Crossposted from Eat4Today
Since discovering it nearly two years ago, I've come to rely on The Hacker's Diet, by John Walker when I need inspiration, renewal or guidance in matters regarding weight control. Today, after weeks of being battered by cold weather and an earache -- I am in desperate need of all three.
I am terrible at managing my weight if left alone. While I'm pretty good about not taking seconds or eating between meals, I guess my portions are too big. And I'm probably eating too much bread. And -- well, I haven't been walking enough.
So, I've gained about 6 pounds since Thanksgiving and it's time to dig into The Hacker's Diet again:
Losing Weight:
Let's try to understand why so many people fail to keep weight off
after struggling to lose it. The rubber bag tells us
that weight gain stems from a very simple cause: eating more food
than the body burns. Feedback explains why: people prone to
overweight lack a built-in feedback system to balance the calories
they eat against what they burn; their appetite doesn't tell them
to stop eating when enough calories have gone in.
A person with a broken feedback system will always tend to gain or
lose weight. In the Food and Feedback
chapter we've seen how Oscar and Buster, victims of incorrect
feedback, gain weight simply by heeding the deceptive message of
appetite. When Oscar or Buster go on a diet, the diet tells them what
to eat and when. And, for reasons we now understand, it works! As
long as they follow the diet and don't cheat, they lose weight as
rapidly as promised and arrive at the end of the diet thin, happy, and
feeling in command of their weight.
Then they put the diet away and rely, once again, on their built-in
feedback system to tell them how much to eat. But it's still
broken! Sure enough, their weight starts to creep upward and before
long all the progress of the diet is erased. People with a tendency
to gain weight need continual guidance about how much to eat.
Withdrawing this guidance at the end of a diet, or couching the need
for ongoing feedback in a manner that implies, "You're a fatty, and
to be slim you'll have to spend the rest of your life on a diet" is
as deplorable as lending a pair of glasses to a nearsighted person for
six weeks, then removing them and saying, "OK. You're on your
own."
If your eyes don't focus, you need optical correction to live a normal
life, and you need it all life long. The fix that lets you see as
well as a person born with perfect vision needn't be obtrusive nor
prevent you from doing anything you wish, but you have to continue
using it. If you happen, instead, to lack a built-in eat watch, you
shouldn't feel any more guilty about technologically overcoming that
limitation than your friends do about wearing glasses. Gotta problem?
Quit whining, fix it, and get on with yer' life!
What I love about John Walker is his acknowledgment that this is a lifetime battle. The Hacker's Diet is a blueprint not just for losing weight (which I believe is the easy part) but also for maintaining and recovering from slip-ups.
To lose weight he lists the steps:
- Estimate Calories
- Plan Meals
- Log Weight
- Compute Trend
- Adjust Calories
As he says:
"Well, of course it works! How could it possibly fail?" And of
course it can't, as long as each link in the feedback loop continues
to function. Once you implement this plan, the only way you will ever
substantially diverge from whatever weight goal you set for yourself
is by eating more or fewer calories than your meal plan prescribes, or
ceasing to calculate your weight trend and adjust your meal plan
based upon it.
Obviously, I've slipped up. And it's time to recalculate my calories, do a little more walking and maybe (just maybe) spend a little less time reading the political blogs....
If you're interested, I hope you'll join me every Saturday as I work my way through John Walker's, The Hacker's Diet: How to lose weight and hair through stress and poor nutrition.