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by John Walker
The Hacker’s Diet
How to lose weight and hair
through stress and poor nutrition
JOHN WALKER
Also by John Walker
THE AUTODESK FILE
c Copyright 1991–1993, John Walker
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in
any manner whatsoever without written permission
except in the case of brief quotations embodied in
critical articles and reviews.
SECOND (ELECTRONIC) EDITION
This book was published in December of 1993.
Typeset with LATEX.
Trademarks
The following trademarks are registered in the U.S.
Patent and Trademark Office by Autodesk, Inc.: AutoCAD, Autodesk, AutoSketch, and AutoShade. The
following are trademarks of Autodesk, Inc.: Autodesk
Cyberspace and Cellular Automata Lab. The following are trademarks of John Walker: The Hacker’s
Diet and Eat Watch.
Third-Party Trademarks
All brand and product names are trademarks or
registered trademarks of their respective companies.
CONTENTS
PREFACE 9
1 INTRODUCTION 11
About losing weight 11
About this book 12
About you 13
About me 14
About the computer tools 16
About pounds and inches 17
About time! 18
I Engineering 19
2 THE EAT WATCH 21
Food and feedback 23
Motivation and manipulation 24
Programmer, hack thyself 26
Problems: managing, fixing, and solving 28
What, me exercise? 32
2
CONTENTS 3
3 THE RUBBER BAG 34
What goes in 35
What you burn 36
What comes out 39
Inside the rubber bag 39
Seizing control 41
Input/Output 53
Food fads 56
Summary 60
4 FOOD AND FEEDBACK 62
Measure the quantity 62
Determine the goal 63
Apply negative feedback 65
Avoid positive feedback 69
Bang-bang vs. proportional control 73
Three possible outcomes 76
Three different people 76
Fun with feedback 87
5 SIGNAL AND NOISE 91
Wired science 92
Cause and effect 95
Dexter’s diet 96
Moving averages 103
The truth in the trend 114
Closing the circle 124
Exploring moving averages 126
6 WHAT, ME EXERCISE? 131
Living longer 132
Feeling better 134
The fitness ladder 135
Climbing the ladder 136
4 THE HACKER’S DIET
Introductory ladder 137
Lifetime ladder 140
How much is enough? 145
Progress and motivation 146
Details 151
II Management 156
7 WEIGHT MONITORING 158
Getting started 158
Every day 161
Every month 165
Every year 174
8 PLANNING MEALS 176
Why plan meals? 177
Calorie targets 178
How many meals, and when? 179
A regular schedule 181
Choose the chow 182
Eat watch in action 192
Summary 204
9 LOSING WEIGHT 206
Closing the loop 206
Getting ready 212
The initial plunge 219
The long haul 228
Late night, hungry, and alone 239
Success and stability 249
CONTENTS 5
10 PERFECT WEIGHT FOREVER 256
Regaining: the problem and the cause 257
Causes for confidence 258
Feedback forever 260
Proportional feedbag 275
Evading evangelism 277
The dream 278
III Details 280
11 PENCIL AND PAPER 282
Calculating daily trend 282
Calculating weight loss rate 284
Calculating calorie deficit 285
Making weight charts 285
Forecasting weight loss 286
Forecasting life extension 287
Calculating feedback models 289
Calculating moving averages 290
12 UNITS AND CONVERSION FACTORS 296
Units of Volume (Fluid Measure) 296
Units of Energy (Food value) 297
Units of Length 298
Units of Weight (Avoirdupois) 298
Units of Dry Volume 298
Abbreviations 299
The Weight of Water 300
13 CALORIES IN VARIOUS FOODS 301
ABOUT THE AUTHOR 332
6 THE HACKER’S DIET
INDEX 333
LIST OF TABLES
Daily calorie requirements, men 36
Daily calorie requirements, women 37
Calories consumed by exercise 131
Exercise ladder, introductory 138
Exercise ladder, lifetime 141
Weight log sheet, blank 162
Weight goals, typical men 254
Weight goals, typical women 255
Units of fluid volume 296
Units of energy 297
Units of length 298
Units of weight 298
Units of dry volume 298
Abbreviations 299
Weight of water 300
Calorie content of foods 301
7
8 THE HACKER’S DIET
PREFACE
This is not a normal diet book, and I am not a normal
diet book author.
I’m not a doctor. Nor am I a nutritionist, psychologist, sports hero, gourmet chef, or any of the other
vocations that seem to qualify people to tell you how to
lose weight.
I’m an engineer by training, a computer programmer
by avocation, and an businessman through lack of alternatives. From grade school in the 1950’s until 1988 I
was fat—anywhere from 30 to 80 pounds overweight.
This is a diet book by somebody who spent most of his
life fat.
