The Hacker's Diet
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The Hacker's Diet is a book written by John Walker, founder of Autodesk. It is a diet book, despite John Walker having nothing to do with medicine or nutrition in his professional life. As he writes, it "is a diet book by somebody who spent most of his life fat."
Walker describes the diet as approaching weight loss "as an engineering problem," and claims that his approach enabled him to reduce his weight from 215 pounds to 145 pounds in a year, and keep it stable afterwards.
Walker cuts the problem down to the barest elements, modeling the human body as a "rubber bag" where we can ignore many small variables such as food type, frequency, metabolic rates and even exercise as not greatly important to the central problem. Calories in compared to calories used is the key, if you eat more calories than you burn, you gain weight; if you eat fewer calories than you burn, you lose weight. All that is necessary to consistently lose weight, at the desired rate, is to monitor the intake, monitor the weight loss rate and make the desired proportional adjustments to reach the desired goal, a very simple control systems problem.
Walker also goes to some lengths to introduce the reader to simple feedback and control systems, providing spreadsheets to demonstrate feedback, oscillation and data smoothing to illustrate his arguments. Data smoothing is a key element of the monitoring system, preventing the dieter from becoming discouraged by short term failure to lose and to be able to concentrate on the long term trend.
While the diet is a fairly straightforward calorie-counting approach, what makes it successful for many is the unique focus on feedback through monitoring of weight using engineering principles. Techniques are presented for Excel aided or paper and pencil data smoothing to allow the dieter to adjust the diet for themselves using the long term trend and to not be discouraged by short term fluctuations based on water retention or other factors.
Another important factor in the diet's approach is using the trend line as a control system to allow the dieter early warning of relapse after the target weight is reached. As Walker states "The vast majority of people who lose weight end up, in relatively short order, gaining back every pound they lost." A quick check of the trend line provides an easy way to make small adjustments in intake, allowing much greater control of weight for life.
The book also suggests you combine the diet with exercises derived from the Royal Canadian Air Force 5BX exercise program. This online book also allows for readers to download a folder of Excel files Walker created to record, graph, and monitor weight.
