low fat diet. You need to up your fat intake because what you were taking in for EFAs previously are now going to be cannibalized for energy instead.
I don't know why we need 'amazing diet secrets' at all; it seems to me that, barring metabolic disorders, most of it is just "Do something, anything, about your diet".
I pursued the following program for a semester: 1 meal a day (a sizable, but not huge, dinner at the end of the day --often McDonald's), and a 2/3 mile walk. I lost 15 kg, from over 80 kg to just over 65 kg, in the semester, and a few of those kilograms went away already in the first week --talk about instant gratification.
When that drop was done, I went back to 2 meals a day but kept up the walking (although essentially no other regular exercise). I basically eat what I feel like, although, after a semester of eating 1 meal a day, what I feel like eating is much less than it used to be. I have been a bit over 60 kg for about 3 years now.
There is no real "secret". Its simple mathematics. Getting to know what the caloric numbers mean is the starting point. (Its like in personal finance knowing what the debit and credit columns mean.)
Oh and the diet part will get you only so far and it is the most challenging part, but without exercise you are missing the big step in speeding up your metabolism that in return burns more calories and the combination which results in exponential results. (Leaner more muscular look. Unless you want you leftover skin to be hanging on the floor of course, I'd strongly recommend exercise as part of the program)
I weighed 85kg on +/-179cm with 25% body-fat. Year later, I weighed 73.5kg with 7% body-fat. Healthier I have ever been and am still sticking to it three years later.
Here is my 1 year review:
http://www.hackersinshape.net/archives/16
[edit] Know that there is no secret or any form of black magic :), its a combination of "a) some basic knowledge" (Know what you eating [1 avg. donut == +/-250 calories. That equates to about an hour of running.]), "b) smaller quantities of whole foods at more frequent intervals" and "c) exercise" (Both cardio and resistance).
> There is no real "secret". Its simple mathematics.
It's math but it is definitely not simple math. Both overeating and undereating lead to adaptations and those adaptations can be very different in different people and different conditions, for example stress levels and macronutrients. Those adaptations can affect the body as well as the mind (through perceived energy levels). And body and mind are intertwined in a way you cannot ignore.
Ultimately there is a delta calorie equation that is simple, but it's as useless and trite as saying that a pregnant woman gains weight because she eats more calories than her body burns. It's trivially true, but misses the most important levels.
Cola is the big one for me. When I start feeling a bit pudgy, it's the first to go. I drink a good deal of coffee and tea, but when I worked out the calorie math, it's actually pretty insane how much sugar is in cola:
- 250 ml (about 8 oz) of cola has 120 calories
- 350 ml (about 12 oz) of tea or coffee gets 2-3 sugar cubes
- 2 sugar cubes is 24 calories
- Cola has 10x the calories/volume as sweetened coffee or tea
- I drink 1-2 liters of coffee + tea + cola daily.
So even switching from cola to sweetened tea is a big cut back. Other than that, I just do restraint at the grocery store. Usually I'll allow one chocolate bar every couple weeks.
One thing that I learned when we were out in California for the summer is that the portion sizes in the US can really get you. I shot up 15 pounds (175 -> 190) in 3 months without noticeably altering my diet. After 4 months back in Germany it was gone again, without any intentional intervention.
I'm on the Hacker's Diet right now! As John and others have said, it's all about the math and the self-feedback.
I weigh myself everyday and record it on the online Hacker's Diet application[1]. It gives you a moving average (newer measurements count more than older ones) and gives you a great trend chart to track your progress and give you immediate feedback.
I don't exercise (yet) since I'm already losing weight at an acceptable rate and I've managed to get past the point of craving more from a meal. However, the choice is entirely yours -- if you want to eat a little more on the side, you have to make up for those calories with some (daily) exercise.
Weightlifting is a useful adjunct to a well thought out diet as it encourages the body to retain muscle and drop fat.