The absurdity of my situation finally struck home in
1987. “Look,” I said to myself, “you founded one of
the five biggest software companies in the world, Autodesk. You wrote large pieces of AutoCAD, the world
standard for computer aided design. You’ve made in
excess of fifty million dollars without dropping dead,
going crazy, or winding up in jail. You’ve succeeded at
some pretty difficult things, and you can’t control your
flippin’ weight?”
Through all the years of struggling with my weight,
the fad diets, the tedious and depressing history most
9
10 THE HACKER’S DIET
fat people share, I had never, even once, approached
controlling my weight the way I’d work on any other
problem: a malfunctioning circuit, a buggy program, an
ineffective department in my company.
As an engineer, I was trained to solve problems. As a
software developer, I designed tools to help others solve
their problems. As a businessman I survived and succeeded by managing problems. And yet, all that time, I
hadn’t looked at my own health as something to be investigated, managed, and eventually solved in the same
way. I decided to do just that.
This book is a compilation of what I learned. Six
months after I decided being fat was a problem to be
solved, not a burden to be endured, I was no longer
overweight. Since then, my weight hasn’t varied by
more than a few pounds. I’m hungry less often at 145
pounds than I was at 215. I look better, feel great, and
have more energy for the things I enjoy. I spend only
a few minutes a day maintaining this happy situation.
And I know I’ll be able to control my weight from now
on, because I have the tools I need, the will to use them,
and the experience to know they work.
The tools are now in your hands.
Live long and prosper.
John Walker
Sausalito, California
January, 1991
1
INTRODUCTION
About losing weight
There’s an old Wall Street tale: a tyro asks an oldtimer, “How do you make money in the market.” The
wise man answers, “Nothing could be simpler: buy low,
sell high.” The beginner asks, “How can I learn to
do that?” The sage responds, “Ahhhh. . . that takes a
lifetime.” Simple doesn’t mean easy.
There is no magic secret to losing weight and keeping it off, just as there is no hidden key to instant
wealth. Nonetheless, every year another crop of “magic
diet” and “secrets of investing” books appear on alreadycreaking shelves. The human capacity to ignore inconvenient facts and avoid unpleasantness is immense. Success in any endeavour requires coming to terms with the
true nature of the task at hand and, if the goal is worth
the effort, getting on with it.
“How can I lose weight?” “Simple, eat less food than
your body burns.” “How can I learn to do that?” Read
this book.
11
12 THE HACKER’S DIET
About this book
This book is about. . .
How to. . . It’s a how-to book, but not a cookbook.
Everybody’s different, and no one diet is right for all.
This book will help you find a diet plan that works for
you.
. . . lose weight. . . Lose weight rapidly, and keep it off
permanently. Losing weight isn’t pleasant, and it’s far
better to get it over with quickly, and never have to do
it again.
. . . and hair. . . Just kidding. Actually, it seems to me
the life of a middle aged male is a race between hair
falling out of its own accord and getting ripped out over
stress and irritation. Women have it harder—they have
to rip it all out.
. . .through stress. . . Stress is an unavoidable consequence of living in our fast-paced, high-tech culture,
yet few of us are willing to sacrifice its stimulation and
excitement to recapture the placid and serene life of simpler times. Stress is a primary cause of overeating and
weight gain. You’ll learn how to break the cycle of
stress-induced eating and how to actually turn stress into
an ally in achieving your ideal weight.
. . . and poor nutrition. There is one, simple, unavoidable fact of dieting. To lose weight you have to eat less
food than your body needs. Only by doing so can you
cause your body to burn its reserves of fat and thereby
shed excess weight. If nutrition is about meeting your
body’s needs, losing weight involves deliberately shortchanging those needs—in a word, starving. This isn’t
a pleasant or inherently healthy process, but it’s better than carrying around all that extra weight. You’ll
see how to reduce your food intake intelligently, so you
INTRODUCTION 13
don’t end up with scurvy or something else unpleasant
or embarrassing.
About you
This book is written for successful, intelligent, and motivated people who happen to be overweight. Whether
you’ve always been overweight, have been on a roller
coaster of dieting and regaining, or have just recently
added some excess poundage, the key resources you
need to achieve and maintain whatever weight and health
goals you set for yourself are the same as you need to
accomplish anything else worthwhile in life:
An eye firmly fixed on the goal.
Will power.
A high tolerance for pain.
I don’t mean this to be facetious; vaulting any of life’s
hurdles, whether success in school, business, sports, the
arts, or personal relationships requires the will and the
willingness to do what’s necessary, recognising that the
achievement will more than repay the investment of time
and energy you make.
This is the very key to success in anything—to be
able defer immediate gratification in pursuit of a more
permanent and worthwhile future goal.
This is precisely what losing weight involves. If you’re
successful in the things that matter to you but overweight, all you need to lose that weight is to make accomplishing your weight and health goals matter just as
much, then approach weight loss and control just like
any other important project: by developing and carrying