January 16, 2007Jeremy Zawodny, Yahoo platform engineer, lost 50 pounds and documents his process to the world in his diet plan. In his “What You Need to Know” section:
• Small changes have a major impact on weight loss because they’re compounded over time. It’s just like saving for retirement. The sooner you start doing just a little bit every day, the better off you’ll be.John Walker is the founder of AutoDesk and the author of The Hacker’s Diet: How to lose weight and hair through stress and poor nutrition his online book about weight-loss. From his introduction:• Anyone can do this. Anyone.
• The process is self-reinforcing once you start to see real results. That means you need to commit to a month — a very difficult month. After that first month, though, it’s easy. And the more weight you have to lose, the easier it is.
• During that first month, you’ll be developing three new habits. Only one of them is likely to conflict with an existing habit. The other two will consume maybe 5 minutes of your daily routine.
If you’re seriously thinking about trying to lose weight, give it a shot. This is one of the easiest non-fad and non-gimmick plans you’ll run across, mostly because the “plan” is very simple and tangible. It’s not quite “the simplest thing that could possibly work” but it sure comes close.
The Hacker’s Diet, notwithstanding its silly subtitle, is a serious book about how to lose weight and permanently maintain whatever weight you desire. It treats dieting and weight control from an engineering and management standpoint, and provides the tools and an understanding of why they work and how to use them that permit the reader to gain control of their own weight. The book is intended primarily for busy, successful engineers, programmers, and managers who have struggled unsuccessfully in the past to lose weight and avoid re-gaining it.Other neat stuff from geeks: Jeremy Zawadny notes the value of eating like an ape and wisegeek.com shows us What 200 Calories Look Like.