Ideally you'd add in some decent lifting with free weights three times a week with the standard compound exercises (bench press, squats, deadlifts, overhead press and pullups/chins).
Additionally, as far as dealing with hunger there's a few things you can do:
1) Prepare a whole lot of salads and other calorically sparse things. The volume of food will displace more energy rich foods. One particularly easy implementation of this I've seen includes eating three apples each day.
2) You can stave off hunger by chewing ice chips or drinking water (even just chewing with an empty mouth seems to promote satiety).
3) Find more interesting distractions. Often it's hard to avoid eating food because there's not much else around to occupy yourself with. If you find something better/more interesting you can often go much longer without eating.
This is essentially the diet I've followed over the years. There are a couple more things I do:
1. Only eat when hungry. When I gain weight, it's always because of this one. Over time, I become less sensitive to the state of my stomach. It's OK to skip or push back a meal if you really aren't that hungry. There's a difference between "yeah, I could eat now" and "my stomach is completely empty from the last meal".
2. Absolutely no snacking between meals.
3. Walking. I walk a lot and I think it aids in digestion. My body doesn't work as well without it. I'm sure any other exercise would do.
4. Drink lots of water. (I realize this isn't a new item, but it's important, so I listed it.)
Lastly, on the hunger aspect: yes, it's very difficult to work through the desire to eat. After a few weeks I find that it subsides and I can easily ignore it. What I did was make a game of it. "I'm hungry now." "I'll bet I can wait another hour and not be distracted by it." "Wow, an hour's gone by!"
I'm going to chime in with my own progress I've made over the last few months, and it shows a slightly different path than what the author took.
I started at 220 pounds. I am currently 220 pounds. The difference? My body fat percent has gone down 5 or 6% (from high twenties to low twenties), I have muscles where there were none before.
In the end, my goal weight is still below where I am, but if I had just cut my diet, I would have not made the same kind of progress I have with exercise. (specifically, with a trainer who pushes me harder, with appointments that force me to show up).
To be fair, I still have a gut, and that'll be lost by diet, but the huge progress I've made is entirely attributable to exercise.
50 comments
[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 136 ms ] threadon the other hand, the pile of downvotes before anyone makes any kind of attempt to explain, tends to confirm the worst.
That's the real secret, and it could use some expansion. Isn't that where 99% of dieters fail? Why were you able to overcome your hunger when so many people find that an impossible challenge?
People have a great deal of difficulty overcoming that feeling of hunger -- realizing that just because they feel something, they don't have to act on it. I've jokingly considered writing a diet book focused on this concept; apparently diet books are the only types of books that consistently make money.
1. I drank ice cold water whenever I felt hungry.
2. Initially I would look at that photo of me.
3. Later I looked at the chart and the predicted end date.
I've found keeping a bottle of water on me at all times works well. Whenever I start to feel my mouth go dry I drink some. I catch thirst this way before I even begin to feel thirsty. It's like lubrication for your body. If you don't drink enough of it, things seize up (you'll feel tired, get headaches, hampers athletic performance, etc...).
CamelBak makes some very nice bottles. Sports Authority/Dick's Sporting Goods usually carry them: http://www.amazon.com/CamelBak-BPA-Free-Choose-Re-Use-Better...
Nathan also makes a good one: http://www.amazon.com/Nathan-500-ml-Bottle-Straw-Royal/dp/B0...
Buy like two or three of them. Fill them up in the morning and put them in a fridge. Keep one by your side at all times. Once it's empty, grab another from your fridge, drink as needed, repeat.
Keeping the water "ice cold" is important too. It's so much easier to drink cool water than warm. Probably something derived from evolution where humans had better luck drinking cold water from a running stream than warm water from a sitting puddle from a rain storm. I always throw a few ice cubes in once I pull a bottle out of the fridge.
It's fairly similar to what John advocates actually :) - it's eating WAY less, slower, and mostly vegetables (the main thing about this diet was that the clinic provides the food so you can't overeat).
