Our motto? Defeating Republicans through diet and exercise!
Earlier in the week I stumbled onto The Hacker’s Diet which was developed by John Walker (one of the programmers of AutoCad.) After being fat for most of his life, he decided to treat the problem of controlling his weight like any other problem to solve. And he set out to debug himself.
I’m awed by his work. The information is balanced by a lot of illustrations & a light voice. Which is important because his background as a programmer is reflected in the level of detail and the technical nature of his analogies.
He’s generously given me permission to publish excerpts at Eat4Today each day to stimulate discussion of it and maybe inspire others to start following it along with us. (let’s talk about it on the other side)
His idea is that we’re born with an Eat Watch. A gadget that let’s us know when it’s time to start eating and when it’s time to stop. But some of us have broken Eat Watches. And he’s decided to build a replacement. The Hacker’s Diet will replace our broken Eat Watches and give us a tool that will tell us when it’s time to eat and when it’s time to stop.
Which I think will fit perfectly into my idea of not eating between meals and not taking seconds!
In addition to that, I’ve been trying to work exercise into my daily routine. Here’s a series of photographs of me getting started (reprinted from Getting Fresh Air at Eat4Today):
And a side view:
And pull those arms back!
Whew! That’s about it for today.
(I just found this experiment. Here I am doing the same thing at work)
Here in Kansas City, we’ve got rain coming in two shifts today so I’m glad I got out yesterday!
I’m intrigued about this whole hackers diet thing. I come from a family with a history of diabetes, so I’ve been careful with my weight for twenty years. I have a max weight which I allow myself to reach and a minimum target weight that’s about fifteen pounds below that, so any time that I find myself heading for the upper end, I eat a little bit less and exercise a little bit more for a while. When I get back toward the low end I relax a bit, but don’t count it as a license to do whatever I want. By treating my weight as an optimum range rather than a specific target weight, I keep from stressing about it, but I never let myself get genuinely overweight. It keeps me generally within five pounds of the midpoint between those two weights, though I’ve been as much as eight pounds over or under once or twice.
It’s interesting that you do that, Kelly. Have you always been so successful at controlling your weight? Or did you once have a period of being a bit over?
And is it work for you? Does your Eat Watch work, or is it broken?
(I’m nosy — I hope you don’t mind)
I’ve never been significantly over my upper end, which is 205. I think I hit 215 once, but that was only for a month or two and I got myself headed in the right direction pretty soon after that. It is a bit of work, but not an enormous amount. The hovering specter of family diabetes makes for a good stick. So does the thought of having to buy new clothes.
That’s actually one of my gauges. When my clothes start feeling a little tight, I start weighing myself, otherwise I’ll go for months without getting on the scale. I’m not sure how well my methods would work for other people. I’m naturally a very organized and disciplined soul (some would call me compulsive), which comes in very handy on the deadlines front for writing. No special virtue to it, it’s not something that I work at. Likewise, I’m lucky in having a high metabolism and ease in building muscle mass. I also start from being a big guy which gives me more leeway. Largely thanks to a combination of genetics and luck, keeping my weight down comes relatively easy.
BTW, I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it, but your sig mantra is fabulous. It’s gotten solidly stuck in my head and I find myself thinking it anytime I reach for a snack. Thanks.
Wow, Kelly —
I know that the tight clothes thing wouldn’t work for me. Because it never has. I just buy slightly bigger clothes.
For me, my little set of rules (and a public blog) has been the only thing to work for any extended period of time.
And I’m glad the signature works for you.
I’ve been reading your website (waiting for my password at present), and thinking about the Hacker’s diet. My trouble is lack of exercise, stress, and having no will power when food is present. I don’t really overeat, but I sure do undermove, compared to past years. We moved to a more urban, less safe for walking neighborhood, and now my parking is right next to where I work, etc.
I admire your “no eating between meals”, but for me, what’s worked in the past has been never to restrict between meals, but to have tons of veggies and a few pieces/slices of fruit with me so I could eat whenever I wanted to.
I so need to take off the pounds I’ve added over the past 4 years. . .I do worry about diabetes, too. My brother just was diagnosed with Type II – and I don’t want it!
“…but I sure do undermove…” – that describes it perfectly for me too! Good word. 🙂
It’s sent!!
I wasn’t complaining about the wait for the password – I’m on my husband’s computer, so I had it sent to my work e-mail, and web-mail at work is just glacial about checking new mail. (I guess with global warming, I’m going to have to come up with a new metaphor for really slow stuff!).
Kb, your Eat 4 Today motto was really helpful to me this week and I could see that it’s lodging itself in my psyche. The day of my mom’s birthday party I let go of all restraint and ate cake and then more cake, took seconds, ate between meals,the whole schmear. But at every moment I knew that even that was Just 4 Today. Instead of thinking, oh now I’ve done it, I’ll be eating like this for weeks, I thought without guilt or angst, “No, this, too, is Just 4 Today. I don’t have to do this tomorrow if I don’t want to.” And “tomorrow” I chose to go back to not taking seconds and not eating between meals. Easy peasy, in a way those slips had never felt before.
Thanks, Kb.
Hi kansas,
Your comment that day inspired today’s Commitment story. I hope you don’t mind.
🙂
Not only don’t mind, but I’m going to plagarize myself and post my comment about it there, too.
Cool!
Thanks for the link.
This sentence from John Walker is so true:
Most extraordinary things are done by ordinary people who never knew what they were attempting was “impossible.”
I thought that was a terrific sentence too.