From the Hacker’s Diet by John Walker – Introduction:
This is the very key to success in anything—to be able to 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 out a rational plan for success based on an understanding of what’s involved in achieving it.
This book isn’t written for people who are or wish to become obsessed with their health. I consider weight control and fitness like any other aspect of life that’s important enough to do, but hardly my reason for being. It’s like balancing the checkbook, going grocery shopping, or getting the car tuned up. The goal is to get the job done, and done right, as quickly as possible and with the minimum effort.
I love this idea — that so many of us are successful in the things we set out to do. We’re smart and good at our jobs. But in this one crucial aspect of our lives, we’re helpless and overwhelmed. But John Walker promises that we can become successful at controlling our weight with no more effort than it takes to balance a checkbook.
The poor nutrition part comes in the section about The Book, “…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.”
I’ve always said that losing weight is the easy part compared to the weight-control part. Because you do eventually reach the end. And he goes on to say that it’s the part you want to get past as soon as possible. He’s all for losing the weight quickly, so we can get on with the interesting part of maintaining the weight we want to keep.
When I started The Commitment, I was mostly interested in sneaking weight off. But it turned out that I was getting most of my calories from snacks and taking seconds and when I stopped doing that the weight practically fell off. The nice thing about The Commitment was that I’d be starving for an afternoon, but then I could eat what I wanted for dinner. And I’d be starving when I woke up in the morning, but I could have what I wanted for breakfast. My periods of starvation were always rewarded by the meal of my choice!
One last quick thought from The Hacker’s Diet, “Mastering and applying the tools for weight and health management in this book will allow you to succeed, probably within the next 12 months. By this time next year, then, having reduced a nagging lifelong problem to a few minutes a day of minor effort, you’ll look forward to many additional healthy years replete with all the joys life has to offer.”
Isn’t that amazing? I always said I’d try The Commitment for a year to see what happens, and that’s what John Walker advises too.
(Tomorrow, What is The Eat Watch?)
(read more about The Hacker’s Diet)
One Comment
Glanced at the Hacker’s Diet real quickly, and intended to dive in later. But reading this post today, the procrastination, I realized, is related to me struggling with the commitment. My left brain knows what I need to do. THE LB is always a team player. That is never the issue. It’s the emotions. The emotions are like a 300 pound gorilla next to a 130 pound logical girl. The gorilla starts throwing her weight around and then I’m whacked. How do I get the gorilla to be a team player?