And yes, I was very hungry at first, what I did was drink lots of soup (the instant-soup type, there are some "light" versions by Knorr over here), and yoghurt (also "light").
I didn't eliminate sodas, I replaced them with diet versions (doctor said they were OK for diet purposes).
PD: as another poster said, NO SUGARS, no flour (that means no bread, etc.. . that part is hard!) and no butter and other dairies except for yoghurt.
The one I just checked has 600 mg of Sodium per serving (25% of the recommended daily value). No wonder they are tasty.
Still, they did help me get through hungry spells :)
Nonsense. I'm 8% body fat and eat loads of butter (almost a stick a day) and whole fat yogurt. I don't exercise that much either. Dairy fat is one of the best possible foods. Excellent satiety and virtually no insulin response.
I've heard good things about Atkins and such, so maybe butter isn't that bad, but I'm losing quite a lot of weight without butter, so without butter it will be.
John cut out the sugar and his hunger dropped. FWIIW, my experience was the same and there are many others who echo this.
See "Sugar: The Bitter Truth" (UCSF lecture) which goes into detail on the metabolism of carbohydrates, especially HFCS http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM and discussed on HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1006980
One of many references: http://heartdisease.about.com/cs/riskfactors/a/lofatlocarb_2...
That may be an oversimplification. Lustig, in the lecture mentioned by the GP, shows that there are big differences between how the body metabolizes glucose and fructose. If these differences are significant enough (Lustig's thesis is that they are), then it isn't a "false distinction" to single out sugar/HFCS from other carbohydrates.
People still need some psychological willpower to overcome the urge the eat food, and how to increase that willpower is mostly never explained.
The problem is to keep this mode of life up for a sustained period of time.
I also tend to lose significant weight while on vacation. This is usually because my vacations involve: 1) Intense, extended interaction with people (very occupying, if "distracting" is perhaps not the best word to use re social company) in non-food settings; 2) A lot of traveling and getting around from one novel place to another, again very occupying and without much of a food context.
I guess I could add that vacations for me involve very little TV.
Finally, as an aside, I've remained a fan of "TV host" Craig Ferguson's simple comment on the topic: "Eat less, move around more." I realize that it's not that simple for everybody, but for a fair number of people -- myself included -- it is. And his phrase, especially delivered in his accent and trademark combination of absurd and serious, is very memorable. This makes it useful to me on an ad hoc, day to day basis.
>That's the real secret, and it could use some expansion
Spending time hungry is totally unnecessary to achieve low body fat. It's about insulin management.
If you eat a high saturated fat diet you simply don't get the strong hunger pangs that are symptomatic of crashing blood sugar with a metabolism trained to run on sugar in preference to fatty acids.
Reducing the amount of food works as well, but it depends on what you current food intake is.
It's not so much the hunger I have problems with but the tiredness. I can still concentrate well on my work, but social situations seem to be a lot harder! I guess I feel a bit more grumpy than usual.
Also, make sure you're getting enough dietary fat. Many make the change to a low carb diet by just dropping carbs from their low fat diet. You need to up your fat intake because what you were taking in for EFAs previously are now going to be cannibalized for energy instead.
I pursued the following program for a semester: 1 meal a day (a sizable, but not huge, dinner at the end of the day --often McDonald's), and a 2/3 mile walk. I lost 15 kg, from over 80 kg to just over 65 kg, in the semester, and a few of those kilograms went away already in the first week --talk about instant gratification.
When that drop was done, I went back to 2 meals a day but kept up the walking (although essentially no other regular exercise). I basically eat what I feel like, although, after a semester of eating 1 meal a day, what I feel like eating is much less than it used to be. I have been a bit over 60 kg for about 3 years now.
