The Hackers Diet

foofighter

foofighter

Jedi Council Member
Hi,

I'm on the program committee for a conference, and someone just submitted a talk around The Hackers Diet:
http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/www/hackdiet.html

I had a quick look through, and it seems like he suggests to take a purely mathematical approach to diet, i.e. "count calories and you'll lose weight". Pizza, alcohol, fries, anything goes as long as you're counting the calories and am taking fewer of them. Given all the discussions about diet and health, it seems completely wrong, and so I suggested that we don't take it on for the conference. If any of the health-gurus around here could take a look and offer some feedback on it, that would be appreciated.
 
Ahaha gurus

It looks pretty interesting their diet, looks like an autodestructive life if they want to do that, and assuming that their way to work, will work in a diet just counting calories, when they are not professional people to know what is the correct diet.
 
I don't have enough time to look through the whole thing at the moment (I will look through it tomorrow), but based just on what you described:

A mathematical approach to diet based purely on calories is doomed to failure. This really is a nice distraction strategy, placing emphasis on counting numbers arbitrarily while happily poisoning yourself. I wouldn't be surprised if they got positive results in weight loss! From my experience, it seems that a lot of people who tend to adhere to "calorie counting diets" are actually looking for that excuse to eat whatever they want. In other words, they are terrible eaters to start with. I've been such a person, not so long as 6 years ago. It is an immature mentality, but unfortunately "calorie counting" diet strategies cater to the mindset, even with the best of intentions. Put 'em on the diet and of course they lose weight. They eat less. fwiw.
 
All you have to do is read "Good Calories, Bad Calories" to understand why the idea that counting calories is a load of bunkum.
 
I've done the counting calories while eating whatever you want thing several times years ago. I did loose the weight, but every time I eventually got so fed up of weighing everything and always thinking of food and what I was going to eat next, I just gave up.

While doing the diet I also found I slipped up and went through binges where I'd pig out, and every time I eventually packed it in I eventually put all the weight back on plus a bit more.

Yeah, you can loose weight on it, but in my experience, the calorie counting diet teaches you nothing about what your body really needs for health, and it gets to be sheer torture. :thdown:
 
A better view of a "Hacker's Diet" would be: Do you want to be able to give total attention to your work and not have to worry one bit about how much you eat? Then do the paleo diet; no calorie counting, no weighing, no measuring, just pure energy allocated by your internal operating system the way nature intended it to work. Don't risk the "blue screen of death" that comes with calorie counting and high carb diets! Eat Paleo - live longer, hack more."
 
The stories about what computer programmers eat (what I used to call "programmer food") go back for decades. 25 years ago a large part of my diet (as a programmer) was coffee (free, supplied by the employer) and snacks and prepackaged meals from vending machines at work. One of my especially geeky coworkers was particularly fond of Cheetos and Cheese Its, and would bring bags and boxes of the stuff to work. Going out for lunch might mean pizza or fast food, and maybe beer. It was not healthy and was, I think, considerably more risky than the vegan diet that I later undertook when I decided to "reform."

Calorie counting can "work" in terms of losing weight, but the math is based on assumptions that only even come close when you eat a high-carb diet, and eventually that is going to catch up with you. It seems, however, that most people can only stand to torment themselves for so long when their appetite tells them to eat but they have reached their calorie limit for the day. I did it successfully for 2 years before I succumbed and started gaining weight again.
 
Losing weight also doesn't automatically mean the diet is good, people seem pretty fixated on "only" losing weight and not health/energy in general.
 
Laura said:
A better view of a "Hacker's Diet" would be: Do you want to be able to give total attention to your work and not have to worry one bit about how much you eat? Then do the paleo diet; no calorie counting, no weighing, no measuring, just pure energy allocated by your internal operating system the way nature intended it to work. Don't risk the "blue screen of death" that comes with calorie counting and high carb diets! Eat Paleo - live longer, hack more."
Click to expand...

hahaha! I love it. What better way to appeal to hackers than to pit your argument against the "blue screen of death?"
 
For calorie-counting to be even remotely valuable, wouldn't one need to also know how many are burned whilst staring at the screen?

And wouldn't that be different for everyone? :huh:
 
Laura said:
Don't risk the "blue screen of death" that comes with calorie counting and high carb diets! Eat Paleo - live longer, hack more."
Click to expand...

:lol2: glorious. And so true - a good diet is one that keeps your mind off food and on living. It's sad to see such a tremendous amount of energy dissipate on account ATP-counting. It's not like we measure how well we exercise by the amount of oxygen molecules diffusing across the membranes of our lungs. :lol:
 
Thanks for the responses everyone :D Yeah, the "Eat Paleo - live longer, hack more" is a good one! I think I'll use that.
 
cholas said:
For calorie-counting to be even remotely valuable, wouldn't one need to also know how many are burned whilst staring at the screen?
Click to expand...
That's actually not too hard to come up with. :)

And wouldn't that be different for everyone? :huh:
Click to expand...
It's only an approximation anyway.

When I started counting calories I kept track of what I ate and also what I weighed, over time. I was able to observe a slope that, very roughly, appeared to correspond to 3500 kcal = 1 pound. Even with that result, though, I suspected that there was something wrong with this system.

The problem is that the nutritional values we have for various foods come from the Atwater Convention. They are calculated starting with the amount of energy given off when food is burned in a bomb calorimeter. Various "factors" are then applied because this method often doesn't provide sensible results. Why should it? We don't "burn" food. Bodies just don't work that way, and that was what bugged me from the start about counting calories.
 
Laura said:
A better view of a "Hacker's Diet" would be: Do you want to be able to give total attention to your work and not have to worry one bit about how much you eat? Then do the paleo diet; no calorie counting, no weighing, no measuring, just pure energy allocated by your internal operating system the way nature intended it to work. Don't risk the "blue screen of death" that comes with calorie counting and high carb diets! Eat Paleo - live longer, hack more."
Click to expand...

That makes so much sense, and it is not too difficult to put to the test. It's certainly easier than the "hacker's diet," which I did skim through to determine the premises. Any hacker reasonably well versed in logic should know what you get when you start with false premises, and that's what is wrong with this material. People cannot believe, though, that so many "authorities" would fail to notice that the premises are wrong. When the diets fail, that ought to offer a clue.

Wouldn't the author be surprised to learn that the "Eat Watch" he writes about is actually built in to all of us and generally works extremely well if you don't stuff yourself with toxic "foods." I would say that this is typical short-sighted engineering (the author is an engineer), trying to solve problems without ever understanding the big picture and the true nature of those problems.

All and all I think the book is a great example of how you can draw lots of diagrams and provide lots of explanations and be completely wrong.
 
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