For the "math" part, I wrote this short blog post: http://www.hackersinshape.net/archives/109
Oh and the diet part will get you only so far and it is the most challenging part, but without exercise you are missing the big step in speeding up your metabolism that in return burns more calories and the combination which results in exponential results. (Leaner more muscular look. Unless you want you leftover skin to be hanging on the floor of course, I'd strongly recommend exercise as part of the program)
I weighed 85kg on +/-179cm with 25% body-fat. Year later, I weighed 73.5kg with 7% body-fat. Healthier I have ever been and am still sticking to it three years later. Here is my 1 year review: http://www.hackersinshape.net/archives/16
[edit] Know that there is no secret or any form of black magic :), its a combination of "a) some basic knowledge" (Know what you eating [1 avg. donut == +/-250 calories. That equates to about an hour of running.]), "b) smaller quantities of whole foods at more frequent intervals" and "c) exercise" (Both cardio and resistance).
It's math but it is definitely not simple math. Both overeating and undereating lead to adaptations and those adaptations can be very different in different people and different conditions, for example stress levels and macronutrients. Those adaptations can affect the body as well as the mind (through perceived energy levels). And body and mind are intertwined in a way you cannot ignore.
Ultimately there is a delta calorie equation that is simple, but it's as useless and trite as saying that a pregnant woman gains weight because she eats more calories than her body burns. It's trivially true, but misses the most important levels.
One thing that I learned when we were out in California for the summer is that the portion sizes in the US can really get you. I shot up 15 pounds (175 -> 190) in 3 months without noticeably altering my diet. After 4 months back in Germany it was gone again, without any intentional intervention.
I weigh myself everyday and record it on the online Hacker's Diet application[1]. It gives you a moving average (newer measurements count more than older ones) and gives you a great trend chart to track your progress and give you immediate feedback.
I don't exercise (yet) since I'm already losing weight at an acceptable rate and I've managed to get past the point of craving more from a meal. However, the choice is entirely yours -- if you want to eat a little more on the side, you have to make up for those calories with some (daily) exercise.
[1]: http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/online/hdo.html
Ideally you'd add in some decent lifting with free weights three times a week with the standard compound exercises (bench press, squats, deadlifts, overhead press and pullups/chins).
Additionally, as far as dealing with hunger there's a few things you can do:
1) Prepare a whole lot of salads and other calorically sparse things. The volume of food will displace more energy rich foods. One particularly easy implementation of this I've seen includes eating three apples each day.
2) You can stave off hunger by chewing ice chips or drinking water (even just chewing with an empty mouth seems to promote satiety).
3) Find more interesting distractions. Often it's hard to avoid eating food because there's not much else around to occupy yourself with. If you find something better/more interesting you can often go much longer without eating.
Chewing gum really helps me in the same way.
1. Only eat when hungry. When I gain weight, it's always because of this one. Over time, I become less sensitive to the state of my stomach. It's OK to skip or push back a meal if you really aren't that hungry. There's a difference between "yeah, I could eat now" and "my stomach is completely empty from the last meal".
2. Absolutely no snacking between meals.
3. Walking. I walk a lot and I think it aids in digestion. My body doesn't work as well without it. I'm sure any other exercise would do.
4. Drink lots of water. (I realize this isn't a new item, but it's important, so I listed it.)
Lastly, on the hunger aspect: yes, it's very difficult to work through the desire to eat. After a few weeks I find that it subsides and I can easily ignore it. What I did was make a game of it. "I'm hungry now." "I'll bet I can wait another hour and not be distracted by it." "Wow, an hour's gone by!"
I started at 220 pounds. I am currently 220 pounds. The difference? My body fat percent has gone down 5 or 6% (from high twenties to low twenties), I have muscles where there were none before.
In the end, my goal weight is still below where I am, but if I had just cut my diet, I would have not made the same kind of progress I have with exercise. (specifically, with a trainer who pushes me harder, with appointments that force me to show up).
To be fair, I still have a gut, and that'll be lost by diet, but the huge progress I've made is entirely attributable to exercise.